These Are the 60 Best Books of 2023—According to Real Simple Editors
Here are the page-turners we can't seem to put down.
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From thrillers to romance novels to historical fiction to memoirs, here are the best books of 2023, all vetted by Real Simple editors. Every month, we'll add more of our favorite page-turners we can't seem to put down. These are the books to add to your reading list this year.
Related: 34 Great Books to Suit Any Mood or Interest
The Sweet Spot
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
The Greenwich Village brownstone where Lauren has moved with her young family is crumbling and cluttered, but it’s nothing compared to the drama that’s about to explode around her. Through a series of chaotic (and, in author Amy Poeppel’s hands, absolutely hilarious) circumstances, she ends up with a baby on her doorstep, and bands together with two other women to care for it. The Sweet Spot is a celebration of the ways we find community when we need it most.
Sam
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
National Book Award finalist Allegra Goodman’s Sam details the life of a girl grappling with challenging family circumstances and poverty in New England. Organized in short, vignette-style chapters, the novel starts when Sam is 7 and moves through her teen years, deftly examining the angst that comes with growing up female in modern-day America.
River Sing Me Home
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Eleanor Shearer’s River Sing Me Home opens in Barbados in 1834, when a plantation owner announces emancipation via the Slavery Abolition Act. However, by law, his slaves must continue to work for him as unpaid “apprentices,” making their so-called freedom irrelevant. But Rachel can’t wait any longer: She’s had five children taken from her and sold away. Her tireless journey to find them is a testament to how hard a mother will fight for her kids.
Age of Vice
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Set in India, Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor features Ajay, a servant striving to pull his family out of destitution; Sunny, a hard-partying heir to a corrupt fortune; and Neda, the earnest journalist who slips into a relationship that may threaten her life. As their worlds collide, a crime story, a romance, a family saga, and a societal study emerge—making for a truly unputdownable novel.
Maame
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Maddie, the main character in Maame by Jessica George, feels the weight of the world on her shoulders. The 20-something Londoner is caring for her ailing father while her self-absorbed mother spends most of her time in Ghana. At work, Maddie is dealing with a boss who isn’t open to her ideas, and her social life—not to mention her love life—is nonexistent. When she finally gets to live a little, what unfolds is a funny, poignant, and relatable tale about self-discovery.
Go as a River
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Shelley Read’s debut novel centers on Victoria Nash, a tough-as-nails teenager who runs the household on her family’s peach farm in 1940s Colorado. She instantly connects with a young Native man passing through town, but when their relationship is brutally cut short, she’s forced to escape to a small shack in the mountains. With gorgeous descriptions of the great outdoors, an illicit love story, and an unforgettable protagonist, Go as a River offers something for everyone.
Stash: My Life in Hiding
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
In the early 2000s, Laura Cathcart Robbins was a budding author, had two young kids, and was married to one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. She was also severely addicted to pills. When she decided to get sober, she couldn’t find any “quit lit” books that reflected her experience as a Black woman. Her remarkably candid memoir, Stash: My Life in Hiding, fills that void, revealing how her race, self-image, and privilege influenced her addiction and eventual triumph over it.
I Have Some Questions for You
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
In I Have Some Questions for You, the new novel by Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist Rebecca Makkai, Bodie Kane is an accomplished film professor and podcaster who returns to her New England boarding school after 20-plus years to teach a two-week class. Once on campus, she can’t stop thinking about the 1995 murder of a former classmate. Delving into the case and the (perhaps wrongful) conviction of the school’s athletic trainer, she wonders if she actually knows something that could help solve the mystery.
Pineapple Street
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
When Sasha, a middle class Rhode Islander, marries Cord Stockton, the only son of old money New Yorkers, they move into the Brooklyn Heights brownstone where he was raised. She quickly discovers she can’t change anything: not the furniture, not the ugly drapes, and—most of all—not her in-laws, who are contending with plenty of drama of their own. (Every single character bursts off the page. Seriously.) Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson is just the right witty, entertaining story to usher in spring.
The House of Eve
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
The House of Eve by Sadeqa Johnson, set in the 1950s, features two women whose lives are on vastly different trajectories. Eleanor is determined to succeed at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she’s fallen for a member of one of the city’s elite Black families. Ruby is a brilliant 15-year-old in Philadelphia, desperate to escape her upbringing and become the first in her family to go to college. As both women navigate tough choices and sacrifices, their paths unexpectedly cross, making for a riveting and relatable read.
