Why am I passionate about this?

I am fascinated by the question, “Where is home?” Is it the place you were born, among the people who raised you? Or is it the place you most come alive? Growing up, fiction taught me there were other worlds than the one I inhabited, and historical fiction taught me how they came to be. Travels in England, Europe, Africa, and South America opened up worlds and cultures I had only read about and drove me to write a novel about how one may find "home" in the most unlikely times and places. 


I wrote

Blue Desert

By Celia Jeffries,

Book cover of Blue Desert

What is my book about?

This is the story of Alice George, and her life among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

The books I picked & why

Book cover of Cutting for Stone

Celia Jeffries Why did I love this book?

I loved following these characters from an improbable birth in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to the world of medicine in New York and back.

I learned about a time and place that never appeared in my history texts and about how that history and landscape impacted and illuminated the main character. I was riveted through all 667 pages. 

By Abraham Verghese,

Why should I read it?

11 authors picked Cutting for Stone as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

My brother, Shiva, and I came into the world in the late afternoon of the twentieth of September in the year of grace 1954. We took our first breaths in the thick air of Addis Ababa, capital city of Ethiopia. Bound by birth, we were driven apart by bitter betrayal. No surgeon can heal the would that divides two brothers. Where silk and steel fail, story must succeed. To begin at the beginning...


Book cover of Hamnet

Celia Jeffries Why did I love this book?

I read my fair share of Shakespeare in school and learned that he left his "second best bed" to his wife, but nothing prepared me for the reality of the Black Death, his life as a young Latin tutor who fell in love with an older woman, and the loss of his son. I love O’Farrell’s writing, beautiful atmospheric prose, and a deep study of what can fracture a family.

I could not put this book down.

By Maggie O'Farrell,

Why should I read it?

40 authors picked Hamnet as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021
'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times
'A thing of shimmering wonder' David Mitchell

TWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE. A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither…


Book cover of Moon Tiger

Celia Jeffries Why did I love this book?

I am fascinated by stories that encapsulate a whole life, usually from the perspective of a character looking back, assessing, wondering, and coming to terms with all that has transpired, both personally and globally. I am particularly fascinated by multi-dimensional female characters.

I was taken from page one by how well this story transitioned through different perspectives to offer a kaleidoscopic view of a life lived by a strong, unapologetic, complicated woman. 

By Penelope Lively,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Moon Tiger as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Claudia Hampton is dying. As memories crowd in, she re-creates the mosiac of her life, her own story enmeshed with those of her brother, her lover and father of her daughter, and the centre of her life, Tom, her one great love both found and lost in the "mad fairyland" of war-torn Egypt.


Book cover of A Long Petal of the Sea

Celia Jeffries Why did I love this book?

I put aside the book I was reading at the time to live within this book as long as I could.

I thought I knew about the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the events that led to the uprisings in Chile in the 1970s, but one really doesn’t understand world events until one experiences them through the lives of those (fictional or real) who endured them.

In this story of an unlikely marriage, I learned once again that love is how we survive.

By Isabel Allende, Nick Caistor (translator), Amanda Hopkinson (translator)

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked A Long Petal of the Sea as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

_______________ THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER _______________ 'A powerful love story spanning generations... Full of ambition and humanity' - Sunday Times 'One of the strongest and most affecting works in Allende's long career' - New York Times Book Review _______________ On September 3, 1939, the day of the Spanish exiles' splendid arrival in Chile, the Second World War broke out in Europe. Victor Dalmau is a young doctor when he is caught up in the Spanish Civil War, a tragedy that leaves his life - and the fate of his country - forever changed. Together with…


Book cover of My Antonia

Celia Jeffries Why did I love this book?

I read this book under the covers with a flashlight when I was probably too young to know what I was really reading. Still, I was deeply impacted by the story of these early settlers in the American West.

Although today I read it with a greater awareness of the history of the native people of that land, I am still stunned by the description of a seemingly one-dimensional but beautiful landscape and the world we most often now "fly over." 

By Willa Cather,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked My Antonia as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Packaged in handsome, affordable trade editions, Clydesdale Classics is a new series of essential literary works. It features literary phenomena with influence and themes so great that, after their publication, they changed literature forever. From the musings of literary geniuses like Mark Twain in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to the striking personal narrative of Solomon Northup in Twelve Years a Slave, this new series is a comprehensive collection of our history through the words of the exceptional few.

My Antonia, a novel by Willa Cather, tells the story of friendship between Antonia Shimerda a young woman who moves to…


Explore my book 😀

Blue Desert

By Celia Jeffries,

Book cover of Blue Desert

What is my book about?

This is the story of Alice George, and her life among the Tuareg, a tribe of nomadic warriors. While the outside world endured the catastrophe of World War I, the Tuareg continued to crisscross the Sahara as they always had. A matrilineal society in which the men are veiled and the women hold property, it was a world well-suited to Alice, who discovers a life she never could have lived in corseted England.

In 1917, Alice returned home to England. Her silence about her life in the desert is finally broken five decades later when she receives a telegram announcing Abu has died in the desert. “Who is Abu?” her husband asks. “My lover,” she replies. Thus begins a weeklong journey of revelation as Alice lays bare her secrets.

Book cover of Cutting for Stone
Book cover of Hamnet
Book cover of Moon Tiger

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,188

readers submitted
so far, will you?

You might also like...

Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

By Kalvin Thane,

Book cover of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

Kalvin Thane Author Of Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Artist Reader Gamer Father Coder

Kalvin's 3 favorite reads in 2024

What is my book about?

Unlike the typical tales of a flawless fighting unit, this story follows Commander Kami Trenn and her ragtag squad of mixed-race space marines.

Dog Squad fights a mysterious adversary whose presence remains shrouded in secrecy. The fate of the universe hangs in the balance, but will they be able to make enough of a difference?

Can they hope to uncover the enemy’s plans for galactic dominance before the Alliance falls? Maybe. If they can stop fighting each other.

Cytress Vee: A Dog Squad Story

By Kalvin Thane,

What is this book about?

Across the void formed by two galactic spiral arms, vast forces face each other.

The tenuous Alliance, sixty civilizations united only by fear of invasion, prepare to resist the encroachment of their as-yet unseen enemy, known only as the Creeps.

The Void has become a battleground. Three thousand light years across, and populated by a scattering of ten thousand ‘dark’ worlds, it is the Alliance’s last chance to protect their way of life. Self-destructive, robotic drones pour across the Void in ever-increasing numbers, testing the Alliance fleets to breaking point.

In the midst of the surging tides of war, a…


5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in the Spanish Civil War, brothers, and plagues?

Brothers 114 books
Plagues 58 books