Here are 99 books that Mrs. Everything fans have personally recommended if you like
Mrs. Everything.
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First, I'm a woman and I'm inspired by women from the past who overcame the rules of the day in which they lived. It doesn’t matter where they lived, or what they tried to overcome, but to have bucked the patriarchal system and achieved some measure of success, is phenomenal. Second, I became inspired by silent film star Marion Davies, and I wrote a book about it. I never intended to write historical fiction. My first book was a memoir about sailing to Tahiti at fourteen with my father and two sisters. But life has a funny way of directing us where we need to go. Here I am: inspired by women from the past!
How would you feel to inherit your family business (the Post cereal company) but not be able to run it? I’d be infuriated.
Here is the story of one of the richest women in the country who needed to marry so her husband could have a seat on the board. But men in the early 1900s did not abide women on the Board of Directors of any corporation.
Learn how Marjorie Post navigates the world trying to find love and be true to her father’s dream.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “Marvelous . . . I just had to be there with the Post cereal heiress through every twist and turn.”—Martha Hall Kelly, New York Times bestselling author of Lilac Girls
“New-money heiress Marjorie Post isn’t content to remain a society bride as she remakes herself into a savvy entrepreneur, a visionary philanthropist, a presidential hostess, and much more.”—Kate Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Rose Code
Mrs. Post, the President and First Lady are here to see you. . . . So begins another average evening for Marjorie Merriweather Post. Presidents have come and gone,…
Farrah Wethers struggles with her new midlife career as a massage therapist. Her wealthy client is murdered on her table making her suspect number one. Can Farrah and her best friend, June Cho, sort through the suspects to find the real killer?
I’ve always been interested in what drives people, their passions, and whether or not they’ve gone after them. I love it when something inspires them to emerge from a dormant state and give it their all. Show me a person who graduates from college at 85 or skydives at 99. Those people are inspiring! People go through the most incredible situations and use them as fuel for their lives. I funneled all of this into my latest novel. It’s a universal story that’s singular only to the person going through it. We can all take something positive away from this type of story.
I can probably find a way to put this novel into every book category there is – I love it that much!
Elizabeth Zott is a brilliant chemist in the 1960s, a time when society accepted that only men could be brilliant or chemists. But through a series of opportunities and her defiance in the face of attempts to marginalize her, Elizabeth becomes a de facto leader of a small but mighty group of women who change their circumstances and thereby begin to change the world.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • GOOD MORNING AMERICA BOOK CLUB PICK • Meet Elizabeth Zott: a “formidable, unapologetic and inspiring” (PARADE) scientist in 1960s California whose career takes a detour when she becomes the unlikely star of a beloved TV cooking show in this novel that is “irresistible, satisfying and full of fuel. It reminds you that change takes time and always requires heat” (The New York Times Book Review).
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, Oprah Daily, Newsweek, GoodReads
"A unique heroine ... you'll find yourself wishing she wasn’t fictional." —Seattle Times
I’m somebody that starts far too many sentences with the phrase “Remember when.” I have great sensory recollection of things from my past. As a high schooler in the 90s, I can still smell the CK One I was wearing during the Seinfeld finale and hear the Nirvana blaring through my 5-disc changer while I did my homework. I love using my writing to bring certain time periods back to life. I think because technology is moving so quickly – I struggle to understand TikTok – I like writing books and reading books that take me back to a time period that isn’t changing with status updates, new pictures, and Snaps every second.
Tearjerker warning here. This book brought me back to 1930s Atlantic City. As a Jersey Girl, I’m always curious to read books about the place I grew up. I was especially interested in this book because it centered on a Jewish family, similar to my own. While the plot hinges on a tragedy, there are also hopeful moments and some well-placed humor. Not only was I wrapped up in the family drama, but I learned so much history about the Jersey Shore, a place that today barely resembles what author Rachel Beanland describes.
"The perfect summer read" (USA TODAY) begins with a shocking tragedy that results in three generations of the Adler family grappling with heartbreak, romance, and the weight of family secrets across the course of one summer.
"Rachel Beanland is a writer of uncommon wit and wisdom, with a sharp and empathetic eye for character. She'll win you over in the most old fashioned of ways: She simply tells a hell of a story." -Rebecca Makkai, Pulitzer Finalist for The Great Believers
Atlantic City, 1934. Every summer, Esther and Joseph Adler rent their house out to vacationers escaping to "America's…
Trapped in her enormous, devout Catholic family in 1963, Annie creates a hilarious campaign of lies when the pope dies and their family friend, Cardinal Stefanucci, is unexpectedly on the shortlist to be elected the first American pope.
Driven to elevate her family to the holiest of holy rollers in…
I’m only a writer because I was a musician first. I worshiped music—as a performer, listener, and later a critic—for its ability to enshrine me in a purely emotional world. My favorite lyrics were poetry in motion; my favorite melodies escaped description. And through sharing my feverish acclamations of particular albums and songs, I found community with others who also pledged themselves to art that’d definitively split their lives into “before” and “after.” My writing career was born from cathartic devotion and remains devoted to recounting the rapture of self-formation, of being reflected in the mirror of something that saw you before you even knew to see yourself.
