Nikki Marmery Books In Order

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Nikki Marmery is a fantasy and historical fiction author who is best known for her novel “On Wilder Seas.” She published the novel in 2020 and has since then also gone into fantasy fiction with the publishing of “Lilith” in 2023.
Before she became a novelist, she worked for more than fifteen years as a financial journalist specializing in foreign exchange markets and credit derivatives.

Following the financial crisis and becoming the parent to three small children, she quit her job and decided to become a historical fiction novelist.

Marmery got her history degree from the University of Nottingham and went to the Faber Academy where she got her creative writing certifications.

She has always been interested in feminist prehistory and feminism and hence it was not surprising that when she began writing she penned her very first novel in the same field.

The earlier versions of her debut novel made the shortlist for the 2018 New Novel Award by the Historical Novel Society and the 2017 Myriad Editions First Drafts Competition. The work was also an “AdventureSociety” book club read in 2020.
She now makes her home in The Chilterns in the United Kingdom from where she pens her novels.

Given her interest in feminism and history, Nikki Marmey used to read all manner of books once she quit her job. She was pregnant when she first read about Maria the lead protagonist of her novel “On Wilder Seas.”
Maria was the only woman who was on board Francis Drake’s ship the Golden Hind as it went on a voyage to circumnavigate the world.

She had once read a throwaway line in a history book she read, with a reference that was supposed to be an eyewitness account of the voyage.

It was from this that she learned that Drake’s ship had a woman on board who was with a child when they landed on some island where she was left to her own devices.

According to Nikki, pregnancy usually makes one focus on the unique vulnerability of pregnant women. For this reason, Marmery finds herself fascinated by the story of a pregnant woman all alone in a ship full of men, most of them hardened pirates.
She began contemplating how hard it must have been to live in the tiny confines of an exploration ship during the Elizabethan era.

When Nikki Marmey began researching the facts about Maria, she found that there was hardly any information online. The earliest published accounts of Drake’s voyage did not mention her at all.

The most information she had was that she had embarked on the exploration ship from a Spanish merchant ship in El Salvador in 1579. Most sources also agreed that she had been left all alone on Sulawesi an Indonesian island about nine months later.
With very little to work with, her quest turned from curiosity into a writing project. Since there had been no one who had written about Maria, she decided that she would best do it.

Authors such as Miranda Kaufmann who wrote “Black Tudors” wrote a little about Maria but most who did concentrated more on the happenings in the life of Drake, while erasing or letting the people he interacted with such as Maria go unnamed.
From many secondary sources that she read, she learned that most of the original works concerning Drake’s voyage were stored at the British Library.

However, she never bothered to visit the library and it was not until her friends gave her a tour of the library as a birthday present that she got back into researching Maria.

From reading primary resources, Nikki Marmery found out how Maria is dehumanized and objectified by everyone who wrote about her.
She read two eyewitness accounts she found at the library, and combed through the works of 17th-century historians such as William Camden right up to modern historians.
Nikki was more interested in learning Maria’s perspective but could hardly find any 16th-century perspectives by women.
At some point, she stumbled upon Afro-Latino Voices which had archival records of perspectives of African women who had been transported to the New World. Another very useful work was Javier Villa-Flores’ “Dangerous Speech.”

Nikki Marmery’s novel “On Wilder Seas” is a novel that tells the story of the only woman in history who sailed on the exploratory ship Golden Hind captained by Francis Drake.
The author found her inspiration from a throwaway line in an anonymous account of the circumnavigation voyage.
For about a dozen years, Maria had been a slave of one kind or another and had been traded from one man to another. But at the opening of the novel, she is traded to a good man who allows her to learn to read and acquire education.
But then her owner is taken by the Spanish Inquisition and she asks Drake to take him with her so that she can escape the clutches of Don Francsico her vile Spanish protector.
She is the only woman on the ship that is effectively manned by pirates among whom she makes many allies.
One of her most notable allies is a freed African man named Diego. She also makes friends with a cabin boy named Thomas, who shows her how to get away and hide from the indiscriminate lusts of the crew.
Ultimately, the only haven is in the General’s bed where she can be protected. Little does the captain know that she was heavy with child when she boarded the vessel.
Nonetheless, she proves very beneficial to the general as she is very good at communicating with the natives they encounter whenever they drop anchor.

“Lilith” by Nikki Marmery is a triumphal feminist retelling of the creation myth in Genesis in the tradition of Claire North and Madeline Miller.
Before Eve became Adam’s wife there was Lilith who was Adam’s equal as they lived in happiness and equality in the Garden of Eden. But then Adam decides that Lilith ought to be submissive to him and when she refuses she is expelled from Eden.
Sidelined and demonized, she watches in fury as Eve is created in submission to Adam. However, Lilith had already eaten the “Tree of Knowledge” and knows why God’s wife Asherah who is the Queen of Heaven and his equal went missing.
Lilith plans to rescue Eve and together find Asherah, who will help them restore balance to the world while working on regaining her place in Eden.
Her crusade for justice takes through the various historical epochs from the side of a radical teacher in Judea during Roman timers, to Ancient Sumerian ziggurats, to Queen Jezebel’s court in Israel.
She gets help from the likes of Mary Magdalene, Jezebel, and Norea who help her with her enlightenment.
In the contemporary era, she observes what happens when the world is full of inequality and starts working to correct the wrongs done to humankind, particularly to women.
Inspired by suppressed scriptures and ancient myths, it is an ambitious and thought-provoking novel with a triumphantly engaging heroine and an evocative literary voice.