Girls of Riyadh

A Thousand Splendid Suns

Khaled Hosseini · 416 pages

After 103 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and with four million copies of The Kite Runner shipped, Khaled Hosseini returns with a beautiful, riveting, and haunting novel that confirms his place as one of the most important literary writers today. Propelled by the same superb instinct for storytelling that made The Kite Runner a beloved classic, A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an

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

The Mixquiahuala Letters

Ana Castillo · 132 pages

"... an epistolary novel focusing on the correspondence between two Hispanic women, is a probing description of the relationship between the sexes. The novel is a far-ranging social and cultural document that encompasses both Mexican and United States Hispanic forms of love and gender conflict."--P. [4] of cover.

The Milk of Birds

Sylvia Whitman

When a nonprofit organization called Save the Girls pairs a fifteen-year-old Sudanese refugee with an American teenager from Richmond, Virginia, the pen pals teach each other compassion and share a bond that bridges two continents.

The Pearl That Broke Its Shell

Nadia Hashimi · 464 pages

In Kabul, 2007, with a drug-addicted father and no brothers, Rahima and her sisters can only sporadically attend school and rarely leave the house. Their only hope lies in the ancient custom of bacha posh, which allows young Rahima to dress and be treated as a boy until she is of marriageable age.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Lisa See · 269 pages

In nineteenth century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, or "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The two women exchange messages written on silk fans and handkerchieves using nu shu, a unique language that women created in order to communicate in secret, sharing their experiences, but when a misundersta

So Long a Letter

Mariama Ba · 90 pages

This novel is in the form of a letter, written by the widowed Ramatoulaye and describing her struggle for survival. A beautiful glimpse inside a woman's heart.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows

Balli Kaur Jaswal · 320 pages

After her father's death, Nikki, who has spent most of her life distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community, takes a job teaching a creative writing course in the heart of the Punjabi community. Nikki has spent most of her life distancing herself from the traditional Sikh community. After her father's death she takes a job teaching a creative writing course in the heart of the Punjabi

The Red Tent

Anita Diamant · 321 pages

Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book of Genesis that are about her father, Jacob, and his dozen sons. Told in Dinah's voice, this novel reveals the traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It begins with the story of her mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the f

The Joy Luck Club

Amy Tan · 332 pages

Four mothers, four daughters, four families, whose histories shift with the four winds depending on who's telling the stories. In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, meet weekly to play mahjong and tell stories of what they left behind in China. United in loss and new hope for their daughters' futures, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club. Their daughters, who have neve

Between Friends

Debbie Macomber · 400 pages

Debbie Macomber tells the story of a remarkable friendship—and tells it in a remarkable way. Between Friends is a story in which every woman will recognize herself...and her best friend.The friendship between Jillian Lawton and Lesley Adamski begins in the postwar era of the 1950s. As they grow up, their circumstances, their choices—and their mistakes—take them in virtually opposite directions. Le

Roomies

Sara Zarr, Tara Altebrando · 288 pages

While living very different lives on opposite coasts, seventeen-year-old Elizabeth and eighteen-year-old Lauren become acquainted by email the summer before they begin rooming together as freshmen at UC-Berkeley. Living very different lives, 17-year-old Elizabeth and 18-year-old Lauren email the summer before they begin rooming together as freshmen at UC-Berkeley. The plot contains profanity and

Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay

Elena Ferrante · 417 pages

Since the publication of My Brilliant Friend, the first of the Neapolitan novels, Elena Ferrante's fame as one of our most compelling, insightful, and stylish contemporary authors has grown enormously. She has gained admirers among authors--Jhumpa Lahiri, Elizabeth Strout, Claire Messud, to name a few--and critics--James Wood, John Freeman, Eugenia Williamson, for example. But her most resounding

One Thousand White Women: The Journals of May Dodd

Jim Fergus

Arranged Marriage: Stories

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni · 320 pages

The Care and Management of Lies

Jacqueline Winspear · 319 pages

"By July 1914, the ties between Kezia Marchant and Thea Brissenden, friends since girlhood, have become strained--by Thea's passionate embrace of women's suffrage, and by the imminent marriage of Kezia to Thea's brother, Tom, who runs the family farm. When Kezia and Tom wed just a month before war is declared between Britain and Germany, Thea's gift to Kezia is a book on household management--a ve

The Dowry Bride

Shobhan Bantwal · 319 pages

One sultry night, a young bride overhears an extraordinary conversation. The voices speak of a plot to murder a wife who has failed to produce a child and whose family has failed to produce the promised dowry.Megha is sick with horror when she realizes she is the intended victim. Her husband--the very man who tied the sacred necklace of marriage around her neck—and his mother are plotting to kill

Dreaming of Amelia

Jaclyn Moriarty · 526 pages

Haveli

Suzanne Fisher Staples · 320 pages

Having relented to the ways of her people in Pakistan and married the rich older man to whom she was pledged against her will, Shabanu is now the victim of his family's blood feud and the malice of his other wives. Sequel to "Shabanu, Daughter of the Wind."

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

Deborah Rodriguez · 353 pages

In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together. SUNNY, the proud proprietor, who needs an ingenious plan - and fast - to keep her caf and customers safea YAZMINA, a young pregnant woman stolen from her remote village and now abandoned on Kabul's violent streets a CANDACE, a wealthy American who has finally left her husband for her Afgh

Looking for Jane

Heather Marshall · 400 pages

The Best of Everything

Rona Jaffe · 442 pages

When Rona Jaffe's superb page-turner was first published in 1958, it changed contemporary fiction forever. Some readers were shocked, but millions more were electrified when they saw themselves reflected in its story of five young employees of a New York publishing company. Almost sixty years later, The Best of Everything remains touchingly—and sometimes hilariously—true to the personal and profes

Commencement

J. Courtney Sullivan · 324 pages

A sparkling debut novel: a tender story of friendship, a witty take on liberal arts colleges, and a fascinating portrait of the first generation of women who have all the opportunities in the world, but no clear idea about what to choose.Assigned to the same dorm their first year at Smith College, Celia, Bree, Sally, and April couldn't have less in common. Celia, a lapsed Catholic, arrives with he

Sula

Toni Morrison · 174 pages

Two girls who grow up to become women. Two friends who become something worse than enemies. In this brilliantly imagined novel, Toni Morrison tells the story of Nel Wright and Sula Peace, who meet as children in the small town of Medallion, Ohio. Their devotion is fierce enough to withstand bullies and the burden of a dreadful secret. It endures even after Nel has grown up to be a pillar of the bl