Women's Fiction and Nonfiction Book Recommendations
Best Summer Book Releases for Women 2026
Celebrate complex, powerful and inspiring female perspectives this summer with an incredible collection of women's fiction, biographies and memoirs. Highlighting exceptional women's fiction (and nonfiction) books from female authors, this genre captures the nuance of female relationships, triumphs over adversity and profound personal histories.
Discover brilliant female literary voices like Beatriz Williams, Marie Benedict, Maggie O'Farrell, Lisa See and others. Our in-house editorial team researches and curates this list with intention to find empowering, fiercely authentic narratives that speak directly to Leading Ladies.
August WOmen's Fiction Book Releases
Plant Lady
by Kang Minyoung - Shanna Tan
In the heart of a quiet town, a young woman tends to her plant shop, but beneath the surface of her lush, green sanctuary lies something far darker. ...
Will you dare to disrespect her plants?
Tucked away in the corner of a neighborhood in Dosan, South Korea, is the Plant Shop. Shop owner Yoohee has started anew, and her meticulously grown foliage thrives under her tender care. To both her customers and herself, Plant Shop is a refuge, where petunias and marigolds bloom and the air itself is like an elixir of peace.
By day, Yoohee dispenses advice on gardening, but she also finds herself offering a special service off the clock. Women who are at their wits' end come to her about a man they hope might disappear from their lives. Pulling extra hours is taxing, but Yoohee has encountered and dealt with these kind of men in her own life, men who treated her (and her beloved plants) with utter disrespect. So as night falls, Yoohee trades her apron for a shovel and a hoe and disappears into her moonlit garden. There, she buries not just the remains of the day, but also the bloody remnants of a few unfortunate encounters.
As men begin to disappear ... will anyone ever suspect the Plant Lady?
A highly acclaimed novel from South Korea, Plant Lady brings atmospheric tension and delicate humor to a story of obsession and misogyny that will keep you rooted right to its simmering last page.
Time Travel for Beginners
by Jaclyn Moriarty
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF SUMMER BY PEOPLE, GOODREADS, SHEREADS, BUZZFEED AND SOUTHERN LIVING
In her dazzling new novel, award-winning author Jaclyn Moriarty asks the question, if you could revisit one moment in your life, what would it be?
On a bustling road in Sydney, Australia, lies a nondescript storefront known simply as the Time Travel Agency. Inside, you'll be welcomed by the smell of fresh-brewed coffee, a selection of baked goods...and the question, Where in time do you wish to go?
The guidelines are simple: you can go whenever you wish into the past, and there's no fear of altering the present. Have tea with Jane Austen, scream at a Beatles concert, witness the Olympics in ancient Greece. Perhaps a more personal trip? Visit your long-lost grandmother, recapture the heady days of your youth, return to the idyllic time when your teen was a babbling baby--or watch yourself make the one decision that changed everything.
Is it a hoax? And if it's real, what's the catch?
When single mother Anna is offered a job at the agency, she glimpses the possibility of happiness. Meanwhile, Teddy's a customer hoping to untangle his recently imploded marriage. And Jade, who has a deeply buried secret, despises the agency for offering false hope.
In Jaclyn Moriarty's incandescent novel, Anna, Teddy and Jade leap headlong into time, hurtling on a crash course toward one another. At turns entertaining and illuminating, Time Travel for Beginners explores the moments, big and small, that shape our destiny.
Life of M
by Rachel Cusk
From the critically acclaimed author of the Outline trilogy, an irresistible novel of fame, power, beauty and truth and a blazing renovation of the form.
The movie star M is one of the most recognizable faces of our time. Her image is everywhere. It has been like that since she was a child.
With such fame, her life has the appearance of freedom: people are instantly obliging, spaces are altered to accommodate her, time can be rearranged. M may live in the same places as real people. She may meet her friends or collect her children from school or walk her dogs as they do. But it seems the rules of reality have melted away.
Now, a writer has decided to pay close attention to M's life in the hope of understanding who she really is. It is hard not to feel ugly next to M, hard not to feel insignificant. But what truths--about the very experience of living--might this proximity allow the writer to briefly capture?
In this astonishing novel, Rachel Cusk hunts for these truths without ever swerving away into self-deception. Her pursuit leads us across olive groves and beaches, behind the smoked windows of limousines, and through beautiful cities considered the great masterpieces of civilization. And at every turn, Cusk contemplates the cost of this beauty and what we might lose when we are hypnotized by it.
