2.  The Forest Lover by Susan Vreeland | Set in Canada and France

In The Forest Lover, Vreeland traces the courageous life and career of Emily Carr, who more than Georgia O’Keeffe or Frida Kahlo blazed a path for modern women artists. Overcoming the confines of Victorian culture, Carr became a major force in modern art by capturing an untamed British Columbia and its Indigenous peoples just before industrialization changed them forever.

From illegal potlatches in tribal communities to artists? studios in pre-World War I Paris, Vreeland tells her story with gusto and suspense, giving us a glorious novel that will appeal to lovers of art, native cultures, and lush historical fiction.

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3.  Secrets of the Bees by Jane Johnson | Set in Cornwall, UK and Cyprus

Time has forgotten this remote corner of West Cornwall and left its many secrets undisturbed. Until now… Ezra Curnow has lived in the little cottage on the Trengrose estate all his life. He was born there, as was his father, and his grandfather before that. It is his own little Cornish paradise. Then the mistress of the estate, Eliza, dies without leaving a will, putting the cottage’s ownership into question. London financier Toby and his wife Minty are soon enticed by Trengrose’s charm and, worse still, see a lucrative rental opportunity in Ezra’s cottage. But Ezra is prepared to battle to save his beloved home, and has a number of secret weapons in his armoury. What Ezra doesn’t know is that Eliza also took some secrets to her grave – and she doesn’t intend to rest quietly until they come to light.

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4.  The Hunter by Tana French | Set in Ireland

Tana French lives in Dublin. Her books have won awards including the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Barry Awards, the Los Angeles Times Award for Best Mystery/Thriller, and the Irish Book Award for Crime Fiction. She lives in Dublin with her family. While there are many books to choose from, The Hunter is our most recent read. Set in a small village in the West of Ireland, it features Cal Hooper, who’s retired from Chicago PD, and can’t stifle his detective instincts. The dialogue, the characters and the setting will make you feel like you’re in Ireland, and it’s a great read for mystery lovers.

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5. There Are Rivers in the Sky by Elif Shafak | Set in Mesopotamia, Tűrkiye, London

Our book club loved Shafak’s The Island of Missing Trees in 2021 about a talking fig tree, so we’re thrilled to see this new story about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time, the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Set in ancient Mesopotamia and London, it features characters across centuries and continents through a single drop of water, connected by the Tigris and the Thames. The book has a trigger warning as it includes topics of genocide, violence, and murder, racism and child abuse.

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6.  The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick | Set in the US

Four dissatisfied sixties-era housewives form a book club turned sisterhood that will hold fast amid the turmoil of a rapidly changing world and alter the course of each of their lives. By early 1960s standards, Margaret Ryan, Viv Buschetti, and Bitsy Cobb, suburban housewives in a brand-new “planned community” in Northern Virginia, appear to have it all. The fact that “all” doesn’t feel like enough leaves them feeling confused and guilty, certain the fault must lie with them. Things begin to change when they form a book club with Charlotte Gustafson–the eccentric and artsy “new neighbor” from Manhattan–and read Betty Friedan’s just-released book, The Feminine Mystique.

Controversial and groundbreaking, the book struck a chord with an entire generation of women, helping them realize that they weren’t alone in their dissatisfactions, or their longings, lifting their eyes to new horizons of possibility and achievement. Margaret, Charlotte, Bitsy, and Viv are among them. But is it really the book that alters the lives of these four very different women? Or is it the bond of sisterhood that helps them find courage to confront the past, navigate turmoil in a rapidly changing world, and see themselves in a new and limitless light?

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7. This Motherless Land by Nikki May | Set in Nigeria and England

From the acclaimed author of Wahala, a stunning reimagining of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park: Split between England and Nigeria, two extraordinary cousins are set on vastly different paths as they come to terms with their shared family history—a masterful exploration of race, identity, and love.  Moving between Somerset and Lagos, Nigeria over the course of two decades, This Motherless Land is a sweeping examination of identity, culture, race, and love that asks how we find belonging and whether a family’s generational wrongs can be righted.

