Here are 45 books that The Bombshell Manual of Style fans have personally recommended if you like
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I am a plus-sized woman of color, and I feel women like me are woefully underrepresented in romance books. Too many times, I read a book claiming to feature a “curvy heroine”, only to find she’s a size 6, or just wears baggy clothes. Even worse, some novels make plus-sized female leads lose weight before they get their happily ever after! There are great books out there that show love comes at any size and they deserve to be showcased.
Talia Hibbert’s characters have so much depth; this book is no exception. I saw myself in the curvy lead, Dani Brown, as she’s always looking for signs to lead her in the right direction.
It was great to see her warm relationship with her sisters, even though they are all so different. But I absolutely loved seeing her flirtatious friendship turned fake relationship with former rugby player Zafir Ansari grow into true love. Plus, the spice was top-notch!
'Talia Hibbert is a rockstar! Her writing is smart, funny, and sexy' Meg Cabot
'The author's charm and wit sings off the page in this delightful fake-romance fare' Bolu Babalola, bestselling author of Love in Colour
USA Today bestselling author Talia Hibbert returns with another charming romantic comedy about a young woman who agrees to fake date her friend after a video of him 'rescuing' her from their office building goes viral - perfect for fans of Sally Thorne, Jasmine Guillory and Helen Hoang!
Danika Brown knows what she wants: professional success, academic renown and an occasional roll in the…
As a long-time expat in France, a creative and a Black woman, I get othered and rejected a lot. I’ve had to learn how to own my story – of starting over, of building something from nothing, of remembering where I’ve been, and reminding myself of where I’m going. I had to learn to reject the labels that others want to put on me and draft my own personal hype mantra – then embellish it with a little bombshell sparkle. The books I’ve chosen are meant to entertain while giving you the chance to remind yourself of who you are and who you can choose to be.
Sometimes you just gotta move far away and start all over.
That’s what Karim, my male lead does in my book, and what Dr. Sloan, the female lead does in Rafe. Neither is looking for love, but as luck would have it…
What I loved about Rafewas the reversal of a common trope – male nanny hired by well-to-do single mother. A bearded, muscular, tattooed nanny who cooks and can fold a fitted sheet? Sign me up!
This book is a fun, spicy ride and poses the question, “why not?” Why can’t a woman killing it in her field come home to a man taking care of the home front, ready to meet all of her needs?
All Dr. Sloan Copeland needed was someone to watch her kids. What she found was the man of her dreams…After a nasty divorce and a thousand mile move, Dr. Sloan Copeland and her twin daughters are finally getting the hang of their new life in Los Angeles. When their live-in nanny bails with no warning, Sloan is left scrambling to find a competent caretaker to wrangle her smart, sensitive girls. Nothing less will do.Enter Rafe Whitcomb. He's all of those things, not to mention good-natured and one heck of a whiz in the kitchen. He's also tall, and handsome, and…
As a long-time expat in France, a creative and a Black woman, I get othered and rejected a lot. I’ve had to learn how to own my story – of starting over, of building something from nothing, of remembering where I’ve been, and reminding myself of where I’m going. I had to learn to reject the labels that others want to put on me and draft my own personal hype mantra – then embellish it with a little bombshell sparkle. The books I’ve chosen are meant to entertain while giving you the chance to remind yourself of who you are and who you can choose to be.
Sometimes things happen in life that bring us to our knees – illness, relationships fail, job losses.
And we may feel small, overwhelmed, incapable. In this awesome book about living audaciously, Jones advises the reader to write their own oriki, or personal hype mantra.
When we are at our lowest, we need to look back and see how far we’ve come, remind ourselves of who we were, who we are,and who we will be.
Just as we have the power to write our own orikis, we have the power to write our own next steps. That’s pretty bad-ass.
From the New York Times bestselling author of I'm Judging You, a hilarious and transformational book about how to tackle fear--that everlasting hater--and audaciously step into lives, careers, and legacies that go beyond even our wildest dreams
Luvvie Ajayi Jones is known for her trademark wit, warmth, and perpetual truth-telling. But even she's been challenged by the enemy of progress known as fear. She was once afraid to call herself a writer, and nearly skipped out on doing a TED talk that changed her life because of imposter syndrome. As she shares in Professional Troublemaker,…
As a long-time expat in France, a creative and a Black woman, I get othered and rejected a lot. I’ve had to learn how to own my story – of starting over, of building something from nothing, of remembering where I’ve been, and reminding myself of where I’m going. I had to learn to reject the labels that others want to put on me and draft my own personal hype mantra – then embellish it with a little bombshell sparkle. The books I’ve chosen are meant to entertain while giving you the chance to remind yourself of who you are and who you can choose to be.
