Books like A Day in the Life of a Smiling Woman — picked by fans

Each one of these stories is a mini-novel, which are the sort of stories I love. Black never leaves you hanging, like some writers do, and you will feel like you’re right in there watching the story unfold. The writing has been called pitch-perfect and I agree. Every word is right, every moment fits and every character is trying to make sense of the world as we all do, every day. She deftly explores the emotional DNA passed from generations before and what that means for each of our lives going forward. So you get a great tale well told. and a lot to think about at the same time. Exactly what I love to read and what smart modern women are drawn to. 

Edith Pearlman is a gem. These 20 beautifully written and fascinating short stories delve into the moments that matter most in everyday life. Read them one at a time or all together like a mosaic for modern women. Pearlman’s characters – men women and children – are all unique, and also extraordinary, in their way, and all mirror our own realities. Across the globe and across time, her tales are so true and so wise, I love reading them again and again, especially when I have little time and need a touch of literary magic.  

This is a truly beautiful collection, and I love the way many of the stories place the protagonists in fraught situations that reveal what they will do to survive.

Some of my favorites are “The Worst You Ever Feel” and “The Briefcase” for how they show war’s impact on survivors, and “Painted Ocean, Painted Ship” and “The Miracle Years of Little Fork” for combining the tragic and the absurd in creative ways.

Everyone recognizes ZNH’s iconic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, but Hurston is a master short story writer. She reminds me of the artist Van Gogh, who devoted his work to the common man as Hurston centers her stories on simple folk whose experiences exemplify the human struggle. Profound and pleasing to read, you will smell the flowers, hear the bees buzzing, and occasionally laugh out loud at these beautifully told stories of real life. Although your life may be different from these, you will be reminded of what bonds us more than what divides us. No better time to think about that. 

The vast majority of books on the Revolutionary War are written by Americans, and they predictably focus on the conflict from the Patriot side. But throughout the war, the strategic initiative rested with Britain, not the United States. Through a series of brilliant biographical chapters, O’Shaughnessy traces the history of the war and the evolution of British strategy, and its ultimate failure, from the imperial side.

What all of Joanna Nadin’s books have in common is her ability to capture the voice of her characters so perfectly they feel truly alive. The children of class 4B have that loveable lunacy I remember from teaching kids this age. That authenticity is what has kids falling off their chairs with laughter, and what makes this such a great book to read aloud. You’ll find yourself repeating catchphrases later. Rikin Parekh’s illustrations add another layer of brilliance and perfectly capture the characters and their comedy antics. Literally hilarious!

“Dad says well at least I haven’t been arrested. Grandpa says being arrested would be getting off lightly and in his day he had to walk five miles to school barefoot and eat gravel for lunch. 

Mum who works at the council says, ‘I have spent all day listening to Mr. Butterworth bang on about bollards and the last thing I… show more.

Describing a series of journeys on horseback and by foot through south-east England and the Midlands during the 1820s, Rural Rides is one of the great travelogues. Cobbett was a man of many parts – journalist, soldier, farmer, politician, and social reformer. In Rural Rides he blends lyrical description with fist-shaking fury about the injustices he encountered. He writes so well that you feel that you are travelling through the countryside with him.

What mother remembering her own labor wouldn’t be grateful to Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s essay, “What My Mother Never Told Me, or How I Was Blindsided by Childbirth and Survived,” for her shameless revelations about the most terrifying and grubby aspects of a safe, normal vaginal delivery. It’s just one of the brilliant and necessary essays in a book that kept me company through the hardest and funniest parts of being a mom.

I can’t tell you how many times I consulted Jonathan Mayo’s Titanic: Minute By Minute book, checking that the Titanic’s timeline fit in with what my characters were doing at any given time. It’s non-fiction, and it’s nail-bitingly intense. The book is written in present tense, giving you a sense of urgency as Mayo tells you where everyone is, and what is happening at varying parts of the ship at that exact moment. It helps ground you in reality: The truth was, many of Titanic’s crew and passengers didn’t know the ship was sinking. And many of those who did genuinely believed another ship would arrive long before anything serious could actually happen. Mayo uses both accounts from passengers who survived the sinking, as well as the crew member’s testimony from the British and American Titanic inquiries. 

If you’ve ever wanted to know exactly what happened the night … show more.

The shout line on the jacket is “This will overturn everything you thought you knew about…The First World War”, and it certainly delivers. No other conflict has been so misrepresented, and for most people, their idea of it comes straight from Blackadder Goes Forth. But men did not spend months at a time in the trenches; a whole generation did not die; the generals were not cowardly, incompetent fools.

When I first began to write about WW1 for my Morland Dynasty series, I knew as little as anyone, and what I thought I knew was all wrong! By the time I was researching for War At Home, I knew a lot more, but Corrigan opens my eyes to many more subjects. Informative, well-researched, but above all wonderfully readable, this book should be required reading for anyone who is interested in what really happened, not just the made-for-tv version.