#read99women: Kaia Danielle

Remember when I said yesterday that some of the books in the #read99women series aren’t out yet? Today’s recommendation is like that, but when you read Kaia Danielle’s rave, you’ll be scrambling to pre-order! Some things are worth the wait.

Our guest’s bio first: Kaia is a comedy and fiction writer based out of coastal Georgia. Her recent publications include romantic comedy novella CALLING HER BLUFF and comics short stories in LADIES’ NIGHT ANTHOLOGY volumes 4 and 5. She has performed with Atlanta-based 2 Girls 3 Eyes improv group and is an alumna of Spelman College.

She has studied writing with the Hurston/Wright Foundation, The Second City and Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop. When she isn't living her best Twitter life, Kaia spends her evenings worshipping all things Nora Ephron.

Kaia Danielle

Writes Kaia: “TIES THAT TETHER by Jane Igharo is a must read for fans of ‘Insecure’ and ‘Sex and The City.’ This romcom has it all. A meddling matchmaking mama. Blind dates from hell. A gorgeous ex who keeps showing up at the wrong-est of times. A fling who isn't satisfied with a one-night stand. And a promise made to her dying father that becomes harder and harder to keep. Azere's disaster of a life will keep you rolling in laughter and swiping away tears. Newcomer Jane Igharo blew me away with her Toronto-set debut.”

You can pre-order TIES THAT TETHER here.

#read99women: Hazel Gaynor

Most books in the #read99women series so far (80-some and counting!) have been books that are already available, but a few here and there—both the featured recommendations and new books by the series guests who are doing the recommending—aren’t yet out in the world. But we need something to look forward to, don’t we? It’s like a cheerful little preview of what’s to come, on some future Tuesday. (It’s almost always Tuesday.)

And here’s something else to look forward to on an upcoming Tuesday: Hazel Gaynor’s next historical novel, set in China during WW2. It’ll be published as THE BIRD IN THE BAMBOO CAGE in the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand in August 2020, and as WHEN WE WERE YOUNG & BRAVE in the USA and Canada in October 2020. Wherever you are, the book is available to pre-order now!

Today’s guest Hazel Gaynor is an award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, Irish Times and international bestselling author. Her 2014 debut novel THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME won the 2015 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Novel of the Year, A MEMORY OF VIOLETS was a 2015 WHSmith Fresh Talent pick, THE GIRL FROM THE SAVOY was shortlisted for the 2016 Irish Book Awards, and THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER’S DAUGHTER was shortlisted for the 2019 Historical Writers’ Association Gold Crown Award.

LAST CHRISTMAS IN PARIS (co-written with Heather Webb) won the 2018 Women’s Fiction Writers Association STAR Award. Their second collaboration, MEET ME IN MONACO, was shortlisted for the 2020 Romantic Novelists’ Association Historical Novel of the Year.

Hazel Gaynor

Hazel writes: "I've found it really difficult to read over the past few weeks. I've picked up and put down so many books, nothing quite able to hold my wandering attention before I flick back to the news or bake another cake, so when I finally fell headfirst into a new book, I knew it was going to be one I would think about for a long time. It must be a year since I first heard about Maggie O'Farrell's novel HAMNET (called 'Hamnet & Judith' in the US), a novel inspired by Shakespeare's son, and I've been waiting for its release ever since. Of course, the release date happened to fall smack in the middle of a global pandemic, but my local indie bookshop managed to get my pre-order mailed to me just before everything was locked down. After waiting so long, and having failed to read anything recently, the pressure was on and I was not disappointed!”

“HAMNET is the most beautifully written, brilliantly imagined historical novel, which looks at Shakespeare's life in an entirely new way. Interestingly, the author never mentions him by name. He is never William, or Shakespeare, but a father, son, husband, glovemaker, playwright. He is more often in the wings of the narrative rather than centre stage as HAMNET is the story not just of a beloved young boy, but of his mother, Agnes (who we will all know as Anne), of a twin sister, of a husband and wife, and of the utter devastation and heartbreak that follow Hamnet's death. That I read this novel (which is set during a time of plague), while in the midst of a global pandemic, definitely lent something extra to the narrative. I walked every step with Agnes, sat with her beside the fire, followed her out to the woods, felt her anguish as if it were my own. Often, Maggie O'Farrell's writing is so beautiful that I had to stop and re-read a sentence or a paragraph. This is an amazing historical novel which has been hailed as the best of the author's career, and deservedly so."

