Women Friendship Fiction

Bev Tunney and Amy Schein have been best friends for years; now, at 30, they're at a crossroads. Bev is a Midwestern striver still mourning a years-old romantic catastrophe. Amy is an East Coast princess whose luck and charm have too long allowed her to cruise through life. Bev is stuck in circumstances that would have barely passed for bohemian in her mid-20s. Amy is still riding the tailwinds of her early success, but her habit of burning bridges is finally catching up to her. And now Bev is pregnant.

Forbidden, passionate and all-encompassing, Margo and Richard’s love affair was the stuff of legend—but, ultimately, doomed. When Richard walked out, Margo locked herself away, leaving her three daughters, Rachel, Imogen, and Sasha, to run wild. Years later, charismatic Margo entertains lovers and friends in her cottage on the Isle of Wight, refusing to ever speak of Richard and her painful past. But her silence is keeping each of the Garnett girls from finding true happiness.

Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leech: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.

With the pandemic looming, a listless social media editor accepts a job working for her former college friend Seraphina. A popular Instagram influencer, the subject of obsessive message-board surveillance, and a newly minted Karen of the Day, Seraphina is living out 2020 in the luxury of her “ultimate self-quarantine.” As the year escalates into upheaval and chaos, both women try, in increasingly secretive and complicated ways, to maintain the upper hand.

As the last will of a close friend is read, three women discover that they have inherited a legacy from her: the funds to take a dream trip to Florence, Italy, in her memory. With plenty of hilarious travel mishaps along the way, this book is a story of deep friendship, of making room in our lives to celebrate and remember, of grief, of the realization that friendship keeps the memory alive, and the sweet discovery of unexpected romance.

Robin Lindstrom spent her first year as a young widow cocooned in the safe haven of the Minnesota farmhouse she’d once shared with Gabe, the love of her life—the man she thought she’d be with ’til the end. But her world is turned upside down when she receives an email informing her that her late husband has enrolled her in a dating app. The subscription lasts 12 months; use it!, Gabe’s message-from-the-grave reads. I don’t like the thought of you being alone. If you won’t do it for yourself, do it as a favor to me. Please.

Tom is a teenager and blends into the background of life. After a row with his dad and facing an unhappy future at the dog food factory, he escapes to the library. Tom unwittingly ends up with a bagful of romance novels and comes under the suspicion of Maggie. Maggie is a pensioner and has been happily alone for 10 years, at least that's what she tells herself. When Tom comes to her rescue, a friendship develops that could change her life.

Recognizing how common it is for crafters to start many projects and finish few, a group of women join together to form a guild - Unfinished Projects Anonymous - to keep each other on track and accountable. Three friends are tasked with the job of home visits for their guild. Over the course of the story, this ensemble of women discover that much of life is half-finished - relationships, the raising of children, even our very relationship with the Lord - and that may be perfectly fine.

Noelle is not a fan of the holidays, and to make matters worse she is at a crossroads in her life where it seems that love and adventure are no longer possible. When she stays late at her job in a department store on a snowy Christmas Eve, she accidentally gets locked in after closing. She isn't too concerned about the prospect of spending the night in the store...until a woman appears out of nowhere and tells Noelle that she's her guardian angel.

Alice Sullivan feels like she’s finally found her groove in middle age, but it only takes one moment for her perfectly curated life to unravel. On the same day she learns her daughter is struggling in second grade, a call from her son’s school accusing him of bullying throws Alice into a tailspin.

Sam is seven years old and living in Beverly, Massachusetts. She adores her father, though he isn’t around much. Her mother struggles to make ends meet, and never fails to remind Sam that if she studies hard and acts responsibly, adulthood will be easier—more secure and comfortable. But comfort and security are of little interest to Sam. She doesn’t fit in at school, where the other girls have the right shade of blue jeans and don’t question the rules. She doesn’t care about jeans or rules. All she wants to climb.

Zoe always knew this day would come. After all, no one can live for ever. She may not be ready, but Zoe knows the importance of goodbye. Harriet doesn't know where she fits anymore. It's not in Cornwall with the new family her mum is building, and it's certainly not in the job she hates. Ange was doing fine. Well, she was coping. Like she has been for the past fourteen years because her daughter needed her. Then, the last person any of them expects to see suddenly turns up, and soon it seems the only way to move forward is to revisit the past.

For Sera Wheeler, the Olympics is the reason for everything. It’s why she trains 30 hours a week, starves herself to under 100 pounds, and pops Advil like Tic Tacs. For her mother, Charlene, hungry for glory she never had, it’s why she rises before dawn to drive Sera to practice in a different state, and why the family scrimps, saves, and fractures. It’s why, when Sera’s best friend reports the gymnastics doctor to the authority who selects the Olympic Team, Sera denies what she knows about his treatments, thus preserving favor.

Mary Alice Monroe, New York Times best-selling author of the Lowcountry Summer series, returns to her beloved Beach House series with the highly anticipated follow-up to Beach House Memories and The Beach House!

Bestselling author and voice of Australian storytelling Tricia Stringer tackles troubled relationships, ageism, and love old and new in this warm, funny, uplifting story of colleagues and unlikely travel companions thrown together on an astonishing (and revealing) train trip across Australia.

A tragic accident leaves the tight-knit book club in the small seaside town of Fairweather reeling. Then stranger Tom McLysaght arrives in the community, and the members of the club find their lives changing in ways they never could have imagined. None of them realise that Tom is hiding a secret. On the surface, his move to Fairweather was to escape his highflying life in London and to put some much-needed distance between him and his ex-fiancée - but deep down Tom knows that there are some things he cannot run from.

Keen to put the spark back into her life, Annie Lovell volunteers to investigate her neighbour’s inherited apartment in Paris. There she discovers a bundle of secret diaries hidden within its walls. Captivated by the City of Light, Annie must piece together the events from the past if she is to fulfil the legacy that Beatrice left for her to find....

Assigned to the same suite during their freshman year at Quincy-Hawthorn College, Lainey, Ji Sun, Alice, and Margaret quickly become inseparable. The leafy green campus they move through together, the idyllic window seat they share in their suite, and the passion and ferocity that school and independence awakens in them ignites an all-encompassing love with one another. But they soon find their bonds must weather threats that originate from beyond the dark forests of their childhoods, and come at them from institutions, from one another, and ultimately, from within themselves.

Abandoned by first her father and then her mother, as a girl Tessa is left to live with her abusive stepfather and stepbrother. She survives by finding reserves of strength in herself, and by the transformative love of another teenage girl, Mel, who sees through Tessa’s tough exterior to the loving woman inside. When she suddenly loses Mel, too, Tessa stumbles into a kind of refuge with Henry and his mama, becoming a mother and finding herself in a familial existence that somehow carries her into adulthood—until the day she runs into Mel, who has just returned to Perris after years away.

Adele Astaire was a glittering, glamorous star, dancing with her brother, Fred, endearing herself to audiences from New York to London. But although she is toasted by royalty and beloved by countless fans, Adele Astaire has dreams of a loving husband and a houseful of children. And when she meets Lord Charles Cavendish, her wishes may just come true—but at what cost?