Here is an ever-growing list of my favourite books
History, Nonfiction, and Biography
- Yokohama Yankee: My Family’s Five Generations as Outsiders in Japan by Leslie Helm
- The Salem Witch Trials: A Day-By-Day Chronicle of a Community Under Siege by Marilynne K. Roach
- Black Tudors: The Untold Story by Miranda Kaufmann
- So Many Books, So Little Time: A Year of Passionate Reading by Sara Nelson
- Little by Little: A Writer’s Education by Jean Little
- Ivy Days: Making My Way Out East by Susan Allen Toth
- A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota edited by Sun Yung Shin
- A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in America by Allyson Hobbs
- The Fearless Benjamin Lay: The Quaker Dwarf Who Became the First Revolutionary Abolitionist by Marcus Rediker
- What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America by Peggy Pascoe
- 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Haff
- Farewell to Manzanar: A True Story of Japanese American Experience During and After the World War II Internment by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston,
- The Invisible Thread by Yoshiko Uchida
- So Far from the Bamboo Grove and My Brother, My Sister, and I by Yoko Kawashima Watkins
(Historical) Fiction
- The All Souls trilogy, narrated by Jennifer Ikeda and Time’s Convert by Deborah Harkness
- The Elm Creek Quilt series, Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker, The Spymistress, Mrs. Lincoln’s Rival, and Enchantress of Numbers by Jennifer Chiaverini
- The Amelia Peabody series by Elizabeth Peters, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
- The Chronicles of St Mary’s series by Jodi Taylor
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
- The Giordano Bruno series by S. J. Parris
- The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
- The Lion’s Blood series by Steven Barnes
- The Pearl Diver by Jeff Talarigo, narrated by Jennifer Ikeda
- Ireland by Frank Delaney, narrated by Frank Delane
- Anthem by Ayn Rand
- The Ivory Carver trilogy by Sue Harrison
- The Ballad of Frankie Silver by Sharyn McCrumb
- The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Science Fiction
- Lucy by Laurence Gonzales
- The Martian by Andy Weir
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Lock In by John Scalzi
- Fuzzy Nation by John Scalzi
- Inferno and Escape from Hell by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle
- The Incarnations of Immortality by Piers Anthony, narrated by George Guidall
Classics
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith, narrated by Barbara Rosenblat
- Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
- A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
- Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
- East of Eden by John Steinbeck
- The Crucible by Arthur Miller
- The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Writing
- On Writing by Stephen King
- Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
- The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner
- Kitchen Privileges: A Memoir by Mary Higgins Clark
- Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg
- Views From the Loft by Daniel Slager