I am the writer of three genres, historical fiction, erotic fiction, and historical thrillers. I’ve lived in a number of places in the world and have always done extensive research for my historical fiction. I often cover stories about marginalized peoples set against world-changing political events – post-plague, post-war, etc…With historical fiction, my favourite eras are the mid 17th century and also mid 19th, around the time of the US Civil War. I am also a playwright and screenwriter although my original training was that of sculptor, as such my ambition is to create vivid landscapes the reader can truly experience with all senses.
I love this book because for me it’s the ultimate historical novel; a great epic set in a tumultuous landscape beautifully crafted and utterly engaging. The perfect blend of the personal and the political woven into gloriously intricate emotions. It taught me the importance of character and how the psychology of ambition can shape a whole life as well as destroy a family. The ultimate artistry I inspire towards as a writer, that creates the visceral, vivid landscape I like to get lost in as a reader.
The Leopard is a modern classic which tells the spellbinding story of a decadent, dying Sicilian aristocracy threatened by the approaching forces of democracy and revolution.
'There is a great feeling of opulence, decay, love and death about it' Rick Stein
In the spring of 1860, Fabrizio, the charismatic Prince of Salina, still rules over thousands of acres and hundreds of people, including his own numerous family, in mingled splendour and squalor. Then comes Garibaldi's landing in Sicily and the Prince must decide whether to resist the forces of change or come to terms with them.
For anyone who’s had their lives rocked by a clandestine affair or has profoundly fallen in love knowing it will be fatal, this book will hit your heart. A narrative set against the bleakness of post-war bombed-out London, I love the way Greene blends the physical metaphor of this world with his own internal struggles around faith, infidelity, and obsessive love for a self-destructive woman. It showed me that it was okay to love and lose and how one can craft great literature from pain. But more than that, I think it taught me that the passing of time is not just a way of encapsulating memory, it is also a poignant reminder to live in the moment.
The love affair between Maurice Bendrix and Sarah, flourishing in the turbulent times of the London Blitz, ends when she suddenly and without explanation breaks it off. After a chance meeting rekindles his love and jealousy two years later, Bendrix hires a private detective to follow Sarah, and slowly his love for her turns into an obsession.
This book has dipped in and out of my life at different ages, and each time it has a different resonance for me. I guess it taught me at an early age that love is not confined to lust or youth or even impassioned gestures but in the minutia of marriage and also – as the main plot is about an unrequited love of fifty years finally being consummated – as a tenacious ideal kept alive through hope. As an author, it’s a great illustration of visual and emotional complexity made simple through vivid description.
There are novels, like journeys, which you never want to end: this is one of them. One seventh of July at six in the afternoon, a woman of 71 and a man of 78 ascend a gangplank and begin one of the greatest adventures in modern literature. The man is Florentino Ariza, President of the Carribean River Boat Company; the woman is his childhood sweetheart, the recently widowed Fermina Daza. She has earache. He is bald and lame. Their journey up-river, at an age when they can expect 'nothing more in life', holds out a shimmering promise: the consummation of…
I have included this book for all readers who love a huge narrative arc, in this case, a life that stretches over centuries and changes gender. It was an early influence on me and taught me that fantasy can be powerfully embedded in a plausible historical reality and can be just as powerful and emotionally transforming as a factual biography. Woolf was also a hundred years ahead in terms of nuanced gender and throws out all societal restraints of conventional femineity in her depiction of Orlando, the original his/her hero/ine.
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'The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.'
Written for her lover Vita Sackville-West, 'Orlando' is Woolf's playfully subversive take on a biography, here tracing the fantastical life of Orlando. As the novel spans centuries and continents, gender and identity, we follow Orlando's adventures in love - from being a lord in the Elizabethan court to a lady in 1920s London.
You don’t have to just have had your heart broken, or be in the grip of an obsessive love to recognize the pain, love, trauma, and joy Tolstoy depicts in this classic. Personally, this tragedy has always resonated for me throughout my life, I guess it’s because of the range and age of the characters, as well as the varied depictions of human entanglement that are both so ordinary and extraordinary. I think also this was a novel that showed me I could set a big personal story against a tumultuous political landscape and still move people.
In 1872 the mistress of a neighbouring landowner threw herself under a train at a station near Tolstoy's home. This gave Tolstoy the starting point he needed for composing what many believe to be the greatest novel ever written.
In writing Anna Karenina he moved away from the vast historical sweep of War and Peace to tell, with extraordinary understanding, the story of an aristocratic woman who brings ruin on herself. Anna's tragedy is interwoven with not only the courtship and marriage of Kitty and Levin but also the lives of many other characters. Rich in incident, powerful in characterization,…
The Witch of Cologne is the story of Ruth, a seventeenth-century Jewish midwife whose revolutionary methods lead to accusations of witchcraft and imprisonment. Ruth has brought new and dangerous ideas to Cologne from the free city of Amsterdam, and in her work has combined the radical ideas of the philosopher Spinoza with the ancient ways of the kabbala. Her love affair with Detlef von Tennen, a Catholic cleric, may save her in the short term, but at a time of religious persecution there are a few options for those who break taboos. Detlef becomes fascinated by this woman with her passion for the revolutionary ideas he himself longs to embrace. But the price of love, and of belief, is high…
Edge of the Known World is a near-future love and adventure story about a brilliant young refugee caught in era when genetic screening tests like 23AndMe make it impossible to hide a secret identity. The novel is distributed by Simon & Schuster. It is a USA Today Bestseller and 2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction: General.
Alexandra is a gifted student, adoring daughter, and exuberant prankster. She is also hiding in the open. After a blissful childhood, Alex learned she’s an illegal refugee from a brutal regime, smuggled into…
Fans of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake will be swept away by this riveting speculative fiction adventure and love story about family, genetic privacy, and the onrushing future of surveillance technology.
2024 American Fiction Awards Winner in multiple categories, including Best New Fiction, Political Thriller, and Science Fiction
Alexandra Tashen is a brilliant student, adoring daughter, merry wit, and exuberant prankster. After a blissful childhood on a Texas ranch, she learns the truth: She is a refusé, an illegal refugee smuggled into the Allied Nations as an infant. Everyone from her birth region carries a harmless but detectable bit of…
