Fiction
Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen: The Waverleys have always been a curious family, endowed with peculiar gifts that make them outsiders even in their hometown. Even their garden has a reputation, famous for its feisty apple tree that bears prophetic fruit, and its edible flowers, imbued with special powers. Generations of Waverleys tended this garden. Claire Waverley prepares dishes made with her mystical plants. Her elderly cousin, Evanelle, is known for distributing unexpected gifts. They are the last of the Waverleys - except for Claire's rebellious sister, Sydney, who fled Bascom the moment she could. When Sydney suddenly returns home with a young daughter of her own, Claire's quiet life is turned upside down. Together again, Sydney takes stock of all she left behind, as Claire struggles to heal the wounds of the past. 290 p.
Anxious People by Fredrik Backman: Taken hostage by a failed bank robber while attending an open house, eight anxiety-prone strangers--including a redemption-seeking bank director, two couples who would fix their marriages, and a plucky octogenarian--discover their unexpected common traits. 340 p.
The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister: Eight students gather in Lillian's Restaurant every Monday night for cooking class. It soon becomes clear, however, that each one seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. 272 p.
The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure: A Parisian architect is paid handsomely to devise secret hiding spaces for Jews in his Nazi occupied country but struggles with risking his life for a cause he is ambivalent towards, until a personal failure brings home their suffering. 374 p.
The Aviator’s Wife by Melanie Benjamin: A story inspired by the marriage between Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh traces the romance between a handsome young aviator and a shy ambassador's daughter whose relationship is marked by wild international acclaim. 434 p.
The Pull of the Moon by Elizabeth Berg: Disturbed by the course of her life and marriage, Nan embarks on a backroads odyssey, following the moon and stopping to talk with women, men, her husband through letters, and herself through her diary, and discovering how her life can be reshaped. 208 p.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick: By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new "planned community" in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that "all" doesn't feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson--the eccentric and artsy "new neighbor" from Manhattan--and read Betty Friedan's just-released book, The Feminine Mystique. 372 p.
Self Storage by Gayle Brandeis: A woman who supports her family by selling her yard-sale and self-storage auction acquisitions, Flan Parker embarks on a life-changing odyssey of self-discovery and awareness after bidding on a mysterious box that is empty except for the word "yes." 304 p.
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks: Offered a coveted job to analyze and conserve a priceless Sarajevo Haggadah, Australian rarebook expert Hanna Heath discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the volume's ancient binding that reveal its historically significant origins. 372 p.
Tumbledown Manor by Helen Brown: Leaving her life in New York to start over in a dilapidated Australian manor that once belonged to her great-grandfather, writer Lisa sets out with a team of helpers to refurbish the house and finds herself being transformed along with the manor. 287 p.
The Last Runaway by Tracy Chevalier: Forced to leave England and struggling with illness in the wake of a family tragedy, Quaker Honor Bright is forced to rely on strangers in the harsh landscape of 1850 Ohio and is compelled to join the Underground Railroad network to help runaway slaves escape to freedom. 305 p.
Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker by Jennifer Chiaverini: A fictionalized account of the friendship between Mary Todd Lincoln and her dressmaker Elizabeth Keckley, a former slave. 356 p.
Little Bee by Chris Cleave: A haunting novel about the tenuous friendship that blooms between two strangers--one an illegal Nigerian refugee, the other a recent widow from suburban London. 304 p.
The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh: When Victoria Jones starts working for a florist, she realizes her talent with flowers helps her change the lives of the people who buy her creations. But when she must confront her own painful past, she has to decide how much she is willing to change. 334 p.
The Black Rose: the Magnificent Story of Madam C. J. Walker, America's First Black Female Millionaire by Tananarive Due: A fictional biography chronicles the story of Madame C.J. Walker, who rose from the poverty of her former slave parents to found a marketing empire that made her America's first Black female millionaire. 384 p.
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards: In a tale spanning twenty-five years, a doctor delivers his newborn twins during a snowstorm and, rashly deciding to protect his wife from their baby daughter's affliction with Down Syndrome, turns her over to a nurse, who secretly raises the child. 401 p.
One Second After by William R. Forstchen: One man struggles to save his family and his small North Carolina town after America loses a war, in one second, a war based upon an Electro Magnetic Pulse weapon that will send America back to the Dark Ages. 350 p.
