Here are 100 books that Everybody (Else) Is Perfect fans have personally recommended if you like
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I’ve been fascinated by the world of fashion for more than a decade. Back in 2012, a serious bike accident left me incapacitated for the best part of six months. By the time I recovered from my injuries, a chance encounter with a Russian dressmaker would change everything; I decided to learn how to sew. I sat in front of my sewing machine, made my own clothes, and expanded into making dresses for my friends. Since I’ve always enjoyed reading gritty mysteries, it was only natural for me to incorporate my art into my writing. Cold Dresses was born out of a passion for fashion and dark thrillers.
It’s been a while since I have read a book that I not only didn’t want to put down, but I wanted to speed through!
Ah, to be a young art student in Berlin in 2008 (or probably not!) It has it all: love triangles, murder mysteries, doppelgängers, crazy parties, and a lot of paranoia against a backdrop of the art of fashion.
Twisted and ingeniously plotted, it got me hooked until the very last word.
'Full of delicious layers . . . I felt drunk reading it.' Emma Jane Unsworth
Intoxicating, compulsive and blackly funny, Other People's Clothes is the thrilling debut novel from Berlin-based American artist Calla Henkel.2009. Berlin. Two art students arrive from New York, both desperate for the city to solve their problems. Zoe is grieving for her high school best friend, murdered months before in her hometown in Florida. Hailey is rich, obsessed with the exploits of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears and wants to be a Warholian legend. Together they rent a once-magnificent apartment from eccentric crime writer Beatrice…
Fashion has been the love of my life since I was a little kid pouring over magazines and watching shows on fashion TV in the middle of the night. But I’ve always known fashion is not about clothing, its about feeling and it’s about people. That’s why I love to read the stories about people who work in fashion, who have been impacted by fashion and those who love it just as much as I do.
In Dress Code, fashion director Veronique Hyland makes the connection between clothing and our culture.
She argues that fashion is an integral part of all of our lives and explains the ways that it means so much more than the outfit hanging in our closets. The essays are great at helping the reader contextualize clothing in a world where social media and politics, inform the way we shop and style ourselves.
A New Yorker Magazine Best Book of 2022 * An Esquire Best Nonfiction Book of 2022 * A Town & Country Must-Read Book of 2022 * A Fashionista Summer Read
"Smart, funny, and impressively thorough."-The Cut
In the spirit of works by Jia Tolentino and Anne Helen Peterson, a smart and incisive essay collection centered on the fashion industry-its history, its importance, why we wear what we wear, and why it matters-from Elle Magazine's fashion features director.
Why does fashion hold so much power over us? Most of us care about how we dress and how we present ourselves. Style…
Fashion has been the love of my life since I was a little kid pouring over magazines and watching shows on fashion TV in the middle of the night. But I’ve always known fashion is not about clothing, its about feeling and it’s about people. That’s why I love to read the stories about people who work in fashion, who have been impacted by fashion and those who love it just as much as I do.
If you have any interest in the supermodel era of fashion, Champagne Supernovas is a great look into a piece of it.
The book gives you an inside look at the style scene in the 1990s highlighting moments with Kate Moss, Alexander McQueen, Marc Jacobs, and more. It details some of the most powerful people’s personal struggles, and how the culture they had been thrust into only made it worst. It’s glamorous, sure, but the exploration of the underbelly of popular culture makes it that much more exciting to read.
“Terrifically exciting and fun” (Publishers Weekly), Champagne Supernovas is “a lucid, smoothly executed look at a pivotal decade in the legacy of American fashion” (Kirkus Reviews) as told through the lives of Kate Moss, Marc Jacobs, and Alexander McQueen—the three iconic personalities who defined the time.
Veteran pop culture journalist Maureen Callahan takes us back to the pivotal style moment of the early 1990s—when supermodel glamazons gave way to heroin chic, when the alternative became the mainstream, and when fashion suddenly became the cradle for the most exciting artistic and cultural innovations of the age. Champagne Supernovas gives you the…
Fashion has been the love of my life since I was a little kid pouring over magazines and watching shows on fashion TV in the middle of the night. But I’ve always known fashion is not about clothing, its about feeling and it’s about people. That’s why I love to read the stories about people who work in fashion, who have been impacted by fashion and those who love it just as much as I do.
If you prefer something more visual when it comes to books about style, Worn in New York is certainly that.
