I’ve always loved science—especially ecology and geology, because I grew up among the strange plants and rocky mountains of the Sonoran Desert. In college, however, I found my chosen field felt a little lonely. I didn’t know many stories about the women who had come before me. Now, I know history is full of women who ran rivers, climbed mountains, and made significant scientific contributions in their chosen fields. I find power in these stories, which I hope will make the world of science more welcoming to people of all backgrounds—and also reveal science as the great adventure I always felt it to be.
This book is a whirlwind tour of scientific history from Antiquity to the twentieth century, highlighting the often-forgotten women who have been doing science all along.
Among them are Nicole-Reine Lepaute, the French astronomer who helped calculate the path of Halley’s Comet; Jeanne Baret, who disguised herself as a man to circumnavigate the globe; and Bertha Parker, an Abenaki and Seneca archeologist.
Many of the women in this book rightfully have entire books of their own, but I was drawn to Forces of Nature for its sweeping perspective—and also the realization of just how many women made significant contributions to science, even if I never learned their names in school. I found it inspirational, reminding me that I’m not alone in my love of scientific inquiry.
From the ancient world to the present women have been critical to the progress of science, yet their importance is overlooked, their stories lost, distorted, or actively suppressed. Forces of Nature sets the record straight and charts the fascinating history of women's discoveries in science.
In the ancient and medieval world, women served as royal physicians and nurses, taught mathematics, studied the stars, and practiced midwifery. As natural philosophers, physicists, anatomists, and botanists, they were central to the great intellectual flourishing of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. More recently women have been crucially involved in the Manhattan Project, pioneering…
When we were young and naughty, our parents only had to give my sister The Look, and she’d burst into tears. Me, I would stare right back at them and demand, “What?” Fiercely. In fact I often got in trouble for “arguing,” (when all I was really trying to do was make my case because I felt misunderstood). These days people describe me as someone who doesn’t care what other people think. I forge my own path, staunchly, proudly, and so I am drawn to heroines who do the same, who fly in the face of societal expectations to fight for truth and science and what is right.
I adore everything about the premise of this book—a secret society of lady scientists, working away in an old house in London, trying to invent solutions to the problems of the day. Yes please! I also love that Lady Violet is worldly. She's knowledgeable about physical relations between men and women, and she knows about her body, what she likes, and how to prevent pregnancy. She’s very down-to-earth, empowered, and sex-positive, and she brings our brooding hero Arthur to his knees. There’s something very special about historical fiction with a modern sentimentality. Add to that a swoon-worthy hero, a cast of colorful side characters, and dark forces working against our heroine, and you’ve got a recipe for the perfect start to a super fun series.
What is a Victorian lady's formula for love? Mix one brilliant noblewoman and her enigmatic protection officer. Add in a measure of danger and attraction. Heat over the warmth of humor and friendship, and the result is more than simple chemistry--it's elemental.
Lady Violet is keeping secrets. First, she founded a clandestine sanctuary for England's most brilliant female scientists. Second, she is using her genius on a confidential mission for the Crown. But the biggest secret of all? Her feelings for protection officer Arthur Kneland.
Solitary and reserved, Arthur learned the hard way to put duty first. But the more…
As a historian of early modern France and a professor at Southern Methodist University, I have taken students to Paris on a study abroad program for more than twenty summers. Students were invariably intrigued by the relationship of Henry II, Catherine de Medici, and Diane de Poitiers. The young prince married Catherine de Medici at the age of fourteen but the thirty-six-year-old Diane de Poitiers became his mistress when he was sixteen and remained so for the rest of his life. The complexities of that relationship and the significance of both women led me to conclude that the history of the Renaissance could be told through the lives of the queens and mistresses.
This book focuses on another group of influential women. They are six women of significant scientific accomplishment who have been almost entirely written out of history. Through painstaking research, Gelbart brings these women vividly to life. She reveals their extensive scientific work and significant accomplishments as well their influence on male scientists and intellectuals. She also notes the obstacles they faced and the sacrifices they made to do their work.
The reader walks with Gelbart through the streets of Paris as she gives her figures a rich personal and professional context in time and space. She illuminates the scientific context of the Enlightenment by bringing these women into our historical understanding of the period. Her empathic treatment exposes the difficulties faced by women who pursued science, many of which continue to plague twenty-first-century female scientists.
A fascinating collective biography of six female scientists in eighteenth-century France, whose stories were largely written out of history
This book presents the stories of six intrepid Frenchwomen of science in the Enlightenment whose accomplishments-though celebrated in their lifetimes--have been generally omitted from subsequent studies of their period: mathematician and philosopher Elisabeth Ferrand, astronomer Nicole Reine Lepaute, field naturalist Jeanne Barret, garden botanist and illustrator Madeleine Francoise Basseporte, anatomist and inventor Marie-Marguerite Biheron, and chemist Genevieve d'Arconville. By adjusting our lens, we can find them.