Life of M is a thrilling investigation of who we are, and who we pretend to be, at this late stage of modern life when we are mesmerized more than ever by the images we see everywhere. It cuts through a world of noise and spectacle to bring us an eerie music of immense power and beauty.
The Boat House
by Fern Michaels
Running their inherited marina in a quirky, picturesque New Jersey shore town, siblings Madison and Lincoln Wainright discover what could be a map to Captain Kidd's lost treasure in this fresh, adventure-filled Twin Lights novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Fern Michaels.
An unexpected inheritance from their late uncle brought Madison (Taylor) Wainwright and her brother Lincoln to Smuggler's Cove. But it's the quirky, close-knit locals who've convinced them to stay for the summer. The little town may be worlds away from the privileged existence the siblings knew before their father was arrested for fraud, but here, they've found a sense of belonging.
After renovating the dilapidated boat house that once served as a local marina for crabbers and clammers, Madison and Lincoln are settling in for a true Jersey Shore summer, complete with the town's famous Seafood Festival. Visitors love learning about the area's history--the tales of pirates and privateers, cryptic maps and buried treasure. Those stories seem like harmless fantasy until a seemingly worthless map is stolen from their boathouse.
Could their uncle's rudimentary map show the true location of Captain Kidd's treasure? Or was there another, more sinister motive behind the theft? As Madison and Lincoln dig deeper, they learn that the legends underpinning Smuggler's Cove's history may also have the power to tear it apart, unless they can quickly separate fiction from fact and guilty from innocent. …
The Wild Beneath (Original)
by Kelly Anderson
"Ethereal ... a story that reminds us sometimes the impossible is possible." -- JODI PICOULT
"A haunting, heart-stopping debut." -- CHRISTINA BAKER KLINE
"Part love story, part ode to nature, with a mystical, musical, mysterious quality." -- NIKKI ERLICK
For readers of Wild Dark Shore and The Time Traveler's Wife, a fierce, haunting story of one woman caught between her first love and a mysterious stranger who upends everything--and the two worlds that won't let her go.
Annie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest, navigating by stars and swimming with sea creatures alongside her parents and best friend Evan. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is stranded on land and forced to confront how eccentric she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear.
Their connection is instant, electric. Walker's touch gives Annie visions of the ocean's hidden world, a life she's never known but feels inexplicably drawn to. Yet even as she is pulled toward him, Evan--the steadfast love who has always been there--remains on dry land, offering the stability she may have to leave behind. Annie is torn between Evan's grounding presence and Walker's magnetic secrets. But then, Walker vanishes, along with the answers she needs about who she really is.
Six years later, Annie has left the sea and buried the past until Walker's otherworldly sound returns, pulling her back toward the ocean and the life she abandoned. The truth under the water is more ancient than she ever could have known, and Annie must confront a choice that will test her heart and determine her future.
"Absolutely dazzling." -- SARAH PENNER
"Incandescent ... I did not want to come up for air." -- EMMA KNIGHT
"Spellbinding!" -- NITA PROSE
Sunlight Finds You
by Laura Moriarty
"Radiant ... What begins as a teenage romance in 1950s Florida becomes an intimate, deeply moving story of separation, sacrifice and self-determination -- and of how early love shapes the lives we carry forward." – Christina Baker Kline
"The kind of book that makes you lean closer, then hold your breath as the beauty and betrayal unfold. I couldn't stop reading. I couldn't stop hoping. What an extraordinary novel!" – Ariel Lawhon
A forbidden love blows open the world of a teenage girl, altering the trajectory of her life-from the author of the New York Times bestseller The Chaperone
It's 1949, early in the Cold War, but St. Petersburg, Florida is warm, lush and booming with newcomers seeking sunshine and opportunity. For seventeen-year-old Nora, St. Pete feels like paradise, especially after she meets and wins over Leonard, the shy, brilliant son of transplanted New Yorkers. Nora and Leonard are soon spending balmy days and evenings together, and in her adoring, encouraging company, he grows more confident, even as he remains tender and caring. Leonard's sophisticated mother welcomes Nora into their lives, but his father distrusts her motives.
When his suspicions are seemingly confirmed, Nora is forced to cut contact. In her longing and fear, she takes a chance that changes her life, exiling her from the family she loves and setting off a chain of secrets and betrayals that will follow her into adulthood. It is a mature Nora who tells the story of her turbulent past. Wiser and more worldly, she commits to an honest but compassionate account, and to a future based on trusting, first and foremost, herself.