The Do-Over
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Lily Lee is about to start her dream job when an HR background check reveals that because of a glitch with a pass/fail class, she didn’t actually earn her undergrad degree a decade earlier. Forced to go back and get her missing credits, she discovers that her new TA is her old college boyfriend, Jake Cho. Suzanne Park’s The Do-Over is a delight—hilarious and smart, with insightful commentary about second chances, self-doubt, and what it really means to have a successful life.
Homecoming
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Jess is an unemployed journalist who returns to Sydney from London to care for her ailing grandmother. There, she finds an old book detailing the police investigation into a horrifying 1959 murder that was never resolved. As the storyline in Kate Morton’s Homecoming shifts between past and present, Jess learns her own family might be involved in the notorious case. Her search for answers results in a captivating mystery—exactly the kind of escape we could all use during our downtime.
Life and Other Love Songs
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
On his 37th birthday, a father never shows up for his surprise party at home, seeming to disappear into thin air. Over the ensuing years, as his wife and daughter try to discover what happened to him, the story zigzags through the family’s history, from the Great Migration to 1990s New York, and long-held secrets come to light. Be prepared to read Anissa Gray’s totally absorbing and tender tale, Life and Other Love Songs, in one sitting.
Camp Zero
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling is set in a dystopian future, after climate disaster has ravaged the world. Only the wealthiest are safe, living in settlements of floating cities. Rose, a sex worker, is sent by a VIP client to spy on a secretive camp in the far north of Canada in exchange for secure housing for her mother. What follows is a gripping story about survival, with compelling characters and frightening plot twists that will keep you riveted.
American Mermaid
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
In Julia Langbein’s American Mermaid, a high school English teacher seems to hit the jackpot: Her novel becomes a bestseller and she moves to L.A. to write the screenplay. When her Hollywood hack cowriters try to turn the feminist masterpiece into a bigbudget action movie, her novel’s main character (a mermaid!) appears to come to life to protest. Wildly inventive, this book will get you thinking about artistic integrity as it elicits plenty of laughs.
The Three of Us
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
How would you cope if the two people you loved most—your spouse and your best friend—despised each other? That’s the question posed in Ore Agbaje-Williams’s debut novel. A woman’s best friend comes over for a relaxing wine-and-snacks hang that goes off the rails when the host’s husband comes home from work. Cleverly told in three parts, from each character’s point of view, The Three of Us will give its readers lots to talk about over brunch.
The Secret Book of Flora Lea
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
The Secret Book of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry is a heart-pounding page-turner about the enduring power of love. In 1939, World War II is under way, and a pair of sisters flee London for the countryside. Hazel, 14, comforts Flora, 5, with stories about a land called Whisperwood. Tragically, Flora disappears while playing outdoors one day, and Hazel never forgives herself. But 20 years later, she receives a book—titled Whisperwood and the River of Stars—and discovers her sister’s story might not be over after all.
The Last Animal
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Ramona Ausubel’s The Last Animal begins with a widowed mother taking her two teenage daughters on a summer vacation to…Siberia, where she’s a scientist on a team hoping to bring woolly mammoths back from extinction. The girls stumble upon a fully preserved 4,000-year-old baby mammoth, and the ensuing journey in this warm, whimsical story takes the trio to Italy, Iceland, and ultimately back to one another.
Romantic Comedy
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Sally Milz, the main character in Curtis Sittenfeld’s Romantic Comedy, is a divorced writer for an SNL-like comedy show. One of her best sketches asks why run-of-the-mill men so often end up with incredible women and the reverse never seems to be true. But when she starts emailing with Noah Brewster, a heartthrob pop star she met when he hosted the show, let’s just say the script gets flipped. With a title that truly delivers, this book is pitch-perfect and surprisingly relatable.
The Covenant of Water
COURTESY OF PUBLISHER
Author Abraham Verghese returns, 14 years after the release of his blockbuster Cutting for Stone, with The Covenant of Water, a breathtaking novel set in Kerala on the South Indian coast. Spanning most of the 20th century, the story follows one family’s heartbreaking misfortune: In every generation, somebody drowns. As those left behind grapple with grief, the book beautifully explores the lessons we learn from our ancestors in an always-changing world.
My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dreams Set Me Free
Courtesy of Publisher
Who says coming-of-age stories have to happen in adolescence? For journalist Laura Carney, hers took place during midlife. At age 38, Laura discovers a bucket list drafted by her father, who was killed in a car crash 13 years earlier. She decides to complete the adventures on her late father's wishlist, and in the process learns how to follow not just her father's dreams but also her own.
