Women Friendship Fiction

Rhett Gallagher’s adventurous life is imploding. Just as she turns the big 4-0, her long-term relationship collapses and her gran’s death draws her back to the family farm. The only silver lining is that Rhett’s inspirational book, The Modern Pioneer Girl’s Guide to Life—written under a pseudonym—has become a wild success, so much so that when her big publicity moment comes, self-doubting Rhett panics and persuades her best friend, Jasmine, to step into the limelight in her stead.

When 82-year-old Lil decides to book herself, her 65-year-old daughter, Cassie, and her friend Maggie on a bus trip across Europe, she hopes for a little adventure to counteract the monotony of life. Along with three members of the Salterley Tennis Club and the Jolly Weaver football team, whose ideas of a good time are rather different to Lil’s and strikingly at odds with each other’s, the merry band of travellers set out on their great adventure.

Bertie and Kate have been best friends since high school. Bertie is a semi-failed cartoonist, working for a prominent Silicon Valley tech firm. Her job depresses her, but not as much as the fact that Kate has recently decided to move from San Francisco to Los Angeles. When Bertie’s attempts to make Kate stay fail, she suggests the next best thing: a trip to Paris that will hopefully distract the duo from their upcoming separation.

Georgina has been in love with Hugh since she was 18. Tall, handsome and career driven, he's everything she ever wanted - but totally out of her league. Oh, and married. Over the years, Georgina transformed herself into what she hoped Hugh would see as the ideal woman. And it paid off. At 32, she now has the career, the body and at last, the man she's always desired. But her dream come true hits shaky ground when she falls pregnant. Already-father-of-two Hugh isn't overjoyed, and as Georgina grows bigger, so does the distance between them.

Unsure of the future but ready for risks, Libby O’Dell trades big-city life for whatever the back roads hold. In this case it’s the small community of Sawmill, Texas, where Libby’s taken a temporary job putting an antique store in order. Her new boss, Benny Taylor, a handsome charmer with a three-legged dog named Elvis, isn’t a bad change of scenery, either. Across the street Benny’s surrogate grandmothers—the widows Minilee and Opal—are ready with homemade corn bread, sweet tea, and an invitation for Libby to join their book club.

1939. After the sudden and tragic loss of her husband, Helen is returning home to her mother’s house in Biggin Hill, Kent - the one place she vowed she’d never go back to again. Alone and not knowing where to turn, Helen finds herself joining the local women’s sewing circle despite being hopeless with a needle and thread. These resourceful women can not only make do and mend clothes, quilts and woolly hats, but their friendship mends something deeper in Helen, too.

Gorgeous Vivi is the star of the Aquacade synchronized swimming spectacular, and plucky Max is a journalist for the fair's daily paper. Both are striving to make their way in a world where men try to control their actions and where secrets are closely kept. But when Vivi and Max become friends and their personal and professional prospects are put in jeopardy, they team up to help each other succeed and to realize their dreams during the most meaningful summer of their lives.

Dear friends and army wives Diana, Carmen, and Joanie have been through war, rumors of war, marital problems, motherhood, fears, joy, and heartache. But none of the women are prepared when their daughters decide to enlist in the army together. Facing an empty nest won’t be easy. Especially for Carmen. With emotions already high, she suffers an even greater blow: divorce papers. Diana understands the fury and tears. She’s been there.

Becc was the good girl. A dedicated student. Aspiring reporter. Always where she was supposed to be. Until a secret affair with the charming Cal one summer in college cost her everything she held dear: her journalism dreams; her relationship with her best friend, Eric; and her carefully imagined future. Now, Becc’s past is back front and center as she travels up the scenic California coast to a wedding - with a man she hasn’t seen in a decade. As each mile flies by, Becc can’t help but feel the thrilling push and pull of memories.

