Monica Ali, Brick Lane.
A woman who is sent from Bangladesh to London for an arranged marriage begins to question whether she has a hand in her own destiny.

Jeanne Braselton, A False Sense of Well Being.
A Southern woman with a seemingly perfect life and marriage begins to fantasize about the many ways her husband could meet an untimely end.

Bonnie Burnard, A Good House.
In the optimistic days after World War II, the future seems bright for an Ontario veteran and his family, but life doesn't always work out as planned.

Bebe Moore Campbell, 72 Hour Hold.
A mother tries to cope with her teenage daughter who has bipolar disorder.

Sandra Cisneros, Caramelo.
A multi-generational story of a Mexican-American family whose myriad voices create a dazzling weave of passion, poignancy and the stuff of life.

Sandra Dallas, The Persian Pickle Club.
During the Depression in Kansas, a woman from the city joins a farm wives’ quilting circle and tries to uncover a secret they’ve all been keeping.

Pamela Duncan, Moon Women.
A woman who is trying to live her own life finds she has to take in her ailing mother and her pregnant teenage daughter.

Kim Edwards, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.
A doctor delivers his wife’s twins and gives away the one with Down’s Syndrome without her knowledge—a secret that haunts their family.

Leif Enger, Peace like a River.
A father takes his children on a cross-country search for his son, who escaped from prison after being charged with murder.

Cindy Eppes, South of Reason.
An adolescent girl tries to figure out why her parents have moved the family back to their hometown next-door to an eccentric woman and her son.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex.
The story of a girl who learns that she is a hermaphrodite.

Joy Fielding, Grand Avenue.
Four young mothers who become friends in a rich Cincinnati neighborhood find their friendship tested by tragedy 20 years later.

Connie May Fowler, Before Women Had Wings.
A girl from an impoverished and abusive family learns about dignity and forgiveness from a mysterious neighbor.

Dorothea Benton Frank, Sullivan’s Island.
After learning her husband is unfaithful, a woman rebuilds her life and comes to terms with her past.

Diane Freund, Four Corners.
When their mother is hospitalized for mental instability, four siblings find themselves at the mercy of their eccentric aunt, who comes up to the country from the Bronx with her own troubled children.

Patricia Gaffney, The Saving Graces.
Four women friends sustain each other through the trials of their lives.

Terry Gamble, The Water Dancers.
A Native American girl working as a maid at a rich family’s summer home has an affair with her boss’s son who returns wounded from World War II.

T. Greenwood, Undressing the Moon.
A woman being treated for breast cancer recalls the summer she turned 14 and her mother left home.

Diane Hammond, Going to Bend.
Two women who have been friends since childhood go to work making soups in a local restaurant and cope with the problems, hardships, and joys of life.

Shelby Hearon, Ella in Bloom.
When her perfect older sister dies suddenly, a woman must return home and face her critical mother, but rediscovers an old love.

Donna Hemans, River Woman.
A Jamaican woman is accused of letting her son drown so she could be free to join her mother in America.

Laura Hendrie, Remember Me.
Hoping to make a fresh start, an outcast must first face her past and the hometown that treated her cruelly.

Ann Hood, Somewhere off the Coast of Maine.
Four friends from the Sixties find that in the Eighties their lives have taken some surprising turns.

Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama.
A woman must return to her Alabama hometown to confront her past.

Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees.
A 14-year-old white girl and her black nanny flee from an encounter with racists and take refuge with a trio of beekeeping sisters who may hold the key to the fate of the girl’s mother.

Lorna Landvik, Patty Jane’s House of Curl.
A woman whose husband mysteriously disappeared just before she gave birth to their child opens a beauty salon with the help of her mother-in-law and her sister, who has suffered her own tragedy.

Mary Lawson, Crow Lake.
A successful zoologist looks back on her childhood in rural Canada and the tragic accident that killed her parents and thrust her older brothers into assuming responsibility for the family.

Jeffrey Lent, In the Fall.
After the Civil War, a Union soldier brings home a new wife — a former slave with a secret that will affect subsequent generations of the family.

Bernice McFadden, Sugar.
A churchgoing woman forms an unlikely bond with a prostitute who moves in next door when she sees a resemblance between her new neighbor and her own daughter, who was murdered 15 years before.

Susan Minot, Evening.
A woman on her deathbed recalls a glorious summer weekend years ago when she found and lost the love of her life.

Tova Mirvis, The Ladies Auxiliary.
When young people in the Orthodox community of Memphis begin to stray, a free-spirited newcomer who converted to Judaism is blamed.

Donna Morrissey, Kit’s Law.
A young girl living with her mentally disabled mother in a cottage on the coast of Newfoundland fights the townspeople’s efforts to remove her from her home and unravels the mystery of her birth.

Sena Jeter Naslund, Ahab’s Wife.
A woman who fled her puritanical father joins the crew of a whaling ship disguised as a boy and eventually marries the legendary Captain Ahab.

Antonya Nelson, Living to Tell.
After five years in prison for causing the death of his grandmother in a drunk driving incident, a man returns home to live with his parents and sisters.

Audrey Niffenegger, The Time-Traveler’s Wife.
A woman falls in love with a time traveler who is periodically and uncontrollably swept back and forth through time.

Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier.
A woman must decide what to do when her fiance dives into a shallow lake and is paralyzed.

Ann Patchett, The Magician’s Assistant.
When her magician husband dies, a woman contacts the family she never knew he had.

Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper.
A 13-year-old girl who was conceived as a donor for her sister who has leukemia hires a lawyer when a kidney is required of her.

Reynolds Price, Roxanna Slade.
A 90-year-old woman looks back over the past century and recalls the shocking event that changed the course of her life.

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones.
A 14-year-old girl who is murdered is able to observe & touch the lives of those she left behind.

Dani Shapiro, Family History.
A family falls apart when their 13-year-old daughter exhibits disturbing behavior, culminating in a terrible accident and a terrible accusation.

Carol Shields, Unless.
A writer tries to determine why her daughter suddenly dropped out of college and began begging on a street corner.

Mona Simpson, Anywhere but Here.
A resourceful 12-year-old and her ambitious mother leave the Midwest and head to California in search of fame and fortune.

Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle.
A woman who gave birth out of wedlock at age 17 discovers that her now teenaged daughter is having an affair with her math teacher.

Gail Tsukiyama, Dreaming Water.
A woman cares for her grown daughter who has a genetic disorder that causes rapid aging.

Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups.
A woman who left college to marry an older man with 3 daughters looks back on her life & wonders how she changed from the person she once was.

Amanda Eyre Ward, Sleep toward Heaven.
The lives of a woman on death row, the wife of one of her victims, and a doctor who takes on her late uncle’s prison job become linked.

Sarah Willis, Some Things That Stay.
A girl who travels the country with her itinerant artist father struggles with her desire to settle down, the loss of her mother, and her resentment at being left in charge of her siblings.

Lolly Winston, Good Grief.
A thirtysomething woman whose husband died of cancer tries to cope with her loss.