My Murder
Courtesy of Publisher
Lou is a young, happily married mom of a toddler who’s literally given a second chance at life. After a local serial killer murders her (you read that right!), she’s resurrected by an experimental government project. But as she gets to know the women in her support group who were victims of the same man, she starts to question the story she’s been told about what happened to her. Smart, scary, and full of twists, My Murder by Katie Williams could be read in a single day.
Late Bloomers
Courtesy of Publisher
In Late Bloomers by Deepa Varadarajan, members of an Indian American family grapple with a question we can all relate to: Am I happy with my life? Lata has just left her husband, Suresh, after nearly 40 years of marriage. Lonely and bewildered by his wife’s desire for independence, he tries online dating. Priya, their adult daughter, is in a go-nowhere situation with a married man, and Nikesh, their son, is a new dad whose relationship isn’t what it seems. This funny, charming novel will reassure you that our wrong turns often help us find our way.
I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home
Courtesy of Publisher
Take time to linger over I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore, an exquisite exploration of grief, longing, and our relationship with the past. Finn, a history teacher, reconnects with a former lover while in New York City to visit his brother, who’s dying from cancer. As the novel progresses, it transforms into a ghost story, shifting between the post–Civil War years and modern times, mixing comedy with tragedy, and exploring what it means to be alive.
Quietly Hostile
Courtesy of Publisher
Best-selling author Samantha Irby’s writing manages to be confessional, hilarious, moving, and relatable all at once. In her new collection, she details her thoughts on public bathroom etiquette, sharing a refrigerator with her wife, how to look cool in front of teenagers, her unabashed love for Dave Matthews Band, and so much more. As the title suggests, Quietly Hostile is a provocative read about the sometimes maddening, often ridiculous, and occasionally wonderful components of modern life.
Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea
Courtesy of Publisher
It's 19th-century China, and Shek Yeung has just witnessed the death of her husband, a formidable pirate with a fleet of ships. Instead of fading into the background, she cuts a deal with his second-in-command: She’ll bear him a son in exchange for retaining control of half the fleet. What happens next, as both the Chinese emperor and European forces work to eliminate the pirates, makes Rita Chang-Eppig’s Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea a hold-onto-your-seat ode to an unforgettable woman.
Family Lore
National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo has written her first novel for adults, and we’re here for it. In the humorous and heartfelt Family Lore, Flor Marte is able to predict the exact day someone will die. When she tells her three sisters she wants to throw a “living wake” for herself, they’re desperate to know: Has she foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Flor won’t tell, and as the story weaves together the lives of the Marte women, we learn she’s not the only one who’s hiding something.
The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store
Courtesy of Publisher
From the outside, Chicken Hill looks like a typical rundown neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. But its residents, Black Americans and immigrant Jews, have long lived side by side and held each other’s secrets, including the origins of a buried skeleton and the fate of a deaf boy the state wanted to institutionalize. Like his last blockbuster, Deacon King Kong, James McBride’s The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store explores the power of community though an utterly captivating, compassionate story.
Little Monsters
Courtesy of Publisher
Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur is set on idyllic Cape Cod, where Adam Gardner, an oceanographer, raised his two kids after their mom died. Now approaching his 70th birthday, he’s struggling with bipolar disorder. His adult children, Ken and Abby, have a relationship that is, to put it mildly, strained. Then a stranger named Steph starts turning up (at Abby’s studio, at the restaurant Adam frequents) and reveals a surprise of her own. Treat yourself to this novel’s gorgeous writing and irresistible storyline.
Banyan Moon
Courtesy of Publisher
The complex dynamic between the women in Thao Thai’s Banyan Moon—grandmother, mother, and daughter—is so realistic, you’d swear the novel was a memoir. Ann, the daughter, lives in Michigan with her boyfriend, whose pretentious family treats her like an outsider. When her estranged mother calls with the news that Minh, her grandmother, has died, Ann returns to the crumbling Gothic house in Florida where she was raised. There, the three women’s stories intersect, exposing the unseen ways relatives are bound together.
Talking at Night
Courtesy of Publisher
Teenagers Will and Rosie have nothing in common—he’s a bad boy, she’s a good girl. Yet their chemistry is intense from the moment they meet. Tragedy strikes (we’d spoil it if we told you any more!), and they’re forced apart. Through the years, they’re drawn to each other again and again, never able to let go of what might have been. Have your tissues handy for Talking at Night by Claire Daverley, a raw, extraordinary novel in which every scene aches with emotion.
