Everyone loves a good heroine, the kind you love to hate or hate
to love, who mixes up all the feelings surrounding her. We have a few books
coming up that feature femme fatales with questionable morals and ulterior
motives but whom you just can’t help rooting for
anyway.
The Girl with a Clock
for a Heart by Peter Swanson stars the enigmatic Liana, a woman you
immediately know from the title is not your average girl. The story follows George as Liana reappears
in his life after twenty years on the run from the feds for one definite count
of murder, and possibly another. She has
stolen money from a former, not-quite-law-abiding lover but now wants to return
it to ensure her safety, and she needs George to deliver it. Because of their prior relationship, George
agrees and is soon dragged into a whirlwind of violence, passion, and greed. Available on Edelweiss.
We have a true-life
femme fatale in Priscilla, by
Nicholas Shakespeare. In this biography,
Nicholas stumbles upon a trunk full of his late aunt’s
old love letters and diaries which show her to be a glamorous, beautiful, and
morally ambiguous woman—overy different from the one he remembered as a
child. Nicholas learns about friendships
betrayed, lovers abandoned, and an escape from a German prisoner-of-war camp in
occupied France. This book asks us to
consider what we might do to survive in similar circumstances. Check it out on Edelweiss.
Josephine Marcus Earp is the Lady at the O.K. Corral, by Ann Kirschner. Kirschner tells the story of how an aspiring
actress and dancer from New York became the common-law wife of the famous
Western lawman and gambler, Wyatt Earp.
Josephine was a woman at home in the deserts of the American Southwest
and the boomtowns of the Alaskan Gold Rush, in opulent hotels and rough mining
camps. Kirschner paints an engaging portrait
of this vivacious and versatile woman who ensnared a legend.
These beautiful, powerful women want some attention, and
they get what they want.
-Amanda