Here are 100 books that Precious Bane fans have personally recommended if you like
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As a practicing pagan, and nature writer, I write books about how to reconnect to nature, how to rediscover and connect to your inner self, and your sense of spirituality. I grew up in the wilds of a large national park (Dartmoor) and have found that this colours and shapes everything I do. I spent thirty years living and working in London, and missed Dartmoor every day I was away. Whilst living in the city I had to learn ways to connect to nature, which is how I discovered my spiritual path. I was lucky enough to stage an escape and return home at forty-seven, and have been writing about it ever since.
I loved this book as it follows the author’s quest to reconnect with nature and rediscover a sense of enchantment following the challenges of the COVID lockdowns.
Split into the four elements – earth, air, fire, and water – the author describes her explorations of each element in her life and how if leads her back to herself. I love the book as it enabled me to see nature through the author’s eyes, and with a perspective that is in some ways almost entirely different to my own, and in others, in harmony with my own thoughts and feelings. It was indeed an enchanting read.
'It will do your soul good to read this.' NIGELLA LAWSON
A balm for our times from the internationally bestselling author of Wintering.
Our sense of enchantment is not only sparked by grand things. The awe-inspiring, the numinous, is all around us, all the time. It is transformed by our deliberate attention. The magic is of our own conjuring.
'A total joy . . . Thoughtful, patient and beautifully written, like walking with a friend as dusk settles, this is the book your soul needs right now.' CARIAD LLOYD
As a practicing pagan, and nature writer, I write books about how to reconnect to nature, how to rediscover and connect to your inner self, and your sense of spirituality. I grew up in the wilds of a large national park (Dartmoor) and have found that this colours and shapes everything I do. I spent thirty years living and working in London, and missed Dartmoor every day I was away. Whilst living in the city I had to learn ways to connect to nature, which is how I discovered my spiritual path. I was lucky enough to stage an escape and return home at forty-seven, and have been writing about it ever since.
I love this book because it is like a gentle meander through the woods with the author. You get a real sense of what details draw him in, what his fascinations are, and his discoveries through the turning seasons.
It is often said that in order to really get to know a place, it is good to walk the same route in nature every day, and that was the sense I got with this book. The author knows the landscape of the woods so well, it is like he is visiting an old friend.
When I was stuck indoors a lot during the COVID lockdown, it really helped me to remember why nature is so healing, and also inspired my own walks at this time which were spent in a small area of woodland in London.
'BRITAIN'S FINEST LIVING NATURE WRITER' - THE TIMES
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER and BBC Radio 4 'Book of the Week' from 'indisputably, one of the best nature-writers of his generation' (Country Life)
Written in diary format, The Wood is the story of English woodlands as they change with the seasons. Lyrical and informative, steeped in poetry and folklore, The Wood inhabits the mind and touches the soul.
For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt wood, a particular wood - three and half acres of mixed woodland in south west Herefordshire - that stands as exemplar for all the small woods…
As a practicing pagan, and nature writer, I write books about how to reconnect to nature, how to rediscover and connect to your inner self, and your sense of spirituality. I grew up in the wilds of a large national park (Dartmoor) and have found that this colours and shapes everything I do. I spent thirty years living and working in London, and missed Dartmoor every day I was away. Whilst living in the city I had to learn ways to connect to nature, which is how I discovered my spiritual path. I was lucky enough to stage an escape and return home at forty-seven, and have been writing about it ever since.
I love this book as I used it as a road map of swimming adventures when I moved back home to the West Country after thirty years of living in the city.
I was faced with the challenge of not knowing where to swim, as we didn’t really go in the water when I was a child. The author visits a plethora of favourite swimming spots with a group of friends, and I felt like I was accompanying them on their trips.
I was able to use the book as a guide, to go and visit all the spots Lynne Roper mentions in her diaries, safe in the knowledge I was visiting places that people have swum in for years.
As a practicing pagan, and nature writer, I write books about how to reconnect to nature, how to rediscover and connect to your inner self, and your sense of spirituality. I grew up in the wilds of a large national park (Dartmoor) and have found that this colours and shapes everything I do. I spent thirty years living and working in London, and missed Dartmoor every day I was away. Whilst living in the city I had to learn ways to connect to nature, which is how I discovered my spiritual path. I was lucky enough to stage an escape and return home at forty-seven, and have been writing about it ever since.
I loved this book as I live near one of the ‘lost’ rainforests Guy Shrubsole talks about, and I was able to learn more about it, and understand why the wood is such a special place, not just to me personally, but on an ecological level too.
I had heard a rumour that my local woodland is a temperate rainforest, but I had no idea what the basis was for that idea.
