Here are 100 books that The Empress of Salt and Fortune fans have personally recommended if you like
The Empress of Salt and Fortune.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I grew up dreaming of other worlds, both real and imagined. I’ve since had the great fortune of living in Angola, Bangladesh, Gambia, Italy, Malawi, Mozambique, Myanmar, and Tanzania—each country as fascinating to me as the next. Yet there’s so much more of the world I want to experience! This is why I love novels that immerse me in the history and culture of foreign lands. By entering the hearts and minds of characters with different life experiences than myself, I feel a sense of connection that expands my own worldview. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I have!
This heartwarming, multigenerational drama about the Korean community in Japan swept me into another time and place. Born and raised in a poor fishing village in Japanese-occupied Korea, Sunja makes an impulsive decision in the pursuit of love that transforms the trajectory of her life.
Thoughtful, resilient, and fiercely independent, Sunja was a relatable character whom I desperately wanted to see thrive. I felt her heartache when she left her beloved Korea and shared her indignation at the discrimination she and her family experienced in Japan. Expertly crafted and keenly observed, Pachinko shows us how history and politics shape the lives of ordinary people, often for generations to come.
* The million-copy bestseller* * National Book Award finalist * * One of the New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2017 * * Selected for Emma Watson's Our Shared Shelf book club *
'This is a captivating book... Min Jin Lee's novel takes us through four generations and each character's search for identity and success. It's a powerful story about resilience and compassion' BARACK OBAMA.
Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja…
I firmly believe that literature exists to do more than entertain us. It has an incredible power to expand our perspective about the world and the lives of the people around us. Fantasy, in particular, can stretch the mind’s boundaries by asking us to empathize with compelling characters and wrap our heads around strange and wondrous worlds. I try to achieve that in my books, presenting thrilling stories, fantastic worlds, and emotionally charged moments, but always through the eyes of real-feeling people. I hope the books on this list will feel as mind-expanding and empathy-building to you as they did to me!
This book is both a fascinating vision of a tumultuous world and a deep dive into the mind of a troubled and compelling protagonist.
The character work in this book is incredibly impressive, with the long arc of the protagonist’s development drawn in convincing and gripping detail that left me feeling like I had known this person for years through all their triumphs, tragedies, and mistakes, which is to say nothing of its creative and plausible magic, its socio-political commentary, and its meditation on family and grief. Rightfully recognized as a modern classic, it is a book all fans of fantasy should read.
At the end of the world, a woman must hide her secret power and find her kidnapped daughter in this "intricate and extraordinary" Hugo Award winning novel of power, oppression, and revolution. (The New York Times)
This is the way the world ends. . .for the last time.
It starts with the great red rift across the heart of the world's sole continent, spewing ash that blots out the sun. It starts with death, with a murdered son and a missing daughter. It starts with betrayal, and long dormant wounds rising up to fester.
I was an unusual child. My favorite stories were fairytales, no tale was too tall for me. On Christmas Eve, my father always read a story called “Giant Grummer’s Christmas” because it was my favorite. Giant Grummer lived in a huge castle made of limburger cheese. He threatened to reach his long arm down chimneys to steal the presents Santa left but Santa saved the day by giving Giant Grummer presents too. Folklore, legends, and magic are important. We need to believe more in the “make believe.” Everyone should read stories about ghosts and witches and cheese-eating giants, anything fantastical to open their worlds and set their imaginations free.
Alix Harrow writes that “behind every witch is a women wronged.”
Here are three sisters wronged by an abusive father who have hurt and betrayed each other in the past, but the bonds of love and sisterhood and witchcraft are stronger.
This book is for every woman because every woman has felt powerless. Every woman has been marginalized and dismissed but these three sisters prove to all of us that there is great power when women come together as they have throughout history.
I was rooting like crazy for these the sisters to prevail. I was charmed by the spells they cast based on fairy tales, nursery rhymes, lullabies. This is a book rooted in feminist tradition told in the tradition of great folklore.
