My Notorious Life

A Novel

    • 4.3 • 261 Ratings
    • $14.99
    • $14.99

Publisher Description

“Exquisitely written and richly detailed, My Notorious Life is a marvel. Kate Manning’s rags-to-riches Dickensian saga brings to vivid life the world of nineteenth-century New York City, in all its pitiful squalor and glittering opulence. I loved this novel.” —Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train

A brilliant rendering of a scandalous historical figure, Kate Manning’s My Notorious Life is an ambitious, thrilling novel introducing Axie Muldoon, a fiery heroine for the ages. Axie’s story begins on the streets of 1860s New York. The impoverished child of Irish immigrants, she grows up to become one of the wealthiest and most controversial women of her day.


In vivid prose, Axie recounts how she is forcibly separated from her mother and siblings, apprenticed to a doctor, and how she and her husband parlay the sale of a few bottles of “Lunar Tablets for Female Complaint” into a thriving midwifery business. Flouting convention and defying the law in the name of women’s reproductive rights, Axie rises from grim tenement rooms to the splendor of a mansion on Fifth Avenue, amassing wealth while learning over and over never to trust a man who says “trust me.”

When her services attract outraged headlines, Axie finds herself on a collision course with a crusading official—Anthony Comstock, founder of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. It will take all of Axie’s cunning and power to outwit him in the fight to preserve her freedom and everything she holds dear.

Inspired by the true history of an infamous female physician who was once called “the Wickedest Woman in New York,” My Notorious Life is a mystery, a family saga, a love story, and an exquisitely detailed portrait of nineteenth-century America. Axie Muldoon’s inimitable voice brings the past alive, and her story haunts and enlightens the present.

GENRE
Fiction & Literature
RELEASED
2013
September 10
LANGUAGE
EN
English
LENGTH
448
Pages
PUBLISHER
Scribner
SELLER
SIMON AND SCHUSTER DIGITAL SALES INC
SIZE
14.3
MB

Customer Reviews

SAppelquist ,

My Notorious Life

An amazing heroine. An engaging story. Thoroughly enjoyed the tale of this rags to riches midwife. Extremely topical.

Emesille ,

Couldn't put it down!!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book... It's now amongst my top favorites along with Orphan Train and The Kitchen House. It is believable (although a work of fiction, based loosely on historical events and a midwife of the 1800's) and keeps the pages turning. Highly recommended!

HSH Nurse ,

My Notorious Life

This is truly one of the greatest books that I have ever read in all of my life. The author is a genius and the story is riveting. I do not remember a book that I could not wait to come home from work to read! The only bad thing I can say about it is that it had to end. I wish I could have continued to read on for ever.

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