by Elizabeth Gilbert (2013)
Born in 1800 into extraordinary wealth, Alma Whittaker inherits her father's passion for the natural sciences. An independent woman with a voracious mind, she becomes an extraordinary botanist specializing in mosses, tracing the mysteries of evolution and desire across nineteenth-century Philadelphia, London, and the South Pacific.
Ariel Lawhon
Maine, 1789. When the Kennebec River freezes over, a body is discovered entombed in the ice. Martha Ballard, an independent midwife and healer, is summoned to examine the corpse and record the evidence in her diary. A murder investigation unfolds in a tight-knit winter community where Martha must defy town magistrates to uncover the truth.
Tracy Chevalier
In the windswept coastal town of Lyme Regis, Mary Anning hunts for sea monsters in the jagged cliffs. When she uncovers the fossilized skeleton of an unknown creature, she rocks the scientific world. Alongside Elizabeth Philpot, an intelligent spinster with an eye for fossilized fish, Mary challenges the scientific establishment of 19th-century Britain.
Alexandra Ripley
The Civil War had swept away her wealth. Chess has only her pride and a patent on a tobacco machine that needs the right man to fulfill its promise. With a heart committed to another man's wife and a raging ambition, Nate Richardson agrees to marry Chess. It seems they both get what they want. But the bargain will plunge them into a world of cutthroat deals and raw passions.
Nella Larsen
A seminal masterwork of the Harlem Renaissance exploring racial passing in 1920s America, tracking two childhood friends whose reunion leads to perilous deception, psychological obsession, and tragedy.