At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant

I had a dozen favorite places to lie reading. The house sat on three acres of land dotted with fruit trees and outbuildings. 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 I lived in was a big, eccentric place, built in part by my father and his friends. When we moved there I was five years old, and the valley was filled with fruit orchards. I grew up in California’s Santa Clara Valley. This vibrant novel recreates a lively and fascinating historical period when women claimed a new and more active role in London's literary scene. Yet it is through her own experience that she finds a new matrimony with which to face her unknown future. Meg seeks wisdom from almanacs and astrologers, plays and books of jests, guides for ladies and guides for midwives. Meg resists the overtures and edicts of her stepmother with a cleverness equaled only by her fierceness, but in spite of it all her rival's belly soon swells with what Meg fears will be her father's new heir. Moore's unexpected marriage throws all Meg's dreams into confusion. She knows that someday she will have her pick of suitors, and that with the right husband she can continue in the book trade and be friends with wits and authors, as her father is.

Meg Moore is the motherless and only child of a bookseller with a thriving business in Restoration London-and that makes her an heiress.

At the Sign of the Star by Katherine Sturtevant