Books

Former 1980s rock hopeful Libby Conlin has long since buried her music — until her newly divorced daughter posts the old recordings online and the industry comes calling. As her past resurfaces, mother and daughter remake their lives in a story about second acts and redefining love.

Two women in their 70s have been best friends since childhood, summering on a wild Maine peninsula they have vowed to protect from development. Alice Elliott Dark’s sweeping novel is about female friendship, legacy, secrets, and the question of what we owe the places and people we love most.

A fictionalized life of Japanese poet Yosano Akiko, who defied her era’s constraints to become a pioneering feminist and the first to render The Tale of Genji into modern Japanese. Through poverty, betrayal, earthquake, and fire, her fierce devotion to art wounds her daughter — and she sets out to make amends before it’s too late.

Why it’s here: It follows Akiko across a whole life into older age — an unflinching portrait of a woman artist aging and trying to repair what her ambition cost.

During the Great Depression, young dancers Mattie and Kip tap for coins and ride the rails until betrayal and disaster separate them for a lifetime. Now ninety-nine, Mattie finally tells her granddaughter the whole story.

Southern women in a locked-down senior community reinvent their love lives in thirteen tales of friendly vampires, sexy demons, and dream lovers — plus eight bonus stories of vibrant women from New York to California.

Shunned as a medieval healer and rescued by a vampire, Marion Chase joins a sisterhood devoted to ethical living. Five centuries later she runs a Chicago blood bank with a hidden sideline — until she falls for the one person who could destroy her.