Opening up a vintage clothing shop in Madison has always been Violet’s dream, but making it a success is entirely different challenge. Teenager April is trying to recover from a broken engagement and the looming birth of her child. Amithi struggles with the betrayal of her husband and tension with her tradition-averse daughter. These different women connect over vintage cloth and learn to face down the upheavals of their lives to emerge stronger together.
The first in Italian author Ferrante’s four-book series, My Brilliant Friend introduces Lila and Elena, two girls growing up in the slums of 1950s Naples. Bookish and quiet, Elena contrasts with her brash best friend Lila, whose path in life seems destined for marriage and motherhood in spite of her dreams of becoming a writer. An acclaimed study of women’s friendship and the changing aspects of their lives, Ferrante masterfully captures the strengths and struggles of two extraordinary women.
Rachel, whose life has spiraled into depression and alcoholism, becomes intrigued by a couple she dubs Jess and Jason who she spots from her commuter train every day. One day as she is passing their home, she sees Jess kissing a man who is not her husband. Shortly after, Jess disappears entirely. Told from the intersecting perspectives of Rachel, Jess and Anna, Jess’s neighbor, an intriguing thriller unfolds. But who is telling the truth?
Beryl Markham has grown up in the wilds of 1920s Kenya, raised by her British father and members of the local tribes. Her unlikely upbringing gives her a boldness that helps her become a pioneering aviator and author, as well as a deep appreciation for the beautiful and wild spirit of Africa. But affairs of the heart are a different matter, challenging even a woman as independent and strong as Markham.
Young Lucy Mercer Rutherford is hired as the private secretary for Eleanor Roosevelt but soon falls deeply in love with Eleanor’s ambitious and charismatic husband Franklin. When the affair is discovered by Eleanor and threatens Franklin’s presidential chances, Franklin ends it with Lucy, vowing to never betray Eleanor’s trust again. But the connection is strong between the two, and when Franklin is in declining health, the two meet again. This novel, told from Lucy’s perspective, is based on historical events and sources.
In this National Book Award-nominated novel, a rag-tag group of traveling Shakespearean actors struggle to survive in a landscape that has been decimated by a global pandemic that wipes out 99% of the population. In flashbacks, members of the group recall their lives during the pandemic and what it took for them to survive, with some surprising connections.
On a wet day in 1986, businesswoman Laura Schroff passed Maurice, an 11-year-boy panhandling for spare change. She walked on, but something made her stop and go back. That day, recounted in this true story, marked the beginning of a life-changing friendship that enriched both Schroff and Maurice, and underscores how one moment of kindness can have lasting benefits.
In this unconventional and funny novel, a teenage girl assembles a mixed collection of documents to try to solve the disappearance of her mother, a former award-winning architect who found herself increasingly at odds with her life in Seattle.
An earlier written sequel of To Kill a Mockingbird set in the 1950s, Go Set a Watchman casts the beloved characters of Scout and Atticus in a new light, and poses the question of how far we have really come in the battle against discrimination.
Sarah Grimke, a well-to-do daughter of antebellum Charleston receives a ten-year old slave girl, Hetty ‘Handful’ Grimke, on her eleventh birthday. Both women know they are meant to do more in the wider world, and yearn to escape the respective paths of life they were born to. Over the course of their thirty-five year relationship, their destinies overlap and intertwine through slavery, freedom and the complexities of love, against the backdrop of the abolition and early women’s movements.
