More by Geraldine Brooks

[Jessica]

More books by Geraldine Brooks

Year of Wonders : A Novel of the Plague
When an infected bolt of cloth carries plague from London to an isolated village, a housemaid named Anna Frith emerges as an unlikely heroine and healer. Through Anna's eyes we follow the story of the fateful year of 1666, as she and her fellow villagers confront the spread of disease and superstition. As death reaches into every household and villagers turn from prayers to murderous witch-hunting, Anna must find the strength to confront the disintegration of her community and the lure of illicit love. As she struggles to survive and grow, a year of catastrophe becomes instead annus mirabilis, a "year of wonders." Inspired by the true story of Eyam, a village in the rugged hill country of England.

March
Winner of the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. From Louisa May Alcott's beloved classic Little Women, Brooks has animated the character of the absent father, March, following him as he leaves behind his family to aid the Union cause in the Civil War. His experiences will utterly change his marriage and challenge his most ardently held beliefs. It's a lushly written, wholly original tale steeped in the details of another time.

Foreign Correspondence
An award-winning foreign correspondent, Brooks embarks on a human treasure hunt to find her childhood pen friends. It's a memoir focusing on the ties of family, friends, and place.

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women
This is the story of Brook's intrepid journey toward an understanding of the women behind the veils, and of the often contradictory political, religious, and cultural forces that shape their lives. In villages and capitals throughout the Middle East, she finds that a feminism of sorts has flowered under the forbidding shroud of the chador as she makes other startling discoveries that defy our stereotypes about the Muslim world.

Additional Recommended Reading

The Thirteenth Tale
Diane Setterfield
No one is more surprised then Margaret Lea when she is tapped to write the biography of Britain’s most prolific and well-loved novelist, Vida Winter. Vida, gravely ill, wants to recount her life story before it is too late. In her research, Margaret reads a rare copy of Miss Winter's Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation -- yet is confused when she realizes the book only contains twelve stories. As Vida Winter unfolds her story, she shares dark family secrets and Margaret finds herself more and more deeply immersed in her strange and troubling story. In the end, both women have to confront their pasts and the ghosts that haunt them still.

The Book of Air and Shadows
Michael Gruber
Jake Mishkin's seemingly innocent job as an intellectual property lawyer has put him at the center of a deadly conspiracy and a chase to find a priceless treasure involving William Shakespeare. As he awaits an unknown killer (or killers), Jake writes an account of the events that led to this deadly endgame, a frantic chase that began when a fire in an antiquarian bookstore revealed the hiding place of letters containing a shocking secret, concealed for four hundred years. What at first seems like a thrilling puzzle waiting to be deciphered soon turns into a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse, where no one is to be trusted.

Ghostwalk
Rebecca Stott
A Cambridge historian, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found drowned, clutching a glass prism in her hand. The book she was writing about Isaac Newton’s involvement with alchemy remains unfinished. When Lydia Brooke begins to ghostwrite the missing final chapters, she moves into Elizabeth’s studio and soon discovers that the shadow of violence that has fallen across present-day Cambridge, which escalates to a series of murders, may have its origins in the troubling evidence that Elizabeth’s research has unearthed.

The Historian
Elizabeth Kostova
This is the story of a young woman plunged into a labyrinth where the secrets of her family's past connect to an inconceivable evil: the dark fifteenth-century reign of Vlad the Impaler and a time-defying pact that may have kept his awful work alive through the ages. The search for the truth becomes an adventure of monumental proportions, taking us from monasteries and dusty libraries to the capitals of Eastern Europe.

[Fozzie]

I have read all but one of the books listed under Additional Recommended Reading, Ghostwalk. Has anyone read it? I think I will add it to my list of books to read. I can recommend the other books listed.

[bentley]

It seems that the folks who hated The Historian (which I liked very much) hated Ghostwalk. Since I loved The Historian, I would be inclined to give it a whirl.

Message Edited by bentley on 02-09-2008 03:18 PM