93 books like The Lady's Slipper

Ms. Patzer’s writing is lilting and emotional in its building of character and setting in old Italy. You’ll feel you are right there as a young woman struggles with her mysterious past, a forbidden love, and the cruel superstitions that stand in her way. I rooted for Olivia, who has no idea what danger her very birth has caused.

I fell in love with the atmosphere and plot. Also, the different setting not normally seen in most historicals: 13th century Tuscany. I could taste the food, smell the aromas, and see the sweeping countryside. The life in a convent felt authentic, and the drama, the heroine’s determination to discover her past, kept me reading.

Set in thirteenth-century England. Ms. Morris weaves a tale of turbulence, greed, murder, and much more. I loved her historical details in an era that must be difficult to research. Yvonne is a heroine you will instantly care about as her life is upended in so many ways. The fast pace had me riveted to the story. Ms. Morris has you walking the dank halls of a castle, breathing in the smoky fires, and brooding for Yvonne as she faces the demands and restrictions on medieval women who had little control over their lives. The political maneuverings around her are also well-researched. Each character stands out. A tour de force.

I’m a fan of Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart, and The Baron’s Wife reminded me of those stellar authors. A young wife, a mysterious, windswept residence, a man with a shady past, Ms. Andersen weaves these details together in an intriguing plot. Her descriptions of the ocean-battered shores of Cornwall at Wolfram Abbey, and the murder that may or may not have happened at Laura’s new husband’s hands, had me gripped to my seat. Laura grows braver each day as she tries to solve the mystery and believe in her husband. Emotionally charged, this novel is a nail-biter. This is Victorian Gothic at its best. One of my favorites.

This western showcases three strong and determined women of completely different backgrounds. I found something to appreciate about each one. Clara is under suspicion for poisoning her husband and flees west to start a new life. Selfish Mary Rose joins her, to put her past with husbands to rest. Emma finds them on the trail, falls in, but hides a terrible secret. Ms. Howard’s writing is clean and straightforward and always kept me engaged. How can they pool their resources and reach their goals? I liked how they came to trust and protect, no matter their flaws. Ms. Howard is excellent at characterization and this story taught me about female empowerment in difficult times. They thrive without help from men. As a horse lover, I enjoyed Emma’s horse training skills. 

This 1834 novel written by a physician/writer from Philadelphia holds its own with anything Poe or Melville ever wrote in terms of weirdness, psychological complexity, and sheer literary panache. 

It tells the story of a singularly unambitious young man who accidentally kills himself and then discovers that he has the power to reanimate the corpses of others who have just died. And so our hero finds himself living the lives of a rich man with terrible gout, a playboy, a misguided Quaker philanthropist, and – most shockingly – a rebel slave. 

Through it all, Sheppard Lee still maintains a sense of his own identity, even as his spirit becomes something of a puppet for its new physical manifestations. Both philosophical and darkly comic, this recently rediscovered work should be a classic.

Mary Dyer is a forgotten American hero, who suffered unbelievably for her faith. In early Boston Quakers, Baptists, Jews, Catholics—everyone but the Puritans—were banished. She became a Quaker missionary and led what became a hopeless cause: freedom of worship. Her whole story is painful, shocking, and cannot be summed up here without spoilers. The Puritan men who settled the Bay Colony hated and feared women who spoke up. They banished or destroyed them.

A thousand-page runaway bestseller, The Quaker City sold more copies than any American novel prior to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

Lippard happened to be a friend of Poe’s, and he exceeded him when it came to depicting depravity and mayhem. Underneath the surface of order and respectability, Lippard’s Philadelphia is a city pervaded by corruption and crime, and the center of it all is a vast men’s clubhouse called Monk Hall.

Three interlocking plots deploy more sex and violence than most readers would expect from a mid-nineteenth-century novel, or even a twenty-first-century novel. Lippard coins the term “grotesque-sublime” in his description of his main character, Devil-Bug, but that expression applies to the whole novel.

You might get lost in one of his sentences even as he describes a character getting lost in the secret passages of Monk Hall, but it’s a fascinating trip. Think of it as a trashy but bingeworthy… show more.

What Comes After is a heart-rending story of a boy who is brutally murdered.

A school friend commits suicide shortly after, leaving a note confessing to the murder, but there are unanswered questions.

Meanwhile, a destitute and pregnant teenager shows up in town with worries and questions of her own. Rufus the dogs brings the dad and the girl together, then rides along with both of them as their intertwining stories unfold.

He doesn’t solve crimes or save lives, but he does what rescued dogs so often do – rescue their people.

This book is tagged as a murder mystery and a thriller, and it is both those things.

But essentially it is the first-person narrative of an aching father, the people around him, and the dog who shares his grief.

This novel has everything in it that I love about Cornwall – the life and work of its artists, an incredible sense of the scenery and atmosphere, and the limpid light cast over its beauty. 

It’s also an absorbing story about the price that may have to be paid for following your star. Successful artist Rachel Kelly values creativity and self-expression, but all too often she places these above the happiness of her partner and children. Is she right or is she wrong? 

This is another book I have read over and over again.

The hero is a powerful, intelligent, and rakish Duke. To a modern reader, it quickly becomes clear that the hero, Jervaux, suffers a stroke. But the author shows how medical understanding of the time results in him being confined to an asylum for the insane. 

There, the heroine, a devout Quakeress receives an enlightenment that he is not mad, but maddened. Patiently, she sets about rescuing him. I just love how powerfully the author shows the inner struggles of a hero with limited ability to communicate, as well as the heroine’s own determination to cling to her vision.