I've read a lot about you all liking Jean Plaidy on this forum, and I've never read anything by her.  She's written like a zillion books, so I was wondering if you all could tell me a good one to start with?   Thanks!

What is your favorite historical era? That will really determine the best place to start that you will enjoy. Basically there are NO bad Plaidy's. ;-)

The downside is some older titles are difficult to find until they get re-released so that too will determine where to start. Otherwise I'd say start at the Norman saga and work your way through history! Fun!

Marci, that is exactly what I wanted to do, but I'm having a hard time finding the entire Norman saga, so I had to skip around. Starting at the Normans and working through history would have been great!

http://members.tripod.com/jeanplaidy/id17.htm - Everything you'd ever want to know about Jean Plaidy.

http://members.aol.com/SGoldst155/plaidy.html - An organized, handy listing of her books.

http://plentyaboutplaidy.blogspot.com/ - This is a Plaidy blog. You could read her reviews and choose a book that sounds good to you.

http://www.randomhouse.com/crown/catalog/results2.pperl?keyword=jean%20plaidy - You can go here to see which Plaidy books have been re-released and are available for purchase.

You might want to choose an historical figure that you already know a bit about and start there. Henry VIII would be good, the series that feature him and his wives are very easy to find.

Especially since the Norman books are hard to find, I'm not sure I would start with those.  IMO, they were not her best work and had I started with those, I might not have read any others.  I'm glad I read the Norman books since they do provide some basic history, but I have really enjoyed The Plantagenet Saga the most.  I also agree that it depends on what period of history you are interested in.

I don't really have a favorite era...I just like good writing and good stories!  ;)  I appreciate the input so far.  Do the books within each series need to be read in order, or does each book stand on its own?

The novels by the same woman that appear under the pseudonym Victoria Holt are really fun too. The Victoria Holt novels appear more as individual novels and less as series, I think, which makes them easier to pick up. They are a lot of fun - they are often somewhat gothic in nature and feature a woman trying to decide between two men, one of whom may have an evil secret. In case you can't find everything you want on paperbackswap, I've always found that Goodwill is an excellent place to get cheap works by this author.

I have a few Victoria Holt books on my shelf right now. (she also wrote as Phillipa Carr, amongst other lesser known pseudonyms). I have Kirkland Revels as a freebie with an order too (see my signature).

I like reading the books in order, but as many are hard to find, that isn't always possible. I find they do stand alone as the characters are what makes them interesting and the time period is 2nd to the character development. My most recent favorite was The Reluctant Queen about Richard III's wife, Anne Neville. She was also the daughter of John Neville, The Kingmaker. I read it one day, not even stopping to sleep!

I decided to check my library, since most of the books aren't available on here anyway, and our library has NO Jean Plaidy books, some Victoria Holt and a few Philippa Carr.  So, I checked out Daughters of England.  Has anyone read that one?   I'll start it as soon as I finish The Red Tent.  My library has enough to keep me busy for a little while, then I'll have to go searching for some written under Jean Plaidy.  Thank you so much for your input, girls!