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8. A Long Petal of the Sea by Isabel Allende | Set in Chile and Spain

We love everything written by Isabel Allende, including Violeta, or The House of the Spirits, but there’s nothing quite like reading this epic novel and then visiting Valpariso and other places in Chile that are mentioned in the book to conjur some feels. A Long Petal of the Sea is historical fiction at its best, telling a story that spans decades and crosses continents, as it follows two young people as they flee the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s in search of a place to call home. When General Franco and his Fascists succeed in overthrowing the government, hundreds of thousands are forced to flee in a treacherous journey over the mountains to the French border.

Among them is Roser, a pregnant young widow, who finds her life intertwined with that of Victor Dalmau, an army doctor and the brother of her deceased love. In order to survive, the two must unite in a marriage neither of them desires. Together with two thousand other refugees, Roser and Victor embark on the SS Winnipeg, a ship chartered by the poet Pablo Neruda, to Chile: “the long petal of sea and wine and snow.” As unlikely partners, the couple embraces exile as the rest of Europe erupts in world war.  A masterful work of historical fiction about hope, exile, and belonging, A Long Petal of the Sea shows Isabel Allende at the height of her powers.

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9.  Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid | Set in the US (and Space!)

Taylor Jenkins Reid returns to her stomping grounds of richly drawn historical fiction with Atmosphere, set in and around NASA’s Space Shuttle program in the 1980s. This is Reid’s fourth win in this category, following Daisy Jones & the Six (2019), Malibu Rising (2021), and Carrie Soto Is Back (2023).

Joan Goodwin has been obsessed with the stars for as long as she can remember. She is content with her life as a professor of physics and astronomy and as aunt to her precocious niece, Frances, until she comes across an advertisement seeking the first women scientists to join NASA’s space shuttle program. Suddenly, Joan burns to go to space. Selected from a pool of thousands of applicants in the summer of 1980, Joan begins training at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilot Hank Redmond and scientist John Griffin, easygoing even when the stakes are high; mission specialist Lydia Danes, who has worked too hard to play nice; warmhearted Donna Fitzgerald, navigating her own secrets; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer who can fix any engine and fly any plane. As they become unlikely friends and prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a love she never imagined. In this new light, Joan begins to question everything she thinks she knows about her place in the observable universe.

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10. River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure | Set in China

Part mesmerizing coming-of-age tale, part intimate family drama, this stunning debut novel follows a young woman searching for belonging and opportunity in a rapidly changing world. Seamlessly alternating between these two points of view, River East, River West explores complex questions of identity as teenager Alva comes of age: Is she a local or a foreigner? Who is this man her mother married, and can he be a father when she never had one? A powerful reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative set against China’s economic rise, this lauded debut novel is a profoundly moving portrait of girlhood, race, and class, cultural identity and belonging, as it is the seductive allure of the American Dream.

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11.  Bitter Honey by Lolá Ákínmádé Åkerström | Set in Sweden, the US and Gambia

Spanning four decades and three continents, Bitter Honey is a story about a mother and daughter divided by long buried secrets, struggling to understand each other as they forge their own paths, from the internationally bestselling author of In Every Mirror She’s Black.

This poignant novel delves deep into the complicated relationships between mothers and daughters and delivers a warm, heartfelt story of love, forgiveness, and women finding their voices.

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12. Skylark: A Novel by Paula McLain | Set in France

Launching in January 2026, this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Wife weaves a mesmerizing tale of Paris above and below—where a woman’s quest for artistic freedom in 1664 intertwines with a doctor’s dangerous mission during the German occupation in the 1940s, revealing a story of courage and resistance that transcends time. A spellbinding and transportive look at a side of Paris known to very few—the underground city that is a mirror reflection of the glories above—Paula McLain’s unforgettable new novel chronicles two parallel journeys of defiance and rescue that connect in ways both surprising and deeply moving.

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