It is 1937, and Alice, Edith and Marg continue to face hardships every day, growing up on one of the poorest streets in Blackpool. Penniless, their friendship has helped them survive this far, but it'll take more than that to see them through the dark days ahead. Alice is coping with a violent father. Marg is left reeling after a dark secret about her birth comes to light and threatens to destroy the life she knows, and Edith is fighting to protect her alcoholic mother from the shame of their neighbours and keep her brother on the straight and narrow.

Friends for over a decade, Amanda and Sophie decide it’s time to flip the script. Why not spend their lives with each other and keep men on the side for fun, sex, and occasionally fixing things around the house? Amanda is a lawyer who excels in her professional life but crumbles at the slightest sign of a common cold. Sophie is an aspiring artist who has lived all over the world and doesn’t crumble, period. Together, they’ve been through it all. But when their romantic lives implode at the same time, they decide enough is enough.

Can their friendship survive the darkest days of war? When Abigail arrives for a new start in Bristol in the late 1930s, she knows life won’t be easy - particularly as she is the unmarried mother of three-year-old Emily Grace. But as the war starts to take over the city and threaten their very existence, will Abigail’s new friends, Carrie and Eileen, be enough to keep herself and her daughter safe?

Lifelong friends Joanna, Debbie, and Gwen grew up on Bribie Island together in the quaint little hamlet of Sunshine. Now that they're on the cusp of retirement, they hold a regular potluck brunch to catch up.

It's been thirty years since the friends graduated from Coral Island State High School, and the class is returning to the island to celebrate. But there will be more people at the reunion than were invited, and someone will leave in handcuffs. When this group of friends finally solves the murder mystery that has dogged them for decades, the revelations uncovered will shake them to the core.

Food of Love tells the story of Regina, a former supermodel, now princess of a tiny European principality, who has lost her skeletal figure and finds herself threatened by an unknown assassin. Fearing her royal husband wants to kill her now that she’s not model-thin, she seeks protection from her estranged African-American foster sister, conservative Christian television pundit, Rev. Cady Stanton.

In a suburb outside Cleveland, a community of Indian Americans has settled into lives that straddle the divide between Eastern and Western cultures. For some, America is a bewildering and alienating place where coworkers can't pronounce your name but will eagerly repeat the Sanskrit phrases from their yoga class. Harit, a lonely Indian immigrant in his mid-40s, lives with his mother, who can no longer function after the death of Harit's sister, Swati.

Raised in East Hampton, Caroline never thought she’d be one of the “city people” who spent summers and weekends at the beach. But, once her husband’s business takes off, a job stint transplants the couple permanently into Manhattan life - where the phrase when you marry for money, you work for it every day reflects her neighbors’ lives. And where entitled husbands, like hers, embark on affair after affair with little consequence. Time for the wives to get even.

Inner-suburban Melbourne in the 1970s: a world of communal living, drugs, music and love - Garner captures the fluid relationships of a community of friends. Helen Garner’s gritty, lyrical first novel divided the critics on its publication in 1977. Today, Monkey Grip is regarded as a masterpiece - the novel that shines a light on a time and a place and a way of living never before presented in Australian literature: communal households, music, friendships, children, love, drugs and sex.

Germaine Johnson doesn’t need a lot of friends. She has her work and her Sudoku puzzles. Until an incident at the insurance company she works for leaves her jobless, and she realizes that there are very few job openings for recently laid-off senior mathematicians with no people skills. With some luck (read: bad luck), Germaine secures a position at city hall answering calls on the Senior Citizens Helpline. But the mayor has something else in mind for Germaine: a secret project involving the troublemakers at the senior citizens’ center and their feud with the neighbouring golf club.

Tiny McAllister never thought she’d get married. Not because she didn’t want to, but because she didn’t think girls from Connecticut married other girls. Yet here she is with Caroline, the love of her life, at their destination wedding on the Bermuda coast. In attendance - their respective families and a few choice friends. The conflict-phobic Tiny hopes for a beautiful weekend with her bride-to-be. But as the weekend unfolds, it starts to feel like there’s a skeleton in every closet of the resort.