The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman: When she becomes pregnant at age 15, Maggie's parents force her to give up her baby daughter Elodie. Elodie is raised in an orphanage turned psychiatric hospital until her release at age 17. Maggie, now married, reconnects with her first love and begins actively searching for her daughter, whom she has never forgotten. 384 p.
Firefly Lane by Kristin Hannah They were known as the Firefly Lane girls--a single, inseparable unit. The best friends promise to be there for each other forever--and for 30 years, that promise holds strong. Then events and choices make that promise impossible. 479 p.
Five Quarters of the Orange by Joanne Harris: A sensual novel follows a woman as she returns to the French village where she lived as a girl during the German occupation. 336 p.
The Silent Wife by A. S. A. Harrison: Todd and Jodi are in a bad place in their relationship. They've been together for 28 years, and with no children to worry about, there has been little to disrupt their affluent lifestyle. But there has also been little to hold it together, and beneath the surface lie ever-widening cracks. When it becomes clear that their precarious world could disintegrate at any moment, Jodi knows she stands to lose everything. It's only now she will discover just how much she's truly capable of. 326 p
The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood: When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos. 356 p.
People we meet on Vacation by Emily Henry: With one week to win back the best friend she might just be in love with, a travel writer plans the trip of a lifetime. 364 p. Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman Presents a series of interlinking stories that capture the lives and fortunes of the occupants of an old Massachusetts house over the course of two centuries. 238 p.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman: A socially awkward and isolated woman whose regimented life begins to change when she and a coworker, Raymond, help an elderly man who has fallen. This chance encounter leads to an unlikely friendship that pulls Eleanor out of her shell. As their bond develops, Eleanor starts to confront the traumatic past that has shaped her, and with Raymond's support, she begins to heal and find a new way to live. 327 p.
The Other Alcott by Elise Hooper: Seeking to make her own mark on the world, May Alcott escapes her Concord home to study art and embark on a quest to discover who she is as an artist and woman. 408 p.
Loving Frank by Nancy Horan: Historical novel telling the story of the relationship between legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the wife of a couple whose home Wright built in 1904. 377 p.
The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson: Leia finds her life is spiraling out of control. First she discovers she is pregnant from a one night stand, then she receives a phone call that her beloved grandmother is acting erratically. Meanwhile, she finds her stepsister in the middle of a marital crisis. Returning to her grandmother’s small hometown in Alabama to figure out the future, Leia is confronted by the past including a dark family secret. 384 p.
The Orphan’s Tale by Pam Jenoff: Sixteen-year-old Noa, forced to give up her baby fathered by a Nazi soldier, snatches a child from a boxcar containing Jewish infants bound for a concentration camp and takes refuge with a traveling circus, where Astrid, a Jewish aerialist, becomes her mentor. 363 p.
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver: Rural Kentucky native Taylor Greer only wants to get away from her roots and avoid getting pregnant. She succeeds, but inherits a 3-year-old native-American little girl named Turtle along the way, and together, from Oklahoma to Tucson, Arizona, half-Cherokee Taylor and her charge search for a new life in the West. 246 p.
Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline: Close to aging out of the foster care system, Penobscot Indian Molly Ayer takes a community service position helping an elderly woman named Vivian clean out her home and discovers that they are more alike than different as she helps Vivian solve a mystery from her past. 278 p.
How to End a Love Story by Yulin Kuang: Helen Zhang hasn't seen Grant Shepard once in the thirteen years since the tragic accident that bound their lives together forever. Now she's in Los Angeles, where the two have to work together. The result is messy, and electrifying. 372 p.
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons by Lorna Landvik: From the initial formation of The Freesia Court Book Club and over the course of the next thirty years, five women in small-town Minnesota share the events, triumphs, tragedies, hardships, joys, and sorrows of their lives. 417 p.
Garden of Stones by Sophie Littlefield: After bombs rain down on Pearl Harbor, 14-year-old Lucy Takeda and her mother, Miyako, are rounded up--along with thousands of other innocent Japanese-Americans--and taken to the Manzanar prison camp where they endure abuse and harsh living conditions until Miyako makes the ultimate sacrifice. 301 p.
