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    At the Sign of the Star
    At the Sign of the Star
    At the Sign of the Star
    Audiobook3 hours

    At the Sign of the Star

    Written by Katherine Sturtevant

    Narrated by Emily Gray

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    In 1677, 12-year-old Meg loves working with her widowed father in his London bookshop. When she grows up, she will inherit the shop. Then she will be independent and can choose her own husband. But her father remarries, and Meg's plans are suddenly in ruins. Based on careful research, this novel offers a brilliantly detailed panorama of Restoration London and a view of women's roles in that era.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateFeb 15, 2013
    ISBN9781470357207
    At the Sign of the Star
    Author

    Katherine Sturtevant

    I grew up in California’s Santa Clara Valley. When we moved there I was five years old, and the valley was filled with fruit orchards. The house I lived in was a big, eccentric place, built in part by my father and his friends. It had a huge brick fireplace, a screened-in porch where we ate and sometimes slept in summer, a "secret" recess in one of the bedrooms where Easter nests were always hidden, and dozens of built-in bookshelves. The house sat on three acres of land dotted with fruit trees and outbuildings. I had a dozen favorite places to lie reading. I come from a book-loving family. My grandmother worked at the Library of Congress during the 1940s and later owned an antiquarian bookshop. My mother was a school librarian for many years and always brought home wonderfully written stories, many of them set in other eras. I was a writer from an early age. I wrote stories, poems, and plays; I wrote them for school and I wrote them on summer vacation. My grandmother gave me a portable typewriter for Christmas when I was twelve. After that, it traveled with me on every camping trip we took. I would sit at a picnic table, under evergreens, and turn our humdrum vacations into tales of heroic rescues or martyred pets. By the time I was in high school, the fruit orchards in the valley had given way to housing tracts and electronics plants. One night, when I was sixteen years old, our big funny house burned to the ground. A few days later we walked through the rubble to see what could be salvaged. Little remained: the remnants of the stove, the piano keys, and hundreds and hundreds of scorched books strewn among the ashes. So the place I grew up in is now gone. Of course, so are many of my favorite places, including colonial Boston, biblical Palestine, and Restoration London. But the books I read when I was growing up are still with me, and will be with me forever. KATHERINE STURTEVANT studied creative writing at San Francisco State University, where she received her B.A. in 1976 and her M.A. in 1993. Her articles and reviews have been published in The San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury-News, The Willamette Week, and Calyx. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, her twin sons, and two Maine Coon cats.

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    Reviews for At the Sign of the Star

    3.5/5

    28 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed reading this book. The idea of a girl who loves books and theater and writing sounded exactly like me! The main character of Meg is very well written, lively, and realistic. The setting is also unusually vivid - you feel as if you there right alongside the main character in 1600's London.True, this book is not a page-turner you won't be able to put down. It may not be rivetingly exciting, but it certainly is endearing and an entertaining, interesting book.
    • 4/5
      I think this is a great bone chilling mystery about how Figgy's friend Terra disappears mysteriously because of a worthless jade horse that Mr.Chu is too proud to let them not insurance it.Out of turns is a great book about a american foreigner who has to find a way to find her friend and get her back safely-without getting killed.
    • 4/5
      We find Meg in 17th century London. Her father is a bookseller and Meg is determined to be a bookseller when she grows up and inherits her father's business. Her mother died when she was younger and Meg's much more interested in reading and selling books than in learning womanly ways. Then Meg's father marries Susannah. Suddenly Meg finds herself learning to cook and sew. Worse than those arduous tasks is the fear that Susannah may bear a son who would become an heir to the business... Meg finds her future in jeopardy... Is there anything she can do to get it back?I really enjoyed this book. The main character is really likeable- very strong female protagonist.