A "memorable [and] entertaining" novel of three strong women in 1920s small-town Minnesota by the author of Revelations (The Washington Post Book World).Winner of the Willa Literary AwardFinalist for the Minnesota Book AwardIn a Midwestern farming community in 1923, as book-loving Penny enters adolescence, her mother, Barbara, pulls her out of school to send her to work. Destined to become a cleaning woman like her mother, Penny sees no escape from her bleak existence—until a scandalous figure arrives in the town of Minerva, Minnesota: Cora, very pregnant, very headstrong, and very alone, has come to make a home on her grandfather's farm. Intrigued by this curious new resident, Penny sets out to work for Cora, setting into motion events that will change multiple lives. Drawing on her mother's and grandmother's stories of Minnesota farm life in the early twentieth century, acclaimed author Mary Sharratt has created a...

A kind of fifteenth-century Eat, Pray, Love, Revelations illuminates the intersecting lives of two female mystics who changed history—Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich.

Shakespeare in Love meets Shakespeare's Sister in this novel of England's first professional woman poet and her collaboration and love affair with William Shakespeare. London, 1593. Aemilia Bassano Lanier is beautiful and accomplished, but her societal conformity ends there. She frequently cross-dresses to escape her loveless marriage and to gain freedoms only men enjoy, but a chance encounter with a ragged, little-known poet named Shakespeare changes everything. Aemilia grabs at the chance to pursue her long-held dream of writing and the two outsiders strike up a literary bargain. They leave plague-ridden London for Italy, where they begin secretly writing comedies together and where Will falls in love with the beautiful country — and with Aemilia, his Dark Lady. Their Italian idyll, though, cannot last and their collaborative affair comes to a devastating end. Will gains fame and fortune for their plays back in London and years later publishes...

In the glittering hotbed of turn-of-the-twentieth-century Vienna, one woman's life would define and defy an era Gustav Klimt gave Alma her first kiss. Gustav Mahler fell in love with her at first sight and proposed only a few weeks later. Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius abandoned all reason to pursue her. Poet and novelist Franz Werfel described her as "one of the very few magical women that exist." But who was this woman who brought these most eminent of men to their knees? In Ecstasy, Mary Sharratt finally gives one of the most controversial and complex women of her time the center stage. Coming of age in the midst of a creative and cultural whirlwind, young, beautiful Alma Schindler yearns to make her mark as a composer. A brand-new era of possibility for women is dawning and she is determined to make the most of it. But Alma loses her heart to the great composer Gustav Mahler, nearly twenty years her senior. He demands...