Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales of Batches and Brews

by Carolyn Korsmeyer, Apple An, Debra Borchert

Whether cooking for solace, scrounging for food, concocting medicine, or brewing poisons, the feisty women in these stories will keep you thirsting for more. Twenty-five tales will transport you far afield in time and place: third century Ireland, medieval Europe, twentieth-century Australia. Read your way from a hippie commune to a WW II internment camp in the Philippines; from a Renaissance palace to a Polish village wracked by war, the hills of Appalachia, and a sleepy Ontario town. Mixtures to soothe, heal, and thrall are prepared in these pages, where lovers take revenge, mothers protect their children, and feisty women make choices in a challenging world.

Paperback

Expected publication December 12, 2025

About the author

Carolyn Korsmeyer is the author of five books of philosophy and three novels, Charlotte's Story (TouchPoint 2021) and Little Follies: A Mystery at the Millennium (Black Rose Writing, 2023)and Riddle of Spirit and Bone (Regal House, 2025).

Reviews

[litandcoffee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feisty Deeds II: Historical Tales of Batches and Brews presents twenty-five stories that illuminate how women across eras have stirred, brewed, mixed, and mended their way through history. Framed by a thoughtful foreword from K.J. Dell’Antonia, the collection begins with the premise that women’s daily labor—whether in gardens, kitchens, or makeshift infirmaries—has long shaped lives in ways both subtle and essential.

Across lands and centuries—Ireland to Europe, Renaissance courts to wartime Pacific islands, Appalachia to Ontario—the stories return to mixtures that sustain or undo. Scarce meals, secret herbs, handed-down cures, and poisons brewed in silence form the book’s heartbeat. With each act, women protect, resist, sacrifice, or seize control. The anthology moves between tenderness, darkness, and the mythic, yet each story centers a woman acting with purpose despite her era’s constraints. Wartime mothers endure, Renaissance cooks navigate peril, and modern women face inherited wounds—each leaving a mark. Though varied in style, the stories hum with the same quiet resonance. From era to era, these women shape their worlds through what they mix, prepare, and choose. Fans of historical fiction and thoughtful portraits of resilience will feel right at home in these pages.