Number 98, believe it or not! Wow! Today’s guest, Linnea Hartsuyker, writes absorbing, adventure-packed historical novels that transport readers into a vividly drawn, unfamiliar world: the Viking Age of Exploration. Linnea and I will be two of four guests at a virtual Historical Fiction Happy Hour on Friday, May 29 — check out the details here!

Linnea Hartsuyker can trace her ancestry back to Harald Fairhair, the first king of Norway, her inspiration for the trilogy consisting of THE HALF-DROWNED KING, THE SEA QUEEN, and THE GOLDEN WOLF. She grew up in the middle of the woods outside Ithaca, New York, and studied Engineering at Cornell University. After a decade of working at internet startups, and writing in her spare time, she attended NYU and received an MFA in Creative Writing. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband.

Linnea’s pick for #read99women: “Before fairy-tale-based novels became a fashionable sub-genre, in 1978, the heyday of second-wave feminism, Angela Carter wrote THE BLOODY CHAMBER, a collection of fairy tales, almost exclusively centering a woman's point of view. The prose is a delight, full of fantastical detail that creates beautiful pocket worlds for the reader to explore. No lover of fairy tales should pass this book by.”

Read Linnea’s full review on Goodreads.