I truly believe that video games are the art form that defines our present and, at least, our near-ish future. So, it was a great pleasure to encounter Zevin’s novel about the relationships behind a video game studio’s origins, which both elevates and scrutinizes the medium’s potential to revolutionize narrative storytelling.
Zevin deftly translates gaming's embodied perspective, including one stand-out moment in the back half that is perhaps the book’s defining triumph. Through her expansive prose, Sam, Sadie, and Marx play out their lives: their moments of intense and sometimes myopic creativity, their intricate interpersonal joys and devastations, and the fantastically rendered worlds, some built from reality and others from pixels which bring them together, push them apart, and might just bring them together again.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest, examining identity, creativity and our need to connect.
This is not a romance, but it is about love.
'I just love this book and I hope you love it too' JOHN GREEN, TikTok
Sam and Sadie meet in a hospital in 1987. Sadie is visiting her sister, Sam is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there, but playing together brings joy, escape, fierce competition -- and a special friendship. Then all too soon that time is…
I love music and books about the music industry. Fiction or nonfiction–the drama of a musician’s rise and efforts to sustain a career never gets old to me. I can relate to their determination to make a living doing something they love. Also, as a resident of Memphis, Tennessee, I’m fascinated by the musical history here and often meet people that had ties to the music industry and are now “regular people.” My latest novel Intermissionis about a singing group. I’ve read numerous books in this genre, from Motown bios to the five listed. What a great way to combine my two favorite things–music and books!
This story about a female country singer spans her coming-of-age during the Depression and her struggle to make it as a country musician. Hearing this story from a female point of view is different and interesting. Much of the story is also about her life as a “regular person” after her heyday.
As she embarks on her “farewell tour” she must face the choices she’s made. The story is a good reminder that fame and glamour often come at a great cost.
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Everybody Rise, a “shimmering” (New York Times Book Review) novel with the exquisite historical detail and evocative settings of The Cold Millions and Great Circle that tells the story of one unforgettable woman’s rise in country and western music.
It’s 1980, and Lillian Waters is hitting the road for the very last time.
Jaded from her years in the music business, perpetually hungover, and diagnosed with career-ending vocal problems, Lillian cobbles together a nationwide farewell tour featuring some old hands from her early days playing honky-tonk bars in Washington State and…
Like most writers, I’m intoxicated by stories, and when I first learned about the all-but-unknown country of Oman—once a major maritime power in the Indian Ocean—and its involvement in the East African slave trade, I was hungry to discover more. That “more” soon catapulted me into an extraordinary world filled with romance, beauty, violence, cruelty, and larger-than-life characters I had never heard of before. I was eager to share that world with others and so wrote this book. I am also the author of two other books about the Middle East and am deeply interested in writing about the region’s people, history, and culture, rather than its politics.
In this lyrical novel, winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize (the first novel in Arabic to do so), the Omani writer Altharthi captures the rich complexity of a country caught between the past and the future.
Her characters embody various aspects of Oman’s history—its slave trade, its maritime prowess, its close-knit village life, its rapid modern development—while at the same time debunking Western stereotypes about Arab women, society, and culture.
I visited Oman in early 2023 and everywhere I went, I saw Alharthi’s novel brought to life. Time and memory, religion and magic, poetry and proverbs—all swirl hypnotically together in this book, brilliantly translated by Marilyn Booth.
This winner of the 2019 Man Booker International Prize and national bestseller is “an innovative reimagining of the family saga . . . Celestial Bodies is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets" (The New York Times Book Review).
In the village of al-Awafi in Oman, we encounter three sisters: Mayya, who marries after a heartbreak; Asma, who marries from a sense of duty; and Khawla, who chooses to refuse all offers and await a reunion with the man she loves, who has emigrated to Canada.
Being diagnosed with an incurable cancer and told I may only live 5-years forced me to become an expert in the misconceptions of how to behave and what to say to cancer patients. It’s all bunk! What I know: (1) Don’t tell me “Call if you need anything.” I’m the one who’s sick, you need to call me. (2) Please don’t patronize me; I live in reality, not the land of rainbows, unicorns, and miracles. (3) It’s okay not to know what to say; I’m as blown away as you are. What patients need is honesty, present and available support, and laughter – a lot of it.
What a wonderful, moral-rich, non-preachy, feel-good, tapped several of the big societal issues (adultery, death, divorce, pride, bullying, regret, work vs. family; you get the point), without ever once making me squirm with too many religious overtones, or want to run off to confess my improprieties. As a flower child at heart, I loved the continual nuances of people and growth compared to good soil and water, seasons, and blooms. This book was beautifully done.
When the matriarch of a loving family is diagnosed with cancer and determined to live out her days without treatment, there are twists and turns of reality that make this book a must-read. I too, nearly chose the path of non-treatment and this book resonates.
