Women's Fiction 2025

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back—because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

In Berlin's underground, where techno rattles buildings still scarred with the violence of the last century, nineteen-year-old Nila finds her tribe. In their company she can escape the parallel city that made her, the public housing block packed with refugees and immigrants, where the bathrooms are infested with silverfish and the walls outside are graffitied with swastikas.Escaping into the clubs, Nila tries to outrun the shadow of her dead mother, once a feminist revolutionary; her catatonic, defeated father; and the cab-driver uncles who seem to idle on every corner. To anyone who asks, her family is Greek, not Afghani.And then Nila meets American writer Marlowe Woods, whose literary celebrity, though fading, opens her eyes to a world of patrons and festivals, one that imbues her dreams of life as an artist with new possibility. But as she finds herself drawn further into his orbit and ugly, barely submerged tensions begin to roil and claw beneath the city's cosmopolitan veneer, everything she hopes for, hates, and believes about herself will be challenged.A portrait of the artist as a young woman in a Berlin that can't escape its past — an electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discovery.Endorsements'Kaleidoscopic, full of style and soul' — Raven Leilani'A beautiful coming-of-age story about identity and discovery' — Elle'A no-bullshit must-read debut' — Kaveh Akbar'Rarely has the wildness and bewilderment of youth been conveyed with such richly textured heat' — Garth Greenwell

A boy meets a girl. The past meets the future. A finger meets a trigger. The beginning meets the end. England is forever. England must fall.In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel.Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more.But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the structures and histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy history when history is living in your house?

Rosa Roshkin is five years old when her family is murdered in a pogrom and she is forced to leave behind everything she knows with only a suitcase of clothes and her father’s violin.Somewhere Else is an epic generational novel about womanhood and Judaeo-Scottish experience across two World Wars, the creation of Israel and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explores today’s most difficult and urgent questions, not least how to find identity in displacement.

Singapore, 1951 When Josephina is a girl, her parents lock her in a room with the father of the boy to whom she's betrothed. What happens next will determine the course of her life for generations to come.New Zealand, 1984 Josephina and her family leave Sri Lanka for New Zealand. But their new home is not what they expected, and for the children, Sithara and Suri, a sudden and shocking event changes everything.London, 2018 Arriving on her uncle Suri's doorstep, jetlagged and heartbroken, Annie has no idea what to expect — all she knows is that Suri was cast out by his amma for being gay, like she is.Moving between cities and generations, Amma follows three women on very different paths, against a backdrop of shifting cultures. As circumstance and misunderstanding force them apart, it will take the most profound love to knit them back together before it's too late.

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to NY. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel, and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. Miranda July's second novel confirms the brilliance of her unique approach to fiction. With July's wry voice, perfect comic timing, unabashed curiosity about human intimacy, and palpable delight in pushing boundaries, All Fours tells the story of one woman's quest for a new kind of freedom. Part absurd entertainment, part tender reinvention of the sexual, romantic, and domestic life of a 45-year-old female artist, All Fours transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman. Once again, July hijacks the familiar and turns it into something new and thrillingly and profoundly alive.

Sara has just landed at LAX, returning home from a conference abroad, when agents from the Risk Assessment Administration pull her aside and inform her that she will soon commit a crime. Using data from her dreams, the RAA’s algorithm has determined that she is at imminent risk of harming the person she loves most, her husband. For his safety, she must be kept under observation for twenty-one days.The agents transfer Sara to a retention center, where she is held with other dreamers, all of them women trying to prove their innocence from different crimes. With every deviation from the strict and ever-shifting rules of the facility, their stay is extended.Months pass and Sara seems no closer to release. Then one day, a new resident arrives, disrupting the order of the facility and leading Sara on a collision course with the very companies that have deprived her of her freedom.From Laila Lalami comes a riveting and utterly original novel about one woman’s fight for freedom, set in a near future where even dreams are under surveillance. Eerie, urgent, and ceaselessly clear-eyed, The Dream Hotel artfully explores the seductive nature of technology, which puts us in shackles even as it makes our lives easier. Lalami asks how much of ourselves must remain private if we are to remain free, and whether even the most invasive forms of surveillance can ever capture who we really are.EndorsementsPulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalist.“maestra of literary fiction” — NPR

Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they're nobodies.First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone in a shabby apartment except when she is visited by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose, and somehow manages to survive. Across the ocean in America, Elizabeth’s daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family's future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in the privileged hills of Los Angeles. And then there's the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student spending her days in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings.When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family's brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never even mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow together?Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, these five women are pulled apart and brought together by revolutions personal and political.A darkly funny, life-affirming debut novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as they grapple with revolutions personal and political. The Persians is a darkly funny, deeply moving and profoundly searching portrait of a unique family in crisis. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.Endorsements'I enjoyed it enormously' — Marian Keyes'Glorious … Darkly funny, richly satisfying' — Sarah Winman'Funny and profound … A gloriously engrossing debut' — Tash Aw‘Exuberant, comic and perceptive’ — Amina Cain

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power.