It’s a fun look at specific pieces of clothing that were, well, worn in New York by influential people. Each one is a first-person account of a specific item and it corresponds to a photo of the piece. One of my favorites is the story and image of actress Aubrey Plaza’s page uniform that she apparently stole when she worked at NBC.
The boots a passenger had on when his plane landed on the Hudson River. The tank top Andy Warhol's assistant wore to one of their nightclub outings together. The jacket a taxi driver put on to feel safe as he worked the night shift.
These and over sixty other clothing-inspired narratives make up Worn in New York, the latest volume from New York Times bestselling author Emily Spivack. In these first-person accounts, contributors in and out of the public eye share surprising, personal, wild, poignant, and funny stories behind a piece of clothing that reminds them of a significant moment…
I believe deeply that, as messy and painful as life is, there is always joy, and usually humor, to be found. The book I wrote, Leaving’s Not the Only Way to Go, pulls from some of the painful experiences I’ve had, and I often find myself following my description of the book, about two women who meet in a grief group, with “but it’s not a downer!” It’s true, because Leaving is also inspired by all the joy and connections I’ve made for myself, even in the midst of loss. I learned how to balance the two sides of life through books like the ones on this list.
Simply the Best is a romance set after the COVID-19 pandemic began, and it doesn’t flinch from the pain that era has inflicted on us all. Kallmaker set out to grapple with the question of how we find joy and love after experiencing such devestation, and why trying to find joy and love at all still matters.
This romance is, despite its serious circumstances, as funny and pleasurable as all Kallmaker novels are.
Simply the Worst…Alice Cabot’s only great love is science, but a lapse in judgment has exiled the New York journalist to the glitzy Gallerias and vapid bubble-babble of Beverly Hills. The assignment to do a flattering feature series on Simply the Best and the superficial nonsense it sells threatens to crush what little is left of her spirit.
Simply the Best...Pepper Addington can’t believe she’s moved up from grunt intern to personal assistant for Helene Jolie, the celebrity socialite founder of SimplytheBest.com. Succeeding at the job she worked so hard to get is her only priority. Keep a cynical know-it-all…
I’m an OB/GYN, passionate about adventuring beyond what’s expected. This has led me to pivot multiple times in my career, now focusing on writing. I’ve written a play, The Post-Roe Monologues, to elevate women’s stories. I cherish the curiosity that drives outer and inner exploration, and I love memoirs that skillfully weave the two. The books on this list feature extraordinary women who took risks, left comfort and safety, and battled vulnerability to step into the unknown. These authors moved beyond the stories they’d believed about themselves–or that others told about them. They invite you to think about living fuller and bigger lives.
I read this book in a day. The writing sparkles with intimacy, vulnerability, and humor. Levy, a journalist accustomed to traveling the world, finds herself lost while on assignment in Mongolia. There, she experiences a miscarriage within the context of a crumbling relationship.
She writes, “The future I thought I was meticulously crafting for years had disappeared, and with it have gone my ideas about the kind of life I’d imagined I was due.”
An Amazon.com Book of 2017 and an NPR Great Read of 2017
'Every deep feeling a human is capable of will be shaken loose by this short, but profound book' David Sedaris
'I wanted what we all want: everything. We want a mate who feels like family and a lover who is exotic, surprising. We want to be youthful adventurers and middle-aged mothers. We want intimacy and autonomy, safety and stimulation, reassurance and novelty, coziness and thrills. But we can't have it all.'
I have loved fairy tales since I was a little girl and watched my first Disney movie. Over the years, I’ve read many fairy tale retellings, as well as the original versions. I love how writers can see a story like Beauty and the Beast and find ways to make an almost completely new story, but still hold true to the original concepts of the fairy tale. Fairy tales connect us to our childhood and when we read these new versions, it lets us relive a part of our childhood. Not many books can do that!
Bayron made the classic Cinderellafairy tale something modern girls can relate to. Black, LGBT girls will especially find a kindred spirit in Sophia. I loved how determined Sophia was to fight back against society’s expectations of her. She was willing to fight for her happily ever after, even if it didn’t look like how the world thought it should. To see Sophia’s struggles rewarded with her love story with Constance was great to read.
