Here are 98 books that Sacred Hearts fans have personally recommended if you like
Sacred Hearts.
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I love writing books that feature buildings and construction as a backdrop to life. I’ve worked as an interior designer for over 30 years, and now I teach design at a university in Sydney. Our homes offer so much more than four walls and a roof. They provide us with comfort and shelter. They offer security and stability. They help us stay sane and grounded in a sometimes confusing and turbulent world. I don’t think the importance of our homes can be underestimated.
Most romance readers know that this story is about a run-down villa in Tuscany and a heartbroken heroine (Frances Mayes) struggling to build a life after her divorce. But read the book for the beautiful descriptions of the countryside, the delicious food and wine, and the gorgeous accounts of village life—the markets, the frescos, the fading sunlight!
This memoir is not just a restoration journey; it’s a book about finding yourself.
Discover the New York Times bestseller that inspired the film. The perfect read for anyone seeking an escape to the Italian countryside.
When Frances Mayes - poet, gourmet cook and travel writer - buys an abandoned villa in Tuscany, she has no idea of the scale of the project she is embarking on.
In this enchanting memoir she takes the reader on a journey to restore a crumbling villa and build a new life in the Italian countryside, navigating hilarious cultural misunderstandings, legal frustrations and the challenges of renovating a house that seems determined to remain a ruin.
I am grateful to my maternal grandparents, immigrants from southern Italy, who instilled in me a love for the Bel Paese that has inspired me all my life. I began to travel to Italy 45 years ago, and after writing for television—on the staff of Everybody Loves Raymond—I turned to travel writing. I’ve written 4 books about Italian travel, along with many stories for magazines. I also design and host Golden Weeks in Italy: For Women Only tours, to give female travelers an insider’s experience of this extraordinary country.
I have always loved visiting the city of Naples – for the great food, the rich history, and the warm locals who remind me of my southern Italian relatives. Ferrante’s novels go deep into the complexities of a female friendship that spans many decades, while also bringing to life a wide range of characters who I grew to love and truly care about, while devouring this extraordinary series.
The complete four-volume boxed set of the New York Times–bestselling epic about hardship and female friendship in postwar Naples that has sold over five million copies.
Beginning with My Brilliant Friend, the four Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante follow Elena and Lila, from their rough-edged upbringing in Naples, Italy, not long after WWII, through the many stages of their lives―and along paths that diverge wildly. Sometimes they are separated by jealousy or hostility or physical distance, but the bond between them is unbreakable, for better or for worse.
This volume includes all four novels: My Brilliant Friend; The Story of…
I love learning about history, and the more I learn, the more I appreciate my place in this world. While military history, particularly from pre-WW1 to the end of WW2, was what made me first plant my nose in a book, I can geek out on pretty much any historical period: the rise of human civilization, Rome, the conquest of the New World, the development of airplanes. But it’s the personal element that most draws me in, and the fact that we humans remain fundamentally the same in how we cope with another through the ages. It’s through fiction that we see the past in a way that makes sense.
I really enjoyed this novel for several reasons. For one, Jess Walter is a fantastic storyteller. As a history geek, this book gives a fascinating retro look into an era I otherwise would’ve ignored: Hollywood during the making of the movie Cleopatra. One of the strengths of fiction is fleshing out a historical personality by putting him or her on stage, giving them voice, emotion, and substance that would be difficult to do in nonfiction.
We meet Richard Burton in all his self-centered, boozy, womanizing splendor, and you can’t help but feel disappointed that you never got to spill drinks with him. But the guy who steals the show is Hollywood producer Michael Deane, a narcissistic schemer who tramples over everyone to get his way, on the surface self-absorbed, yet inwardly fully aware of the effect he’s having.
The #1 New York Times bestseller—Jess Walter’s “absolute masterpiece” (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author): the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962 and resurfaces fifty years later in contemporary Hollywood.
The acclaimed, award-winning author of the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets returns with his funniest, most romantic, and most purely enjoyable novel yet. Hailed by critics and loved by readers of literary and historical fiction, Beautiful Ruins is the story of an almost-love affair that begins on the Italian coast in 1962...and is rekindled in Hollywood fifty years later.
I am grateful to my maternal grandparents, immigrants from southern Italy, who instilled in me a love for the Bel Paese that has inspired me all my life. I began to travel to Italy 45 years ago, and after writing for television—on the staff of Everybody Loves Raymond—I turned to travel writing. I’ve written 4 books about Italian travel, along with many stories for magazines. I also design and host Golden Weeks in Italy: For Women Only tours, to give female travelers an insider’s experience of this extraordinary country.
This memoir of a Sicilian year beautifully weaves together Simeti’s personal experience in rural Sicily and Palermo with her extensive knowledge of history, mythology, and culinary traditions. Simeti’s honesty truly prepared me for my first trip to Sicily – giving me a full picture of the island’s light and dark sides.