Listen. My one-time friend Maria did tell me once: "Make your own paradise, Tibb, since this world is no sweet place for people like us."Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you're not too bound by the Big Man's rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her mother is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone.As she wends her way across England's fields and forests, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.And so, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan: her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds — and vengeful enemies — to their door...A Little Trickerie is blazingly original, disarmingly funny and deeply moving. Portraying a side of Tudor England rarely seen, it's a tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, with a ragtag cast of characters and an unforgettable and distinctly unangelic heroine.

In a small seaside town, autumn is edging into winter, gulls ride winds over the waves, and two women pass each other on the promenade, as yet unaware of each other's existence.In the nineties, Lydia was a teen pop star, posed half-naked on billboards everywhere with a lollipop between her lips and no idea how to live, letting the world happen to her. Now, three decades later, Lydia is less and less sure that what happened to her was in the least bit okay. The news cycle runs hot with #MeToo stories, and a famous former lover has emerged with a self-serving apology, asking her to forgive him. Suddenly, the past is full of trapdoors she is desperately trying not to fall through.Joyce, in middle age, has never left home. She still lives with her mother Betty. With their matching dresses, identical hairdos and makeup, they are the local oddballs. Theirs is a life of unerring routine: the shops, biscuits served on bone china plates, dressing up for a gin and tonic on Saturday. Nice things. One misstep from Joyce can ruin Betty's day, so Joyce treads carefully. She has never let herself think about a different kind of life. But recently, along with the hot flushes, something like anger is asserting itself, like a caged thing realising it should probably try and escape.Amid the grey skies, amusement parks and beauty parlours of a gentrifying run-down seaside resort, these two women might never meet. But as they both try to untangle the damaging details of their past in the hope of a better future, their lives are set on an unlikely collision course.With mordant wit and lyrical prose, Birding asks if we can ever see ourselves clearly or if we are always the unreliable narrators of our own experiences. It is a story about the difference between responsibility and obligation, unhealthy relationships and abusive ones, third acts and last chances, and two women trying to take flight on clipped wings.

All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe's world. All Ettie wants is to escape it.The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie. Into this strange, silent house walks a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph's curiosity grows...Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village. She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.

A house is a precious thing...It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

"By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?"When academic Nadia is disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, she decides to make a getaway — accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues.But then Nadia meets Sara, a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen, and she is struck by how similar their stories are. Both from a Muslim background, both feisty and opinionated, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines, Sara and Nadia immediately connect and a powerful friendship forms. When Sara confesses a secret, Nadia is forced to make a difficult choice.A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism, and the decisions we make in pursuit of connection and belonging, Fundamentally upends and explores a defining controversy of our age with heart, complexity and humour — delivered by one of the most fearless and talented new voices in contemporary fiction.

Deidre is a victim of her family, her society, her history. That is how she sees herself, and so she feels free of all obligations, moral and practical — until the police take her back to her family home. In a Cape Town where water is rationed and must be collected from trucks each day, and where the consequences of apartheid and its ending are still evident, Deidre lives from day to day in squalor — largely self-created — borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyone she knows. Then she is contacted by the police and taken by a respectful constable to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in a shattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she has to accept the truth of her past and of her older brother, her parents' golden boy. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it truly is to be a victim.

With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy Barton, Olive Kitteridge, Bob Burgess, and more—as they deal with a shocking crime in their midst, fall in love and yet choose to be apart, and grapple with the question, as Lucy Barton puts it, “What does anyone’s life mean?”It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives down the road in a house by the sea with her ex-husband, William. Together, Lucy and Bob go on walks and talk about their lives, their fears and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, is finally introduced to the iconic Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known—“unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them—reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.Brimming with empathy and pathos, Tell Me Everything is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”EndorsementsNew York Times bestsellerOprah’s Book Club pickFrom Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout“Stunner.” — People“Tell Me Everything hits like a bucolic fable... A novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout’s shimmering technique.” — The Washington PostShortlisted for the Women’s Prize for FictionNamed a best book of the year by Time, NPR, Vogue, and Parade.