In the book Guy Shrubsole explains how to spot a temperate rainforest (a place where there are epiphytes present – plants growing on plants growing on plants) as well as exploring some of the mythology we humans create to explain the presence of these places in nature. It goes a lovely balance between scientific fact and storytelling.
WINNER OF THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR CONSERVATION 2023
The Sunday Times Science Book of the Year
As seen on Countryfile
'If anyone was born to save Britain's rainforests, it was Guy Shrubsole' Sunday Times
Shortlisted for the Richard Jefferies Society Literary Prize
Temperate rainforest may once have covered up to one-fifth of Britain, inspiring Celtic druids, Welsh wizards, Romantic poets, and Arthur Conan Doyle's most loved creations. Though only fragments now remain, they are home to a dazzling variety of luminous life-forms.
In this awe-inspiring investigation, Guy Shrubsole travels through the Western Highlands and the Lake District, down to the…
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
Tom Pocock, a Naval Correspondent for The Times and Defence Correspondent for the London Evening Standard, has been described as the foremost authority on Admiral Nelson. But going past Nelson, in this book, he delves deeply into the lesser-known people that helped Nelson – and Britain – win the Napoleonic Wars, mission by mission, battle by battle.
This book is an absolute treasure-trove of information for anyone interested in the more secret ways Britain fought the first half of the Napoleonic Wars. “This book tells, through contemporary letters, journals, and newspapers, the gripping story of the secret war and of the shadowy but fascinating figures who did their utmost to undermine French plans.” This book inspired years of research – books and physical trips – that created The Tide Watchers. It brought the people of “the secret war” to life, American inventor Robert Fulton’s life in France, and the…
Nelson's victory at Trafalgar on 21 October 1805 was a pivotal event in European history. But Trafalgar was not simply an isolated battle fought and won in an afternoon - the naval campaign had in fact begun more than four years before. This extraordinary period, following Napoleon's threat to invade England in 1801, came to be known as The Great Terror, and Britain was on the alert. As the Grande Armee faced a Dad's army of English volunteers across the Channel, a secret war of espionage and subversion was fought in the shadows. New weapons - rockets, submarines and torpedoes…
I fell in love with Pride & Prejudice variations over a decade ago when I did a Google search for “Pride & Prejudice sequel” because I was desperate to read more of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet. I’ve read hundreds, if not thousands, of variations and fan fiction over the years. Last year, I finally developed the courage to start writing my own which (I flatter myself) has been well-received by readers of JAFF (Jane Austen Fan Fiction). I write them in between running my blog, homeschooling my three children, recording my podcast, and surviving the hot Texas summers.
One of my other favorite tropes is when fantasy and Pride & Prejudice combine. I love this version where Elizabeth Bennet can speak to dragons, which is a forbidden power. When Jane becomes ill, Elizabeth has to travel to Pemberley to help save her.
Not only is fantasy involved, but I really enjoy how history becomes involved in the form of England’s war with France and Bonaparte. I find it incredible to see Elizabeth break through protocol and rules all for the love of her sister, Jane.
Foreword INDIES Winner for Fantasy. Royal Dragonfly Award Winner for Fantasy. “A charming retelling”—Locus Magazine
An unforgettable fantasy retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice that is romantic, funny, and more relevant than ever.
Elizabeth Bennet is hiding a forbidden power. She can speak to draca, the fire-breathing creatures kept as status symbols by English gentry. But Mr. Darcy has noticed, and he has his own dark secret.
When Elizabeth’s sister falls deathly ill, the cure lies in the mysteries of draca. Elizabeth, aided by her brilliant sister Mary, defies restrictive English society to hunt for lost draca lore. She…
I’m a very ordinary person. A history and literary nerd. A wife and mother. I don’t have any M.As or PhDs. I started teaching myself to write in 1991, and after joining the Romance Writers of America, Australia, and New Zealand, as well as Writing NSW (New South Wales), I had my first writing award, and first short story published in 1997. I got my first writing contract in 2000 (Silhouette Books, NY). I quit romance in 2012 to focus on historical fiction and YA, both of which I still love, and putting a little romance in there never hurts. I've given workshops and talks for the Historical Novel Societies of Australia and North America.
This book
shows the caricatures done by cartoonists of the time. If you pay enough
attention to the dates, these can shed new or deeper light on accepted history.