Not just anyone can grow up dirt poor, build a successful consulting business in Miami, survive being stalked, and keep the world in the dark about their crippling anxiety.
Brett Fontaine does it without letting a lock of hair get out of place – true bombshell style. A relationship with her new client, the media-clueless cinnamon roll chef Will Te’o, is completely ill-advised. So of course, that’s exactly what happens.
I adored this book because it so easy to identify with Brett. We all want to be together on the outside and respected in our fields. But there’s still the fear that we’re whatever weaknesses we may have had in the past.
Will helps Brett see the badass inside of her. Walden-West does the same for her readers.
Trading her red-dirt roots for the title of Miami’s go-to image consultant, Brett Fontaine refuses to let anything jeopardize her new life.
…Not an influential client-turned-stalker who’s up for parole…
…Not post-kidnapping panic attacks…
…And certainly not the stubborn, attention-phobic chef with the tempting tataus she’s been challenged to transform into a celeb in ninety days.
Will Te’o can almost taste the dream he sacrificed American Samoa, culture, and cherished family ties for—opening a four-star restaurant in the most cut-throat culinary location in North America.
Unfortunately, that requires navigating its equally ruthless social scene.
I love Jane Austen’s novels. I first read Pride and Prejudice when I was about 14, but it’s far too long ago to remember when I first read the others, and I’ve now read them all many times. I’ve also always been a singer, and I learned the piano when I was young, so I immediately noticed the music in the novels. I started writing about it seriously in the 1990s, but it wasn’t until 2007 that I realized that her music collection was still around and started making concert programs out of it. The new book brings all these things together.
This book tells us more about what Jane Austen looked like in real life than any drawing does. I love how Hilary Davidson delves into every possible piece of evidence for what she wore and provides illustrations from contemporary drawings and actual bits of clothing that survive.
Some of them actually belonged to Austen–like her turquoise ring and topaz cross, her lace shawl, and her brown silk pelisse. How amazing is it to see these items that Austen herself wore and to see the evidence that she was over 5 foot 6 inches tall!
Hilary Davidson delves into the clothing of one of the world's great authors, providing unique and intimate insight into her everyday life and material world
What did Jane Austen wear?
Acclaimed dress historian and Austen expert Hilary Davidson reveals, for the first time, the wardrobe of one of the world's most celebrated authors. Despite her acknowledged brilliance on the page, Jane Austen has all too often been accused of dowdiness in her appearance. Drawing on Austen's 161 known letters, as well as her own surviving garments and accessories, this book assembles examples of the variety of clothes she would have…
Fashion has been the love of my life since I was a little kid pouring over magazines and watching shows on fashion TV in the middle of the night. But I’ve always known fashion is not about clothing, its about feeling and it’s about people. That’s why I love to read the stories about people who work in fashion, who have been impacted by fashion and those who love it just as much as I do.
In Dress Code, fashion director Veronique Hyland makes the connection between clothing and our culture.
She argues that fashion is an integral part of all of our lives and explains the ways that it means so much more than the outfit hanging in our closets. The essays are great at helping the reader contextualize clothing in a world where social media and politics, inform the way we shop and style ourselves.
A New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022 * An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 * A Town & Country Must-Read Book of 2022 * A Fashionista Summer Read
"Smart, funny, and impressively thorough."-The Cut
In the spirit of works by Jia Tolentino and Anne Helen Peterson, a smart and incisive essay collection centered on the fashion industry-its history, its importance, why we wear what we wear, and why it matters-from Elle Magazine's fashion features director.
Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style…
I have sewn since I was a child, taught by my mother to keep me out of mischief. From having the best-dressed dolls in the neighbourhood I graduated to making my own, sometimes outlandish, forms of fashion and then became a banner maker and community textile artist. Sewing is in my DNA and I love the tactile, rhythmic soothe of it. But I have long been curious about how, in the many books are published about needlework, very few ever mention why people sew. This is what fascinates me, the stories of sewing, because it is through its purpose that we discover the spirit that lies within it.
This is a brilliantly researched book which allowed me to accompany Sofi Thanhauser as she travelled across continents to unearth the origin and the fate of fabric production. It made me realise the terrible damage done to our environment and to communities through colonialisation, exploitation, industrialisation, and our throw-away economy. Tracking how craft is being replaced with slave labour, how traditions are being eroded, and local economies destroyed in the pursuit of cheaper and greater textile production, Worn is not a comfortable read, but it is, for me, a reminder of the human cost involved in most of what I wear.