'Glorious . . . a tale that will sweep you away' Yangsze Choo, New York Times bestselling author of The Night Tiger
'A gorgeous and thrilling paean to the ferocious power of women' Laini Taylor, New York Times bestselling author of Strange the Dreamer
In 1893, there's no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
I’m a communication professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, a social media user, and a mom. After Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election, I wrote an op-ed for CNN arguing that he’d won the election on social media, and I just never stopped writing. A few hundred op-eds and a book later, I’m still interested in what social media is doing to us all and the issues women are up against in our society. My book allowed me to explore how social media is impacting every single aspect of the lives of women and girls and exactly what we can do about it. I wrote it as a call to arms.
Kate Manne offers the best definitions of sexism (men thinking they’re better than women) and misogyny (men punishing women for displeasing them) that I’ve ever read. And she brings receipts, showing examples of how these two things play out in everything from novels to politics to crimes to classrooms.
Once I read her book, it was impossible for me not to spot more examples pretty much everywhere I went in the world.
Misogyny is a hot topic, yet it's often misunderstood. What is misogyny, exactly? Who deserves to be called a misogynist? How does misogyny contrast with sexism, and why is it prone to persist - or increase - even when sexist gender roles are waning? This book is an exploration of misogyny in public life and politics, by the moral philosopher and writer Kate Manne. It argues that misogyny should not be understood primarily in terms of the hatred or hostility some men feel toward all or most women. Rather, it's primarily about controlling, policing, punishing, and exiling the "bad" women…
I've been book-besotted my entire life. I've read, studied, taught, reviewed, and written books. I went to “gradual” school, as John Irving calls it, earning a PhD in literature before gradually realizing that what I really loved was writing. For me, books contain the intellectual challenge of puzzles, the fun of entertainment, the ability to fill souls. They have changed my life, and the best compliments I have received are from readers who say my books have changed theirs. I read widely and indiscriminately (as this list shows) because I believe that good books are found in all genres. But a book about books? What a glorious meta-adventure.
Magical doors that appear out of nowhere, a fantastical book that may not be fiction, some truly sketchy villains, a quest, and an intrepid heroine.
The author had me at fantastical book, but what I love about this novel is the world and character building, that feeling of opening the cover and being somewhere that has nothing to do with ordinary life.
And yet, there is mystery. And romance. A lost father. A daring daughter. You’ll want to race through it, but slow down at the same time, just to savor the ride.
"A gorgeous, aching love letter to stories, storytellers, and the doors they lead us through...absolutely enchanting."—Christina Henry, bestselling author of Alice and Lost Boys
LOS ANGELES TIMES BESTSELLER! Finalist for the 2020 Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards.
In the early 1900s, a young woman embarks on a fantastical journey of self-discovery after finding a mysterious book in this captivating and lyrical debut.
In a sprawling mansion filled with peculiar treasures, January Scaller is a curiosity herself. As the ward of the wealthy Mr. Locke, she feels little different from the artifacts that decorate the halls: carefully maintained, largely…
As an author and a lifelong lover of books, I read all genres. My favorites are set in fantastical worlds with unique settings. The mash-up of history and fantasy is endlessly compelling to me, and I always want to see a romantic subplot (or main plot!) in the books I read. I want a happily-ever-after even when the strange world and its villains are conspiring against the main characters.
Set in the mid-1400s in France, this series starter contains action, court intrigue, romance, and assassin nuns! I read it years ago and it remains a favorite, not only for the beautiful language, but for the strong heroine, Ismae, and her journey from following the rules and doing as she’s been told, to learning how to discern right from wrong and follow the guidance of her own moral compass. This is a book I would loveto watch as a movie, not only for the action, but the costumes.
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others. Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high…
Historical fantasy is my favorite genre, combining my twin passions of history and mythology/folklore. I especially like to read about unfamiliar times, places, identities, and cultures. What I love best about the fantastical is that it allows me to think and write about deep matters symbolically. As someone still discovering my asexuality in middle age, I’ve always identified best with coming-of-age stories, which is why there are so many young protagonists in both my reading and my writing.