Gone Tonight
Courtesy of Publisher
Prepare to stay up until the wee hours devouring Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen. For Catherine, growing up with a mother like Ruth meant constantly moving from city to city (and never asking why). When Catherine is finally ready to leave home for a career opportunity, her mother’s health declines. Forced to remain by Ruth’s side, Catherine starts to question whether things are what they seem, and whether she can trust the mom she’s always known.
You Were Always Mine
Courtesy of Publisher
In You Were Always Mine, the new novel by duo Christine Pride and Jo Piazza, Cinnamon is a Black woman in her mid-30s who loves spending her lunch break reading at a park, where she develops a friendship with Daisy, a struggling, white 19-year-old. One day, Daisy stops showing up, and Cinnamon finds an abandoned blond and blue-eyed baby by their regular spot. What happens next makes for a thought-provoking and tender story about race, class, and motherhood.
Tom Lake
Courtesy of Publisher
In Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s latest, happily married Lara is picking cherries at the family orchard with her three adult daughters. They ask her to tell the story of when she was 24 and had a torrid affair with now-famous actor Peter Duke while the two starred in a summer-stock production of Our Town. As the narrative shifts between Lara’s memories and the present day, it examines how all our relationships—hot and brief, comfortable and long-lasting—shape who we are.
Congratulations, the Best Is Over!
Courtesy of Publisher
R. Eric Thomas had career success and a happy marriage in Philadelphia (not to mention a very popular Twitter feed) when he did something he never could have predicted: He moved with his husband back home to Baltimore. Like being regaled by your funniest friend, Congratulations, the Best Is Over! chronicles his return to his hometown, examining what happens when the life you have doesn’t resemble the one you pictured (but—spoiler alert—might be even better).
Everything/Nothing/Someone: A Memoir
Courtesy of Publisher
Alice Carrière, the daughter of a renowned artist and a European actor, grew up in the 1990s in a sprawling, 17,000-square-foot home in Manhattan, where major celebrities were regular visitors. Sounds glamorous, right? In her beautifully written memoir, she reveals a childhood marred by abuse, neglect, and abominable treatment by so-called mental health experts. Told with visceral candor and in heartbreaking detail, Everything/Nothing/Someone will stay on your mind for a long time.
The Hike
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In Lucy Clarke’s The Hike, Liz persuades her three best friends to forgo their annual resort vacation for a camping trip in the mountains of Norway. While it’s not exactly what they all had in mind, they’re longing for a reprieve from the stresses they’ve left back home. As they set out into the wilderness (where there’s no cell service, and a storm is looming), they soon learn that what’s hiding in the lush landscape that surrounds them could be more sinister than they expected.
Amazing Grace Adams
Courtesy of Publisher
Amazing Grace Adams opens with Grace stuck in snarling traffic on the morning of her estranged daughter’s 16th birthday. She is 45 and feeling the weight of midlife on her shoulders. As her anger ratchets, she hits a breaking point, gets out of her car…and sets off on foot across London, determined to reconnect with her family. With this hilarious debut novel, Fran Littlewood delivers a fantastic ode to female rage and how it (wildly!) plays out over the course of a single day.
Happiness Falls
Courtesy of Publisher
It’s a typical morning in suburban Virginia when Mia’s dad takes her brother Eugene for a walk in a nearby park. But when Eugene, who has a rare genetic disorder that makes him unable to speak, returns alone and bloodied, it’s clear the quiet life the family leads is over. More than your average mystery novel, Happiness Falls by Angie Kim gets to the heart of the characters, whose crisis is a watershed moment for them all.
The Fraud
Courtesy of Publisher
The Fraud, the latest by Zadie Smith (White Teeth, On Beauty), is based on an actual 1873 trial in which an Australian butcher claimed he was the rightful heir to a huge English estate and the title that came with it. In the novel, a Scottish housekeeper and one of the trial’s star witnesses— a man who grew up enslaved on a Jamaica plantation—become entangled in the question of who is telling the truth. Written in short, vignette-style chapters, this fast-paced read is rife with deception and British class drama, ultimately asking: How easy is it to spot a fake?
