women's fiction

The Waverley family, Claire and Sydney, both have the gift of helpful magic. They live in the charming town of Bascom, North Carolina where it’s autumn and as temperatures fall, everyone and everything grows restless and problems flourish.

Claire runs Waverley’s Candies out of her kitchen, making handcrafted confections. Business is so good she can’t keep up with demand on her own. When someone offers to buy the business, Claire is stuck in a quandary.

Sydney owns a successful hair salon and knows what hairstyle will look best on anyone. But she’s reluctant to fire a new hire who isn’t

Welcome to Blessings, Georgia!

If you head over to The Curl Up and Dye, Ruby, Vest, and Vera will freshen up your 'do while you catch up on the latest gossip. Did you hear about LilyAnn Bronte? It looks like she's ready to move on after the loss of her fiance. Is it possible the newcomer to town, T.J. Lachlan has sparked her interest? Or, has she finally noticed the boy next door, Mike Dalton?

The Curl Up & Dye is a Southern romance. While generally a sweet romance about a woman rediscovering herself, there are a few instances of violence that are a little unexpected. If you enjoy your time

Pamela Morsi used to write wonderful Americana romances in the 90s, and I’m glad to see that her humor and poignant understanding of human behavior is still very much in evidence with her shift to contemporaries. The Bikini Car Wash feels a lot like her older historicals because of the small town setting and the ensemble cast. There have never been a ton of authors that wrote good Americana or Frontier Western romances, but Morsi is one of the best because of the way she portrays small town life with a realistic and sympathetic hand. Her characters are always drawn with lots of affectionate

Vampires in Saint Louis? Yes, and they need help. Guilty Pleasures is the first of the Laurell K. Hamilton’s wildly popular Vampire Hunter stories. Anita Blake is a necromancer, with an affinity for the dead in all their guises, but that doesn’t mean she wants to work for them. When the Master Vampire of Saint Louis sends sexy Jean Paul to procure Anita’s help her main response is, “I don’t date vampires. I kill them.”

I thoroughly enjoyed meeting Anita Blake. In this narrative told entirely from her point of view, Anita comes across as a sharp, strong woman with a biting sense of humor and a

Camille Claudel is a woman most women cannot stand – she’s arrogant, loud-mouthed and pretentious. She always has an opinion, the right one, and she’s never afraid to share it. If you think these characteristics annoying and rude in today’s society, imagine its late 19th century Paris where men rule society and women are just prizes on their arms. Predictably, Claudel doesn’t win friends in Heather Webb’s Rodin’s Lover, a fictionalized account of the real-life affair of Claudel and Auguste Rodin.

Claudel is born into a well-off but working-class family who spend their summers in Villeneuve

Before the success of the young adult novels Eleanor and Park and Fangirl, Rainbow Rowell debuted with the adult fiction novel Attachments.

Set at the end of 1999 with Y2K pending, Attachments tells the story of three newspaper employees, Lincoln, Jennifer and Beth. Lincoln is a night systems security officer, whose main duty is to monitor employee emails for potentially inappropriate or prurient activity. Jennifer and Beth are best friends whose emails get flagged to Lincoln on a regular basis. Amused by their snarky and clever non-work related conversations, Lincoln decides not to report their staff email abuse, and instead continues to read their personal email exchanges.

Die Again is the 11th title in the Rizzoli and Isles series by Tess Gerritsen. This mystery features a dual story line that takes place in Africa and in Boston, Massachusetts. The mysteries are not simultaneous in their execution, although they are presented to the reader in alternating segments. Eventually, of course, the mystery of what occurred in Africa ties into and becomes part of the Boston murder. But figuring that out and tying them together proves to be tricky. 

The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman is a difficult yet rewarding read—if you can stick with it. The novel tells the story of four strong-willed and resourceful women living in Masada, a mountain plateau in the Judean desert, in 70 C.E. The book is divided into four chapters with each chapter dedicated to a first-person narrative from one of our four leading females. The connecting detail of this quartet is that each woman is a dovekeeper, responsible for tending to and caring for the dove cote which supplies much needed manure for growing crops in the desert.

The story opens with Yael, the

Still Alice is a very moving book that captures the heartbreak and suffering of someone diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's disease. We often hear about older people dealing with this dreaded disease but it also affects a surprising number of younger people. Genova captures the great loss felt by a young Harvard professor and mother as she faces the detrimental impacts of the disease. Alice’s story is powerfully written, engaging, and fast paced, although it takes place over two years. It's very emotional and I identified with all the characters on some level. Recommended for book club

The Kettle triplets Lyn, Cat and Gemma are celebrating their 33rd birthday as they traditionally do, with three cakes and champagne and just the three of them.  The triplets create a stir everywhere they go and this night is no different.  However, what they don't realize is that this birthday is bringing to a head many years of secrets, misunderstandings, and misguided intentions. While they may be triplets, the girls are all individuals with very different personalities and roles they play in the family.  With many flashbacks to the past and told from each of the triplet's viewpoints we see

