Non-Fiction and Fiction Recommendations for 2011

Should you be looking for an end of the year holiday gift or some reading for yourself for vacation, here are two of my favorite ancient/classical history books read and reviewed this year; one for each category, fiction and non-fiction:

• Caesars' Wives : Sex, Power, and Politics in the Roman Empire, by Annelise Freisenbruch
  Frisenbruch's jaunt through 5 centuries of imperial women focuses on women worth getting to know, although she's so thorough she seems to touch on every known wife and some mistresses, as well as daughters.
• Niobe and Amphion - The Road to Thebes and Niobe and Chloris - Arrows of Artemis, by Victoria Grossack and Alice Underwood
  This series sticks in my mind. I read the first volume a few years ago. Now with the trilogy complete, you can see the connectedness of figures in Greek legends and a more nuanced understanding of principle characters in the founding myths.

In the category of young adult historical fiction, try Vicky Alvear Shecter's Cleopatra's Moon. Well-researched, the novel explores how the children of Cleopatra and Mark Antony might have fared while being brought up in Egypt and the hostilities they would have faced in Rome.