Women Friendship Fiction

At thirty-five, Mika Suzuki’s life is a mess. Her last relationship ended in flames. Her roommate-slash-best friend might be a hoarder. She’s a perpetual disappointment to her traditional Japanese parents. And, most recently, she’s been fired from her latest dead-end job. Mika is at her lowest point when she receives a phone call from Penny—the daughter she placed for adoption sixteen years ago. Penny is determined to forge a relationship with her birth mother, and in turn, Mika longs to be someone Penny is proud of. Faced with her own inadequacies, Mika embellishes a fact about her life.

Living on the island of Cyprus, Nisha is far from her native Sri Lanka. Though she longs to return home, she knows that working as a nanny and maid for a wealthy widow is the only way to earn enough to support her daughter, left behind to be raised by relatives. Yiannis is a poacher, trapping the tiny protected songbirds that stop in Cyprus as they migrate each year from Africa to Europe and selling them on the illegal market. He dreams of finding a new way of life, and of marrying Nisha.

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.

Eve, Nessa, and Molly are all in their 70s. Over the years, they’ve laughed and cried and they’ve been by each others’ sides as colleagues, flatmates, and mothers. And they’ve grown old disgracefully together in their golden years....

But all good things must come to an end. As one of their trio takes her final journey, a very large glass is raised to fun, frolics, and–most importantly–friendships.

Sofia Colicchio is a free spirit, loud and untamed. Antonia Russo is thoughtful, ever observing the world around her. Best friends since birth, they live in the shadow of their fathers’ unspoken community: the Family. Sunday dinners gather them each week to feast, discuss business, and renew the intoxicating bond borne of blood and love. But the disappearance of Antonia’s father drives a whisper-thin wedge between the girls as they grow into women, wives, mothers, and leaders. One fateful night, their loyalty to each other and the Family will be tested.

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.

The wife has it all. A big house in a nice neighborhood, a ride-or-die snarky best friend, Temi, with whom to laugh about facile men, and a devoted husband who loves her above all else—even his distaste for Temi. On a seemingly normal day, Temi comes over to spend a lazy afternoon with the wife: drinking wine, eating snacks, and laughing caustically about the husband's shortcomings. But when the husband comes home and a series of confessions are made, the wife's two confidants are suddenly forced to jockey for their positions, throwing everyone's integrity into question.

When Claire Barclay receives news that her beloved stepfather has had a stroke, she's more than a little shaken. Leo is her last real relative, and his own children rarely check up on the old man. Claire and her husband, Art, leave New York and fly back to Scotland to care for him during the summer. Their visit makes clear that Leo is no longer capable of living on his own, but he is determined to stay in his beloved old house. Art comes up with the idea of turning the place into a conference center, thinking they could purchase the place from Leo and build him a cottage on the property.

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.

Isabelle “Izzy” Flanders and Yoko Akia are beginning a new project—an indoor-outdoor café that will be the cornerstone of a market village. Izzy knows just the person to get the project off the ground: her old college classmate, Zoe Danfield, now vice president of a huge construction corporation. But the Zoe that Izzy reencounters doesn’t seem like her confident old friend. This Zoe is stressed, and Izzy eventually learns why. Buildings and bridges have been collapsing all over the world, causing hundreds of deaths, and Zoe suspects her firm’s inferior foundation materials are the cause.

In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times best-selling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world - no matter how out of place they feel. Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. Such as, why did Dulcie Shelby leave her hometown so suddenly? And why did she vow never to return?

When Charlotte and Philip meet, the pair form a deep and instant connection. Soon they’re settled in the Florida Keys with plans to marry. But just as they should be getting closer, Charlotte feels Philip slipping away. Second-guessing their love is something Charlotte never imagined, but with Philip’s excessive absences, she finds herself yearning for more. When she meets Ben, she ignores the pull, but the supportive single dad is there for her in ways she never knew she desired.

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.

Megan Chernoff is a talented but unemployed copywriter in an identity crisis after the birth of her second child. Seeking a fresh start, she and her family move to New York City, where she meets Daphne Cole—a gorgeous, stylish, well-known momfluencer. To Meg's surprise and delight, Daphne shows an inordinate amount of interest in Meg, showering her with compliments, attention, gifts, and all the perks that come with having a massive digital platform. Before she knows it, Meg finds herself immersed in Daphne's world.

Elin Hilderbrand's brief, irresistible postscript to her number-one New York Times best-selling novel Summer of '69.

At the break of dawn, Caroline Shelby rolls into Oysterville, Washington, a tiny hamlet at the edge of the raging Pacific. She’s come home. Home to a place she thought she’d left forever, home of her heart and memories, but not her future. Ten years ago, Caroline launched a career in the glamorous fashion world of Manhattan. But her success in New York imploded on a wave of scandal and tragedy, forcing her to flee to the only safe place she knows. And in the backseat of Caroline’s car are two children who were orphaned in a single chilling moment.

Four older women have a lifelong friendship of the best kind: loving, practical, frank, and steadfast. But when Sylvie dies, the ground shifts dangerously for the remaining three. They are Jude, a once-famous restaurateur; Wendy, an acclaimed public intellectual; and Adele, a renowned actress now mostly out of work. Struggling to recall exactly why they’ve remained close all these years, the grieving women gather at Sylvie’s old beach house - not for festivities this time, but to clean it out before it is sold. Can they survive together without her?

Everyone talks about falling in love, but falling in friendship can be just as captivating. When Neela Devaki's song is covered by internet-famous artist Rukmini, the two musicians meet and a transformative friendship begins. But as Rukmini's star rises and Neela's stagnates, jealousy and self-doubt creep in. With a single tweet, their friendship implodes, one career is destroyed, and the two women find themselves at the center of an internet firestorm.

Evvie, Maggie, and Topher have known one another since college. Their friendship was something they swore would last forever. Now years have passed, the friends have drifted apart, and they never found the lives they wanted - the lives they dreamed of when they were young and everything seemed possible. Evvie starved herself to become a supermodel but derailed her career by sleeping with a married man. Maggie married Ben, the boy she fell in love with in college, never imagining the heartbreak his drinking would cause.

Cara Romero thought she would work at the factory of little lamps for the rest of her life. But when, in her mid-50s, she loses her job in the Great Recession, she is forced back into the job market for the first time in decades. Set up with a job counselor, Cara instead begins to narrate the story of her life.