Here are 73 books that Florence Adler Swims Forever fans have personally recommended if you like
Florence Adler Swims Forever.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
First, I'm a woman and I'm inspired by women from the past who overcame the rules of the day in which they lived. It doesn’t matter where they lived, or what they tried to overcome, but to have bucked the patriarchal system and achieved some measure of success, is phenomenal. Second, I became inspired by silent film star Marion Davies, and I wrote a book about it. I never intended to write historical fiction. My first book was a memoir about sailing to Tahiti at fourteen with my father and two sisters. But life has a funny way of directing us where we need to go. Here I am: inspired by women from the past!
How would you feel to inherit your family business (the Post cereal company) but not be able to run it? I’d be infuriated.
Here is the story of one of the richest women in the country who needed to marry so her husband could have a seat on the board. But men in the early 1900s did not abide women on the Board of Directors of any corporation.
Learn how Marjorie Post navigates the world trying to find love and be true to her father’s dream.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Marvelous . . . I just had to be there with the Post cereal heiress through every twist and turn.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
“New-money heiress Marjorie Post isn’t content to remain a society bride as she remakes herself into a savvy entrepreneur, a visionary philanthropist, a presidential hostess, and much more.”—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone,…
Growing up as a bi-racial Malay Filipina in a country that only recognizes my Malay-Muslim heritage, I have always inadvertently never quite met the standards of what constitutes a “good Malay Muslim woman.” My circumstances have meant I am always drawn to stories of women who strain against the confines of their societies and desire more for themselves than what is considered acceptable by polite society. Whether they achieve their goals by coloring within the lines or straying outside them, their journeys are what continue to inspire me to live my own life as authentically as possible.
I love this novel for its hilarious, unique take on the rage-against-the-patriarchy trope. Elizabeth Zott, the novel’s lead, is a refreshing portrayal of a woman battling the world of mansplaining while doing it in the most stereotypically “female” way—cooking up a storm! As a chemist, her scientific breakdowns of how ingredients chemically react with one another make for many humourous moments on the page.
This is a book that will have you hooting with laughter and rooting alongside the protagonist till the very end. It mirrored the frustrations I have often felt as a working woman and left me vindicated for the times I, too, have “behaved badly” in male company.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • Meet Elizabeth Zott: a “formidable, unapologetic and inspiring” (PARADE) scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show in this novel that is “irresistible, satisfying and full of fuel. It reminds you that change takes time and always requires heat” (The New York Times Book Review).
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Daily, Newsweek, GoodReads
"A unique heroine ... you'll find yourself wishing she wasn’t fictional." —Seattle Times…
I’m somebody that starts far too many sentences with the phrase “Remember when.” I have great sensory recollection of things from my past. As a high schooler in the 90s, I can still smell the CK One I was wearing during the Seinfeld finale and hear the Nirvana blaring through my 5-disc changer while I did my homework. I love using my writing to bring certain time periods back to life. I think because technology is moving so quickly – I struggle to understand TikTok – I like writing books and reading books that take me back to a time period that isn’t changing with status updates, new pictures, and Snaps every second.
I have long been a fan of Jennifer Weiner and expected another charming, funny (and modern) read when I picked up Mrs. Everything. But this book far surpassed my expectations. It was far more serious, ambitious, and sweeping than her other books. The story centers on two sisters growing up in 1950s Detroit, taking me back to an era where women were raised to be housewives alone, and follows them through the tumultuous sixties and beyond. Weiner’s writing and research are so strong, I felt like I experienced the historical milestones along with the characters.
In this instant New York Times bestseller and “multigenerational narrative that’s nothing short of brilliant” (People), two sisters’ lives from the 1950s to the present are explored as they struggle to find their places—and be true to themselves—in a rapidly evolving world from #1 New York Times bestselling author Jennifer Weiner.
Jo and Bethie Kaufman were born into a world full of promise.
Growing up in 1950s Detroit, they live in a perfect “Dick and Jane” house, where their roles in the family are clearly defined. Jo is the tomboy, the bookish rebel with a passion to make the world…
Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect voice. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it…
I’m only a writer because I was a musician first. I worshiped music—as a performer, listener, and later a critic—for its ability to enshrine me in a purely emotional world. My favorite lyrics were poetry in motion; my favorite melodies escaped description. And through sharing my feverish acclamations of particular albums and songs, I found community with others who also pledged themselves to art that’d definitively split their lives into “before” and “after.” My writing career was born from cathartic devotion and remains devoted to recounting the rapture of self-formation, of being reflected in the mirror of something that saw you before you even knew to see yourself.
