Showing titles in Women's Fiction

In 1963, Annie Ernaux, 23 and unattached, realizes she is pregnant. Shame arises in her like a plague: Understanding that her pregnancy will mark her and her family as social failures, she knows she cannot keep the child. In a France where abortion was illegal, she attempted, in vain, to self-administer the abortion with a knitting needle. Fearful and desperate, she finally located an abortionist and ended up in a hospital emergency ward where she nearly died. In Happening, Ernaux sifts through her memories and her journal entries dating from those days.

Life is about to blossom for Lili.... In the three years since her husband died in a car accident, Lili has just about managed to resume her day-to-day life as a single mother and successful illustrator. She can now get her two girls to school, show up to work and watch TV like a pro. But there's still the small problem of the aching loss she feels inside. When she's commissioned to illustrate a series of horticultural books, and signs up to a weekly gardening class, finally her life starts to bloom again.

At 18, Alexandra Wickham is presented to King George V and Queen Mary in an exquisite white lace and satin dress her mother has ordered from Paris. With her delicate blond looks, she is a stunning beauty who seems destined for a privileged life. But fate, a world war, and her own quietly rebellious personality lead her down a different path. By 1939, Europe is on fire and England is at war. From her home in idyllic Hampshire, Alex makes her way to London as a volunteer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. But she has skills that draw the attention of another branch of the service.

Isma is free. After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London - or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream: to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew. Then Eamonn enters the sisters' lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs.

Skye Starling is overjoyed when her boyfriend, Burke Michaels, proposes after a whirlwind courtship. Though Skye seems to have the world at her fingertips - she’s smart, beautiful, and from a well-off family - she’s also battled crippling OCD ever since her mother’s death when she was 11, and her romantic relationships have suffered as a result.

From 1960s Italy to present-day Ireland, Ripeness is the story of a family secret that rips a teenage girl's world apart, only for her to discover its true meaning decades later. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater, Sarah Moss. 'Moss makes every moment count' - The Sunday...

Brought to you by Penguin. Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2024. Carmel had been alone all her life. She had been alone since she was twelve years old. The baby knew all this. They looked at each other; one life into another life, and the baby knew exactly how alone her mother had...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A READ WITH JENNA TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice A Washington Post 10 Books to Read in March A Marie Claire Best Women’s Fiction of 2019 A Washington Book Review Difficult-To-Put-Down Novel A Refinery 29 Best...

“Funny, touching and infused with wonder, as all love stories should be.”—San Francisco Examiner The iconic tale of love and loss that has touched the hearts of millions, Love Story has become one of the most adored novels of our time. It has sold more than twenty-one million copies...

A brand new Nikki Galena mystery where echoes from the past haunt the twistiest, most complex investigation of her career.

"A sparkling travelogue and a poignant journey of self-discovery all in one. . . . Alka Joshi is simply the best!" —Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Alice Network and The Rose Code From the New York Times bestselling author of The Henna Artist, this sweeping novel of...

Brought to you by Penguin. It is 1950. In a devastating moment of clarity, Margery Benson abandons her dead-end job and advertises for an assistant to accompany her on an expedition. She is going to travel to the other side of the world to search for a beetle that may or may not exist. Enid...

Girlie, a thirty-something Filipinx-American, works a day job at a social-media moderation centre, flagging and removing the very worst that makes it on to the internet. She's good at it, too—dispassionate, unflinching, maybe because she learned by necessity to cauterise all her emotions when she was still a kid—so it's no surprise to anyone when the social-media company for which she works offers her a big pay rise and an office to start moderating its new venture: virtual-reality theme parks, stunning simulations of civilizations long-since dead.

Brought to you by Penguin. Razor-sharp, glittering tales exploring marriage, fame and female friendship, from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy and American Wife. In this compulsive collection of twelve witty stories, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as...

I left my brothers in the marines to start a family. I left my ex-wife when that family drove her to drink and drugs. Now all I have left is my son - and he's all I care about. I can't afford to make another mistake. And the girl who moved in next door? Mistake written all over her. But I can't take my damn eyes off her. As she tries to start a new life away from her abusive ex, she has her own reasons to stay away. But we can't help it. We're drawn to each other. And when she tells me how much she wants a baby...I make every mistake in the book. Because I want a family again. 

It is the 1970s in LA, and Jacaranda Leven - child of sun and surf - is swept into the dazzling cultural milieu of the beautiful people. Floating on a cloud of drink, drugs and men, she finds herself adrift before her talent for writing, and a determined literary agent, set her on a course for New York and a new life. Sex & Rage is a recently rediscovered classic from author Eve Babitz, herself a muse to many an artist, writer and musician in the 1970s.

From the bestselling author of The Direction of the Wind and The Taste of Ginger comes an immersive, fun and heartfelt novel about a disgraced Indian American divorcée who spends a summer in Italy, reconnecting with her passion for cooking and reckoning with cultural expectations to make the...

Brought to you by Penguin. A swoony small-town romance that will set your heart racing. The scowl should've been my first sign to stay away from Anson Hunt. The sexy smirk and the fact that he's my brother's best friend? Reasons two and three. Anson is my opposite in every way: grumpy, rude, and...

Sometimes when he didn't know he was being watched, Meggie would look at him and try desperately to imprint his face upon her brain's core. And he would turn to find her watching him, a look in his eyes of haunted grief, a doomed look. She understood the implicit message, or thought she did; he must go, back to the Church and his duties. Never again with the same spirit, perhaps, but more able to serve. For only those who have slipped and fallen know the vicissitudes of the way.

Thirty-four-year-old Ruby Bridge is a not-too-successful comedienne who uses her mother, a nationally-syndicated "moral and spiritual counselor" as the main fodder for her cynical, rather bitter humor. Her mother Nora, long divorced from Ruby's father, is a woman whose past is just about to catch up with her - in the form of blackmail by a former lover.