In a society where science was not yet an established profession for men, much less…
I’ve been immersed in Norse Myth for more than a decade and writing books about the Gods I’ve always wanted to read. My Fate of the Gods trilogy is a mythic mash-up of Biblical, Norse, Greek, and Egyptian myth, and writing as Amalia Carosella, my book Daughter of a Thousand Yearsis Viking age historical fiction about Freydis, the daughter of Erik the Red. Additionally, as a Norse Pagan polytheist myself, finding books that do justice to the Gods in our modern world is that much more important to me than your average reader - I’m always looking to celebrate the books that bring them to life!
Suspense, Horror, Romance, Adventure—this book has it all! Vidar’s steadfast search for the mortal woman he loved and lost, and the complications of her return as a cynical scientist at a research outpost in the modern world are both “wild and melancholy.” I love the idea of a god with such a loyal heart. This book gets bonus points for going all-in on Odin as the villain of the piece, but also features Loki in full Trickster form, and touches on many of the other gods of Asgard.
Victoria Scott, scientist and hardened sceptic, accepts a job at an isolated weather station on an island in the Norwegian Sea. She's running from a broken engagement and the knowledge that love is a lie. But there are shadows outside her cabin window, a hag who visits in nightmares - and a distrurbing sense of familiarity in the deep, haunted forest. In Asgard, the world of the old gods, Odin's son Vidar has exiled himself from his cruel family to await the reincarnation of his beloved: the woman his father murdered a thousand years before. And deep in the black,…
I am an award-winning children’s book author who writes stories about unexpected friends, women who did the impossible, people who are (almost) forgotten & ideas that seem too complicated until I find the right way to tell them.
Margaret and the Moon tells the story of Margaret Hamilton, who wrote the computer code that was key to the US first landing on the moon. The story is full of suspense. Margaret—not the astronauts—is the real hero of the story. But what is best about this book is that it is bursting with curiosity. Margaret wonders, Why are there only DADDY Longlegs? Why aren’t more girls scientists? How big is the moon? And with each of her questions, readers themselves became more and more curious! Isn’t that fabulous?!
Margaret Hamilton loved numbers as a young girl. She knew how many miles it was to the moon (and how many back). She loved studying algebra and geometry and calculus and using math to solve problems in the outside world.
Soon math led her to MIT and then to helping NASA put a man on the moon! She handwrote code that would allow the spacecraft’s computer to solve any problems it might encounter. Apollo 8. Apollo 9. Apollo 10. Apollo 11. Without her code, none of those missions could have…
I'm a writer and a reader. I love getting lost in books. It has been the most consistent aspect of my life. I love audacious books whose beauty pushes all the way to the edge of absurdity, without ever slipping over. I love nothing more in life than sitting by a fire and dissolving into a good book. I'm the author of the Children of Paranoia series, the Memory Detective series, and the stand-alone novel List of Fears. My books have been published in seven different languages and have been optioned for both movies and television. I live in Brooklyn with my wife and two children, all of whom can be found reading at any given moment.
When I read The Hungry Tide for the first time, it read to me like a fantasy novel set in a faraway world. Except it isn’t. The setting for The Hungry Tide is a real place, but it is as dangerous and as fantastic as something created by Tolkien. It takes place in the Sundarbans of India, a world where tigers hunt people and tidal floods come without warning and wipe out villages. Sometimes I read a book to get lost in a world that doesn’t exist. Other times I read a book to get lost in a world that does. I’ve never been to the Sundarbans, but I still periodically dream about them.
A profound and absorbing saga from the Internationally Bestselling and Man Booker Prize shortlisted author
'Amitav Ghosh is such a fascinating and seductive writer... I cannot think of another contemporary writer with whom it would be this thrilling to go so far, so fast' The Times
January 2001: A small ship, led by wealthy Scotsman Daniel Hamilton, arrives in the Sundarbans, a vast archipelago of islands in the mythical river Ganges, a half-drowned land where the waters of the Himalayas merge with the incoming tides of the sea.
In the Sundarbans the tides reach more than 100 miles inland, and…
From my first foray into poetry when I was in high school, I've been creative writing for over fifty years. Poetry proceeded into writing alternative song lyrics to established songs while in college. After graduating I naively pursued a career as a professional song lyricist, achieving limited success and unable to continue. While in the midst of a long career in the landscape industry, upon realizing that I wanted to write a novel based on an idea I had, I eventually completed a supernatural thriller titled, The Poe Consequence. Years of watching detective shows and reading memorable crime thrillers provided the inspiration to write a murder mystery as well. You Say Goodbye is the result.