#read99women: Kellye Garrett

Kellye Garrett writes the Detective by Day mysteries about a semi-famous, mega-broke black actress who takes on the deadliest role of her life: Private Detective. The first, HOLLYWOOD HOMICIDE, won the Agatha, Anthony, Lefty and Independent Publisher “IPPY” awards for best first novel and was named one of BookBub’s Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time. The second, HOLLYWOOD ENDING, was featured on the TODAY show’s Best Summer Reads of 2019 and was nominated for both Anthony and Lefty awards. Prior to writing novels, Kellye spent eight years working in Hollywood, including a stint writing for “Cold Case.” She now works for a leading media company and serves on the Board of Directors for Sisters in Crime. She also is a co-founder of Crime Writers of Color. You can learn more at KellyeGarrett.com.

Kellye Garrett

”Even though none of us will be going to a beach anytime soon, now is a perfect time for a beach read. My pick is MIMI LEE GETS A CLUE by Jennifer J. Chow, which came out in March 2020 from Berkley. If you’re like me in that you love mysteries but also can’t read anything too dark, then you already are a fan of amateur detective novels. Jennifer’s book has all the cozy/amateur detective staples: a cute cat (this one even talks!), amazing characters, and a great hook in Mimi as a novice pet grooming shop owner. But what I especially love is that she also takes the cozy tropes and turns them on their head. Instead of a small town, the story takes place in Los Angeles. Instead of dating a cop, Mimi is falling for her neighbor who’s a lawyer—and still just involved in the case. And what makes it even more exciting is that Jennifer’s series is helping usher in Berkley’s wave of diverse #ownvoices millennial focused cozies that will include upcoming books from Abby Collette, Alexis Daria and Mia P. Manansala.” 

#read99women: Elise Hooper

Yesterday on #read99women, Jennifer Robson recommended Elise Hooper’s FAST GIRLS. (Have you pre-ordered it yet?) And today we’ve got Elise Hooper with her own #read99women recommendation. Happy Friday!

A native New Englander, Elise Hooper spent several years writing for television and online news outlets before getting a MA and teaching high-school literature and history. She now lives in Seattle with her husband and two daughters.

Elise Hooper

Says Elise, “WE RIDE UPON STICKS had my name written all over it because I grew up playing field hockey during the 1980s so this one combines my love of sports with history in a fun and imaginative way. So if you take some big hair, mix it with field hockey, a dash of Emilio Estevez, and a smattering of New England witchcraft, and mash it all together you get this clever and quirky novel about the members of the 1989 Danvers High School Team who dabble in the dark arts to ensure a winning season. A perceptive look at the transformation of girls into young women, this one is wicked fun.”

#read99women: Jennifer Robson

Thanks to the coronavirus, some things have changed completely in the past couple of months; others remain completely unchanged. Most things are somewhere in the middle. And certain annual events we were counting on to happen this spring and summer — March Madness, BookExpo, the Olympics — won’t be happening until next year.

So, no 2020 Olympics. What’s a fan to do? Well, I suppose if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but I’m offering the same prescription for this problem that I do for so many others: books.

And Jennifer Robson, today’s #read99women guest, is here to help.

First, the bio: Jennifer Robson is an internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of historical fiction. She studied French literature and modern history as an undergraduate at King's College at the University of Western Ontario. She then attended Saint Antony's College at the University of Oxford, where she obtained her Doctorate in British economic and social history. Robson worked as an editor for a number of years, but is now lucky enough to consider herself a full-time writer. She is the author of the historical novels Moonlight Over Paris, After the War Is Over and Somewhere in France, and a contributor to the anthology Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War.

Jennifer’s recommendation is Elise Hooper’s upcoming novel FAST GIRLS — perfect for readers interested in Olympics history who need their near-term sports fix, and of course for anyone interested in historical fiction done well.

Jennifer says: “In FAST GIRLS, a novel of three remarkable women and their journey to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Elise Hooper seamlessly interweaves history and fiction, and the results are kinetic, mesmerizing, and terrifically entertaining. Her frank depiction of the obstacles faced by her heroines, all real-life champions, brings to stunning life three women whose stories have been long overlooked, but whose courage and ground-breaking achievements have endured. This is a wonderful novel from an accomplished historian and ferociously talented writer, and it will surely appeal to anyone with an interest in the pioneering women who paved the rocky and uphill way for today’s female Olympians.“

#read99women: Sherri L. Smith

The #read99women series started well before we knew what wide-ranging effects the COVID-19 pandemic would have on the United States, so most of the recommendations you’ve been reading were made long before #StayHomeAndRead became a thing. But today’s guest has a recommendation specifically for quarantine reading, and I know so many of us are seeking comfort in books these days. Comfort comes in different forms for different people, but the good news is, there’s a book out there for everyone.

