Fans pick 100 books like Traveling with Ghosts

Self-discovery after being brokenhearted from a love relationship is what I refer to as the dark night of the soul. We’ve all been there. There is no way out except to go in, which is what the main character did in Eat Pray Love. Eventually, she finds herself and gains self-love.

Miss Pink, my main character, does something similar. Her journey was going from living in a high rise with a great job to losing it all, including a cheating husband and eventually becoming homeless. What does she do? She starts to give to others who are far worse off, like animals about to be euthanized legally. How uncivilized, how cruel, and Miss Pink, the great warrior, comes up with solutions to save almost all of them. Save the four-legged and two-legged, and you save yourself.

If there ever lived a strong, persistent woman, it is Jaouad. This is Jaouad’s memoir of fighting and surviving leukemia at age 22. I came to love her as a person as she suffered the broken dreams of her youth and her future.

The insightful writing is from her unique perspective as a young woman who speaks multiple languages and is raised in several countries, including the United States. In her post-treatment year, she completes a road trip around the United States, which brings more revelations.

With this “traveloir,” Mary Morris showed me how to do it: How to travel alone as a single woman when you didn’t have a plan or an agenda; how to write about people and places that bring them alive; how to find your own story in your travels and in your writing.

Mary Morris published this book in 1989, the year before I set off on my own—a (much older) single woman traveling without a plan or agenda. As I opened the yellowed pages again, after many years, I read this line: “I settled into loneliness once again.” Next year I’ll be traveling to San Miguel de Allende, one of the settings in Nothing to Declare. I may take this book with me and read it again. 

This is a dual memoir and each woman is on a quest to redefine herself. Sue Monk Kidd as a writer and her daughter, Ann Kidd Taylor as she asks the age-old question: “what to do with my life.” 

Written in alternating chapters, mother and daughter write of their experiences and insights as they visit sacred sights in ancient lands, places rich with myth and legend and the sacred feminine. My journey too was as a seeker, a woman thick with an urgency to write as Sue was, and as a single woman exploring “now what?” 

While I traveled alone and these women traveled together, each of us was on our own individual journey, exploring, discovering, asking questions, and seeking answers that can often only be found when we travel within.

This beautifully illustrated book explores Austen’s life and her interactions with the world as a novelist.

Jane’s teenage writings, her music books, and the story of her surviving pelisse (a type of coat) are all discussed, along with the magic of her remaining correspondence. (Sadly, after Jane died, her sister Cassandra burnt many of her letters to protect her emotional life from strangers’ prying eyes).

Austen’s fiction manuscripts, several of which survive, offer clues to how she worked. Jane’s status as a novelist at the time of her death in 1817 is also discussed, and compared with her competitors. 

A cultural tour de force, this book includes everything you could ever wish to know about the Georgian era, although it does specifically stick to its latter years (1789-1830). It is a deeply informative read yet the author maintains a lively and engaging tone throughout as he covers a wide range of topics such as the landscape of Regency Britain, travel, law and order, as well as entertainment, health, and sexuality, so it’s just perfect for any reader unfamiliar with the period. In fact, it’s perfect for anyone who already is. Established writers of the genre will surely pick up something new by reading it.

While most Jane Austen variations center around Pride and Prejudice’s famous couple, Elizabeth and Darcy, Katherine Cowley’s book takes a completely different tactic. The heroine of her book is the often-ignored middle Bennet daughter. After their father’s untimely death, Mary is visited during the night by a pair of distant relations, who invite her to live with them. Lady Trafford and her nephew are training Mary to be a governess—or so she thinks. I loved seeing Mary in the role of a detective, trying to solve the murder that takes place shortly after she arrives in her new home and discovers what Lady Trafford is really up to. Katherine Cowley’s carefully placed clues lead the reader along the adventure with Mary Bennet, and we get to see new sides of this character that were not explored in Austen’s original novel. Other characters from Pride and Prejudice make brief appearances,… show more.

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! 

What were the lives of ordinary people like during Austen’s day?

They were far removed from the elegant folk depicted in her novels. The authors look at topics such as child miners, chimney sweeps, crime and punishment, personal hygiene, and how to do the laundry.

True stories look at the horrors of surgery and childbirth in those days of no anesthesia and little understanding of infection. 

When John Darwin got into debt and ran out of money-making ideas, he decided to fake his own death so that his wife could claim the life insurance. The plan was to move to another country and live off the proceeds of his crime. But things didn’t go to plan. The arrogance and ineptitude of John Darwin, and his complete disregard for his family, defies belief. I couldn’t wait to read this book and was not disappointed. It has now been made into a drama by the BBC in the UK.