Scientific cloning fears come to life and the possible consequences of that dynamic?The protagonist, a geneticist, makes a startling and extremely consequential discovery and away we go. The story is a combination of science, crime drama, and bad guy intrigue that keeps the reader wondering how things will play out in terms of experiments and mysterious, secretive plots. Follett offers an array of engaging characters that left me pulling for some and proverbially punching others. As with the other Ken Follett novels I’ve read, the man does his research which offers educational elements as a bonus without it interfering with the flow.And the ending is a beauty.
Questions about who we really are in terms of ourselves and maybe, just maybe, a cloned twin ‘out there’ who apparently isn’t the nice person you are?Why and how could that be? Creative ideas such as this, from the imagination…
A thrilling, chilling story of hidden evil, The Third Twin is a heart-stopping, spine-tingling story from master of suspense, Ken Follett.
An Impossible Result Jeannie Ferrami, a scientific researcher investigating the behaviour of identical twins who have been raised separately, uncovers a perplexing mystery; identical twins who were born on different days, to different mothers, in different places.
A Blossoming Love One, Steve, is a law student and the other, Dennis, a convicted murderer. As Jeannie works with Steve on her project she finds herself falling in love with him, but their world is shattered when he is accused of…
After a long career in other forms of writing including but not limited to journalism, TV writing, nonfiction book authoring, I began writing contemporary romance novels two years ago and I haven’t gotten off the couch or closed my laptop since then. I write sweet, spicy books about quirky heroines and the men who can’t live without them. When I’m not writing, I’m perfecting the right ratio of coffee to milk, hustling my 2 rescue dogs around the neighborhood, or running up a hill in search of a view.
Who says math can’t be sexy? This is the second book in the Secret Scientists of Love series, and the enemies to lovers journey of Letty and Grey hits all the right notes with swoony banter and hot chemistry. I love the friendships between the brainy female scientists at their secret lab and the humor—Everett always brings the humor in big, satisfying doses.
A PopSugar and BookBub Most Anticipated Romance of 2022!
How do you solve the Perfect Equation? Add one sharp-tongued mathematician to an aloof, handsome nobleman. Divide by conflicting loyalties and multiply by a daring group of women hell-bent on conducting their scientific experiments. The solution is a romance that will break every rule.
Six years ago, Miss Letitia Fenley made a mistake, and she’s lived with the consequences ever since. Readying herself to compete for the prestigious Rosewood Prize for Mathematics, she is suddenly asked to take on another responsibility—managing Athena’s Retreat, a secret haven for England’s women scientists. Having…
I’ve been in love with science fiction since I watched Star Wars for the first time at the age of seven, and haven’t looked back since. Besides being a voracious lifelong reader, I’ve written several dozen science fiction books myself, and my favorite sub-genre is space opera. I’ve read most of the Hugo and Nebula-winning novels, as well as several that those awards have overlooked, and my stories have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines including Again, Hazardous Imaginings,After Dinner Conversation, Bards and Sages Quarterly, and Twilight Tales LTUE Benefit Anthology.
Shards of Honor and Barrayar form a duology within the wider Vorkosigan Saga, and starting with them both is the best way to become acquainted with the wider series universe and with the origins of Miles Vorkosigan. All of the later books refer back to events that happen in Barrayar, and one of the core conflicts of the novel is the struggle between the conservative isolationists who don’t want to integrate with the rest of the galaxy, and the liberal reformists who do. The political intrigue is extremely well done, and the adventure is superb.
Sick of combat and betrayal, Cordelia Vorkosigan is ready to settle down to a quiet life. But when the Emperor dies, her husband Aral becomes guardian of the infant heir to the imperial throne of Barrayar and the target of high-tech assassins in a dy
The detailed description of the struggles a young intelligent woman faces, in a professional domain dominated by men, that is depicted in this book, is a very appealing topic for nowadays, especially when characters are inspired by reality.
The writing is affectionate and insightful, even when it describes traumatic episodes, thus adding to the charm of the strong main female character.
The book raises questions to the reader about the authenticity of agreed-upon history, unknown merits, justice and gender equality.
From beloved New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Marie Benedict comes the story of a not-so-famous scientist who not only loved Albert Einstein, but also shaped the theories that brought him lasting renown. In the tradition of Beatriz Williams and Paula McClain, Marie Benedict's The Other Einstein offers us a window into a brilliant, fascinating woman whose light was lost in Einstein's enormous shadow. This novel resurrects Einstein's wife, a brilliant physicist in her own right, whose contribution to the special theory of relativity is hotly debated. Was she simply Einstein's sounding board, an assistant performing complex mathematical…