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides: Alicia Berenson is a famous painter married to an in-demand fashion photographer, living in a posh area of London. One evening, her husband Gabriel returns home late. Alicia shoots him five times in the face and then never speaks another word. 368 p.
Circe by Madeline Miller: Follows Circe, the banished witch daughter of Helios, as she hones her powers and interacts with famous mythological beings before a conflict with one of the most vengeful Olympians forces her to choose between the worlds of the gods and mortals. 393 p.
The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar: While cleaning out her grandmother's New York brownstone, Emsley Wilson finds a diary that belonged to Johanna Bonger, Vincent van Gogh's sister-in-law, who inherited van Gogh's paintings. The paintings were worthless, Johanna was a 28 year old widow with a baby living in Paris, and she barely spoke the language. Yet she introduced van Gogh's legacy to the world. Emsley needs the inspiration. With her business failing, an unexpected love turning up in her life, and family secrets unraveling, can she find answers in the past? 399 p.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris: This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity. 262 p.
The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger: Passionately in love, Clare and Henry vow to hold onto each other and their marriage as they struggle with the effects of Chrono-Displacement Disorder, a condition that casts Henry involuntarily into the world of time travel. 546 p.
The Banned Books Club by Brenda Novak: Despite their strained relationship, when Gia Rossi’s sister, Margot, begs her to come home to Wakefield, Iowa, to help with their ailing mother, Gia knows she has no choice. After her rebellious and at-times-tumultuous teen years, Gia left town with little reason to look back. But she knows Margot’s borne the brunt of their mother’s care and now it’s Gia’s turn to help, even if it means opening old wounds. 348 p.
There, There by Tommy Orange: Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve characters from Native communities: all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. 292 p.
The Curious Charms of Arthur Pepper by Phaedra Patrick Arthur: Pepper has lost his beloved wife, Miriam, and his purpose in life. When Arthur discovers a charm bracelet that belonged to his wife, it sets him on a series of adventures to find out what her life was like before he met her. 307 p. Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters: Ruthie disappears from a blueberry field in Maine in 1962. The story is told through two alternating perspectives: Ruthie's brother, Joe, who is haunted by the event for decades, and a young girl named Norma who lives in Maine and has strange, memory-like dreams. The narrative explores the lasting trauma, grief, and societal prejudice the family faces, while a central mystery unfolds as Joe and Norma's lives are revealed to be deeply intertwined. 307 p.
The Maid by Nita Prose: A charmingly eccentric hotel maid discovers a guest murdered in his bed, turning her once orderly world upside down--and inspiring a motley crew of unexpected allies to band together to solve the mystery. 304 p.
The Alice Network by Kate Quinn: When pregnant American student Charlie St. Clair is banished to Europe by her family to have her baby, she takes the opportunity to head for London to find her missing French cousin and teams up with Eve, a former spy from the Alice Network, to solve the mystery. 503 p.
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn: They've spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can't just retire - it's kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller. 353 p.
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid A story about race and privilege is centered around a young black babysitter, her wellintentioned employer and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both. 310 p.
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid: Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the
job, no one in the journalism community is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? 389 p.
The Social Graces by Renee Rosen: A peek behind the curtain at one of the most remarkable feuds in history: Mrs. Vanderbilt and Mrs. Astor's notorious battle for control of New York society during the Gilded Age. 382 p.
West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge: An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America. 356 p.
Charlotte Illes is not a Detective by Katie Siegel: A former child detective still living with her mom, searching for a job and going on endless first dates is pulled back into sleuthing for one more case and discovers that mystery-solving is much more complicated as an adult. 372 p.
The Rosie Project by Graeme C. Simsion: A socially awkward genetics professor who has never been on a second date sets out to find the perfect wife, but instead finds Rosie Jarman, a fiercely independent barmaid who is on a quest to find her biological father. 295 p.
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein: Enzo, a philosophical dog eager to be reincarnated as a human, serves as a faithful companion to race-car driver Denny Swift, as he navigates both his racing career, and the many roadbumps in his family life. 336 p.
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout: A sequel to Olive Kitteridge finds Olive struggling to understand herself while bonding with a teen suffering from loss, a woman who gives birth unexpectedly, a nurse harboring a longtime crush and a lawyer who resists an unwanted inheritance. 301 p.