This is a year of Sicilian life, its seasons and its sacred festivals, its gorgeous fruits and demanding family life, its casual assassinations and village feasts, its weather and the neighbours. It chronicles a life divided between an apartment in the city of Palermo with the weekends and summer devoted to sustaining life in an old family farm. What makes this journal truly exceptional is that Mary Simeti is both an outsider, (an American who had studied medieval history and worked as a volunteer on a social welfare programme) and an insider. For this journal was written after twenty years…
I have been fascinated by the lives of women in the Renaissance for as long as I can remember – growing up I devoured biographies of Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth Tudor. Now, as a professor, author, and researcher, I feel lucky to have turned my passion into my profession! Along with writing about Renaissance women, I edit a series dedicated to women’s global history. I love books that explore the richness and complexity of the female experience, and which help us to understand how women in other historical eras dealt with questions of autonomy, power and gender inequality – issues that are still with us today.
I always appreciate a book that connects Renaissance history to present-day issues – like the never-ending pressure for women to fit a particular standard of beauty. Like us, Renaissance women obsessed over how they looked, how they smelled, their weight, their hair, their makeup (which somehow makes them seem like people we might have been friends with 500 years ago!).
Burke looks at Renaissance beauty culture through the lens of a historian, using sixteenth-century how-to manuals, poems, letters, diaries, and art to think about the impact of Renaissance ideas about beauty and the enduring connection between cosmetics and gender, misogyny, and power.
It’s an entertaining read that’s backed by serious research.
*As heard on BBC Radio 4 Woman's Hour* *A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, October 2023*
'A total eye-opener, I loved it' Nuala McGovern
'Lively and intriguing ... You'll never look at Renaissance portraits in the same way' Maggie O'Farrell
'Terrific ... that rare thing, a serious history that is both accessible and entertaining' Literary Review
Plunge into the intimate history of cosmetics, and discover how, for centuries, women have turned to make up as a rich source of creativity, community and resistance
The Renaissance was an era obsessed with appearances. And beauty culture from the time has…
I have been fascinated by the lives of women in the Renaissance for as long as I can remember – growing up I devoured biographies of Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth Tudor. Now, as a professor, author, and researcher, I feel lucky to have turned my passion into my profession! Along with writing about Renaissance women, I edit a series dedicated to women’s global history. I love books that explore the richness and complexity of the female experience, and which help us to understand how women in other historical eras dealt with questions of autonomy, power and gender inequality – issues that are still with us today.
I loved this book because it’s a biography that reads like a novel and because its subject is a woman who was celebrated in her own time but has been almost totally forgotten since.
In an age when “respectable” women were discouraged from writing and publishing, Vittoria Colonna became one of the most revered poets of the Renaissance, moving in the same circles as popes, princes, writers, and artists.
I love how Targoff brings to life Colonna’s different environments – from the rocky island of Ischia off Naples, where she lived as a newlywed, to the convent where she sought refuge after the death of her husband (who inspired much of her poetry). I also appreciate the nuanced presentation of Colonna’s friendship with Michelangelo, which shows us how influential she was as his spiritual mentor.
Ramie Targoff's Renaissance Woman tells of the most remarkable woman of the Italian Renaissance: Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa of Pescara. Vittoria has long been celebrated by scholars of Michelangelo as the artist's best friend - the two of them exchanged beautiful letters, poems, and works of art that bear witness to their intimacy - but she also had close ties to Charles V, Pope Clement VII and Pope Paul III, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione, Pietro Aretino, Queen Marguerite de Navarre, Reginald Pole, and Isabella d'Este, among others. Vittoria was the scion of an immensely powerful family in Rome during that city's…
I have been fascinated by the lives of women in the Renaissance for as long as I can remember – growing up I devoured biographies of Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth Tudor. Now, as a professor, author, and researcher, I feel lucky to have turned my passion into my profession! Along with writing about Renaissance women, I edit a series dedicated to women’s global history. I love books that explore the richness and complexity of the female experience, and which help us to understand how women in other historical eras dealt with questions of autonomy, power and gender inequality – issues that are still with us today.
I really enjoyed Leah Chang’s beautifully written Young Queens. It adds a new twist to the “royal biography” genre by tracing the interconnected lives of three women – Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots – from childhood into adulthood.
Chang has a gift for bringing history to life, interweaving her sources with a sweeping narrative so that you feel like you can hear these women speaking in their own voices. She shows the paradox at the heart of their lives: even at the height of power, these queens were measured by their gender and their bodies, seen as vessels for the future of the state. It’s an important counterbalance to the usual narrative of royal history.
