Women Friendship Fiction

Dorothy “Dee” Gale is searching for a place to belong. After their globe-trotting mother’s death, Dee and her sister Toni settled with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em in Kansas, where Dee attends graduate school. But when Dee’s relationship with a faculty member, a bestselling novelist, ends in heartbreak and humiliation, she’s caught in a tornado of negative publicity. Unable to face her colleagues—or her former lover—Dee applies to the writing program at Trinity College Dublin.

The PS, I Love You Club. These are the six words written on a card handed to Holly Kennedy. They’re words that are engraved on her heart - because PS, I Love You is how her husband, Gerry, signed his last letters to her, letters that mark a year she will never forget. Now, the mysterious club wants something from her. And if Holly can find the courage meet them, she’ll learn what it really means to live life to the full. Because every love story has one last thing to say....

Parisian Claire has been working hard to become a Michelin-starred chef one day, but ever since the heady time she spent in the company of socialites Gina and Margot, her dream has been to own a Dior gown. This seemed like a far-off fantasy, until the eccentric and wealthy Madame Vaughn, who lives above Claire’s family brasserie, abruptly leaves Paris, asking Claire to mind her apartment. More bafflingly, Madame Vaughn also makes Claire a very special gift: a stunning Dior gown.

Eighteen months ago, Autumn Divac's husband went missing. Her desperate search has yielded no answers—she still has no idea where he went or why. After being happily married for twenty years, she can't imagine moving forward without him, but for the sake of their two teenage children, she has to try. Autumn takes her kids home for the summer to the charming beachside town where she was raised. She seeks comfort by working alongside her mother and aunt at their bookshop, only to learn that her daughter is facing a life change and her mother has been hiding a terrible secret.

Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in a seaside town in Connecticut. But after their mother’s death from cancer 15 years ago, the sisters drifted apart. Their one touchstone is their father, Bill Sweeney, a famous literary lion universally adored by critics, publishers, and book lovers. When Bill dies unexpectedly one cool June night, his shell-shocked daughters return to their childhood home. They aren’t quite sure what the future holds without their larger-than-life father, but they do know how to throw an Irish wake to honor a man of his stature.

Five former sorority sisters, all in their 50's, undertake the adventure of a lifetime when a mysterious invite reunites them at an exclusive resort set on a private island.

Josh Braden has models at his beck and call, a staff that never says never, and an elegant clothing line for the holiday season. When he hires Riley Banks, he expects her to learn the business from the ground up. But the girl next door turns out to be much more than he remembered. Josh and Riley's friendship heats up. Every steamy kiss and every erotic caress stirs a love they cannot deny.

When Nancy Hennessy is murdered, she leaves behind two best friends, an adoring husband and daughter, and a secret lover whose identity she took to the grave. Nancy was gorgeous, wealthy, and cherished by those who knew her - from the outside, her life was perfect. But as the investigation into her death flounders and her friends Eleanor and Mary wrestle with their grief, dark details surface that reveal how little they knew their friend, each other, and maybe even themselves.

Fair Meadows Retirement Community might as well be a country club for most of the retirees enjoying the pool, golf course, and book clubs. But for the caregivers whose family members reside upstairs in the special memory care unit, vacation is over. Comforting these forgotten folks is exactly why the Woolgatherers group has formed. The members make prayer shawls to support those affected by the heartbreaking reality of not being recognized by a loved one—people like Sam Talbot, who has been barely existing since his wife moved into Memory Care.

She has a full-time remote job and her rescue cat Fred. Her best friend Sadie visits with her two children. There's her online support group, her jigsaw puzzles and favorite recipes, her beloved Emily Dickinson poems. Also keeping her company are treacherous memories of an unstable childhood and a traumatic event that had sent her reeling. But something's about to change. First, two new friends burst into her life. Then her long-estranged sister gets in touch. Suddenly her carefully curated home is no longer a space to hide. Whether Meredith likes it or not, the world is coming to her door.

