Laura Newman’s short story collection "The Franklin Avenue Rookery for Wayward Babies" features complex plots, covers considerable time and geographical space, and includes deep characters and relationships. Authentic historical,... Read More

In Leslie Meier, Lee Hollis, and Peggy Ehrhart’s cozy novella collection "Christmas Card Murder", strong women follow holiday clues to solve crimes in their communities. Nothing spices up the holidays like getting the gal pals together... Read More

In a culture that fetishizes male power, the heroine of "A Certain Hunger" is a rapacious, bloodthirsty monster—a perversion of every male fear. Dorothy is a food critic. She has exquisite taste and she hungers for new sensations. So... Read More

The pain of adolescence is complicated by family secrets and persistent grudges in Elena Ferrante’s devastating novel, "The Lying Life of Adults". For thirteen-year-old Giovanna, her father’s side of the family has always been a... Read More

Fariha Róisín’s novel sings of building joy within sorrow and spins a gossamer reverie that clings to the consciousness. Taylia grows up on the Upper West Side as the less loved younger daughter of a mixed race family. Her father is... Read More

Three troubled but tough generations of women, all molded and wounded by the Pentecostal culture around them, are celebrated in Kelli Jo Ford’s masterpiece, patchwork novel, "Crooked Hallelujah". Religion became a source of both... Read More

Though much of it is set among the dead, Valérie Perrin’s "Fresh Water for Flowers" is an exuberant novel whose thoughtful treatments of family tragedies are alchemistic. Abandoned at birth, Violette was shunted between disinterested... Read More

In Anna Dorn’s "Vagablonde", Prue, a Los Angeles lawyer, hopes to wean herself off of various psychotropic prescriptions. Prue is also an aspiring rapper, despite the fact that she is bourgeois and has “the coloring of a Nazi.” As... Read More