Learned by Heart
Courtesy of Publisher
Emma Donoghue’s new novel was inspired by her investigation of a secret journal written by Anne Lister, who attended a posh boarding school in York, England, in the early 19th century. There, Anne met Eliza Raine when they were both 14, and the two fell into a complicated affair. Learned by Heart gorgeously reimagines Anne and Eliza’s relationship, conveying the intense, heady experience of discovering your first love.
One Blood
Courtesy of Publisher
Denene Millner’s One Blood is the story of three women linked by adoption: a young woman forced to give up her child, the adoptive mother, and the daughter who binds the two. Spanning the Great Migration, the civil rights movement, and 21stcentury New York, the novel weaves the three women’s tales together over time, exploring how our collective histories inform who we ultimately become.
Related: The Best Books of 2022—According to Real Simple Editors
Let Us Descend
Courtesy of Publisher
Two-time National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward’s new novel, Let Us Descend, is set in the South before the Civil War. Annis, an enslaved teenager in the Carolinas, gets sold by the man who fathered her to a slave market in New Orleans. As she walks all the way there, she survives by summoning memories of her mother and visions of an ancestral spirit. The writing is so visceral that you truly feel Annis’s experience, making the latest from one of our greatest literary minds a devastating, deeply moving masterpiece.
How to Say Babylon
Courtesy of Publisher
In How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair, the poet, now in her late 30s, recounts growing up in Jamaica with a strict Rastafarian father. In their home, women were expected to be obedient above all else and follow stringent rules to maintain their “purity” (covering their bodies and hair, not having any friends). But Sinclair’s mother, oppressed as she was, gave her children books, which became Sinclair’s salvation and helped her find the voice that would free her. You’ll be riveted by this powerful woman’s journey.
North Woods
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Picture an old house on a plot of land in western Massachusetts. Now imagine all the lives that have passed through it over 400 years, starting with a pair of young lovers who’ve run off from their Puritan colony. In North Woods by Pulitzer Prize finalist Daniel Mason, the setting becomes the main character, and stories of the house’s past (romance, murder, ghosts!), combined with Mason’s stunning descriptions of nature, will get you thinking about the history of the place you call home.
What We Kept to Ourselves
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When a stranger is found dead in the backyard of John Kim’s California home, he and his adult children are rattled but assume it’s random—until they find out he was carrying a letter to Sunny, their wife and mother, who disappeared a year earlier. Taking place in 1999 and the late 1970s, after Sunny first arrives in America from Korea, What We Kept to Ourselves by Nancy Jooyoun Kim—part mystery, part family story—examines the consequences of harboring secrets.
Wellness
Courtesy of Publisher
Wellness by Nathan Hill follows Jack and Elizabeth, who fall in love as college students immersed in the underground art scene in 1990s Chicago. Twenty years later, they’re a married couple dealing with parenthood and homeownership, trying to reconcile who they were with who they’ve become, both together and apart. With hilarious commentary about our culture’s fixation on health and happiness, this novel beautifully probes how we cope with change.
Related: How to Store Books So They Last Forever
Absolution
Amazon
Absolution, the new novel from National Book Award winner Alice McDermott, pays tribute to the overlooked wives of American men whose work (in the government, military, or private firms) stationed them near the center of the Vietnam War. Set mostly in Saigon in 1963, the story focuses on Tricia, a timid newlywed, and Charlene, the brash and glamorous woman who, for better or worse, takes her under her wing. You’ll think about these characters long after the final page of this subtle, powerful story.
Family Meal
Amazon
Two young men, Cam and TJ, are former best friends whose lives have taken different paths. After the death of his lover, Cam returns to their hometown of Houston, where he copes with his grief by overindulging in everything (sex, food, drugs), and TJ wonders whether there’s anything left of the friend he used to know. Visceral and heartbreaking, Bryan Washington’s Family Meal delves into loss and long friendships, exploring how we can reconnect with the people we need most.
The Leftover Woman
Amazon
In Jean Kwok’s The Leftover Woman, Jasmine Yang has just arrived in New York City from China, where she’s fled her abusive husband to track down the daughter she was forced to give up at birth. Uptown, Rebecca Whitney is a wealthy publishing executive juggling a major career hurdle while parenting her young daughter...who was adopted from China. As the two women’s worlds intersect, this poignant mystery sparks fascinating questions about motherhood, class, and identity.
