#read99women: Susan Meissner

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Today’s guest for #read99women is one of my favorite people in historical fiction: Susan Meissner.

Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than half a million books in print [editor’s note: holy mackerel!] in fifteen languages. She is an author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include AS BRIGHT AS HEAVEN, starred review in Library Journal; SECRETS OF A CHARMED LIFE, a Goodreads finalist for Best Historical Fiction 2015; and A FALL OF MARIGOLDS, named to Booklist’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction titles for 2014. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing. Visit Susan at her website: http://susanlmeissner.com on Twitter at @SusanMeissner or at www.facebook.com/susan.meissner

Susan Meissner

Susan Meissner

Susan’s recommendation is a modern classic from a much-admired writer, LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson. As Susan puts it, “Any book that makes you stop and deeply ponder, ‘What if that could really happen, and what if happened to me?’ is a keeper.”

If that’s not quite enough to draw you in, here’s more: “Kate Atkinson’s brilliantly conceived LIFE AFTER LIFE, one of my all-time favorite books by a female writer, is the imagined life of Ursula Todd. She’s a girl who keeps having her life rebooted, almost as if she is being handed by Providence chance after chance after chance to alter the course of human history. Only the reader truly knows the full breadth of Ursula's multi-layered existence. And we’re not in control of anything either. We just know more than she does, and we cannot help her.”

(That last line just gave me chills. Chills!)

Read Susan’s full review of LIFE AFTER LIFE on BookBub here.

To read more of Susan’s recommendations and check out her wonderful books, including her most recent release THE LAST YEAR OF THE WAR (coming to paperback in April 2020), click to see her author page on BookBub.

#read99women: Fiona Davis

When I invited fellow authors to recommend a book for #read99women my only conditions were that each book be written by or about a woman (or both). I hoped we’d have a mix of well-known and little-known, new books and old — and so far, it’s working out great!

Today’s recommendation is a true classic, and our recommender is Fiona Davis, a superstar of the historical fiction genre.

Fiona Davis; photo credit: Deborah Feingold

Fiona Davis; photo credit: Deborah Feingold

The bestselling author of THE DOLLHOUSE, THE ADDRESS, THE MASTERPIECE, and THE CHELSEA GIRLS, Fiona began her career in New York City as an actress, where she worked on Broadway, off-Broadway, and in regional theater. After getting a master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she fell in love with writing, leapfrogging from editor to freelance journalist before finally settling down as an author of historical fiction. Fiona's books have been translated into more than a dozen languages. She's a graduate of the College of William & Mary and is based in New York City. Her new novel THE LIONS OF FIFTH AVENUE is forthcoming on July 28, 2020.

So what book does Fiona recommend for #read99women? Fittingly for a New Yorker who writes across multiple eras, it’s one of the best and best-known books about New York high society in a particular age — THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, by Edith Wharton.

Fiona says: “I recently re-read The Age of Innocence and this time around was struck by how funny Wharton is. She skewers Gilded Age high society with her vibrant wit, while at the same time offering up characters who are flawed, tragic, sometimes irritating, and always relatable.”

You can read the rest of Fiona’s recommendation here.

For more recommendation from Fiona and information about her (fabulous!) books, follow her on BookBub here.

Will tomorrow’s #read99women book be a well-known classic or an undiscovered pleasure? Contemporary or historical? Light reading or intense drama? Only one way to find out…

#read99women: Kim Taylor Blakemore

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Welcome to today’s installment of #read99women! THE COMPANION, the latest release from today’s author, Kim Taylor Blakemore, just hit shelves last week. (I devoured my advance copy: you can take a peek at my BookBub recommendation, which is also my blurb for the book, here.)

More about Kim: Kim writes about the thieves and servants, murderesses and soiled doves, grifters and flimflam girls. The fierce women. The dangerous women with tangled lies and hidden motives. The Companion is her adult debut in historical mystery. Publishers Weekly calls it a "captivating tale of psychological suspense." She is also the author of the YA historical novels Bowery Girl and the WILLA Literary Award winner Cissy Funk. Recipient of a Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award, WILLA Literary Award, and three Regional Arts and Culture Council (RACC) grants, she also teaches novel intensives in Portland, Oregon, and is a member of Women's Fiction Writers Association, and Historical Novel Society.

