The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Format used for this read: Audiobook) Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead. She may leave the home of the Commander and his wife once a day to walk to food markets whose signs are now pictures instead of words because women are no longer allowed to…
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder (Format used for this read: Audiobook) I read this book for the first time 3 years ago and absolutely LOVED IT. When someone in my book club picked this as our monthly read this month, I was kinda JAZZED to dig into it again, remembering how weird and wonderful it was.…
On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton (Format used for this read: Print–hardback) At home they are just sisters, but on stage, they are The Salvations. Ruth, Esther, and Chloe have been singing and dancing in harmony since they could speak. Thanks to the rigorous direction of their mother, Vivian, they’ve become a bona fide…
The Book of Lost Names by Kristin Harmel (Format used for this read: Audiobook) Eva Traube Abrams, a semi-retired librarian in Florida, is shelving books when her eyes lock on a photograph in the New York Times. She freezes; it’s an image of a book she hasn’t seen in more than 60 years – a book…
The Women by Kristin Hannah (Format used for this read: Audiobook) An intimate portrait of coming of age in a dangerous time and an epic tale of a nation divided. Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the sun-drenched, idyllic world of…
Memoirs of an Ex Prom Queen by Alix Kates Shulman (Format used for this read: Print–paperback) Sasha Davis has everything a girl in 1950s suburbia could want: beauty, wit, and a steady boyfriend on the basketball team. All she needs to succeed is to keep her skin clear and her intelligence hidden under her prom…
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado (Format used for this read: Audiobook) In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has…
The Southern Book Club’s Guide to Slaying Vampires by Grady Hendrix (Format used for this read: Audiobook) Patricia Campbell’s life has never felt smaller. Her husband is a workaholic, her teenage kids have their own lives, her senile mother-in-law needs constant care, and she’s always a step behind on her endless to-do list. The only…
Rouge by Mona Awad (Format used for this read: Audiobook) For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her…
Lady Tan’s Circle of Women by Lisa See (Format used for this book: Audiobook) According to Confucius, “an educated woman is a worthless woman,” but Tan Yunxian—born into an elite family, yet haunted by death, separations, and loneliness—is being raised by her grandparents to be of use. Her grandmother is one of only a handful…