Legitimate Kid
Amazon
It’s far from uncommon for celebrities to recount their humble beginnings, but stand-up comedian Aida Rodriguez has a backstory you truly need to read to believe. In Legitimate Kid, she reveals how she was kidnapped—twice!—by family members, survived abuse and homelessness, and ultimately found her way to success (including a Max special) thanks to sheer grit and determination. This deeply candid and inspiring book reads like Rodriguez’s love letter to her own inner child and will have you laughing through your tears.
America Fantastica
Amazon
Tim O’Brien (The Things They Carried) is known for tectonic-plate-shifting wartime fiction. With America Fantastica, his first novel in over 20 years, he’s focusing on the absurdity of modern times. It’s 2019, and Boyd Halverson, a journalist turned online troll, has just robbed a bank and taken Angie Bing, the teller, hostage. Their journey from state to state, tailed by an eclectic assortment of characters (a billionaire, a murderous ex-lover, a hit man), is both an incisive social commentary and pure entertainment.
Call You When I Land: A Memoir
Amazon
Ever been in the midst of an ordinary day and wondered what it might be like to reinvent yourself? When Nikki Vargas was 26, newly engaged, and working in advertising, she realized her life wasn’t what she wanted. So she bought a plane ticket to Colombia. And then another one to Vietnam. And then another, and another. In her globetrotting Call You When I Land, she takes you along on her adventures as she meets love interests, learns tough truths about herself, and ultimately finds her purpose as a travel writer.
The Storm We Made
Amazon
It’s 1945, and Japan has invaded British-colonized Malaya (now Malaysia). Cecily is distraught over the fate of her three children, in part because her own actions may have put them in danger. Ten years earlier, bored with her life as a housewife, she met a general and became a spy for the Japanese forces who are now assaulting her community. Inspired by the author’s grandmother’s stories, The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan is a gripping novel that tackles the personal impact of war.
Flores and Miss Paula
Amazon
Flores and Miss Paula by Melissa Rivero features 30-something Flores and her Peruvian immigrant mother, Paula, who mourn the recent death of Martín, their father and husband, every day. Without his mediating influence, the Brooklyn, New York, apartment they share is center stage for arguments about how each thinks the other should live. Then they find out they have to move, and potentially leave the neighborhood they’ve loved for decades, and their relationship evolves as they finally learn to understand each other.
The Frozen River
Amazon
Part murder mystery, part historical fiction, Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River takes place in New England in 1789. Martha, a midwife and healer, examines a local man’s body after it’s found frozen in ice. She knows he’s one of two men accused of rape and is certain the events are related—so she turns to her treasured diary, with its careful record of daily events, to help her pursue justice. Based loosely on a real-life midwife from the 18th century, this novel has a gothic, wintry feel that makes it an ideal fireside read.
The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac
Amazon
Louise Kennedy’s The End of the World Is a Cul de Sac is set in her native Ireland, where, in each story, a woman faces an unimaginable challenge. One is suspicious of her husband’s relationship with a teenager; another has been abandoned in an unfinished housing development that may be haunted; another is touring the country with her mother-in-law to spread her husband’s ashes. Brace for a tense and provocative examination of women’s lives, and how perseverance can push you through the direst circumstances.
Welcome Home, Stranger
Amazon
In Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen, Rachel is an environmental journalist in D.C. Middleaged, divorced, and childless, she has no desire to go home to Maine to be reminded that her family doesn’t quite know how to handle her independence. But in the aftermath of her mother’s death, she’s forced to return, and her past—and all the people in it—can no longer be ignored. This snarky, vulnerable, complicated main character feels so real, you’ll swear you actually know her.
The Other Mothers
Amazon
In The Other Mothers by Katherine Faulkner, Tash feels like an outcast in her posh London neighborhood, where she and her husband barely make the rent on their dingy basement apartment. With her son in a new playgroup, she has time to rev up her freelance journalism career, and she thinks she has a local story with big-break potential: the unexplained death of a young nanny. But when the fancy moms in the playgroup start inviting her to coffees and cocktails, she grows to suspect them of hiding a sinister connection to the case.
Again and Again
Amazon
Eugene “Geno” Miles is an elderly resident of an assisted living facility. His new nursing assistant, Angel, wouldn’t call him the average patient: He’s moody and he insists his life began in medieval Spain, where he lost the only love he’s ever known. He claims he’s spent the past 1,000 years looking for her. As the two spend time together, Angel wonders whether Geno’s stories about his past lives might contain some truth. Again and Again by Jonathan Evison delivers a heartfelt message about loyalty in a wildly inventive package.
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