18 books like Annie John
White horses
When Teresa was a little girl, she dreamed of dark-eyed, fearless heroes on white horses who would sweep her away. But now, as the adult Teresa negotiates life and love, she begins to understand that fairy tales don't always come true...
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
The chocolate money
An innocent little girl, A phenomenal fortune, A mother like no other. Ten-year old Bettina and her mother, Babs, are heiresses to one of America's biggest fortunes. But Bettina's whole life is overshadowed by that of her beautiful, hedonistic mother, the glamorous but domineering Babs. At fifteen, Bettina escapes to New England and an exclusive, preppy boarding school called Cardiss, where she…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Coming-of-age
Unless
Reta Winters has many reasons to be happy. Then in the spring of her forty-fourth year, all the quiet satisfactions of her well-lived life disappear in a moment: her eldest daughter Norah suddenly runs from the family and ends up mute and begging on a Toronto street corner with a hand-lettered sign reading GOODNESS around her neck.
Piercing and sad, astute and evocative, full of tenderness and…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Teenage Girls, Domestic fiction
REST OF HER LIFE, THE
This incredibly nuanced, beautifully written novel treats moral dilemma with the riveting, character-driven plot of a Jane Hamilton or a Jodi Picoult. This novel looks at one incident and how it changes everything for Leigh, the mother of a pretty, popular high school senior, and their entire family. It’s a novel about mothers, daughters, sisters, and female friends, and the ripple effect that an…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Teenage Girls, Coming-of-age
Act of will
Audra is an impoverished children's nanny from Leeds who sacrificed everything for her only daughter. Christina is a talented art student who won world renown as a fashion designer – yet who has known pain and heartache. Kyle is a rebellious young woman who chafes against her mother's success – and in whom her grandmother's spirit of duty and sacrifice is reborn. Moving from the bleak Yorkshire…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
Mister Pip
In a novel that is at once intense, beautiful, and fablelike, Lloyd Jones weaves a transcendent story that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the power of narrative to transform our lives.On a copper-rich tropical island shattered by war, where the teachers have fled with most everyone else, only one white man chooses to stay behind: the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Coming-of-age
One true thing
A New York psychiatrist recounts her mother's death for which she was arrested. At the time, Dr. Ellen Gulden was accused of killing her mother with an overdose of morphine, a charge in part based on a high school essay in which she advocated euthanasia. By the author of Object Lessons.
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.
At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves.
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Teenage Girls
The first time
After sixteen years of marriage, Mattie Hart discovers that her husband, Jake—a high-profile Chicago attorney—is involved in yet another love affair. But a far greater crisis descends upon the Hart family after Jake leaves home; Mattie receives devastating news that will alter their lives. Wracked by guilt, Jake returns to the wife he has never really loved and the teenage daughter who wants…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
Perfect Nightmare
If you open your house to strangers, who knows who might come in. And what they might be after. Or whom. Now, ponder the unthinkable and surrender to your darkest dread, as sinister storyteller extraordinaire John Saul weaves a heart-stopping tale of lurking terror and twisted intent.Every parent's nightmare becomes reality for Kara Marshall when her daughter, Lindsay, vanishes from her bedroom…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
The visitors
"Built around Lord Carnarvon and Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings, this evocative novel from New York Times-bestselling author Sally Beauman blends fact and fiction to recreate a lost world that's still fiercely enthralling and relevant today"--
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Coming-of-age
The secret life of bees
Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest…
Shares: Teenage Girls, Domestic fiction
Winter Garden
Can a woman ever really know herself if she doesn’t know her mother?
From the author of the smash-hit bestseller Firefly Lane and True Colors comes a powerful, heartbreaking novel that illuminates the intricate mother-daughter bond and explores the enduring links between the present and the past.
Meredith and Nina Whitson are as different as sisters can be. One stayed at home to raise her…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
Big girl small
With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, Judy should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town? A scathingly funny and moving book about dreams and reality, at once light on its feet and profound.
Shares: Teenage Girls, Coming-of-age
Amy and Isabelle
With compassion, humor, and striking insight, Amy and Isabelle explores the secrets of sexuality that jeopardize the love between a mother and her daughter. Amy Goodrow, a shy high school student in a small mill town, falls in love with her math teacher, and together they cross the line between understandable fantasy and disturbing reality. When discovered, this emotional and physical…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Teenage Girls
The Water Cure
"An extraordinary otherworldly debut... [Mackintosh] is writing the way that Sofia Coppola would shoot the end of the world: everything is luminous, precise, slow to the point of dread." --The Guardian The Handmaid's Tale meets The Virgin Suicides in this dystopic feminist revenge fantasy about three sisters on an isolated island, raised to fear men King has tenderly staked out a territory for…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Coming-of-age
The Bonesetter's Daughter
LuLing Young is in her eighties, and finally beginning to feel the effects of old age. Trying to hold on to the evaporating past, she begins to write down all that she can remember of her life as a girl in China. Meanwhile, her daughter Ruth, a ghostwriter for authors of self-help books, is losing the ability to speak up for herself in front of the man she lives with. LuLing can only look on,…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction
All That Glitters
Driven from the Dumas mansion back to her beloved bayou, Ruby's only hope is that fate will let her begin anew....
Living again in a humble shack, Ruby is determined to make a secure and happy home for her precious infant daughter, Pearl. Paul Tate -- her first love, whom she was forced to abandon -- is at her side once more, now a man of dazzling wealth. When he whisks her into his grand house,…
Shares: Mothers and daughters, Domestic fiction