Because I am writing a Young Adult novel, I continue to read and very much enjoy them. Such a treat!

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell. This is a wonderful Young Adult novel, very tender, very innocent, and utterly real.

Rowell’s newest Fangirl, is also getting rave reviews, and I’ve just started to read it. She’s an amazing writer. Treat a teen, but read her yourself!

Studio Saint-Ex by Ania Szado. For fans of The Little Prince, this is a special treat, but frankly, most everyone loves this novel. (All the members of my picky-prickly book club, for example.)

I had the honour to “blurb” it, and here is a short version: “… an elegantly alluring and poignant love story. … Spare and beautifully-crafted, the novel vividly evokes the world of fashion design and the French ex-pat community in New York during WWII. In a word: magnifique!” 

I am sure that there is a reader on your gift list who will love getting this novel. Plus, such a gorgeous cover!

Blood & Beauty by Sarah Dunant. This is a masterpiece of biographical historical fiction, in my view.

Maidenhead by Tamara Faith Berger; I bought this book because it was on last year’s 10-best-of-the-year list by Quill & Quire. (Their lists are always unique and worthy.) I also read it because the main character is a teen, and I’m writing about a teen now: research, right? Well, not exactly. It’s a shocking novel about a girl who is lured into the sex trade—explicit, beautifully written, utterly convincing.

Rather strange to go from Maidenhead to: Pride and Prejudice: An Annotated Edition by Jane Austen and Patricia Meyer Spacks, but such is the Reading Life.

For Austen fans, this annotated and visually lush edition is simply wonderful. There is a wealth of historical information in the annotations and illustrations—fantastic for a historical novelist working in that era (i.e. moi).

These are only five of a very long list! It was hard culling it down. For a list of novels I absolutely admire: see “my bookstore.”

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