I first read this book when I was ill in bed, on strong painkillers, so the setting had a heightened quality in my mind that can never be replicated. But I’ve now read it several times (and watched the Netflix TV series), and it remains a wonderful book with great settings and characters, romance, and danger.
Before I read this book, I knew very little about Chinese Malaysian society in the late nineteenth century, and it was fascinating to learn. I also loved the Plains of the Dead, where ghosts live in houses and eat food that corresponds to the paper funeral offerings burned by their families. Seventeen-year-old Li Lan must go there to seek the deceased young man whose “ghost bride” she is and stop him from haunting her.
A haunting, evocative and highly unusual romantic debut and now a Netflix Mandarin original drama premiering January 2020!
Seventeen-year-old Li Lan lives in 1890s Malaya with her quietly-ruined father, who returns one evening with a proposition - the fabulously wealthy Lim family want Li Lan to marry their son. The only problem is, he's dead. After a fateful visit to the Lim mansion, Li Lan finds herself haunted not only by her ghostly would-be suitor, but also her desire for the Lims' handsome new heir. At night she is drawn into the Chinese afterlife - a world of ghost cities,…
As an author and a lifelong lover of books, I read all genres. My favorites are set in fantastical worlds with unique settings. The mash-up of history and fantasy is endlessly compelling to me, and I always want to see a romantic subplot (or main plot!) in the books I read. I want a happily-ever-after even when the strange world and its villains are conspiring against the main characters.
The romance inUpright Women Wanted is very subtle, but it is more powerful for that subtlety. This dystopian, Wild Western setting is light on the fantasy and is considered “near future” instead of historical, yet the vibe is distinctly historical. In this harsh world, women are considered property and laws are upheld by a military government. However, librarians are free to travel. When the heroine stows away with them, she embarks on an adventure she never could’ve imagined. I would gladly read ten more books set in this world!
In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity.
"That girl's got more wrong notions than a barn owl's got mean looks."
Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.
A tiny mention of the legendary ‘fragrant concubine’ in a travelogue had me search out more information… and more and more until I’d researched and written the stories of four imperial concubines in the Qing era (18th century China). Some rose to power, while others fell to madness. Their extraordinary lives within the high red walls of the Forbidden City fascinated me. Along the way I found a banished empress and a real woman who had endless myths grow up around her, as well as secondary characters like the Italian Jesuit turned court painter. An irresistible era and way of life to explore, in all its shades of light and darkness.
A nobody-concubine rises to become Empress of China, making her way through the rituals and backstabbing of the imperial court. This is the closest to my own books and I loved the detail and the insights into the latter part of the Qing era, as well as the feeling of time running out for the imperial way of life.
To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, seventeen-year-old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor's wives. When she is chosen as a lower-ranking concubine she enters the erotically charged and ritualised Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate facade lie whispers of murders and ghosts, and the thousands of concubines will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor's son. Orchid trains herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way into the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing the attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse…
I'm Professor and Director of the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre at the Australian Catholic University. I've always been interested in the power of ideologies about gender to shape people’s lives, and in the experiences of women in times past. I started off exploring these topics in early modern Europe and then looked at how women, and ideas about gender, shaped the ways European peoples engaged in the world at this period. This has helped me to see the very significant ways that the lives of women and men are always shaped by gender ideologies across the globe and across time, and the innovative ways that people respond to the challenges and opportunities that they encounter.
Jung Chang, best known as the author of Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China, here turns her considerable creative skill to the story of the woman who rose to the height of power in one of the world’s most important empires. Cixi’s trajectory from concubine to mother of the Tongzhi Emperor reminds us how sexual and reproductive labour are often critical to women’s access to power.
Chang locates Cixi’s personal experiences, enjoying extreme luxury in secluded palaces yet displaying keen interest in the outside world that China was forced to confront, against a grand narrative of extraordinary changes to the empire Cixi was charged to safeguard. Chang presents a strongly sympathetic analysis of Cixi but the complex ambitions, many contradictions and perceived failures of this powerful woman ensure that she will remain the subject of continued debate.
Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age.
At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines and sexual partners. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who…