"Wholly original and captivating." - Brigid Kemmerer, New York Times bestselling author of A Curse So Dark and Lonely
Girls team up to overthrow the kingdom in this unique and powerful retelling of Cinderella from a stunning new voice that's perfect for fans of Dhonielle Clayton and Melissa Albert.
It's 200 years after Cinderella found her prince, but the fairy tale is over. Teen girls are now required to appear at the Annual Ball, where the men of the kingdom select wives based on a girl's display of finery. If a suitable match is not found, the girls not chosen…
My day job is teaching U.S. history, particularly courses on urban history, social movements, and race and gender. It is women’s experiences in cities, however, that have driven much of my historical research and sparked my curiosity about how people understand–and shape–the world around them. Lots of people talk about what women need and what they should be doing, but fewer have been willing to hear what women have to say about their own lives and recognize their resiliency. I hope that this kind of listening to the past will help us build more inclusive cities in the future.
I’m always drawn to books and stories that help me understand communities on their own terms, from the inside out, and this book delivers on that.
Even though this is a book written by scholars, the voices of Buffalo’s mid-twentieth-century lesbian community really guide the book since Kennedy and Davis did hundreds of interviews as a part of their research. I loved hearing from the women themselves, reflecting back on this moment in their lives in this one city, about how they found friends and lovers, negotiated work and family, and navigated the city.
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nevertheless became powerful agents of historical change. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture and argue that the roots of gay and lesbian liberation are found specifically in the determined resistance of working-class lesbians.
When I talk with many non-romance readers, they’re often surprised to hear that a feminist reads and writes romance. It’s frustrating that so many people still buy into the conventional wisdom that all romance books are inherently anti-feminist, filled with alpha-hole heroes and wilting flower heroines. I challenged that conventional wisdom on my Romance Novels for Feminists review blog and continue to do so now that I’ve turned to writing romance. I’m so passionate about telling everyone I know about romances that feature clear feminist themes. If you share the conventional wisdom about romance, I hope you’ll give one of the books below a try. They’re not your grandmother’s bodice rippers anymore…
Sapphic historical romances are few and far between, especially ones as intelligently written and historically grounded as Olivia Waite’s. My favorite moves beyond the typical Regency ballroom setting with its slow-burn romance between two 40-something women. Penelope’s a rural beekeeper, and Agatha a London printer, one whose worrisomely politically radical son might be putting her business in danger.
I admire both the lovely writing and the intelligently grounded historical setting (the story takes place against the backdrop of the Queen Caroline affair and the post-Napoleonic repression of the English press). Above all, I appreciate Waite’s deftly crafted and utterly appealing characters, two unconventional business owners who both enjoy their work almost as much as they do one another.
When Agatha Griffin finds a colony of bees in her warehouse, it's the not-so-perfect ending to a not-so-perfect week. Busy trying to keep her printing business afloat amidst rising taxes and the suppression of radical printers like her son, the last thing the widow wants is to be the victim of a thousand bees. But when a beautiful beekeeper arrives to take care of the pests, Agatha may be in danger of being stung by something far more dangerous...
Penelope Flood exists between two worlds in her small seaside town, the society of rich landowners and the tradesfolk. Soon, tensions…
I’m obsessed with obsession; with the nature of intimate relationships. If I could obsess about a topic as easily and naturally as I can about a human, I’d probably have five or six advanced degrees. As a writer I’m most frequently drawn to third-person limited because I love the marriage of intimacy and distance it can create. It's that marriage that confounds me; the dark inner spaces contained by the people we love.
Christine Snow is a therapist who has her shit together, or does she? When her girlfriend vanishes, it becomes apparent to Chris that, on an emotional level, Taylor was never really there to begin with. Anshaw’s use of a third-person limited point of view and a present tense narrative creates a sense of breathless intimacy. If you’re looking for a thriller, look elsewhere. Seven Moves is a well-observed mediation on the inherent unknowability of an intimate partner. Anshaw does obsession like no one else.
Christine Snow, a Chicago therapist, has at last returned from the margins of her past - a card-sharp father, too many wrong lovers - into comfortable urban domesticity with Taylor Hayes, a travel photographer. The two women share a house, a dog, a life. And then one morning after a minor argument, Taylor disappears, Chris's anger turns to alarm as time passes and still she hears nothing, until she falls across a clue as unsettling in itself as Taylor's disappearance. Following a trail that leads to Morocco and home again, Seven Moves tracks Chris's gradual realisation that one can never…
