Here are 100 books that The Wise Women fans have personally recommended if you like
The Wise Women.
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I’m a voracious reader, an author, and also a book critic, so hundreds of books cross my desk. What I love the most is the feeling of discovery—reading a book whose likes I haven’t seen on any bestseller list or on a front display in a bookstore. There are so many, many hidden gems—books that have stayed with me long after the publication day, and I always want others to have the same devotion to them that I do!
Henderson’s a prize winner and she should be on the top of every reader’s list! Here, she creates a protagonist like no other: a mortician Mary Crampton, living in a stomach-cramp of a town.
What’s surprising and wonderful is that she loves her work, and treats it as art—and I was so fascinated to learn about it. As her town crumbles away, a young man enters her life—a man whose brother was killed in a grain mill. As the two grow closer, the town becomes angrier, making Gal take new stock of the life she has—and the life she could create. So haunting!
High Plains Book Award Winner for Fiction * Western Writers of America Spur Award Winner for Best Contemporary Western Novel * WILLA Literary Award Winner in Contemporary Fiction * Montana Book Award Honor Book
With the quiet precision of Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres and the technical clarity of Mary Roach's Stiff, this is a novel about a young woman who comes most alive while working in her father's mortuary in a small, forgotten Western town.
"The dead come to me vulnerable, sharing their stories and secrets . . . "
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I’m a voracious reader, an author, and also a book critic, so hundreds of books cross my desk. What I love the most is the feeling of discovery—reading a book whose likes I haven’t seen on any bestseller list or on a front display in a bookstore. There are so many, many hidden gems—books that have stayed with me long after the publication day, and I always want others to have the same devotion to them that I do!
Everyone reveres Grace Paley, but what if you could read a fictionalized account of Paley and the young writer she mentored—and even created a publishing company to publish her?
That’s writer Leora Skolkin-Smith’s story and it’s so gripping, so passionate, so real. Set in the tumultuous 1970s, it’s about female power, trauma, and how mentoring works—and sometimes doesn’t work. Plus it is so gorgeously written, a gripping page-turner about finding our voices, both on the page, and off. I just adored it—so much that I got all of Skolkin-Smith’s other books, too.
Allegra Gordon knew there was much she could learn from Faith Hale. From the moment she met the esteemed writer and feminist icon on the campus of New York's Abigail Stone College, Allegra understood that Faith would be a force in her life, one that would wrench the best work from her and encourage her to lay her soul bare. The relationship that evolved would simultaneously be the most liberating and most shattering Allegra ever encountered. And it would change both women in profound ways.
From political rallies in the early seventies to soaring tributes at the turn of the…
I’m a voracious reader, an author, and also a book critic, so hundreds of books cross my desk. What I love the most is the feeling of discovery—reading a book whose likes I haven’t seen on any bestseller list or on a front display in a bookstore. There are so many, many hidden gems—books that have stayed with me long after the publication day, and I always want others to have the same devotion to them that I do!
Strangers in Budapest is exotic, gorgeous, and like a beautiful orchestra on paper. It also keeps you turning the pages.
A young American couple move here with their baby son after the fall of the Communists, but they bring their ghosts with them, and assimilating is difficult. especially when they encounter an elderly Jewish-American veteran, who has come to Hungary to exact revenge on someone he is convinced married and then murdered his daughter. Just dazzlingly original.
"Jessica Keener has written a gorgeous, lyrical, and sweeping novel about the tangled web of past and present. Suspenseful, perceptive, fast-paced, and ultimately restorative." -Susan Henderson, author of Up from the Blue Budapest: gorgeous city of secrets, with ties to a shadowy, bloody past. It is to this enigmatic European capital that a young American couple, Annie and Will, move from Boston with their infant son shortly after the fall of the Communist regime. For Annie, it is an effort to escape the ghosts that haunt her past, and Will wants simply to seize the chance to build a new…
In 1913, a 15-year-old pregnant girl was found dead of apparent suicide. Dr. James Wilson, a new graduate and the first doctor ever to start a practice in this rural town, feels guilty over her death because of his delayed intervention.
Photography has always been more than just images for me. I love capturing the moments that define a movement. I started out photographing punk bands, drawn to their raw creativity. Later, I shot Hollywood legends, but at the core, it was always about the same thing: artists fighting to make something that lasts. These stories feel like snapshots of a life I know well, and they bring me back to the packed punk club where everything started.
I’ve always been really into crime fiction, and when you throw in a gritty concert setting, I’m all in. This book nailed that feeling, the sound, and the unspoken tension between past and present. It’s very cool how the concert setting wasn’t just the background noise but part of the mystery itself.
