I’m a historical fiction author and librarian from Hampshire, and I’m passionate about women’s history. I write stories inspired by the lives of real women in the past, who achieved extraordinary things, but whom history has forgotten. My debut novel, Operation Moonlight, won the Penguin Random House First Novel competition in 2019.
I adored this captivating, spellbinding tale of the only woman to sail with Francis Drake on the Golden Hind.
It’s based on the compelling true story of a slave called Macaia, a woman who was literally written out of the history books as her ordeal was deemed an inconvenient truth. Nikki Marmery not only vividly and authentically brings to light this courageous woman's story, but she sets Macaia front and centre.
I learned so much about this period of human history, about what life was like aboard a 16th Century sailing ship, and about how world exploration has never been solely a male endeavour. Macaia is an ordinary woman, who showed extraordinary bravery and endurance, and I found her story fascinating, moving, and life-affirming.
April 1579: When two ships meet off the Pacific coast of New Spain, an enslaved woman seizes the chance to escape. But Maria has unwittingly joined Francis Drake’s circumnavigation voyage as he sets sail on a secret detour into the far north. Sailing into the unknown on the Golden Hind, a lone woman among 80 men, Maria will be tested to the very limits of her endurance. It will take all her wits to survive—and courage to cut the ties that bind her to Drake to pursue her own journey. How far will Maria go to be truly free? Inspired…
I loved this brilliant espionage novel, inspired by real events during the Second World War.
William Boyd paints an authentic, dramatic, vivid portrait of the life of a female spy. Sally Gilmartin is living as a respectable widow in the picturesque English countryside. But decades before, during the war, she was Eva Delectorskaya.
As a rigorously trained spy, who carried fake passports and used safe houses, she was taught to lie and deceive, and above all, to never trust anyone. Now, in her later years, someone is trying to kill her, and she’s going to have to learn to trust her daughter with the secrets of her past.
I am fascinated by stories of female agents, especially those of the clandestine Special Operations Executive who underwent incredibly perilous missions during the war. Restless is a novel full of tension and drama, a spy tale of the finest order, and I highly recommend it.
'Eva Delectorskaya,' I said mystified. ' Who's that?' 'Me,' she said. 'I am Eva Delectorskaya.' What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? During the long, hot summer of 1976, Ruth Gilmartin discovers that her very English mother Sally is really Eva Delectorskaya, a Russian emigre and one-time spy. In 1939 Eva is a beautiful twenty-eight year old living in Paris. As war breaks out, she is recruited for the British Secret Service by Lucas Romer, a mysterious, patrician Englishman. Under his tutelage she learns to become…
I was transfixed by this epic novel, which reimagines the extraordinary life of an early female aviator, based on real pilots like Amelia Earhart, Beryl Markham, Eleanor Smith, and Jackie Cochran.
The novel spans Prohibition-era Montana, the Pacific Northwest, Alaska, New Zealand, wartime London, and modern-day Los Angeles. Great Circle tells the remarkable story of a daredevil female aviator, who achieves her dream to fly around the world, despite all the challenges she faces. A true heroine I will never forget.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A TODAY SHOW #ReadWithJenna BOOK CLUB PICK • The unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, at any cost: an “epic trip—through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood—and you’ll relish every minute” (People).
After being rescued as infants from a sinking ocean liner in 1914, Marian and Jamie Graves are raised by their dissolute uncle in Missoula, Montana. There--after encountering a pair of barnstorming pilots passing through town in beat-up biplanes--Marian commences her lifelong love affair with flight. At fourteen she…
This is one of my favourite novels about the imagined life of the 19th Century fossil enthusiast, Mary Anning.
Though poor and uneducated, Mary had a passion for dinosaur fossils, scouring the windswept Jurassic coast near Lyme Regis. She found fossils nobody else could, making discoveries that shook the scientific world. But science in the past was an almost entirely male-dominated arena, and Mary’s finds were effectively stolen from her, and she was ignored and forgotten in the scientific community.
Mary’s story is one of female hardship, endurance, and tenacity, and her contribution to our scientific knowledge deserves to be remembered.
From the New York Times bestselling novelist, a stunning historical novel that follows the story of Mary Anning and Elizabeth Philpot, two extraordinary 19th century fossil hunters who changed the scientific world forever.
On the windswept, fossil-strewn beaches of the English coast, poor and uneducated Mary learns that she has a unique gift: "the eye" to spot ammonites and other fossils no one else can see. When she uncovers an unusual fossilized skeleton in the cliffs near her home, she sets the religious community on edge, the townspeople to gossip, and the scientific world alight. After enduring bitter cold, thunderstorms,…
This incredibly moving novel, set in Dublin in 1918, tells the story of a nurse, Julia, who works in the maternity ward of a hospital.
During the height of the terrible flu epidemic, Julia must risk her own life in order to save the lives of the women under her care. I love learning about the medical world, and the history of women as healers. The story features a real doctor – Dr. Kathleen Lynn – a pioneering medical woman who, along with brave women like Julia, saved lives against all odds.
In Dublin, 1918, a maternity ward at the height of the Great Flu is a small world of work, risk, death, and unlooked-for love, in "Donoghue's best novel since Room" (Kirkus Reviews).
In an Ireland doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital in the city center, where expectant mothers who have come down with the terrible new Flu are quarantined together. Into Julia's regimented world step two outsiders—Doctor Kathleen Lynn, a rumoured Rebel on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.
Operation Moonlight is a dual-timeline historical novel, inspired by the brave stories of real women in the Second World War.
1944: newly trained SOE secret agent Elisabeth is faced with an impossible mission - to parachute into Nazi-occupied France and send back information on the Germans’ deadly long-range missiles. Her only advice: trust no one. 2018: Betty is about to turn 100. When she receives an invitation from the local Century Society to meet other centenarians and reminisce, she remains mysteriously tightlipped about her past. But when her carer, Tali, discovers a suitcase in the cellar containing letters and a gun, Betty’s secrets refuse to stay hidden any longer.
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
The team attempts a new route up the East Face without the use of supplemental oxygen, Sherpa support, or chance for rescue. When three climbers disappear during their summit attempt, Zieman reaches the knife edge of her limits and digs deeply to fight for the climbers’ lives and to find her voice.
The plan was outrageous: A small team of four climbers would attempt a new route on the East Face of Mt. Everest, considered the most remote and dangerous side of the mountain, which had only been successfully climbed once before. Unlike the first large team, Mimi Zieman and her team would climb without using supplemental oxygen or porter support. While the unpredictable weather and high altitude of 29,035 feet make climbing Everest perilous in any condition, attempting a new route, with no idea of what obstacles lay ahead, was especially audacious. Team members were expected to push themselves to their…