From New York Times bestselling author Julie Cantrell comes a story of family and the Southern roots that call us home.
"If Julie Cantrell isn't on your reading list, she should be." -Lisa Wingate
Years ago, Lovey chose to leave her family and the South far behind. But now that she's returned, she's realizing things at home were not always what they seemed.
Eva Sutherland-known to all as Lovey-grew up safe and secure in Oxford, Mississippi, surrounded by a rich literary history and her mother's stunning flower gardens. But a shed fire, and the injuries it caused, changed everything. Her…
When I first visited Antarctica, I not only fell in love with penguins but saw firsthand how high the stakes are regarding climate change—not only for humans but especially for animals, who are suffering horribly due to our actions. Being in Antarctica, the most rapidly warming place on earth, highlighted how important it is to tackle climate change, which includes protecting animals. When we lose one species, the entire ecosystem changes. I’ve embraced protecting domestic animals as well, from companion animals to farmed animals, having learned just how much human and non-human animals have in common—so much more than you’d think! And I love reading and writing about the ways in which we’re all connected.
Katy Yocom’s Three Ways to Disappear won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature and was named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite—well-deserved recognition for this gorgeous debut novel. Three Ways to Disappear reveals the plight of the endangered Bengal tigers through the stories of two sisters who come together years after a family tragedy changes their lives—journalist Sarah, in India to help preserve the tigers, and Quinn, in Kentucky, dealing with family issues. The novel shows the complicated balance of tiger conservation among humans who themselves are struggling, and portrays the complexities of family bonds as well as the immense challenges facing the natural world. Both the human and tiger characters are beautifully rendered, empathetic, and unforgettable.
A Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite Winner of the First Horizon Award and the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature Leaving behind a nomadic and dangerous career as a journalist, Sarah DeVaughan returns to India, the country of her childhood and a place of unspeakable family tragedy, to help preserve the endangered Bengal tigers. Meanwhile, at home in Kentucky, her sister, Quinn--also deeply scarred by the past and herself a keeper of secrets--tries to support her sister, even as she fears that India will be Sarah's undoing. As Sarah faces challenges in her new job--made complicated by complex local…
I'm a full-time author and freelance editor from a small Canadian city, and I’ve always been fascinated by a good mystery—flipping through the pages, trying to guess who did or didn’t do it. Dark and gritty are my favorites, and the titles on this list do a good job of staying in that realm while still being very much YA. I hope you love them as much as I did!
This is a dual-timeline murder mystery from a unique perspective. Without giving away too many spoilers, this story follows Clara, whose sister has been accused of murdering Griffin Tomlin—the “golden boy” who Clara once had a crush on.
There is a lot to unpack here, and the dual-timeline makes it a fascinating read; piece-by-piece, we slowly learn Clara’s past with Griffin leading up to the events of him being allegedly murdered by her sister. Why would Clara’s sister do such a thing? And was Griffin Tomlin really the “golden boy” he seemed to be? This story gets dark, and as a fair warning, sometimes graphic—but if that sounds like a good read for you, I’d definitely pick it up!
Sometimes the lies we’re told are nowhere near as deadly as the lies we tell ourselves . . .
Four months after the murder of golden-boy Griffin Tomlin, the entire town of Shiloh is still in shock. For Clara Porterfield, the world has crumbled into a million chaotic pieces.
At home, her sister awaits trial for Griffin’s murder, her mother obsessively digs in a dead garden, and her father lives in perpetual denial.
At school, Clara is haunted by her classmates’ morbid stares and the unspoken questions they are too afraid to ask.
I spent a decade researching my own dramatic family story in Southern Italy – a story of murder and passion – so I took a deep dive to learn about a hidden culture my relatives left behind when they came here to America in steerage. As a fellow at the New York Public Library, I literally read hundreds of books, articles, and papers over those ten years to try and educate myself about the world I was entering for my own search. These are the books that touched me the most deeply – and continue to – not just with their own intense research but with their emotion and gorgeous prose.
I loved the generational sweep of this novel, its gorgeously written history of Calabria, and its character and relationship studies. Though it is fiction and borders on magical realism, Grames spent time in her ancestral village to give the setting and background a wonderful sense of authenticity.
I loved Stella, who overcame bad luck over the decades, and her intense relationship with her sister, Tina. As a woman who wondered about the back story of her own Italian grandmother and old aunts, I was captivated by the descriptions, the attention to language and detail, and this heartbreaking tale of crushing patriarchy.
'You don't read this book, you live it' Erin Kelly
'Holds the reader under a spell from start to finish' O, the Oprah Magazine
'If you're going through Elena Ferrante withdrawals, this is the book for you' Harper's Bazaar
If Stella Fortuna means 'lucky star,' then life must have a funny sense of humour.
Everybody in the Fortuna family knows the story of how the beautiful, fiercely independent Stella, who refused to learn to cook and who swore she would never marry, has escaped death time and time again.
From her childhood in Italy, to her adulthood in America, death…