It felt like being backstage at a show where something’s just a little off. It kept me flipping pages way too late, and honestly, that’s when you know a crime novel really delivers.
A riveting work of dark suspense from acclaimed author Clea Simon
Gal, a middle-aged musician, is back in Boston to play a memorial for her late drummer/best friend, when she finds herself freezing on stage at the sight of a face in the crowd. The next day, she learns that the man she saw has been killed - beaten to death behind the venue - and her friend's widower is being charged in connection with his death. When the friend refuses to defend himself, Gal wonders why and, as the memories of begin to flood back, she starts her own…
I’d written modern true crime before—a book that helped solve a 40-year-old cold case—and wanted to try my hand at historical true crime. I live in Manhattan, home to the greatest crime stories of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so I was able to see the actual locations where the grisliest murders, the biggest bank heists, and the crookedest con games took place. What really drew me in, though, were the many colorful, unforgettable characters, both good and bad, cops and robbers, who walked the bustling streets of Old New York during the fascinating era known as the Gilded Age.
If you read one biography/memoir of a Gilded Age criminal, make it this one. It tells the story (often in his own words) of the celebrated pickpocket George Appo, an odd little half-Chinese, half-Irish, one-eyed fellow who could make $800 in a few days when most working men made less than that in a year. Appo would rivet New Yorkers when he testified about his second career as a “green goods” con man, working to swindle gullible out-of-towners who came to buy purported counterfeit money at a discount, only to discover that there was nothing but sawdust inside the packages they carried away. Appo refused to name names, though, as he was a self-described “good fellow.”
In George Appo's world, child pickpockets swarmed the crowded streets, addicts drifted in furtive opium dens, and expert swindlers worked the lucrative green-goods game. On a good night Appo made as much as a skilled laborer made in a year. Bad nights left him with more than a dozen scars and over a decade in prisons from the Tombs and Sing Sing to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he reunited with another inmate, his father. The child of Irish and Chinese immigrants, Appo grew up in the notorious Five Points and Chinatown neighborhoods. He rose as…
I’m Professor of History at Colorado State University Pueblo and have published eight books, mostly about the history of food. After encountering Up in the Old Hotel for the first time during the early 1990s, I started reading New York City history in my spare time.The Fulton Fish Market: A History is my way to blend my expertise with my hobby. Each of these books are beautifully written, informative, and fun. If you’re interested in the history of New York City and you’re looking for something else to read, I hope you’ll find my book to be the same.
Joseph Mitchell was the city reporter for the New Yorker for about half a century. This is a collection of his magazine stories. Many of them involve the old Fulton Fish Market, but he also wrote about weird things like dime museums, gypsies, and stag banquets.
To me, every story in this collection is like a time capsule. This is the book that made me want to write about New York City because it suggests there is a history on every block there worth recording. If you don’t like a chapter or two, then skip to the next one, but I’ll vouch for 80% of this book being the best non-fiction writing that I have ever read (and I practically read for a living).
Saloon-keepers and street preachers, gypsies and steel-walking Mohawks, a bearded lady and a 93-year-old “seafoodetarian” who believes his specialized diet will keep him alive for another two decades. These are among the people that Joseph Mitchell immortalized in his reportage for The New Yorker and in four books—McSorley's Wonderful Saloon, Old Mr. Flood, The Bottom of the Harbor, and Joe Gould's Secret—that are still renowned for their precise, respectful observation, their graveyard humor, and their offhand perfection of style.
These masterpieces (along with several previously uncollected stories) are available in one volume, which presents an indelible collective portrait of…
Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, 1977, and Voyager 2 was launched on August 20, 1977. Both began a historic journey with unique 'time capsules' on board intended to communicate a story of our world to extraterrestrials. The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record 12-inch gold-plated disk…
I’ve worked in sports media since graduating college, first as a reporter at Sports Illustrated, then as an editor at ESPN The Magazine and eventually becoming editor-in-chief of the magazine as well as espn.com. I’ve also written several books, including The Odds, which was my immersion into the world of sports betting. Like the books on my list, the experience of writing The Odds scratched every itch: It was about sports, it featured intense and passionate characters and it revealed a secret world with massive influence. The Odds led to a career in betting media, including creating the sports betting beat at ESPN and, eventually, launching The Action Network, a sports betting media network.
I’ve read this book more than any book I’ve ever read. It’s what inspired me to not just want to be a writer but a sportswriter.
Telander does what all writers aspire to do: Turn a slice-of-life story—in this case, a group of Black kids from Brooklyn who love playground basketball—into a bigger lesson about human connection. He uses curiosity, an eye for details, and a sense of humor to make every character feel fully realized.
Heaven Is a Playground was the first book on the uniquely American phenomenon of urban basketball. Rick Telander, a photojournalist and former high school basketball player, spent part of the summer of 1973 and all of the summer of 1974 in Brooklyn living the playground life with his subjects at Foster Park in Flatbush. He slept on the floor of a park regular's apartment, observing, questioning, traveling, playing with, and eventually coaching a ragtag group of local teenagers whose hopes of better lives were often fanatically attached to the transcendent game itself. Telander introduces us to Fly…
When I was a young girl, I was lucky to have friends from all over the world, so learning about a new country or a new city always fascinated me, and it still does. I’m always trying to learn new things, meet new people and whenever I can I like to travel the world. As a writer and illustrator, it’s always nice to experience new things, it helps to expand my imagination. I hope this list inspires you not only to read but to learn a few things here and there.
Anyone who is curious about other cities and cultures will love the complete series of the This Is… books by Miroslav Sasek. They are filled with exciting facts and the colorful illustrations are truly delightful. From New York, to London, to Hong Kong, and many more, these books will inspire you to travel the world!
With the same wit and perception that distinguished his stylish books on Paris, London, and Rome, M. Sasek pictures fabulous, big-hearted New York City in This Is New York, first published in 1960 and now updated for the 21st century. The Dutchman who bought the island of Manhattan from the Native Americnas in 1626 for twenty-four dollars' worth of handy housewares little knew that his was the biggest bargain in American history. For everything about New York is big -- the buildings, the traffic jams, the cars, the stories, the Sunday papers. Here is the Staten Island Ferry, the Statute…
Maybe because I’m a novelist, I’ve always loved reading novels about writers—it’s a joy to see my passionate relationship with my own work reflected in these fictional solitary obsessives, my literary siblings. Reading about their own writing gives me a sense of recognition, community, and solidarity, and makes me feel less alone in this odd vocation, which is no small thing. I can’t get enough fictional evocations of the daily discipline of the writer’s life—as well as the trajectory of a literary career—from adolescence (Jo March) to old age (Leonard Schiller).
I love all Dawn Powell’s novels, but this 1936 satire of the New York literary scene might be my favorite.
Powell brilliantly captures the metropolitan grit and glamour of New York City in the 1930s, the backstabbing literary gossip, hard-drinking parties and seedy bars, and all the publishing world’s deep loyalties and betrayals. The city itself is a character, and all the people in the book feel both true to life and larger than life.
The book follows the aspiring writer Dennis Orphen, who is guilty of stealing the details of his dear friend’s life in his novel—and what ensues is hilarious, sparkling, and surprisingly moving.
Dennis Orphen is a young, clever novelist with a keen eye for a good story. This time, however, his material is drawn from the romantic woes of his closest friend, Effie Callingham. More than a decade earlier, Effie's husband-the superstar writer Andrew Callingham-abandoned her for a younger, prettier woman. In the years since, Effie has stubbornly defended his reputation, clinging to the desperate hope that he might one day come to his senses and return.
When Dennis's novel is published, their friendship is put to the test. In his thinly veiled portrait, Effie's private pain is exposed to a scandal-hungry…
Deputy Jenna Hart has only been working in her sleepy hometown of Pearl Springs for seven months when city officials begin to be targeted by a killer. Twenty years ago, the construction of a dam caused people to lose their land to eminent domain. That wound has not healed with…
I’m a queer, nonbinary, Muslim, immigrant writer who has been reading their whole life and writing for part of it. I learned to write by reading–by devouring all kinds of books across different genres and paying attention to how words create feelings, worlds, and chronologies. I also learned to live by reading–I didn’t grow up with models of how to live a life that was true to my identities and so I read everything I could find about experiences that were adjacent to my own. The emergence of queer Muslim literature has been exciting to follow, and I try to read everything in the field.
I love the way Bushra Rehman writes about immigrant New York in the 80s – in vignettes that thread together to convey a sense of time, place, and geography.
All her characters are portrayed sensitively and complexly: from the main protagonist Razia coming into her queerness, to Pakistani aunties with their own histories and trauma, to friends who grow further apart.
I love how much this story is about women as the cornerstones of community.
Razia Mirza grows up amid the wild grape vines and backyard sunflowers of Corona, Queens, with her best friend, Saima, by her side. When a family rift drives the girls apart, Razia's heart is broken. She finds solace in Taslima, a new girl in her close knit Pakistani-American community. They embark on a series of small rebellions: listening to scandalous music, wearing mini skirts, and cutting school to explore the city.
When Razia is accepted to Stuyvesant, a prestigious high school in Manhattan, the gulf between the person she is and the daughter her parents want her to be, widens.…