Sunlight Finds You is, ultimately, a love story set in the past that has much to say about our present. Richly layered and propulsive, it's a book about extending forgiveness for ourselves and for others and about refusing to settle for a life that is less than full.
Capitalism Is Sexism
by Doortje Smithuijsen - Erica Moore
A bold and incisive personal manifesto on the ways sexism is used in capitalist systems to exploit women, using algorithms that pressure them into spending money on a distorted ideal of beauty, motherhood and success.
The age-old pressure to focus on either a career or building a family has been compounded by a new reality: Millennial women are often both the breadwinner and head of household -- all while being told by the cosmetics industry to start Botox before it's too late and that only the best mothers use a Zeitgeist baby carrier.
Through the lens of her own experiences and influencer culture, prominent Dutch journalist and cultural critic Doortje Smithuijsen explores how seemingly innocuous phenomena like smoothie recipes and spin classes are part of a system that persists in marginalizing women by reinforcing an illusion of inadequacy. Capitalism Is Sexism is not simply about finding body positivity in the age of Ozempic or resisting the Trad Wife lifestyle; it's about how these forces are here to captivate your attention, your earnings and your labor, all while pointing towards an inner deficiency. With razor-sharp insight, Smithuijsen shows how difficult it is for women within this system to make choices that are truly their own.
You'll Love It Here
by Natalie Sue
NATALIE SUE'S WRITING IS: "For someone who needs a good laugh." -- Taylor Jenkins Reid - "A true delight." -- Glamour - "Wickedly funny." -- People - "Surprisingly sweet and totally made my day."--Shelby Van Pelt - "So good and also so unexpected." -- Julia Quinn
From the bestselling author of I Hope This Finds You Well comes a sharply funny, surprisingly tender novel about a woman stuck in place, her nosy neighbors, and the journey to find where she belongs -- with all the heart of a grown-up The Breakfast Club.
Mona thought her living situation was bad ... but the real mess is just beginning.
One day is all it takes for Mona's life to implode. After years of climbing at her marketing firm, she was supposed to be getting promoted and finally moving out of her crumbling apartment building. Instead, she's jobless, aimless and still stuck in a space barely big enough for a yoga mat.
Then her eccentric landlady takes a tumble and asks Mona to step in as the building's reluctant super. The deal is simple: help prep the place for sale, and she can secure the upgrade she's been chasing. But that's easier said than done when the neighbors treat "boundaries" as optional.
There's the shouting couple, the mysterious shut-in, a possible panty thief in the laundry room--and Sami, the relentlessly cheerful diner owner who keeps showing up with coffee and unsolicited ideas about community. As Mona gets pulled deeper into the building's chaos -- and closer to the people inside it -- she's forced to confront what, and who, she's really been trying to outrun. Sometimes, the place you're desperate to leave is the one that finally shows you who you are.
Wise, heartfelt and laugh-out-loud funny, Natalie Sue's sophomore novel is a story about burning out, starting over and finding your people in the most unexpected places, perfect for fans of The Wedding People and Anxious People.
July WOmen's Fiction Book Releases
The Brides: A Feminist Horror Novel for Fans of Dracula (Original)
by Charlotte Cross
Creepy, sumptuous and incredibly gripping, The Brides is a feminist gothic horror about the three women who became the brides of Dracula - and the fourth who managed to escape . . .
"Come to me, and be mine for eternity."
1884. When Mafalda journeys to Budapest to care for her grieving aunt, her secret love, Lucy, hurries from London to comfort her, with chaperone and lady's maid in tow.
But lady's maid Alice, blessed and cursed with the Sight, is tormented by terrifying visions. When chaperone Eliza falls prey to a disturbing wasting illness, the women hope to seek the healing waters of Transylvania. At a nobleman's invitation, they set out for Castle Dracula.
In the depths of the forest, miles from civilization, their host reveals his true intentions; a monstrous ambition which will tear the women apart.
And not all of them will survive.
Crash Into Me
by Robinne Lee
"Glittery and sensuous." -- TIME magazine (A Most Anticipated Book of 2026)
In a keenly observed departure from her blockbuster debut, The Idea of You, Robinne Lee delivers a completely new, fearlessly intimate novel of messy, complicated relationships--one that delves into desire, race, power, and the shifting terrain of identity and selfhood.
What happens when a fantasy from your past collides with your reality?