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
WATERSTONES' BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: HISTORY
The boldly original, dramatic intertwined story of Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots - three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men.
'Alluring, gripping, real: an astonishing insight into the lives of three queens' ALICE ROBERTS
'Takes us into the hearts and minds of three extraordinary women' AMANDA FOREMAN
'Conveys the vitality of the past as few books do. An enviable tour de force' SUZANNAH LIPSCOMB
Catherine de' Medici, Elisabeth de Valois and Mary, Queen of Scots lived together…
I have been fascinated by the lives of women in the Renaissance for as long as I can remember – growing up I devoured biographies of Lucrezia Borgia, Mary Stuart, and Elizabeth Tudor. Now, as a professor, author, and researcher, I feel lucky to have turned my passion into my profession! Along with writing about Renaissance women, I edit a series dedicated to women’s global history. I love books that explore the richness and complexity of the female experience, and which help us to understand how women in other historical eras dealt with questions of autonomy, power and gender inequality – issues that are still with us today.
I wanted to include this book because it focuses not only on women in the Renaissance but on the particular experience of a Jewish woman living and writing in seventeenth-century Venice.
Even though the Venetian republic proclaimed justice and equality, those ideals did not extend to women nor to the thousands of Jews and other non-Christians who made their home in the city. As a Jewish woman, Sarra Copia Sulam had to navigate prejudice and suspicion on two fronts, yet she courageously defended herself and her faith in print.
The book does a wonderful job of showing how Sulam used her dexterous pen to take on her critics, and Westwater’s account reveals new biographical information about Sulam, her family, and Jewish life in the Renaissance.
For nearly a decade at the height of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, the Jewish poet and polemicist Sarra Copia Sulam (ca. 1592-1641) hosted a literary salon at her house in the Venetian ghetto, providing one of the most public and enduring forums for Jewish-Christian interaction in early modern Venice. Though Copia Sulam built a powerful intellectual network, published a popular work on the immortality of the soul, and gained fame for her erudition, her literary career foundered under the weight of slanderous charges against her sexual, professional, and religious integrity.
This first biography of Copia Sulam examines the explosive relationship…
My life is divided into two parts: before I left the cult I was involved in during my 20s, and after. Leaving the cult created a reckoning in my life unlike anything I’ve experienced before or since. It was both the worst thing that had ever happened to me, and the best. As a result, I connect deeply with others’ stories of grief, loss, and the challenging times in life that make us. As an author, I have carried these themes into my mystery novels. I hope you experience as much resonance from the books on this list as I have.
The curiosities we have about life can be deeply mysterious, and I’ve learned to love that about it. So, it seems, has Jane Christmas; her memoir recounts her exploration of the possibility of living a cloistered life. She feels compelled to take this journey and is willing to follow her instincts even if they lead to some unusual places.
I loved that this writer and human were open to exploring a deeply spiritual existence and then sharing what that experience was like. It’s not every day we get to go behind the scenes on what may be one of the most personal journeys of a human life.
With humor and opinions aplenty, a woman embarks on an unconventional quest to see if she is meant to be a nun.
Just as Jane Christmas decides to enter a convent in mid-life to find out whether she is nun material”, her long-term partner Colin, suddenly springs a marriage proposal on her. Determined not to let her monastic dreams be sidelined, Christmas puts her engagement on hold and embarks on an extraordinary year long adventure to four conventsone in Canada and three in the UK. In these communities of cloistered nuns and monks, she sharesand at times chafes and rails…
Even as a child, I wanted to escape from current times and visit bygone or future eras. History and literature were favourites and I gleaned most of what I know of the past by reading. Then I found Georgette Heyer, prompting a lifetime love affair with all things Georgian and Regency. Agatha Christie got me into mystery. I loved both the puzzle of whodunit and being whirled away into Poirot, Marple, or Cadfael territory. A good mystery and a deep dive into history as well? Heaven! Best of all is the author who draws me so completely into their imaginary world that the real one fades away.
Sister Joan is yet another religious sleuth. Set in the early 1990s, I think this series now qualifies as a historical mystery. It is a lighter read than my other choices, but one I absolutely loved and, like Cadfael, I dived in and devoured the lot. Vow of Silence is the first and hooked me straight away. The religious life fascinates me and I enjoyed the way the ceremonial routine of the convent was woven into the mysteries. This detail serves to immerse you in the life of Sister Joan, a down-to-earth heroine who drew my admiration. The mysteries unfold naturally into the setting and don’t seem incongruous. A more gentle read than the others I have chosen, but acutely satisfying.
When one nun dies in a bizarre accident and another disappears, hushed whispers of virgin sacrifice, Mother Goddess worship, suicide, and murder spread among the Sisters at Cornwall House convent and Sister Joan is sent to investigate
