Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.
Printing has moved to Book Notification
To help protect our book-list data from automated scrapers and AI bots, printer-friendly lists are now available to registered users at BookNotification.com. Creating an account is free.
Visit BookNotification.com to customize and print this book list.
Mary Robinette Kowal is a renowned author from the United States, who is famous for writing fantasy, science fiction, historical fiction, romance, regency, and fiction novels. She is particularly well known for writing the Glamourist Histories book series. Author Kowal is the winner of the 2008 Campbell Award, which she won in the Best New Writer category. She has also won the Hugo Award in 2011 for writing the short story For Want of a Nail. The stories written by author Kowal have featured in a number of popular literary magazines, including Asimov’s, Tablebones Magazine, Apex Digest, Strange Horizons, etc. They have even appeared in a few Best of the Year anthologies. In addition to being an author, Mary Kowal is also a professional voice actor and puppeteer. She has given performances for LazzyTown CBS, the Puppetry Arts Center, and Jim Hensen Pictures. Author Kowal has even founded her own production company called the Other Hand Productions. Mary Kowal’s designs have helped her win a couple of UNIMA USA Citation for Excellence. This is the top level award that a puppeteer in America can achieve. As for voice acting, author Kowal lends her voice for Audiobooks of various fictions, including that of authors Cory Doctorow, John Scalzi, Seanan McGuire, Kage Baker, etc. Author Mary Kowal was born as Mary Robinette Harrison on February 08, 1969, in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States. She completed her graduation from the University of East Carolina and obtained a degree in the Art Education. She also earned a minor degree in theater and then started working as a puppeteer from 1989 onwards. Her popularity in the puppeteering field got her the chance to work in Iceland for LazyTown TV show for two seasons Recently, Kowal had the opportunity of participating in a workshop called Sesame Puppetry.
Mary has served as Shimmer Magazine’s art director. She was also named as Weird Tales’ art director in 2010. While Kowal was busy with her puppetry and voice acting professions, she developed an interest in fiction and fantasy stories. Her urge to develop a story of her own enabled her to start writing, and eventually, she came up with several novels and short stories. With the publication of her first full length novel, author Kowal received a nomination for the prestigious Nebula Award. She gave a donation of her archive in 2009 to the Rare Books & Special Collections department at the University of Northern Illinois. Kowal has been invited several times on a podcast called Writing Excuses as a guest. She went on to become a full time cast of the podcast’s 6th season. Author Kowal says that she received great inspirations from the famous written works of some prominent writers like Jane Austen, Orson Scott Card, Steven Brust, etc. The influences helped her greatly and allowed her to come up with interesting ideas for the stories of her own. As of today, Mary Kowal is happily married and stays with her loving husband named Rob Kowal in Chicago. Kowal is fond of using the manual typewriters for writing her manuscripts. This led her to buy more than a dozen such typewriters. Kowal says she never gets bored of using this type of typewriters and feels excited to work with them. Over the years, author Kowal managed to gain the love and support of numerous fans from all across the globe. The number of her dedicated fans has kept on increasing with the passage of time. Every time a book of her’s gets published, many new readers become her fans as they feel intrigued by her style of writing and character depictions. Author Kowal feels grateful to have achieved successes in different professions and hopes to become even more successful with her determined efforts in the years to come.
The Glamourist Histories series written by author Mary Robinette Kowal is comprised of a total of 5 books, which were released between the years 2010 and 2015. The debut book of this series is entitled ‘Shades of Milk and Honey’. It was released by the Tor Books in the year 2010. The lead characters mentioned by Mary Kowal in this novel include Jane Ellsworth, Mr. Vincent, Melody Ellsworth, and Mr. Dunkirk. At the start of this book’s story, it is shown that Melody and Jane are sisters and they wish to get the attention of eligible men. Jane Ellsworth has a skillful talent for glamour, while Melody possesses a pretty fair face. After a while into their search for eligible men, Jane and Melody find their suitors and hope for a happy life ahead. But, Jane comes to know that the suitor of Melody is intended to take advantage of her for dowry’s sake. Following the revelation of this harsh truth, Jane could not stop herself from using her remarkable glamour skills to set the things right for her sister. And while doing so, she accidentally indulges into a beautiful love story that takes her a long way.
The next exciting installment of the series is called ‘Glamour in Glass’. It was also published by the Tor publishers in 2012. The main characters of the novel are shown as Jane Ellsworth, Vincent, etc., and the story’s setting is done in Belgium and Elba. At the beginning of the story of the book, it is depicted that there is magic present in the world in glamour form and it is available to some talented users. The glamour allows the possessors to form illusions of any imagination practically. The story continues from where it had ended in the first installment and follows the lives of Vincent and Jane. Much deeper intrigue and drama unfold as the story proceeds further. After the abdication of his throne by Napoleon, Jane & Vincent visit Belgium for honeymoon. The two learn that the emperor has escaped exile and this puts the continent in a great turmoil. As they do not any easy return to England, Vincent & Jane become concerned about escaping their honeymoon rather than enjoying it. With no other option left to take control of the situation, Jane decides to use her skill of glamor for rescuing Vincent from prison. With this major step, she hopes that she will be able to prevent her recent marriage from facing destruction in a foreign war-torn country. The book was highly appreciated by readers in many places of its publishing. It succeeded in catching the eyes of many noted critics and authors. Many of them praised author Kowal for such a unique story. The readers loved the characters and enjoyed reading the prose to a greater delight.
The links beside each book title will take you to Amazon where you can read more about the book, check availability, or purchase it. As an Amazon Associate, I earn money from qualifying purchases. If you would like to link to us, Get the Code Here.
Recommendations
Every Monday we send out an e-mail with 12 Book Recommendations over various genres, and highlighting two big new book releases. Subscribe today! Or see all our past book recommendations.
BOOK OF THE MONTH:
Everyones favourite Mossad agent and art restorer Gabriel Allon is back. This is the 26th novel in this excellent spy thriller series by Daniel Silva.
In the latest entry, with a release date of July 14th, Gabriel has to track down the missing wife of a British billionaire.
The best way is to join the Page Turners Club on our sister site, Book Notification. Go ad-free and help us keep building new features.
Get new release alerts, track your reading, and build your TBR. Get Notified.
CONTACT ME
Any issues with the book list you are seeing? Or is there an author or series we don’t have? Let me know!
For more information on BSIO read the About Me page.
Featured Series
Are you a Jack Reacher fan? If so, you absolutely have to read the Peter Ash series by author Nick Petrie.
I recommend this series to anyone who has liked Jack Reacher, and everyone always replies thanking me for it. Nick makes my life easy. If you are a Jack Reacher fan, past or present, Check out this great series today.
Top Thriller Authors
Are you a fan of psychological thrillers? A big fan of authors such as Gillian Flynn? These are our most recommended authors in the thriller genre, which is my personal favourite genre: