Novels
- The Frenchwoman (1989)
- The Queen’s War (1991)
- Dreams of Empire (1996)
- The Sweet By and By (2001)
- The Beautiful American (2014)
- A Lady of Good Family (2015)
- The Last Collection (2019)
Non fiction
- The Cornell Book of Herbs & Edible Flowers (1993)
- The Book of Love (1998)
Novels Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
Jeanne MacKin Books Overview
Dreams of Empire
Kept in a cage of a marriage by a cheating yet charming husband, Margueritte Verdier has escaped, embarking on a journey to find what she had always been missing. It is an adventure that would pair her up with none other than Napoleon Bonaparte and consume her with the mystical air of Cairo. An expedition to Egypt is also what Lord Elgin, the British ambassador to Napoleon’s enemy the Ottoman Empire, has in mind. Each in pursuit of a fresh start, these three are also all in search of a prize only rumored to exist: an ancient artifact known as The Woman Carried Away. Their hunger for exotic booty fuels their desire. Their inquisitive, adventurous natures are what may bring them to ruin. You see, the Woman Carried Away is said to carry a curse and bestow supernatural powers on the one who carries it. Napoleon has plans for such powers. Lord Elgin has plans for these powers. But what of Margueritte? What will she do when the fate of the world hangs between a rock and two men, when her future could be either free or cursed? She knows what the others don’t; she knows the secret history of the pharaohs. Margueritte is Napoleon’s personal illustrator and it is her keen eyes and powers of observation that open up the epic and colorful past of Egypt in another age. She illuminates a journey between times, between a fallen empire of pharaohs and two competing empires of Europe. With all the powers of this world and more up for grabs will it be enough to satisfy the heart and dreams of this single indomitable woman?
The Book of Love
Culled from love letters, poetry, fiction, personal essays, and memoirs, this lavish and fascinating anthology celebrates humankind’s grandest pastime and obsession: love. How do we define love? ‘It feels like hunger pains, and we use the same word. Pang. Perhaps this is why Cupid is depicted with a quiver of arrows, because love feels at times like being pierced in the chest. It is a wholesome violence…
. People search for love as if it were a city lost beneath the desert dunes, where pleasure is the law, the streets are lined with brocade cushions, and the sun never sets.’ So writes Diane Ackerman in her insightful introduction. Here is a panorama of fine writing about love’s many moods and majesties, from all the veils of flirtation, seduction, and marriage to the tempests of suspicion, jealousy, and heartache. Here is a treasury of more than two hundred selections from Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s ‘How Do I Love Thee?’ There are excerpts from Romeo and Juliet, Madame Bovary, Justine, The Odyssey, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as well as the letters from Baudelaire to Sabatier, George Eliot to Herbert Spencer, and Henry Miller to Ana’s Nin. General readers and scholars alike will delight in this anthology’s mix of the contemporary and the classic.
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