The Animators

The Life and Death of Sophie Stark

Anna North · 288 pages

An unapologetic filmmaker uses the stories of those around her to create movies that bring her both critical acclaim and ire from the people whose secrets she has exposed. By the author of America Pacifica.

The Woman Upstairs

Claire Messud · 304 pages

Relegated to the status of schoolteacher and friendly neighbor after abandoning her dreams of becoming an artist, Nora advocates on behalf of a charismatic Lebanese student and is drawn into the child's family until his artist mother's careless ambition leads to a shattering betrayal.

Paulina & Fran

Rachel B. Glaser

The Cranes Dance

Meg Howrey · 373 pages

Kate is conflicted after she is offered her sister Gwen's starring role in a ballet, especially since her jealously prevented her from seeing the signs of the mental breakdown that made Gwen lose the role.

Innocents and Others

Dana Spiotta · 279 pages

"The most ambitious, accomplished, and beguiling novel yet from the author of the National Book Award finalist Eat the Document and the National Books Critics Circle Award finalist Stone Arabia. Innocents and Others is a riveting story about three women looking for meaning in friendship, work, and love--"Dana Spiotta is a major unnervingly intelligent writer" (Joy Williams, author of The Quick and

The Unfortunate Importance of Beauty

Amanda Filipacchi · 334 pages

"Meet the Knights of Creation, a group of artistic friends struggling with society's standards of beauty. Barb, a stunningly beautiful costume designer, chooses to don a fat suit in hopes that it will help her meet the man of her dreams--a man who can see beyond her looks. Lily, Barb's brilliantly talented, unfortunate-looking musician friend, goes to fantastic lengths to attract the shallow man s

This Is Where We Live

Janelle Brown

The Interestings

Meg Wolitzer · 560 pages

The summer that Nixon resigns, six teenagers at a summer camp for the arts become inseparable. Decades later the bond remains powerful, but so much else has changed. The kind of creativity that is rewarded at age fifteen is not always enough to propel someone through life at age thirty. Their friendships endure and even prosper, but also underscore the differences in their fates, in what their tal

The Great Man

Kate Christensen · 312 pages

From the acclaimed author of The Epicure's Lament, a novel of literary rivalry in which two competing biographers collide in their quest for the truth about a great artist.Oscar Feldman, the "Great Man," was a New York city painter of the heroic generation of the forties and fifties. But instead of the abstract canvases of the Pollocks and Rothkos, he stubbornly hewed to painting one subject--the

Cat's Eye

Margaret Atwood · 445 pages

**Cat's Eye** is the story of Elaine Risley, a controversial painter who returns to Toronto, the city of her youth, for a retrospective of her art. Engulfed by vivid images of the past, she reminisces about a trio of girls who initiated her into the fierce politics of childhood and its secret world of friendship, longing, and betrayal. Elaine must come to terms with her own identity as a daughter,

The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot

Marianne Cronin · 352 pages

Tender

Belinda McKeon · 424 pages

When they meet in Dublin in the late nineties, Catherine was a sheltered college student; James an adventurous, charismatic young artist. In a city brimming with possibilities, he spurs her to take life on with gusto. But as Catherine opens herself to new experiences, James's life becomes a prison; as changed as the new Ireland may be, it is still not a place in which he feels able to truly be him

Vision in White

Nora Roberts · 352 pages

Childhood friends Mackensie, Parker, Laurel and Emmeline have formed a very successful wedding planning business together but, despite helping thousands of happy couples to organize the biggest day of their lives, all four women are unlucky in love. Photographer Mackensie Elliott has suffered a tough childhood and has a bad relationship with her mother, which makes her wary of commitment. But when

The Wedding People

Alison Espach · 384 pages

It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s actually the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to

We Are Water

Wally Lamb · 564 pages

Anna Oh, a middle-age wife, mother and artist, divorces her husband after 27 years of marriage to marry Vivica, the Manhattan art dealer who orchestrated her professional success.

Lucky You: A Novel

Erika Carter · 279 pages

Ellie, Chloe and Rachel are friends (sort of); waitresses at the same tired bar in the Arkansas college town they've stuck around in too long. Each is becoming unmoored in her own way: Ellie obliterates all feeling with alcohol and self-destructive acts of sexual promiscuity; Chloe pulls out patches of her hair and struggles to keep incipient mental illness at bay; changeable Rachel has fallen und

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood

Rebecca Wells · 383 pages

The antics of a group of women in a small town where they were expected to raise babies, not Cain. The story is recounted by a mother to a daughter, the daughter thinking she is so much better because she got out of that town and is now a theater producer. The moral: mothers too were once rebels.

The Bean Trees

Barbara Kingsolver · 240 pages

Taylor, a poor Kentuckian making her way west with an abandoned baby girl, stops in Tucson where she finds friends and discovers resources in apparently empty places.

It Chooses You

Miranda July · 218 pages

While writing the script for her 2011 film *The Future*, Miranda July sought inspiration from the most unlikely of places: A weekly classified ads booklet. *It Chooses You* includes a series of interviews the author conducted with people who placed ads for various items or services, along with short snippets concerning her writing process for *The Future* plus some autobiographical notes. The b

The Jane Austen Book Club

Karen Joy Fowler · 296 pages

"In California's Central Valley, five women and one man join together to discuss Jane Austen's novels. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin, unsuitable arrangements become suitable, and love happens." "Dedicated Austen readers will delight in unearthing the echoes of Austen that run through this novel, but many readers will simply enjoy the vision and voice that, desp

The Color Purple

Alice Walker · 274 pages

The Color Purple is a 1982 epistolary novel by American author Alice Walker which won the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. The novel has been the frequent target of censors and appears on the American Library Association list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2000–2009 at number seventeenth because of the sometimes explicit content, particula

Same Difference

Siobhan Vivian · 287 pages

Feeling left out since her long-time best friend started a serious relationship, sixteen-year-old Emily looks forward to a summer program at the Philadelphia College of Art but is not sure she is up to the challenges to be faced there, including finding herself and learning to balance life and art.

Astonish Me

Maggie Shipstead · 356 pages

From the author of the widely acclaimed debut novel *Seating Arrangements,* winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Price for First Fiction: a gorgeously written, fiercely compelling glimpse into the demanding world of professional ballet and its magnetic hold over two generations. *Astonish Me* is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Sovie

Speak

Laurie Halse Anderson · 197 pages

"Speak up for yourself--we want to know what you have to say." From the first moment of her freshman year at Merryweather High, Melinda knows this is a big fat lie, part of the nonsense of high school. She is friendless, outcast, because she busted an end-of-summer party by calling the cops, so now nobody will talk to her, let alone listen to her. As time passes, she becomes increasingly isolated