Women Friendship Fiction

When Katy’s mother dies, she is left reeling. Carol wasn’t just Katy’s mom, but her best friend and first phone call. She had all the answers and now, when Katy needs her the most, she is gone. To make matters worse, their planned mother-daughter trip of a lifetime looms: to Positano, the magical town where Carol spent the summer right before she met Katy’s father. Katy has been waiting years for Carol to take her, and now she is faced with embarking on the adventure alone.

Eudora Honeysett is done with this noisy, moronic world - all of it. She has witnessed the indignities and suffering of old age and has lived a full life. At 85, she isn’t going to leave things to chance. Her end will be on her terms. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland, a plan is set in motion. Then she meets 10-year-old Rose Trewidney, a whirling, pint-sized rainbow of sparkling cheer. All Eudora wants is to be left alone to set her affairs in order.

With rumors of infidelity straining Greg and Tess MacAvoy's marriage, the couple head out on their sailboat one early summer day to celebrate their wedding anniversary, hoping the roughest waters are behind them. But in an accident off Nantucket, they mysteriously drown, leaving behind two small children as well as three couples who have long been their closest friends. Tragedy brings to the surface long-simmering conflicts and emotions, and the MacAvoys' six grieving friends find themselves unprepared for the revelation of secret upon secret.

At night, in Huda's fragrant garden, a breeze sweeps in from the desert encircling Baghdad, rustling the leaves of her apricot trees and carrying warning of visitors at her gate. Huda, a secretary at the Australian embassy, lives in fear of the Mukhabarat - the secret police who watch and listen for any scrap of information that can be used against America and its allies. They have ordered her to befriend Ally Wilson, the deputy ambassador's wife. Huda has no wish to be an informant, but fears for her teenage son, who may be forced to join a deadly militia.

Australia, 1906: Orphan Jane Piper is nine years old when philanthropist siblings Michael and Elizabeth Quinn take her into their home to further her schooling. The Quinns are no strangers to hardship. Having arrived in Australia as penniless immigrants, they now care for others as lost as they once were. Despite Jane’s mysterious past, her remarkable aptitude for mathematics takes her far over the next seven years, and her relationship with Elizabeth and Michael flourishes as she plays an increasingly prominent part in their business.

A moving novel on the power of friendship in our darkest times, from internationally renowned writer and speaker Elif Shafak. In the pulsating moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating, but her brain is still active - for 10 minutes 38 seconds. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life - and the lives of others, outcasts like her.

Since the age of 12, McKenzie Arnold has spent every summer at Albany Beach, Delaware, with her best friends, Aurora, Janine, and Lilly. The seaside house teems with 30 years of memories - some wonderful, others painful - and secrets never divulged beyond its walls. This summer may be the last they spend together, as Janine contemplates selling her family cottage.

Don and Rosie are back in Melbourne after a decade in New York, and they're about to face their most important project. Their son, Hudson, is having trouble at school: His teachers say he isn't fitting in with the other kids. Meanwhile, Rosie is battling Judas at work, and Don is in hot water after the Genetics Lecture Outrage. The life-contentment graph, recently at its highest point, is curving downwards.

Harriet Hatley is the most in-demand wedding photographer in town, but she doesn’t believe in romance, loathes the idea of marriage, and thinks chocolate fountains are an abomination. Which is why, when her long-time partner proposes, she panics. Suddenly Harriet is single… and living down the hall from her ex. She needs a new apartment, like, yesterday.

Tabitha Walker is a black woman with a plan to "have it all." At 33 years old, the checklist for the life of her dreams is well underway. Education? Check. Good job? Check. Down payment for a nice house? Check. Dating marriage material? Check, check, and check. With a coveted position as a local news reporter, a "paper-perfect" boyfriend, and even a standing Saturday morning appointment with a reliable hairstylist, everything seems to be falling into place. Then Tabby receives an unexpected diagnosis, jeopardizing the keystone she took for granted: having children.

Set in a Lower East Side tenement in the early days of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Fourteen Days is an irresistibly propulsive collaborative novel from the Authors Guild, with an unusual twist: each character in this diverse, eccentric cast of New York neighbors has been secretly written by a different, major literary voice—from Margaret Atwood and John Grisham to Tommy Orange and Celeste Ng.

It’s the hottest day of the 1976 heatwave and there’s not a breath of fresh air in the labour ward at Lincoln County Hospital. Michelle is having her fourth child, a girl, while beloved husband Dean is sipping a cold pint in the pub. Their little house is already bursting at the seams, but Michelle is sure they’ll find a way to stretch their budget and continue life as a blissfully chaotic happy family. They name their new baby Donna.

Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend, Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn't (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order…until now. Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. One small rewind at a time, Cassie attempts to fix the life she accidentally obliterated, but soon she'll discover she's trying to fix all the wrong things.

Olivia Jones, hard-working and accomplished, has, against the odds, blazed an enviable career path in the finance world. But behind the veneer of her success, she is mourning several devastating losses and betrayals. Untethered from her life in New York City, Olivia moves to a summer home in The Hamptons. Here, Olivia finds a close-knit community of African American elites who escape New York City for the beautiful beaches of the Hamptons. Since the 1930s, very few have known about this Historically Black Beachfront Community, and the residents like it that way.

The women of Sweethaven are enjoying an Indian summer when their old friend - the missing member of their scrapbook circle - arrives back home. Meghan Rhodes has moved on with her life, leaving Sweethaven and its painful memories in the past. But when her ex files for custody of their twins, she takes the first flight back to the beach town full of haunting memories. Meghan wants to make things right with her ex-husband, her children, and the friends she'd convinced herself she no longer needed. But is she too late?

Paris, 1944: The war is nearly over, but for members of the Resistance in occupied France, it is more dangerous than ever before. Twenty-five-year-old Gabby Foucher loathes the Nazis, though as the concierge of 10 rue Royale, she does her best to avoid conflict - unlike her bolder sister Yvette, who finds trouble at every turn.

Bride-to-be Lulu is about to marry Shanghai’s most eligible bachelor. She just has one secret: she isn't in love and is only marrying him under pressure to fix her family’s financial issues. But for Lulu and her two best friends, her upcoming nuptials may offer a different opportunity entirely…

Eve, Justin, Susie, and Ed have been friends since they were teenagers. Now in their thirties, the four are as close as ever, Thursday night bar trivia is sacred, and Eve is still secretly in love with Ed. Maybe she should have moved on by now, but she can’t stop thinking about what could have been. And she knows Ed still thinks about it, too. But then, in an instant, their lives are changed forever.

Maeve Binchy's best-selling novels not only tell wonderful stories, they also give an insight into how Ireland has changed over the decades but how people remain the same: they still fall in love, sometimes unsuitably; they still have hopes and dreams; they have deep, long-standing friendships, and some that fall apart. From her earliest writing to her most recent, Maeve's work has included wonderfully nostalgic pieces and also sharp, often witty writing which is insightful and topical.

Mackenzie Dienes seems to have it all — a beautiful home, close friends and a successful career as an elite winemaker with the family winery. There’s just one problem — it’s not her family, it’s her husband’s. In fact, everything in her life is tied to him — his mother is the closest thing to a mom that she’s ever had, their home is on the family compound, his sister is her best friend. So when she and her husband admit their marriage is over, her pain goes beyond heartbreak. She’s on the brink of losing everything.