Thanks to the coronavirus, some things have changed completely in the past couple of months; others remain completely unchanged. Most things are somewhere in the middle. And certain annual events we were counting on to happen this spring and summer — March Madness, BookExpo, the Olympics — won’t be happening until next year.

So, no 2020 Olympics. What’s a fan to do? Well, I suppose if all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, but I’m offering the same prescription for this problem that I do for so many others: books.

And Jennifer Robson, today’s #read99women guest, is here to help.

First, the bio: Jennifer Robson is an internationally acclaimed and bestselling author of historical fiction. She studied French literature and modern history as an undergraduate at King's College at the University of Western Ontario. She then attended Saint Antony's College at the University of Oxford, where she obtained her Doctorate in British economic and social history. Robson worked as an editor for a number of years, but is now lucky enough to consider herself a full-time writer. She is the author of the historical novels Moonlight Over Paris, After the War Is Over and Somewhere in France, and a contributor to the anthology Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War.

Jennifer’s recommendation is Elise Hooper’s upcoming novel FAST GIRLS — perfect for readers interested in Olympics history who need their near-term sports fix, and of course for anyone interested in historical fiction done well.

Jennifer says: “In FAST GIRLS, a novel of three remarkable women and their journey to the 1936 Berlin Olympics, Elise Hooper seamlessly interweaves history and fiction, and the results are kinetic, mesmerizing, and terrifically entertaining. Her frank depiction of the obstacles faced by her heroines, all real-life champions, brings to stunning life three women whose stories have been long overlooked, but whose courage and ground-breaking achievements have endured. This is a wonderful novel from an accomplished historian and ferociously talented writer, and it will surely appeal to anyone with an interest in the pioneering women who paved the rocky and uphill way for today’s female Olympians.“