Women’s Fiction Books – List of Recommendations
Without formula or prediction, characters learn to breathe in life.
Women’s fiction books recommendations are contemporary, ranging from non-typical or subversive romance to spiritual to lady lit. The novels include inspirational, domestic, marriage and divorce fiction, friendship fiction, sister relationships, lesbian fiction, women’s issues, mother and children, women of a certain age and more. Book list and slideshow are below, see them now….
What are women’s fiction books by definition? 
- Women’s fiction books are usually written by women, for women.
- They are based on the motivation of women’s issues and personal drama.
- Most often, women’s fiction is written sans the typical romance.
- Even without this typical romance, these novels are seldom read by men.
- Women’s fiction books are almost always contemporary, given they are not in a genre such as Regency, historical, romance, supernatural, fantasy, horror or mystery.
- Personal and career drama, environmental issues and political activism are tempered with the distinctive ways the protagonist deals with challenges and self realization.
The main foundation is a lack of foundation formula in women’s fiction books.
Being a no-formula genre, women’s fiction runs wild and I love it. Happily ever after is beside the point. If there is a hero at all, he – or she – is a non-typical hunk with personal drama of his or her own and would seldom be a hero in the romantic fiction genre.
Personal drama guides the story.
The personal drama in women’s fiction involves close personal relationships, such as friendship and sister relationships, mothers and children, domestic life, marriage, divorce, widowhood, death, recovery, coming of age as women over a certain age, and self realization. Sometimes the futility of human relationships in women’s fiction is so consuming there is no humor or hope. We realize that climate of storytelling is awarded in novels by male authors, and, here at least, is also applauded as fine storytelling within the women’s fiction genre.
Women fiction books and their readers are mesmerized by the life journey . . .
- Life is not necessarily happily ever after.
- Relationships can bury a person.
- People can break people.
- Even children die.
- Some people have little courage, even when they need it.
- Advocacy for a cause does not mean we get what we need.
- Dreams are often lost and never found.
- Goals are never set in stone.
- Some hearts never recover.
Is this pessimism? Reality? A desire for a truly responsive read? Maturity of age?
To have this realization does not mean there is not hope or humor to life, that writing falls flat and purposeless.
Women’s fiction books . . .
For me, as an author and reader whose favorite genre has always been women’s fiction, this is a reflection of women learning to breathe with life. Remember the book and movie, Waiting to Exhale
Life is about breathing, dreaming and dying.
Women – me too, I admit it – we hold our breath. . .
In women’s fiction novels, the characters at the forefront learn to breathe. They exhale. They grow, they become anew as they bend with life.
What makes their journey interesting is the lack of formula.
The surprise for a reader to realize their character has what? Found a lost child, healed an emotional wound with a nonprofit advocacy, taken in a bevy of strangers who become their family, sold everything and bought into a commune lifestyle, walked away from a marriage only to return with a solid identity. Faced a burning home and decided it wasn’t real anyway. Is called by sacred contract to be a dreamer to help people. Lost the nanny and the husband and grieves the nanny. Confronts widowhood with their hell on wheels spirit. A woman decides to retire rom marriage and arranged a concubine for her husband. It’s all in there, in the women’s fiction novels.
Women’s fiction is a face-off with reality where reader speculation of endings has changed. And their relationships with the writers of women’s fiction is more reality-based, in my opinion.
I look forward to readers and other authors sharing book suggestions for the categories below, even your own novels. Just use the comment box. Also, you are welcome to email me using the grey envelope.
Essa Adams
Author, Women’s Fiction Blog
Author, A Breath Floats By
Consider reading …. NOTE there is a pause button in top of slideshow.
Women’s Fiction Books to Read
Short Story Collections
Roads Unravelling by Katherine-Diane Leveille
Women and Fiction: Stories By and About Women
The Stories of Eva Luna – Author Isabel Allende
Women of A Certain Age
Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever – Judity Marshall
Heart and Soul by Maeve Binchy
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
A Well Behaved Woman’s Life – Susan McGeown
Promises to Keep by Jane Green
Pavilion of Women – Pearl S. Buck
Sisters in Women’s Fiction Books
A Soft Place to Land – Susan Rebecca White
In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner
The Secret Life of Bees – Author Sue Monk Kidd
The Geometry of Sisters by Luanne Rice
Friendship Fiction
Husbands May Come and Go but Friends are Forever – Judity Marshall
Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons – Lorna Landvik
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
The Futility of Human Relationships
Suspicious River – Laura Kasischke
Little Children – Tom Perrotta
Divorce Fiction
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything – Janelle Brown
Madame Mirabou’s School of Love – Barbara Samuel
Marriage in Women’s Fiction
My Husband Ran Off with the Nanny and God Do I Miss Her – Tracy Davis
Pavilion of Women – Pearl S. Buck
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
Love the One You’re With – Emily Griffin
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
Burnt Mountain – Anne Rivers Siddons
Women’s Issues
The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis
You’re Not You by Michelle Wildgen
Lesbian Fiction
Seeking Sara Summers by Susan Gabriel
Self Realization for Women in Fiction
Mother and Children in Women’s Fiction Books
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt by Beth Hoffman
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Rebecca Wells
Promises to Keep by Jane Green
The Rest of Her Life by Laura Moriarty
The Glass Lake by Maeve Binchy
A Pebble To Polish – Janet Lord Leszi
Hearts Upon a Fragile Bough – Vera Jane Cook
Aging Parents
A Better View of Paradise – Randy Sue Coburn
Debilitating Illness in Women’s Fiction Books
You’re Not You by Michelle Wildgen
Death in Women’s Fiction
Where the Lake Becomes the River by Kate Betterton
Crazy as Chocolate – Elizabeth Hyde
Domestic Fiction
The Secret Life of Bees – Author Sue Monk Kidd
All We Ever Wanted Was Everything – Janelle Brown
When She Flew – Jennie Shortridge
Women’s Fiction Books – Featuring Love or Subversive Romance
Metaphysical and Light Supernatural in Women’s Fiction Books
Flight of the Goose – Lesley Thomas
The Painter’s Gift – Penelope J. Holt
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
A Better View of Paradise – Randy Sue Coburn
Spiritual Fiction
The Painter’s Gift – Penelope J. Holt
A Well Behaved Woman’s Life – Susan McGeown
The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis
I have a recommendation for women’s fiction — The Last Victim, a novel by Elaine Bossik. Check it out here:
http://www.elainebossik.com/novel
Sounds good. I love stories about women and friendship. Romance is great but the challenges of life beat it all.
Thanks to you…I have found the genre of my book, or the no-genre…women’s fiction. The Laughing Ladies seems to meet all
the requirements you mention, except one. It is not a contemporary story. It takes place in 1893 Colorado, a brief time in history when there were opportunities for women that would make Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem positively giddy. Its emphasis on the power of female friendship to enable a woman, against all odds, to reach her goals is a theme that continues throughout the centuries.