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto: When she discovers a dead man in the middle of her teashop, Vera Wong, a Chinese mother with time on her hands, calls the police but not before swiping the flash drive from the body, setting a trap for the killer that becomes complicated by unexpected friendships with her customers. 338 p.
The Keeper of Stars by Buck Turner: It's 1962 when Tennessee-native Jack Bennett meets out-of-towner Ellie Spencer. Twelve years later, Dr. Elizabeth Spencer, now a renowned professor of astronomy, receives a mysterious package. Inside is a novel about a young man and woman who meet at the water's edge and fall madly in love over one magical summer. As she immerses herself in the pages, Ellie realizes this is no ordinary story--it's
their story. And hidden among the tales of star-gazing and stolen kisses is a detail that has her questioning everything.
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler: Eighty-five-year-old Pearl Tull recalls the desertion of her husband and her attempts to raise three children, who must come to terms with themselves and their father after their mother's death. 336 p.
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar: Captures the delicate balance of class and gender in contemporary India as witnessed through the lives of two women—Sera Dubash, an upper middle-class housewife, and Bhima, an illiterate domestic hardened by a life of loss and despair. 321 p.
The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton: An electrifying novel about the meteoric rise of an iconic interracial rock duo in the 1970s, their sensational breakup, and the dark secrets unearthed when they try to reunite decades later for one last tour. 360 p.
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware: Reluctantly accepting an old friend's invitation to spend a weekend in the English countryside, reclusive writer Leonora awakens in a hospital badly injured, unable to recall what happened and confronting a growing certainty that someone involved has died. 308 p.
Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir: A fictional portrait of Lady Jane Grey, the great-niece of Henry VIII, follows her turbulent life against the backdrop of Tudor power politics and religious upheaval, from her youth, to her nineday reign as Queen of England, to its tragic aftermath. 409 p.
All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker: Follows the intertwined lives of two childhood friends, Patch and Saint, over two decades. The story begins when a thirteen-year-old Patch is kidnapped after saving a wealthy family's daughter from a serial killer in 1975. The book is a mystery and love story about Patch's life in captivity, Saint's lifelong quest to find him, and their eventual search for the truth behind the events that destroyed their youth. 595 p.
The Lost and Found Bookshop by Susan Wiggs: Inheriting her mother's San Francisco bookshop in the wake of a tragedy, Natalie bonds with her ailing grandfather and hires a contractor to perform repairs before unexpected discoveries connect her to the community and family secrets. 355 p.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin: A modern love story about two childhood friends, Sam, raised by an actress mother in LA's Koreatown, and Sadie, from the wealthy Jewish enclave of Beverly Hills, who reunite as adults to create video games, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. 397 p.
Biography & Memoirs
The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom: A memoir describing the author’s upbringing in a New Orleans East shotgun house as the unruly 13th child of a widowed mother, tracing a century of family history and the impact of class, race and Hurricane Katrina on her sense of identity. 376 p.
Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman: Follows the author's incarceration for drug trafficking, during which she gained a unique perspective on the criminal justice system and met a varied community of women living under exceptional circumstances. 327 p.
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah: One of the comedy world's fastest-rising stars and host of The Daily Show tells his wild coming of age story during the twilight of apartheid in South Africa and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. 288 p.
Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner: An exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance; an unflinching, powerful memoir about growing up Korean-American, losing a mother, and forging your own identity. 239 p.
Nonfiction
Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain New York chef Tony Bourdain gives away secrets of the trade in his wickedly funny, inspiring memoir and exposé. 302 p.
The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Olympics by Daniel James Brown: The dramatic story of the American rowing team that stunned the world at Hitler's 1936 Berlin Olympics, drawn from the team's own journals, photos, and memories of a once-in-a-lifetime shared dream. 404 p.
The Girls of Atomic City by Denise Kiernan: Looks at the valuable contributions made by the thousands of women who worked at a secret uranium-enriching facility in Oak Ridge, Tennessee during World War II. 371 p.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly: The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America’s greatest achievements in space. 349 p.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot: Weaves together the story of Henrietta Lacks--a woman whose cells have been unwittingly used for scientific research since the 1950s--with the birth of bioethics, and the dark history of experimentation on African Americans. 381 p.