In a complicated marriage and raising her children in Los Angeles's toxic playground of privilege and power, Cecilia Chen is struggling to find her real self among the many labels assigned to her: wife, mother, artist, daughter.
Until the moment she crashes-literally-into the Anouk Ferrand. It's been twenty years since she last encountered the enigmatic model on a photo shoot in Mexico.
And it's this chance second meeting that will upend Cecilia's life.
Seeing Anouk again forces Cecilia to revisit their brief time together and question where she truly fits in. Can the renewed intensity of her explosive physical and emotional entanglement with Anouk finally give her an answer?
Heartbreakingly real and emotionally layered, Crash Into Me illuminates the unexpected detours that change our lives forever.
Last Night Was Killer
by Mary Pauline Lowry
"An inventive mystery loaded with humor, heart, and found family." --People Magazine
"I have never had so much fun watching a fictional character try to figure out if she killed someone or not. Wild, outrageous, silly, smart, Tilly is a heroine for the ages and Mary Lowry writes like no one else. A damn delight." – Rufi Thorpe, Author of Margo's Got Money Troubles
A suspenseful, bighearted, and laugh-out-loud story of a single mom trying to do it all--including solve a murder she may or may not have committed ...
When Tilly Turner signed up for an introductory pole-dancing class, she was looking for a distraction. Reeling from her mother's passing, and with her career as a stand-up comedian in ruins, Tilly has just moved back to the Idaho hometown she was desperate to leave, with her twin daughters in tow.
But Tilly gets more than she bargained for after a night out with her new pole-dancing pals. She wakes to a raging hangover, no memory of the evening before, and a dead body in the trunk of her car.
Who was the dead man? And more importantly, who killed him? Tilly has no alibi and needs answers. But investigating a murder is complicated, especially with an old frenemy circling, childcare plans falling through, and pole-dancing classes to attend. And don't even mention the sexy ATF agent who she's trying (and failing) to keep at arm's length.
As Tilly races to solve the mystery before the police come knocking, she finds herself implicated in a larger plot that includes political subterfuge and arms dealing. But who knows--maybe busting a criminal enterprise will be just the shake-up she needs.
Balancing both heart and hilarity, and with a witty take on the struggles of modern motherhood, Last Night Was Killer is a charming introduction to the most unlikely -- and likable -- of sleuths.
Ungodly Rich
by Katharine McGee
Old gods, new rules. New York Times bestselling author Katharine McGee puts a modern-day twist on ancient mythology in this bold reimagining of the Greek gods as a family of billionaires--with all the messy drama that entails.
When Julia Dodds meets Harry Adams, love hits her like a lightning bolt. He's adventurous, charismatic, and impossibly handsome. Little does Julia know that her boyfriend has left out a few key details. His name isn't Harry: it's Ares, as in the ancient god of war. His mother is Hera, and his father is Zeus.
Soon, Julia is caught up in a world of wealth and privilege as she joins Harry at a lavish family reunion. Except these billionaires don't just have wealth--they have divine powers. And the moment she steps onto their private island, Julia becomes their latest target.
It's no secret that the Gods love to meddle, and when it comes to Julia, Harry's immortal relatives each have their own agenda. Harry's mother, Hera, will do anything to protect her own. Harry's sister-in-law Aphrodite has a deeply personal reason for hating Julia, and tasks Hermes, keeper of family secrets, with digging up dirt. Meanwhile, Hades has spent years trying to upend Zeus's power--and now he finally sees an opportunity to strike.
Set against a globe-trotting backdrop that sweeps from New York's exclusive private clubs to the wilds of New Zealand to the gated estates of the British aristocracy, Ungodly Rich is a story of love, revenge, secrets, sex, and the most ancient motivator of all: family.
Twisted Road
by Christine Feehan
There's no escaping the pull of desire in this novel in #1 New York Times bestselling author Christine Feehan's Torpedo Ink motorcycle club series.
When Czar shut down Lazar "Keys" Alexeev's undercover mission, that should have been the end of the story. Instead, Keys is back in the middle of a nowhere town where a petite redhead with a pouty mouth and a ready smile drives him to distraction. He's not sure why he's breaking all of Torpedo Ink's rules to spend more time around a woman who's not even his type. He can't get her out of his head--and now he's facing the consequences.
