Today’s guest for #read99women is one of my favorite people in historical fiction: Susan Meissner.

Susan Meissner is a USA Today bestselling author of historical fiction with more than half a million books in print [editor’s note: holy mackerel!] in fifteen languages. She is an author, speaker and writing workshop leader with a background in community journalism. Her novels include AS BRIGHT AS HEAVEN, starred review in Library Journal; SECRETS OF A CHARMED LIFE, a Goodreads finalist for Best Historical Fiction 2015; and A FALL OF MARIGOLDS, named to Booklist’s Top Ten Women’s Fiction titles for 2014. A California native, she attended Point Loma Nazarene University and is also a writing workshop volunteer for Words Alive, a San Diego non-profit dedicated to helping at-risk youth foster a love for reading and writing. Visit Susan at her website: http://susanlmeissner.com on Twitter at @SusanMeissner or at www.facebook.com/susan.meissner

Susan’s recommendation is a modern classic from a much-admired writer, LIFE AFTER LIFE by Kate Atkinson. As Susan puts it, “Any book that makes you stop and deeply ponder, ‘What if that could really happen, and what if happened to me?’ is a keeper.”

If that’s not quite enough to draw you in, here’s more: “Kate Atkinson’s brilliantly conceived LIFE AFTER LIFE, one of my all-time favorite books by a female writer, is the imagined life of Ursula Todd. She’s a girl who keeps having her life rebooted, almost as if she is being handed by Providence chance after chance after chance to alter the course of human history. Only the reader truly knows the full breadth of Ursula's multi-layered existence. And we’re not in control of anything either. We just know more than she does, and we cannot help her.”

(That last line just gave me chills. Chills!)

Read Susan’s full review of LIFE AFTER LIFE on BookBub here.

To read more of Susan’s recommendations and check out her wonderful books, including her most recent release THE LAST YEAR OF THE WAR (coming to paperback in April 2020), click to see her author page on BookBub.