I truly believe that video games are the art form that defines our present and, at least, our near-ish future. So, it was a great pleasure to encounter Zevin’s novel about the relationships behind a video game studio’s origins, which both elevates and scrutinizes the medium’s potential to revolutionize narrative storytelling.
Zevin deftly translates gaming's embodied perspective, including one stand-out moment in the back half that is perhaps the book’s defining triumph. Through her expansive prose, Sam, Sadie, and Marx play out their lives: their moments of intense and sometimes myopic creativity, their intricate interpersonal joys and devastations, and the fantastically rendered worlds, some built from reality and others from pixels which bring them together, push them apart, and might just bring them together again.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest, examining identity, creativity and our need to connect.
This is not a romance, but it is about love.
'I just love this book and I hope you love it too' JOHN GREEN, TikTok
Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital in 1987. Sadie is visiting her sister, Sam is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there, but playing together brings joy, escape, fierce competition -- and a special friendship. Then all too soon that time is…
Sister Bernard, the main character in my novel Obedience, is ninety. I’ve always been fascinated – and afraid – of what it means to grow old, particularly as a woman, and I like exploring the perspectives that age can bring. I enjoy seeing older women given a voice, especially when they don’t turn out to be the easy, likeable characters we might expect. There aren’t that many books with really old women as the main characters, because age is not glamorous or comfortable, but that’s why it’s interesting. I hope the novels on this list go some way towards redressing the balance.
Seventy-five-year-old Florence is clever, outspoken and belligerent, sharp-witted, and sharp-tongued. Reliving memories of the American Feminist Movement at its height, she’s a great character forced to confront her own aging and the difficult dynamics of her family life. Crackling dialogue makes this book a slick and entertaining read.
In this award-winning novel that Maureen Corrigan of NPR’s "Fresh Air" deems “exquisitely crafted...witty, nuanced, and ultimately moving,” a wise, septuagenarian woman who has lived life on her own terms finds herself thrust into the center of her family’s various catastrophes. ¶ A Best Book of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, The Millions, the Christian Science Monitor · Finalist for the Kirkus Prize · A Chicago Tribune Editor’s Choice · An Indie Next Pick ¶ Meet Florence Gordon, a blunt, brilliant feminist. At seventy-five, Florence wants to be left alone to write her memoir and shape…
Born into a family with friction between parents, I never thought relationships could get much worse. When my parents divorced, father became estranged, then died by apparent suicide, memoirs by diverse voices opened my world and made me feel less alone. When I went through a sexual and gender identity crisis of my own, they helped me navigate the turmoil in my own life. I spent more than twenty-five years writing professionally for corporate and academic employers before writing biography and memoir became a coping skill.
Preston and Spezi’s memoir helped me learn how to write from inside a murder investigation. I knew I needed to write about my father’s unusual death and my suspicions, but I didn’t have the tools to tackle it. The two journalists describe how they solved an infamous serial killer case only to become suspects themselves. Preston and Spezi drive their story with a momentum I tried to match in telling mine.
The Monster of Florence, which was shortlisted for the prestigious CWA Gold Dagger Award for Non Fiction in 2010, is a true account of brutal serial murder in idyllic Florence. After settling in Italy in 2000, Douglas Preston discovered that the olive grove in front of his family's new home had been the scene of one of the most infamous double-murders in Italian history, committed by a serial killer who had never been found and was known only as the Monster of Florence. Preston, intrigued, met Italian journalist Mario Spezi, who had followed the case since the first murders in…
Neuroscience PhD student Frankie Conner has finally gotten her life together—she’s determined to discover the cause of her depression and find a cure for herself and everyone like her. But the first day of her program, she meets a group of talking animals who have an urgent message they refuse…
I write historical fiction set in medieval Italy, in that lesser-known territory somewhere between ancient Rome and the Renaissance. I’m fascinated by the period before the Medici, before Michelangelo, sometimes even before Dante. The seeds of the Renaissance are hidden in that turbulent time, and I love to hunt for them. I also like to write about marginalized people—the obscure, unfamous, forgotten folk plucked from the footnotes. I’m happy to introduce some of the excellent history books that help me do that. These five books are specific to Florence, the city of my heart.
If you want to learn about medieval Florence, why not go directly to the source? Dino Compagni was a Florentine merchant, a member of the silk guild, and an active member of the city’s government, contemporary with Dante. He was right in the middle of things during that turbulent period—he saw it all and took part in a lot of it. His chronicle, which covers from about the year 1280 to the beginning of the fourteenth century, relates the harm he perceived coming from factional strife. Bornstein’s translation is clear and readable, and his extensive notes and introduction help to make sense of this long-ago time.