Lyric Johansen doesn't like to look anyone in the eyes, but Keys's gaze is the one thing keeping her from a full-on panic attack. Her instinct to charge into the fray and help the biker fend off a group of vicious thugs has led to the most insane situation she's ever been in: trapped in a coffin with a man she barely knows, minutes away from a painful death.
Survival means staying focused. But when Keys kisses Lyric to snap her out of losing it, he's the one who ends up falling apart. He'll need to unleash hell to get them out alive. If only to get another taste …
Lady X
by Molly Fader
The search for a notorious vigilante exposes the secrets among three generations of women, from contemporary L.A. to gritty 1970s New York, in this propulsive novel hailed as "an unputdownable paean to female rage and retribution" by #1 bestselling author Jodi Picoult.
Los Angeles, 2024. After learning that her A-list actor husband sent explicit photos to multiple girls on social media, Margot Cooper runs away from the world--and the paparazzi--by fleeing to her childhood home with her teenage daughter in tow.
But home isn't the sanctuary Margot was hoping for. In a cardboard box in the corner of the attic, she finds damning evidence of an infamous urban legend, the mysterious vigilante "Lady X"--including a blurry newspaper photo of a woman who looks an awful lot like Margot's mother.
New York City, 1977. In the midst of an infamous summer, Ginger Daughtry and her two beloved roommates are able to shield one another from the chaos--until one of them is assaulted. Astounded by the lack of response from police, the young women decide to engage in some light payback, signing their handiwork as "Lady X."
Soon copycats appear, and a movement inspired by acts of vandalism against terrible men spirals out of control, with criminals running amok under the guise of the enigmatic Lady X. When a body is found fallen--or pushed--from five stories high, the hunt reaches a boiling point.
Sisterhood Above All: A #Rushtok Novel
by Kathleen Barber - Amayah Shaienne
Any girl would kill to be a Gamma.
"Barber and Shaienne's juicy, sexy, vicious collab is like America's Next Top Model stitched with The Art of War. You'll be equally riveted by the reality TV-level drama and the raw authenticity of the characters in this sure-to-go-viral sorority rush thriller." -- Layne Fargo, bestselling author of The Favorites and They Never Learn
Being a Gamma at Southern State University means belonging to the most desirable, exclusive sisterhood there is. For Ava, it means even more--it's the last connection she has to her beloved late mother, and she'll do anything to wear the Gamma letters.
But the Gammas didn't become the best house on campus by letting just anyone in, and every prospective pledge is expected to earn her spot. As president, Madison is the ultimate gatekeeper, and she has a special test for Ava.
Rival sorority Theta is nipping at the Gammas' heels for the top spot on campus, and president Shay is proud they've gotten there by rising above the hyper-competitive gamesmanship that consumes other houses. She knows she's made some enemies in her quest to change the Greek system from the inside, but she can't imagine the depth of Madison's resentment for her ... or how far Ava will go to become a Gamma.
The sisterhood, the parties, the elite status--and the connection to her mother--are what Ava has always wanted, but she never guessed the cost of membership would be so high. Three women, two houses, one dead body: rush has never been this messy.
I'm a Lot: Surviving Myself and All the People I've Been
by Alison Leiby
In this witty, absurd, and surprisingly moving memoir-in-essays, comedian Alison Leiby unpacks the multitudes women are told to be--and the joy of refusing to pick just one.
"Alison Leiby is the Jewish millennial David Sedaris. Reading this book was like having a glass of wine with your funniest, smartest, and coolest friend." -- Bess Kalb, author of Nobody Will Tell You This But Me
Have you ever frozen when someone asks, "So, tell me about yourself?" If so, take a page from I'm a Lot. Alison Leiby proudly embraces the identities we're often encouraged to hide: Housewives stan. Discount shopaholic. Former jock. Happily single. Childless by choice and proud cat mom. Through these different roles and identities, Leiby reveals her hard-earned wisdom about what it's like to be a woman who does it all (except for the things that make her say "uh, no thank you").
When she was nineteen years old, a complication from back surgery left Leiby on her deathbed. After a surprising recovery, you might assume Leiby was ready to seize life by the you-know-whats. But instead of letting this one miraculous experience define her, Leiby's brush with death made her realize there is nothing more beautiful in this life than just getting to be yourself. And while women are still expected to conform to many patriarchal labels, Leiby ignores the pressure to be palatable and instead champions all the joyful, weird, and complicated selves she brings to the world.
