100 books like Precious Bane

By Mary Webb,

Here are 100 books that Precious Bane fans have personally recommended if you like Precious Bane. Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Rebecca Beattie Author Of The Wheel of the Year: Your Rejuvenating Guide to Connecting with Nature's Seasons and Cycles

From my list on to reconnect you to nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Rebecca's book list on to reconnect you to nature

Rebecca Beattie Why did Rebecca love this book?

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.

By Katherine May,

Why should I read it?

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

What is this book about?

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

'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

'Beautifully written.'
PHILIPPA PERRY

Feeling bone-tired, anxious…


Book cover of The Wood: The  Life & Times of Cockshutt Wood

Rebecca Beattie Author Of The Wheel of the Year: Your Rejuvenating Guide to Connecting with Nature's Seasons and Cycles

From my list on to reconnect you to nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Rebecca's book list on to reconnect you to nature

Rebecca Beattie Why did Rebecca love this book?

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.

By John Lewis-Stempel,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Wood as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'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…


Book cover of Wild Woman Swimming: A Journal of West Country Waters

Rebecca Beattie Author Of The Wheel of the Year: Your Rejuvenating Guide to Connecting with Nature's Seasons and Cycles

From my list on to reconnect you to nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Rebecca's book list on to reconnect you to nature

Rebecca Beattie Why did Rebecca love this book?

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.

Book cover of The Lost Rainforests of Britain

Rebecca Beattie Author Of The Wheel of the Year: Your Rejuvenating Guide to Connecting with Nature's Seasons and Cycles

From my list on to reconnect you to nature.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Rebecca's book list on to reconnect you to nature

Rebecca Beattie Why did Rebecca love this book?

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.

By Guy Shrubsole,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lost Rainforests of Britain as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Under His Lover's Wing

Fenna Edgewood Author Of The Bluestocking Beds Her Bride

From my list on a pride-filled summer of LGBT reading.

Why am I passionate about this?

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! 

Fenna's book list on a pride-filled summer of LGBT reading

Fenna Edgewood Why did Fenna love this book?

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…

Book cover of Napoleon's Men: The Soldiers of the Revolution and Empire

Michael Broers Author Of Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire: 1811-1821

From my list on Napoleon and an era that shook Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Michael's book list on Napoleon and an era that shook Europe

Michael Broers Why did Michael love this book?

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. 

By Alan Forrest,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Napoleon's Men as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Philip Dwyer Author Of Napoleon: The Path to Power 1769 - 1799

From my list on the Napoleonic Wars and their impact on Europe.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Philip's book list on the Napoleonic Wars and their impact on Europe

Philip Dwyer Why did Philip love this book?

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? 

By David A. Bell,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The First Total War as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of Russia Against Napoleon: The Battle for Europe, 1807 to 1814

Roger Knight Author Of Convoys: The British Struggle Against Napoleonic Europe and America

From my list on history to change your ideas on the Napoleonic Wars.

Why am I passionate about this?

For fifty years I've studied the British sailing navy, fascinated by its workings, the slow communications, the vagaries of the winds and tides. In parallel with my work in archives, I've sailed in most of the European waters described in Convoys. I worked at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, for 27 years, leaving as Deputy Director in 2000. Since then, I've taught postgraduates and written about Nelson and the British government (Britain against Napoleon), and became convinced that Britain came very close to being defeated by Napoleonic France. If Napoleon had not thrown it all away by his invasion of Russia in 1812, I might be writing this in French, with a very different script! 

Roger's book list on history to change your ideas on the Napoleonic Wars

Roger Knight Why did Roger love this book?

The most important strategic fact in this war was the defeat of Napoleon’s great army which invaded Russia in 1812, and its destruction by winter weather during the retreat from Moscow later that year. It was a blow from which Napoleon never recovered.

This fascinating book is written from Russian sources, bringing the extraordinary story of the decision to abandon and burn Moscow, and how the Russian army was used and commanded. No one who looks at the war as a whole can ignore this book. The fact that Hitler repeated the same mistake of invading Russia in 1941 makes it even more powerful.

By Dominic Lieven,

Why should I read it?

4 authors picked Russia Against Napoleon as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A compulsive page-turner ... a triumph of brilliant storytelling ... an instant classic that is an awesome, remarkable and exuberant achievement' Simon Sebag Montefiore

Winner of the Wolfson History Prize and shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize

In the summer of 1812 Napoleon, the master of Europe, marched into Russia with the largest army ever assembled, confident that he would sweep everything before him. Yet less than two years later his empire lay in ruins, and Russia had triumphed. This is the first history to explore in depth Russia's crucial role in the Napoleonic Wars, re-creating the epic battle between…


Book cover of Napoleonic Wars in Cartoons

Lisa Chaplin Author Of The Tide Watchers

From my list on hidden histories on The Napoleonic Wars.

Why am I passionate about this?

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.

Lisa's book list on hidden histories on The Napoleonic Wars

Lisa Chaplin Why did Lisa love this book?

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…

By Mark Bryant,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Napoleonic Wars in Cartoons as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

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…


Book cover of The Napoleonic Source Book

William Nester Author Of Napoleon and the Art of Leadership: How a Flawed Genius Changed the History of Europe and the World

From my list on Napoleon and his era.

Why am I passionate about this?

Napoleon has fascinated William Nester since he was a boy. During a dozen years living in Europe, he visited most of Napoleon’s palaces and battlefields. For this biography, he carefully read all of Napoleon’s memoirs and 40,108 letters. His book captures Napoleon’s complexity, paradoxes, contradictions, accomplishments, catastrophes, and genius. William Nester, a Professor at the Department of Government and Politics, St. John’s University, New York, is the author of more than forty books. His book George Rogers Clark: I Glory in War won the Army Historical Foundation's best biography award, and Titan: The Art of British Power in the Age of Revolution and Napoleon, won the 2016 Arthur Goodzeit Book Award.

William's book list on Napoleon and his era

William Nester Why did William love this book?

Philip Haythornthwaite’s Napoleonic Source Book is a comprehensive overview of the army and navy commanders, campaigns, regiments, uniforms, and weapons of not just the great powers, but every state that fought in the Napoleonic Era. The 200 or so illustrations and maps, and the 700 entry glossary are first-rate.

By Philip J. Haythornthwaite,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Napoleonic Source Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

This illustrated guide provides, in an accessible, narrative format, information on the Napoleonic period. Over 100 anecdotes of the era, contemporary illustrations and mapwork are presented.


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