Dear Readers,

Happy September! I can’t even believe I’m writing that. I don’t think I’ve gotten the hang of writing “2021” on anything and we’re on a gentle downhill slide to 2022. Every time I try to do mental math related to time I realize I’ve lost a year or two which seems possibly normal given how everything has been at sixes and sevens for about eighteen months, right? Let’s just say it does and move on.

So this month, it’s all about BOOKS. Several months back, I tweeted about something that may not even be a thing—microgenres. I coined the term but someone may well have beaten me to it. We all know about the big genres, things like romance, mystery, sci-fi/fantasy. But a microgenre (to me) is a very specific subset of one of these larger genres. For instance, I love books set in fancy French ski chalets where everyone is trying to murder everyone else. (See what I mean about specific?) Because the confines of a microgenre are so tiny, only a handful of books might fit. Or, the boundaries may stretch a bit to include books that are adjacent because of how they “feel.” (I can’t be the only person to read based on how books feel, can I? Certainly not.)

This month, I thought I’d share recs for one of my other favorite microgenres: Women Behaving Badly. I love novels in this vein, and there are lots of those. (MAESTRA by L. S. Hilton is one of my favorites.) But what I’m talking about are memoirs/biographies, bonus points if the biographer is also a woman.

Some recent faves:

*WILD GAME by Adrienne Brodeur. This one landed with a splash last summer and it was riveting. When Brodeur was 14, her mother used Brodeur to facilitate her torrid affair with a married man, a choice that would have repercussions for basically the rest of Brodeur’s life.

*THE WOMAN BEFORE WALLIS. There are two books by this title; the one we’re after is Andrew Rose’s bio of Marguerite Alibert. (The book is subtitled PRINCE EDWARD, THE PARISIAN COURTESAN, AND THE PERFECT MURDER.) It has everything. If you’re not familiar with Alibert, let’s just say she makes Wallis Simpson look like a Girl Scout.

*OPEN BOOK by Jessica Simpson. Compared to lots of the women profiled in these books, Simpson is a lamb. She didn’t murder anybody; she didn’t rope her adolescent child into covering up double-adultery. But she writes candidly about her struggles with early fame, alcohol, and relationships in a heartfelt, relatable way.

*THE BOLTER by Frances Osborne. Written by a direct descendant of the subject, this book chronicles the exploits of Lady Idina Sackville, a notorious English society figure. As with the Alibert book, there’s plenty of sex, drugs, and what passed for rock and roll at the time.

*THE TEMPTRESS: THE SCANDALOUS LIFE OF ALICE DE JANZE AND THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF LORD ERROLL by Paul Spicer. This is a perfect companion read to THE BOLTER since it concerns a woman who shared a man (or two, as you do, I suppose) with Idina Sackville. Again, it’s chock-full of histrionics, illicit affairs, and a smidge of attempted murder.

[Sackville and De Janze belonged to a group of colonizers in East Africa—present-day Kenya—who decided to take their European entitlement on the road, which also falls under the heading of Women Behaving Badly.]

*THE LADY AND THE PANDA by Vicki Croke. This one also has a subtitle, but the last one wore me out, so I’m leaving the title as is. It’s the fascinating story of a society designer who put away her dressmaking shears and set off for China to bring back the first panda ever seen in the West. We can debate for days whether she ought to have done such a thing, but how she did it makes for an intriguing read.

*GOLD DUST WOMAN by Stephen Davis. Can we have a Women Behaving Badly microgenre without a rock bio? Certainly not. This is the latest biography of Stevie Nicks and it is a perfect poolside read, especially if you have a Stevie playlist pulled up on Spotify. (If you’re looking to pair it with a novel, throw in DAISY JONES AND THE SIX by Taylor Jenkins Reid.)

Don’t forget, you can pre-order AN IMPOSSIBLE IMPOSTOR, Veronica Speedwell’s 7th adventure now! (Publishing Feb. 2022)

Happy reading!

www.DeannaRaybourn.com