In fourteen personal essays full of deadpan jokes, tender moments of candid introspection, and insightful social commentary, Leiby encourages us to ditch the manufactured Instagram persona and embrace the fact that sometimes the puzzle pieces don't always fit to create a perfect picture, but that doesn't mean we are incomplete.
Perfect Life
by Meredith Lavender - Kendall Shores
Following a shocking murder, a woman must face the husband she thought she knew in this twisty, sizzling novel from the bestselling authors of Happy Wife.
Welcome back to Winter Park, where looks can kill and secrets refuse to stay buried.
Este Walker didn't move to Florida to make friends. Five years ago, she ghosted her life in California to reinvent herself among the lakefront estates of Florida's elite. With a cocktail in hand, more money than she could ever spend, and a past she intends to keep hidden, she's finally content--or, you know, close enough. Her husband, Beau, and her best friend, Nora, are the only company Este needs.
But when someone she'd much rather forget resurfaces, the past begins to close on her. And then a mysterious death turns Winter Park upside down--and Beau, who's keeping secrets of his own, is implicated, . Thrust into a high-stakes murder investigation, Este must unravel a web of lies and deception to answer the question: What exactly happened in California, and has it come back to haunt her? More important: How is she going to get herself out of this mess?
June Women's Fiction, Biographies & Memoirs
Daughters of the Sun and Moon
by Lisa See
From beloved New York Times bestselling author Lisa See, the story of three Chinese women whose unexpected friendship helps them survive and, despite the odds, thrive, in the turmoil of post-Civil War Los Angeles.
In 1870, three Chinese women arrive in the small, dusty and violent pueblo of Los Angeles. Dove, the bound-footed daughter of an imperial scholar, is entrancing and innocent. These characteristics should bring her great rewards, beginning with her arranged marriage to a much older merchant. Petal, the big-footed daughter of peasants, has grown up hungry and with dirt between her toes. In a moment of desperation, Petal's father sells her to buy money for rice seed, and she is loaded onto a ship to the Gold Mountain of America, where she is once again sold. Moon is married to a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. She is educated, speaks fluent English and has been endowed with a face of great beauty, yet her failed footbinding as a child has left her with a limp that lessens her value in the eyes of many.
Each woman has her own desires. Dove wants to love and be loved, Petal desires freedom and Moon seeks justice. Together they face a larger society that wishes them not one ounce of good will. Anti-Chinese sentiment is strong in Los Angeles, and this eventually leads to the Night of Horrors during which all three women are challenged in ways they could not have imagined.
Brought together by hardship and heartbreak, they must use their bravery, endurance and ability to "eat bitterness" to discover their voices, find freedom and connect through solace and friendship. Together, they are daughters of the sun and moon.
Land
by Maggie O'Farrell
The award-winning, bestselling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait returns with a soaring historical novel set in Ireland in the years before and after the Great Hunger.
"A breathtaking hymn to the sanctity of natural spaces, operating on timescales both intimate and geological. I finished Land moved not only by the vivid lives of its human characters, but the thrumming, gorgeous presence of its mosses, waters, winds and skies." -- Daniel Mason, author of North Woods
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is unexpectedly sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and the lives of those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás, and how is Liam, aged only 10, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
Land is a novel about separation and reunion, tragedy and recovery, colonization and rebellion. It's a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away. As spellbinding and varied as the landscape that inspired it, Land is, above all, a story of survival, for our times and for all time.
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
by Denise Kiernan
From the New York Times bestselling author of The Girls of Atomic City and The Last Castle comes a sweeping chronicle challenging the traditional mythology of the nation's beginnings and championing the unsung women behind the American Revolution.
History has always celebrated the "Founding Fathers" -- the sly but victorious tactics of Washington, the daring exploits of Lafayette, the grand ideas of Jefferson. Yet we rarely hear of the women who kept the colonies running and liberty alive. Obstinate Daughters finally rewrites the story of America's birth by revealing the courageous, resourceful women whose actions shaped a nation.
From the battlefields to the printing press, from the plantations to the pulpit, these women fought, spied, published, preached, farmed, organized. From the front lines to the home front, from the colonies to the frontier, these unsung heroines turned the tide. In Obstinate Daughters, readers will meet women who armed themselves and took matters into their own hands to defend their town.
A Cherokee leader who warned patriot settlements of looming attacks, risking the lives of her own people in the process. A British spy at the center of a plot to assassinate George Washington. Enslaved women who risked their lives while fighting a parallel battle for their own freedom, embodying the very ideals the revolution claimed to uphold. The only woman to have her name on the Declaration of Independence. And many more.