A sweeping and captivatingly told history of clothing and the stuff it is made of—an unparalleled deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet.
“We learn that, if we were a bit more curious about our clothes, they would offer us rich, interesting and often surprising insights into human history...a deep and sustained inquiry into the origins of what we wear, and what we have worn for the past 500 years." —The Washington Post
In this panoramic social history, Sofi Thanhauser brilliantly tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and…
I am a historian and historic buildings consultant with a longstanding interest in 15th and 16th century England. In addition to my own work on memorials, funerals, and the Howard family, I have worked as a researcher and consultant for television and books, including being a production researcher for the BBC adaptation of Wolf Hall.
Maria Hayward is my go-to author for all things clothing and fashion in Tudor England. In this book, she focuses on dress during Henry VIII’s reign, and the sumptuary legislation that regulated what people could wear. However, this is more than just a study of legislation. Hayward also uses wills, portraits, inventories and letters to describe and analyse the actual clothes owned by people from across the social spectrum. Of particular use to newcomers to the history of fashion is the information she provides about the different types of fabric and accessories, and her glossary.
English dress in the second half of the sixteenth century has been studied in depth, yet remarkably little has been written on the earlier years, or indeed on male clothing for the whole century. The few studies that do cover these neglected areas have tended to be quite general, focusing upon garments rather than the wearers. As such this present volume fills an important gap by providing a detailed analysis of not only what people wore in Henry's reign, but why. The book describes and analyses dress in England through a variety of documents, including warrants and accounts from Henry's…
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles is the author of the internationally acclaimed Morland Dynasty books. Five volumes of this comprehensive historical series focus on WW1, covering the military campaigns and the politics behind them. With the approach of the WW1 centennials, she was asked to write about the period again, this time from the point of view of the people who stayed at home. The result was the six-volume series, War At Home, which views the war from a more personal perspective, through the eyes of the fictional Hunter family, their servants, and friends.
On a lighter note, this book is a wonderful journey through what everyone wore, not just the fashions but the uniforms, the make-do-and-mend, maternity wear, underclothes, knitting for the soldiers, wartime washing-day, trousers for women (shock! horror!), a kit for lady footballers and lady drivers, and how the war changed women’s clothing along with their lives. Full of illustrations, delicious cartoons, and WW1 advertisements, this book is quite simply a wonderful read, as well as wonderfully informative.
Imagine 'stepping into someone else's shoes'. Walking back in time a century ago, which shoes would they be? A pair of silk sensations costing thousands of pounds designed by Yantonnay of Paris or wooden clogs with metal cleats that spark on the cobbles of a factory yard? Will your shoes be heavy with mud from trudging along duckboards between the tents of a frontline hospital... or stuck with tufts of turf from a football pitch? Will you be cloaked in green and purple, brandishing a 'Votes for Women' banner or will you be the height of respectability, restricted by your…
I’ve always wanted to know why people acquire the things they choose, how they get them, and what they do with them. For years, too, I’ve been fascinated by the period when modernity was being born, a time full of worldwide exploration, the founding of new nations and societies, and the invention of new ways of making, transporting, and distributing all sorts of goods and services. I discovered that studying consumers, consumer goods, and trade from the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth century was the perfect way to satisfy my curiosity. The Material Atlantic is my report about what I’ve learned.
Luxury is not usually associated with slavery. But in the colonial Americas, it could be. Sometimes, because some enslaved men and women were tailors and seamstresses, and some of the clothing they created was costly. More often, however, because some enslaved people got their hands on expensive, fashionable clothing.
Historians have begun to tell this story, and few do it better than the young scholar Tamara Walker. In this superb study, Walker tracks down all sorts of sources, written and pictorial, to describe the many ways that enslaved individuals acquired fine clothing in Lima, Peru, a Spanish-American colonial capital renowned for its residents’ opulent apparel.
Exquisite Slaves adds a fresh dimension to the exciting scholarship that is revealing how marginalized groups have obtained goods usually forbidden to them.
In Exquisite Slaves, Tamara J. Walker examines how slaves used elegant clothing as a language for expressing attitudes about gender and status in the wealthy urban center of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Lima, Peru. Drawing on traditional historical research methods, visual studies, feminist theory, and material culture scholarship, Walker argues that clothing was an emblem of not only the reach but also the limits of slaveholders' power and racial domination. Even as it acknowledges the significant limits imposed on slaves' access to elegant clothing, Exquisite Slaves also showcases the insistence and ingenuity with which slaves dressed to convey their own sense…