In The Book of Heaven, Patricia Storace creates the mythology of an alternate universe, but one the reader recognizes, as if through a veil, from its allusions to Greek legends and Old Testament stories. It is different from anything I’ve read and therefore hard to describe. Although the sections hinge on central themes, such as of the oppression of women and the nature of God and of love, they can be read in isolation. Each section presents the tale of a different woman, eulogized in the stars themselves in this world Storace creates. Her writing is contemplative; reading it is a meditation

Growing up, Vinnie Warren Bump longed to see the world, but her parents were concerned that the world would be cruel to Vinnie who was only 32 inches tall. Determined to make a name for herself, Vinnie signed a contract with Colonel Wood who promised to make her a singing sensation. Instead, Vinnie was exhibited as one of his “oddities” on a shabby showboat on the Mississippi River. Vinnie returned home humiliated. She reached out to P. T. Barnum who agreed to hire her to sing at his American Museum. Thus began a long, mutually respectful friendship. Barnum introduced Vinnie to General Tom

The White Princess is the fifth of Philippa Gregory's Cousins' War series, this one focusing on Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville.  Henry Tudor defeated Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field, ending the War of the Roses, to become Henry VII.  To unite the York and Lancastrian families, Princess Elizabeth was forced to marry Henry VII, whom she believed to be the murderer of her love, Richard III.  Henry VII was suspicious of everyone and everything around him, making one wonder how anyone could have had a very satisfactory life. 

Ms. Gregory has created fear and

Growing up on one of the South Carolina outerbanks islands, Eleanor was a wild child who knew no fear and who loved to play the piano.  Her sister was the beauty queen.  Now in her 30's, Eleanor lives with her sister, brother-in-law and mother in a small house on the mainland.  Eleanor works in an office and moonlights as a piano player in a bar to help make ends meet.  When Eleanor is offered extra work by her boss to be a companion to his elderly aunt that lives on the island she grew up on Eleanor snaps up the opportunity not only to make more money but to get out of the house and away from

In The Husband's Secret the lives of three Australian women are intertwined in ways they would never have thought possible. For years, the tragedy of a teenage daughter’s death has haunted one of the women and unknowingly affected another. The third woman, faced with a marital earthquake, takes her young son to her hometown of Sydney. There, the three women interact, bringing the past into the present and altering all their lives forever.

Moriarty brings humor and wit to the drama and trauma these middle-aged and elderly women are living through. Fans of Maeve Binchy will likely enjoy the

Victoria Jones has just aged out of the foster care system, and her case worker is transporting her to a transitional home. In alternating chapters, the reader watches Victoria make her way in the world while learning about her past. Whether looking forward or back, her past, present, and future are riveting.

Like those chapters, I alternately wanted to shake the adult Victoria by the shoulders, and hold little Victoria in my lap. Through her gift with flowers, Victoria meets an array of insightful, compassionate, and loving people. Through the ghosts of her past, she pushes them away.

Victo

This short novel takes place over the course of one night and opens with a death.  Nina is calling her husband, Phillip, for dinner and when he doesn’t answer, she immediately senses what has happened.  She decides to keep his body overnight - to spend a final night with her husband of 42 years.  She holds an all-night vigil by his side and reminisces about their life together.  As she is trying to sort her emotions, the memories of their life together return like flashbacks. The purposefully fragmented and non-linear writing style skips back and forth between different decades and the many

I recall, as a fairly sheltered college student, traveling to New York City for the wedding of a distant relative. It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be neighborhoods in this crowded place of constant motion. When I supposed that it must get lonely living where you would never serendipitously bump into someone you knew, a cousin tried to set me straight by explaining that people frequent the same places and thus you would often encounter the same people. I don’t think I truly grasped what he was saying until reading The New Yorkers.

The inhabitants of a New York neighborhood, all with

I recall, as a fairly sheltered college student, traveling to New York City for the wedding of a distant relative. It hadn’t occurred to me that there could be neighborhoods in this crowded place of constant motion. When I supposed that it must get lonely living where you would never serendipitously bump into someone you knew, a cousin tried to set me straight by explaining that people frequent the same places and thus you would often encounter the same people. I don’t think I truly grasped what he was saying until reading The New Yorkers.

The inhabitants of a New York neighborhood, all with

Are you looking for a good read this holiday season? The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart is my new favorite. Frankie follows in her father's footsteps by attending the elite Alabaster boarding school. Her freshman year was relatively uneventful. With the help of her older sister she has managed to make a good group of friends that are slightly nerdy but still somewhat popular. At the begining of her Sophomore year Frankie is pining once more for the handsome Mathew Livingston. When he finally asks her out Frankie is swept up with the feeling of being popular. She