As she has done so many times before, Kiernan masterfully weaves these individual stories together into a single compelling narrative and carves a place in history for these impactful females. With journalistic rigor and narrative flair, Kiernan reminds us that the past is always open to challenge, and that every untold story can inspire a new generation.
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
by Kaitlyn Tiffany
The untold story of the women who debunked the Warren Report, a riveting history of obsession, heartbreak and the myth of the great American century
"An extraordinary account of a relentless search for truth." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Kaitlyn Tiffany masterfully unspools a hidden history of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath." -- Liza Mundy, New York Times bestselling author of Code Girls and The Sisterhood
In the winter of 1967, the official account of the Kennedy assassination was beginning to unravel. A scattered group of Americans had pointed to major problems with the report prepared by President Johnson's handpicked Warren Commission. Many of the most serious criticisms of the government's work came from a source that surprised some: women who, within the community of critics, outnumbered the men two to one.
Politicians and reporters dismissed these women, referring to them as "scavengers" and suggesting they were eccentrics with murder-mystery fixations or crushes on the deceased President Kennedy. But in The Housewives Underground, Kaitlyn Tiffany resurrects the story of Maggie Field, Shirley Martin and Sylvia Meagher, whose collaboration and friendship reshaped both their own lives and our national memory.
Field hosted screenings of the Zapruder film and raised money to pursue new leads. Martin traveled frequently to Dallas, enlisted her children to help interview witnesses and irritated J. Edgar Hoover with her "antagonistic" attitude toward the FBI. And at the center of the story is Sylvia Meagher, a born-and-raised New Yorker who was devoted to the ballet and the Mets, cultivated fierce friendships and firm grudges, and dedicated 25 years to her conviction that the whole truth of JFK's assassination had not been told.
Painstakingly researched and engrossing, The Housewives Underground takes readers back to the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, a time when Americans' belief in their government was eroding, introducing readers to the so-called housewives who asked the first, hardest questions about one of the most shocking events in American history.
When You Loved Me
by Beatriz Williams
A young widow returns to her late father's New England estate, only to be drawn into the hunt for the rumored pirate treasure that consumed his life, in this thrilling and moving novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Husbands & Lovers.
"Utterly transporting … one of the most gorgeous love stories I've read in a long time." -- Emily Giffin
Local history insists that a legendary pirate buried his treasure somewhere beneath Windward, the decayed Cooper estate on Winthrop Island, but Lucy Cooper never trusted the fable that broke her family apart. When a widowed Lucy returns with her young daughter to grieve her estranged father, she discovers catastrophe: The property is mired in debt she canʼt repay, and Ben Ressler has unexpectedly turned up on her doorstep.
Thirteen summers ago, the teenaged Lucy never meant to fall in love with Ben, a Dartmouth football star vacationing nearby at the Peabody estate and the object of an all-consuming crush by Laura Peabody, Lucy's best friend. Those few weeks were the best and worst of Lucy's life, dooming her friendship with Laura. Now, after a fatal accident ended his dazzling NFL career, Ben has returned to live quietly in the Peabodys' caretaker lodge. He's also the last person who saw Lucy's father alive.
As Lucy reconstructs her father's troubling final days, she uncovers his research on the frozen winter of 1717, when a desperately wounded pirate sought refuge on Winthrop Island with an enigmatic healer. To Lucy, this history points the way to a different kind of treasure: how to heal from the fractures of the past and earn a second chance at love. But just as Lucy's long-buried emotions sear to the surface, a shocking turn of events reveals that someone else on the island will do whatever it takes to claim the fabled plunder.
A timeless story of love and atonement, When You Loved Me maps both a centuries-old treasure hunt and the intimate territory of the human heart, weaving together past and present as only Beatriz Williams can.
A Pair of Aces
by Marie Benedict - Victoria Christopher Murray
A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law, a prosecutor and a madam, who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian.
Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan's first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City's five largest organized crime families. Other prosecutors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they've all focused on the crime syndicate's traditional businesses bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing, or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can't get Luciano alone.
Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.
Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they're trying to convict. It is this very alliance, of two women from vastly different worlds, that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.
Related: Before you go, check out our curated list of Spring 2026 Leading Lady Book Recommendations. Looking for even more great reads? Explore historical eras with our Time Traveler book picks, or get lost in a world of literary fiction curated for Bookworms.