To get your hands on new books, definitely check out Bookshop.org, where your purchases support local bookstores, most of which are suffering a huge decrease in business due to stay-at-home orders. And if you’re looking for a heartbreaking, immersive YA historical novel to keep you company, include this one in your order: THE BLOSSOM AND THE FIREFLY by today’s guest, Sherri (rhymes with Capri) L. Smith.

Sherri L. Smith is the award-winning author of YA novels Lucy the Giant, Sparrow, Hot Sour Salty Sweet, Flygirl and Orleans. Her bestselling novel, The Toymaker’s Apprentice is the Southern California Booksellers Association Award winner for Middle Grade. Her books have been listed as Amelia Bloomer, American Library Association Best Books for Young People, and Junior Library Guild Selections. Flygirl was the 2009 California Book Awards Gold Medalist. Sherri was a 2014 National Book Awards judge in the Young People’s Literature category. She is a three-time writer-in-resident at Hedgebrook retreat in Washington State, as well as a resident at Wassard Elea retreat, in Ascea, Italy. Sherri is a faculty member of the Creative Writing MFA program at Goddard College and the MFA in Children's Writing at Hamline University.  She lives in Los Angeles with the love of her life and a disreputable cat.

Sherri L. Smith

“These are hard times. We are hunkered down at home, worrying about what we cannot see. From Covid-19 to legislation and policies affecting our health and the environment, to the lack of human contact with our loved ones, it’s an isolating time. So naturally, I turned to a series of books about a woman who lives on a lonely Saltmarsh on the edge of the sea.  Ely Griffith’s Ruth Galloway Mysteries tell the story of a forensic archeologist brought in by the local police in the neighboring British town, to identify bodies, bones and other possibly ancient (possibly recent) discoveries. Rife with literary references, Roman and Celtic history, and scientific insight, these books are a pleasure to read. Dr. Galloway is my kind of lady—a little overweight and under-fashionable, brilliantly knowledgeable, insatiably curious, believably desirable, and tired. This twelve book series starts with The Crossing Places. The most recent installment, The Lantern Men, hit shelves just this February. If you pace yourself, you’ve got good company for as long as you are sheltering in place. “

#read99women: Janelle Brown

If you need evidence that there are still great things happening in the world, a fun coincidence: turns out today’s #read99women guest is our second in a week to have one of her books optioned for the screen by Nicole Kidman! Janelle Brown’s PRETTY THINGS — out today! — is the latest, and I for one can’t wait to see an adaptation. The book is twisty, dark, delicious fun, following a desperate con artist and her Instagram-influencer target in a constantly escalating game of secrets, manipulation, competition and conflict. Thriller fans will want to snap this one up immediately.

Janelle Brown is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels WATCH ME DISAPPEAR, ALL WE EVER WANTED WAS EVERYTHING, THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE, and PRETTY THINGS, now available from Random House. Her journalism and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Wired, Self, RealSimple, Lenny, The Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. Previously, she worked as a senior writer at Salon, and began her career as a staff writer at Wired during the dotcom boom years, working on seminal Web sites like HotWired and Wired News. In the 1990s, she was also the editor and co-founder of Maxi, an irreverent (and now, long-gone) women’s pop culture Webzine.

A native of San Francisco and graduate of UC Berkeley, she has since defected to Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband Greg and their two children.

Janelle Brown

Janelle’s #read99women recommendation is THE HUNDRED-YEAR WALK by Dawn Mackeen, which she calls “one of the most visceral, gripping non-fiction books that I’ve read in recent years.”

It sounds simply stunning: “Dawn MacKeen traces the path that her grandfather - a survivor of the Armenian Genocide - took when he was managed to escape the Turks in 1915. As a refugee, he walked naked through the Syrian desert, hid from the death squads hunting him, was taken in by a tribe of nomadic Sheikhs, and managed over and over to survive through the moments when death seemed inevitable. Dawn MacKeen visits Syria herself -- a perilously journey through a war-torn landscape -- on a quest to retrace his steps; and even includes excerpts from his long-lost journals. The resulting book is half-memoir and half investigative reporting. It’s wrenching and beautifully written and more relevant than ever when we think of our modern refugee crisis.”

#read99women: Marie Benedict

The end of the #read99women series is in sight (what!?) and so I’m not sure how many more of these cool double-features we have in store, but on Friday we had Camille di Maio recommending Marie Benedict’s THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM (yay!), and today we have Marie Benedict herself (another yay!) with her recommendation.

Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years' experience as a litigator at two of the country's premier law firms, who found her calling unearthing the hidden historical stories of women. Her mission is to excavate from the past the most important, complex and fascinating women of history and bring them into the light of present-day where we can finally perceive the breadth of their contributions as well as the insights they bring to modern day issues. She embarked on a new, thematically connected series of historical novels with THE OTHER EINSTEIN, which tells the tale of Albert Einstein's first wife, a physicist herself, and the role she might have played in his theories. The next novel in this series is the USA Today bestselling CARNEGIE'S MAID, and the book that followed is the New York Times bestseller and Barnes & Noble Book Club Pick THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM, the story of the brilliant inventor Hedy Lamarr. In January of 2020, LADY CLEMENTINE, the story of the incredible Clementine Churchill, was released, and became an international bestseller. Her next novel, THE MYSTERY OF MRS. CHRISTIE, will be published in January of 2021, and her first co-written book, THE PERSONAL LIBRARIAN, with the talented Victoria Christopher Murray, will be released in June of 2021.

Marie Benedict

Marie’s #read99women pick is HOMEGOING by Yaa Gyasi, “a necessary read… A multi-faceted exploration of the ramifications of the evils of slavery, it contains one of my favorite reflections on the study of history: ‘You must always ask yourself, whose story am I missing? Whose voice was suppressed so that this voice could come forth? Once you have figured that out, you must find that story.’” Read the full review here.

#read99women: Camille di Maio

Historical fiction comes in many flavors, but biographical historical fiction has an appeal all its own, and nothing gets certain readers’ hearts racing like the words “based on a true story.” If that’s your jam, you’re going to want to circle the date May 5 on your calendar for Camille di Maio’s new novel THE FIRST EMMA. Check out this summary:

Camille Di Maio's fifth novel THE FIRST EMMA is the true story of Emma Koehler, whose tycoon husband Otto was killed in a crime-of-the-century murder by one of his two mistresses--both also named Emma--and her unlikely rise as CEO of a brewing empire during Prohibition. When a chance to tell her story to a young teetotaler arises, a tale unfolds of love, war, beer, and the power of women.

(Murder! Mistresses! Beer! I’m ready.)

Camille di Maio recently left an award-winning real estate career in San Antonio to become a full-time writer. Along with her husband of twenty-one years, she enjoys raising their four children. She has a bucket list that is never-ending, and uses her adventures to inspire her writing. She’s lived in Texas, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and California, and spends enough time in Hawai’i to feel like a local.

Camille di Maio

Camille’s pick for #read99women, like her upcoming novel, is also biographical historical fiction based on a true story. Here’s Camille:

“My favorite historical fiction books have me rushing to learn more as soon as I finish the last page. The author will have successfully sparked my imagination and my desire to dig deeper. One of the best examples of this is THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM by Marie Benedict. From Nazi dinner parties to Hollywood to the halls of science, Benedict's book covers the remarkable life of actress Hedy Lamarr. A Jewish woman married to a Nazi sympathizer, she was savvy enough to learn of their plans and escape before she was in too much danger. Transforming herself into one of Hollywood's A-list actresses, she harbored yet another secret - she was a scientist. Using her understanding of music, she invented technology that made bluetooth possible today. While these facts are all interesting enough, Benedict writes a narrative that keeps the reader turning the pages in this most engrossing tale.”

#read99women: Samantha Downing

Today’s guest Samantha Downing had a blockbuster debut last year with MY LOVELY WIFE, which was praised by People Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, Cosmopolitan, the Washington Post, and countless other channels. Now not only is it available in paperback, it’s also headed for the silver screen — with none other than Nicole Kidman in the starring role. Not bad for a debut, right?

Her follow-up HE STARTED IT is also getting early raves, with Booklist calling it “virtually impossible to put down” in a starred review, and notoriously difficult-to-please Kirkus saying “Buckle up and settle in for one diabolically fun road trip.” It’s due out in July, and there’s no time like the present to pre-order. (You can get a signed copy from Garden District Book Shop in New Orleans, even!)

Samantha Downing

Samantha’s recommendation is YOU ALL GROW UP AND LEAVE ME by Piper Weiss, which she calls “One of the most polarizing memoirs I have read. Piper Weiss grew up in the Manhattan of the 90's, the daughter of an elite, wealthy family. She was also the tennis student of a child predator...only she wasn't chosen as the victim…. A pre-MeToo era story worth reading, if only to remember how dangerous self-conscious teenage girls can be to themselves.”

Read the full review here.