The minutiae of these cartoons teaches you a lot about the time and the
thoughts of the general public, or how the media wanted to sway them to think. For
example, on pages 24 and 25, the cartoons show “Citizen Fox” – showing this
British subject living in France as joining the Republican system. “French
Telegraph Making Signals in the Dark” (James Gillray) and “The Raft in Danger,
or the Republican Crew Disappointed” (Isaac Cruikshank) shows the many wild
rumors and general fear of French invasion around 1798, after the failed
invasion via Ireland, who was then fighting for independence from the crushing
absentee English landlords. Going deeper with this idea, you can see the fear
of war on two fronts…
NAPOLEON BONAPARTE, the junior artillery officer of the French Revolution who became emperor and dictator of nearly all of western Europe, was the most caricatured figure of his time, with almost 1000 satirical drawings being produced about his exploits by British artists alone. Long before the advent of illustrated daily or weekly newspapers these hand-coloured prints were a major source of news and opinion and had considerable impact on the public at large. From the battles of the Nile, Copenhagen, Trafalgar, Austerlitz, Jena and Leipzig to the Peninsular War, the invasion of Russia, exile on Elba and his final defeat…
I grew up in a religion and family where being gay was most definitely more than frowned upon. Now as a queer author and parent (and former academic who studied queer lit and video games!), I’m thrilled to be bringing a “book baby” into the world during Pride Month that is pure historical romantic fantasy in which two women embrace who they are and one another. When I first started reading queer fiction, much of it was gritty and realistic, sure, but also extremely grim. I think we desperately need a balance of the grim and the gleeful and that is what I hope this little list gives you! Happy endings are possible in fiction and reality. Happy Pride Month, dear readers!
When I first entered the heady world of Regency romance in January 2021 (yes, Bridgerton was the spark but I read the books first!), Merry Farmer soon became an instant inspiration. She writes M/M, F/F, and F/M historical romances and is one of the very few people who manage to write all three and have a beloved following. So, of course, I wanted to become an ARC reviewer for her and managed to snag some of the books in her After the War series, which follows a group of gay men returning back to England for a house party reunion after, you guessed it, the Napoleonic Wars.
This is not the first installment in the series, but it’s the sweetest. Merry Farmer has created a loveable, enchanting hero in Declan Shelton, the reticent, odd young gamekeeper who draws the attention of Lord Spencer Brightling, a gruff and stern man who…
I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in Napoleon, although in what ways have shifted back and forth over time. His reforms shaped the Europe we live in today, as few other rulers have managed. To go to law, to buy and sell, to marry, be born, or divorce, all these actions belong to his Civil Code. That is why I took up the study of his regime and its work as a professional historian. His myth, his exploits, gripped me as a boy, and still do. So spectacular a rise and fall do not happen by chance. There was no one like him.
Not since the monumental work of Jacques Morvan in his Le Soldat Imperial, almost a century ago, has a scholar brought so much learning and insight to the experience of the soldiery of the longest wars in modern European history. Forrest brings his hallmark skills as an archival scholar to the daunting task of reassembling the lives of the men who did the fighting, endured the horrors and the hardships behind the glittering uniforms, and heroic paintings of the battles. He brings the ordinary to life and puts the extraordinary in its proper context of the hardscrabble, but adventurous, lives of the rankers. One for the ages.
Napoleon's soldiers marched across Europe from Lisbon to Moscow, and from Germany to Dalmatia. Many of the men, mostly conscripted by ballot, had never before been beyond their native village. What did they make of the extraordinary experiences, fighting battles thousands of miles from home, foraging for provisions or garrisoning towns in hostile countries? What was it like to be a soldier in the revolutionary and imperial armies? We know more about these men and their reactions to war than about the soldiers of any previous army in history, not just from offical sources but also from the large number…
I'm an Australian historian specializing in the French Revolution and Napoleon. I have spent a goodly part of my career writing a three-volume biography of Napoleon, alongside chapters, articles, and edited books that aimed at reassessing the man and the period. Working on Napoleon and the French as occupiers led me into the history of massacre and more broadly into the history of violence. I studied under the preeminent French Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, at the University of Paris-Sorbonne, Paris IV.
Not everyone agreed with the author’s assessment of the Napoleonic Wars as the first total war, and I can’t say that I am overly convinced myself, but Bell presents the reader with an interesting and provocative interpretation of the practice of warfare at the dawn of the modern era. I came away with a better appreciation of the horror of battle and war during this period, something that is often glossed over in the standard military histories of the era. Was the practice of ‘total war’ brought about by mass conscription or had the seeds already been planted?
World War I has been called 'the war to end all wars', the first time combatants were mobilized on a massive scale to ruthlessly destroy an enemy. But as David A. Bell argues in this tour de force of interpretive history, the Great War was not, in fact, the first total war. For this, we need to travel back to the era of muskets and sailing ships, the age of Napoleon. According to Bell, it was then that warfare was transformed into the hideous spectacle that seems ever present today. Indeed, nearly every modern aspect of war took root in…
