The Great Conversation: First Ladies of Modern Fiction
Explore 'The Great Conversation: First Ladies of Modern Fiction'—a curated list of must-read books featuring iconic female voices in contemporary literature. Discover inspiring stories and thought-provoking narratives.

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Gaudy Night
by Dorothy L. Sayers
“Gaudy Night stands out even among Miss Sayers’s novels. And Miss Sayers has long stood in a class by herself.” —Times Literary Supplement The great Dorothy L. Sayers is considered by many to be the premier detective novelist of the Golden Age, and her dashing sleuth, Lord Peter Wimsey, one of mystery fiction’s most enduring and endearing protagonists. Acclaimed author Ruth Rendell has expressed her admiration for Sayers’s work, praising her “great fertility of invention, ingenuity, and wonderful eye for detail.” The third Dorothy L. Sayers classic to feature mystery writer Harriet Vane, Gaudy Night is now back in print with an introduction by Elizabeth George, herself a crime fiction master. Gaudy Night takes Harriet and her paramour, Lord Peter, to Oxford University, Harriet’s alma mater, for a reunion, only to find themselves the targets of a nightmare of harassment and mysterious, murderous threats.

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Busman's Honeymoon
by Dorothy L. Sayers
Murder is hardly the best way for Lord Peter and his bride, the famous mystery writer Harriet Vane, to start their honeymoon. It all begins when the former owner of their newly acquired estate is found quite nastily dead in the cellar. All too quickly, what Lord Peter had hoped would be a very private and romantic stay in the country has turned into a most baffling case, with a misspelled "notise" to the milkman at its center and a dead man who's been discovered in a most intriguing condition: with not a spot of blood on his smashed skull and not a penny less than six hundred pounds in his pocket.



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The Book of Night with Moon
by Diane Duane
Four Manhattan cats challenge the forces of evil when an ancient power invades the mystic Gates under Grand Central Station and unleashes terror throughout the city

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To Visit the Queen
by Diane Duane
Traveling back in time to 1874 London to prevent an assassination plot against Queen Victoria, the feline wizards of Grand Central Station -- leader Rhiow and her able partners Urrah and Arhu -- must summon their powers to avert disaster in Victorian England, or else their archenemy, the evil Lone One, will warp time and trigger Armageddon. Teamed with a young Arthur Conan Doyle, Queen Victoria herself, and other historical figures, the feline wizards set out to find the forgotten magic that will rewrite history -- or the cats who can save mankind will never have existed.


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The Beekeeper's Apprentice ; Or, on the Segregation of the Queen
by Laurie R. King
A chance meeting with an elderly beekeeper turns into a pivotal, personal transformation when fifteen-year-old Mary Russell discovers that the beekeeper is the reclusive Sherlock Holmes, who soon takes on the role of mentor and teacher.