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Kim’s recommendation for #read99women: THE OUTLANDER by Gill Adamson, which sounds amazing. “In 1903, a woman is chased across the vast Canadian frontier and into the Rockies by two men - the brothers of her husband seeking vengeance for his death at her hands….The characters she meets are strange and compelling, violent and filled with kindness, each person a product of the wild woods and unforgiving mountains.”

Read more of Kim’s recommendation on BookBub by clicking here.

Click here to see Kim’s other BookBub recommendations.

And come back tomorrow for another recommendation from another fabulous author!




#read99women: Diana Giovinazzo

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Pleased as punch to kick off a super-fun project I’m calling #read99women! So for the next 99 days (ooh that’s a lot of days) I’ll be hosting one awesome author a day, recommending one book by and/or about women. We’ve got a delightful mix of authors from across genres, talking about books they think readers would love, whether the book is a brand-new thing that hasn’t even come out yet, an overlooked gem from the archives, or a clear classic.

So for our first #read99women recommendation, please welcome to the blog Diana Giovinazzo, podcast co-host extraordinaire of Wine, Women and Words and soon-to-be debut author of THE WOMAN IN RED, a novel of Anita Garibaldi that’ll knock your proverbial socks off when it hits shelves in August 2020.

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Diana’s recommendation: THE LOST DAUGHTER by Elena Ferrante. She says: “The Neapolitan novels are getting a lot of attention right now, and rightfully so. But this book, which may be more along the lines of a novella, deserves some attention.”

Click here to read more of Diana’s recommendation. (Or here to see all of her recommendations on BookBub.)

Have you read THE LOST DAUGHTER? Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments!

And tune in tomorrow for another great author with another great book to add to your TBR pile…

deadlines, deals and diversions!

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It’s a big day at Greer Macallister HQ! Yesterday was the deadline to turn in the updated draft of my next book (“Book 4” is what I’ve been calling it so far), and at 11:45pm, I did so. YAY! There are definitely a few more cycles to go through, including copy edits, but it feels like a major milestone, and I can’t wait to share this book with the world. Not to mention the title and cover, which I hope to reveal soon. Maybe while I’m doing events for the paperback release of WOMAN 99, coming February 4? Maybe!

Speaking of WOMAN 99, if you can’t wait for that paperback and you’re not a fan of hefty hardcovers, now’s a great time to snap up the e-book! It’s discounted for a limited time on all e-book platforms. So if you’re an e-reader, grab it for your Kindle or Nook or other preferred e-reading device before the price goes from less than a latte to more than a macchiato.

And I’m thrilled to announce that in lieu of #womenshistoryreads this year, I have another fun project that’ll be launching next week. Obviously one of the ways we find new books is through recommendations from friends — and how many book-loving, well-read authors would you like to hear from? 10? 50? How about… 99? Get ready for the hashtag #read99women, and prepare to see your TBR pile topple.

Happy 2020!

Hope everything’s going swimmingly for you in the new year! I’ve been quiet for a while, buckling down on my next book — my fourth! — which is currently planned to come out in 2021 from Sourcebooks. The title and cover are still secret for now, but here’s the premise: it’s about 13 women who join an expedition to the Arctic in the 1850s, and what happens when not all of them come back. If you don’t hear from me in the next two weeks, it’s because my immense stack of research reading has finally toppled over and pinned me to the floor.

I’ve got lots of fun plans coming soon, including events for the paperback release of WOMAN 99, a new feature I’m launching on the blog, and other stuff I can’t talk about yet (shhhh.) But stay tuned for lots of activity, announcements, sharing, book recommendations, and more!

Newsletter + giveaway = awesome!

If you don’t already subscribe to Stephanie Dray’s delightful newsletter, April is the time to jump on board! Not just because it’s great, but because she’s also running a giveaway of WOMAN 99 this month.

To enter, subscribe to Stephanie’s newsletter, and see the instructions for entry on this Facebook post.

(This is her April giveaway, so enter now; she’ll have another one for May!)