Dino Campagni's classic chronicle gives a detailed account of a crucial period in the history of Florence, beginning about 1280 and ending in the first decade of the fourteenth century. During that time Florence was one of the largest cities in Europe and a center of commerce and culture. Its gold florin was the standard international currency; Giotto was revolutionizing the art of painting; Dante Alighieri and Guido Cavalcanti were transforming the vernacular love lyric. The era was marked as well by political turmoil and factional strife. The inexorable escalation of violence, as insult and reprisal led to arson and…
I am a long-time writer and reader of mystery novels and short stories, but I have also written contemporary novels, scholarly work in history and culture, and history books. I am particularly interested in the psychology of crime and of detectives, and in each of the books I’ve recommended, the characters are drawn with unusual subtlety and depth or are interestingly eccentric. In addition, Vargas’s novels usually include interesting and little-known historical information, while Tallis’s Lieberman Papers series gives a lively picture of Vienna in its golden age of culture without neglecting the disquieting anti-Semitism and political unrest under the surface.
Nabb’s Marshal Guarnaccia, unflamboyant and patient, is an unspectacular thinker but a brilliant listener with a real, if unsentimental sympathy for the people he deals with on both sides of the law. Without fancy vices or personal charisma, Guarnaccia’s fundamental decency is nowhere on better display than in The Marshal’s Own Case, set among the desperate young transgender prostitutes of the Florentine sex trade, a culture quite different from the Marshal’s own secure family life.
The shocking discovery of a dismembered body on a Florentine hillside was only the first of the shocks in a case no one wanted to handle. Finally Marshal Guarnaccia was detailed to investigate. The author also wrote "The Marshal and the Madwoman".
I write historical fiction set in medieval Italy, in that lesser-known territory somewhere between ancient Rome and the Renaissance. I’m fascinated by the period before the Medici, before Michelangelo, sometimes even before Dante. The seeds of the Renaissance are hidden in that turbulent time, and I love to hunt for them. I also like to write about marginalized people—the obscure, unfamous, forgotten folk plucked from the footnotes. I’m happy to introduce some of the excellent history books that help me do that. These five books are specific to Florence, the city of my heart.
It’s impossible to understand the turbulence that frequently swept over Florence in those years without some sense of what the magnate class was all about: its pride and its violence, its lawlessness, its emphasis on knighthood, and its private military forces. Lansing shows how the magnate class evolved as a distinctive culture, becoming powerful and disruptive to the city’s peace well beyond even what its considerable economic clout would suggest. She places a lot of emphasis on the role of women among the magnates, even though women could never be full members of the lineage, since they married into other lineages. Lively and readable, with lots of stories of interesting individuals.
In the 1290s a new guild-based Florentine government placed a group of noble families under severe legal restraints, on the grounds that they were both the most powerful and the most violent and disruptive element in the city. In this colorful portrayal of civic life in medieval Florence, Carol Lansing explores the patrilineal structure and function of these urban families, known as "magnates." She shows how they emerged as a class defined not by specific economic interests but by a distinctive culture. During the earlier period of weaker civic institutions, these families built their power by sharing among themselves crucial…
Desperate to honor his father’s dying wish, Layken Martin vows to do whatever it takes to save the family farm. Once the Army discharges him following World War II, Layken returns to Missouri to find his legacy in shambles and…
I write historical fiction set in medieval Italy, in that lesser-known territory somewhere between ancient Rome and the Renaissance. I’m fascinated by the period before the Medici, before Michelangelo, sometimes even before Dante. The seeds of the Renaissance are hidden in that turbulent time, and I love to hunt for them. I also like to write about marginalized people—the obscure, unfamous, forgotten folk plucked from the footnotes. I’m happy to introduce some of the excellent history books that help me do that. These five books are specific to Florence, the city of my heart.
This concise history of Florence is a great starting point. It traces the evolution of the city from a medieval commune to a republic, covering intellectual, political, cultural, religious, and economic trends and developments over the centuries. Its scope is broad, and one of its strengths is its continuity, as it follows various threads through time. Najemy is a well-known historian of Florence, and this popular history is an excellent resource.
In this history of Florence, distinguished historian John Najemy discusses all the major developments in Florentine history from 1200 to 1575. * Captures Florence's transformation from a medieval commune into an aristocratic republic, territorial state, and monarchy * Weaves together intellectual, cultural, social, economic, religious, and political developments * Academically rigorous yet accessible and appealing to the general reader * Likely to become the standard work on Renaissance Florence for years to come