After nine years of dating, Holly is sure her boyfriend Will is going to propose. But instead of popping the question, he shocks her by suggesting they open their relationship to date other people. For the last three years, Fliss and her boyfriend Ash have been in a happily open relationship. But now that they’re turning 30, he wants to close it, throwing Fliss’s whole ethos of living life on her terms rather than society’s expectations into question. When Fliss overhears Holly crying in the toilets during her first date in nine years, they decide to ditch their dates and have dinner together.

The Lion City has gone by many names and is famous for many things—its decadent street food, its world-class shopping, its lush gardens that burst with tropical blooms. But paradise is always hiding a snake. For Dara, a workaholic lawyer from the UK, Singapore is opportunity. Every day, brokering deals for her firm’s wealthy clientele, she gets closer to her ultimate goal: making partner. For Amaka, a sharp-tongued banker from Nigeria, Singapore is extravagance.

Damani is tired. Her father just died on the job at a fast-food joint, and now she lives paycheck to paycheck in a basement, caring for her mom and driving for an app that is constantly cutting her take. The city is roiling in protests—everybody's in solidarity with somebody—but while she keeps hearing that they’re fighting for change on behalf of people like her, she literally can’t afford to pay attention. Then she gives a ride to Jolene (five stars, obviously).

Ever since Beth Bailey was a girl, she’s been in love with her best friend’s older brother, Mark. She’s continued to hold out hope that maybe, someday, he’ll love her back. But now Beth is thirty-five years old, and on the day of Mark’s wedding to another woman, she finally accepts the wake-up call she needs to move on.

Beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal, at ninety-five years old, is a national treasure. Working at the height of her powers, in this story collection she turns her gimlet eye and compassionate humor on aging and life in the slow lane. From the master of the short short comes a collection of sixteen new stories featuring old friends who have loved and lunched together for over forty years. These erudite, sharp-minded nonagenarians offer startling insights into friendship, family and aging.

Ivy Gover, a curmudgeonly middle-aged charwoman with some slightly witchy talents, inherits a rural cottage in Buckinghamshire and takes up residence near the tiny village of Little Warby. Having settled in with a rescued dog and a pet pigeon, she manages, despite her anti-social instincts, to have surprising effects on her new neighbors. But her biggest challenge will likely be the twelve-year-old runaway who shows up at her door.

Joy and Annie are friends and roommates whose thirty-something lives aren’t exactly what they’d imagined. To make ends meet, they decide to rent their extra bedroom to Theo, who charms Joy with his salt-and-pepper hair and adoration of their one-eyed cat. When Annie goes to live with her boyfriend, Theo and Joy settle into a comfortable domesticity. Then Theo brings home Celine, the girlfriend he’s never mentioned, who is possibly the most stunning woman Joy has ever seen. Joy resolves to do whatever it takes to hold on to him, falling deeper into a hellscape of her own making.

Double Blind follows three close friends and their circle through a year of extraordinary transformation. Set between London, Cap d'Antibes, Big Sur, and a rewilded corner of Sussex, this thrilling, ambitious novel is about the headlong pursuit of knowledge - for the purposes of pleasure, revelation, money, sanity, or survival - and the consequences of fleeing from what we know about others and ourselves.

Karissa Newcomb is ready for a new start in a new neighborhood, as far away as she can get from Seattle, where her husband cheated on her with the neighbor who was supposed to be her best friend. She and her nine-year-old daughter are moving on to the city of Gig Harbor on the bay in Puget Sound. She even has a new job as an assistant at a small publishing company right in Gig Harbor. Her new boss seems like a bit of a curmudgeon, but a job is a job, she loves to read, and the idea of possibly meeting writers sounds fabulous.

Stella fell in love with Simon hard and fast. He was everything she wanted in a husband, and he seemed to feel the same way about her. More than a decade of marriage later, life is sweet. They have three much-wanted children, a successful business and a comfortable London home. What more could Stella possibly want? But then, out of the blue, Simon is gone. Vanished. No one knows where he’s gone or why. Now Stella, with the help of her friends and family, has to pick up the pieces of her and her children’s life, all the while wondering what she missed.