100 books like The Last List of Mabel Beaumont

I LOVE books about women who won’t be told what to do.

In 1960s Mississippi, black women were "the help." Other jobs weren’t open to them. They cooked and cleaned for white people, and they raised their children, but they weren’t allowed to use the same bathroom. And they couldn’t be friends with the children they’d raised when they were adults. 

Enter white would-be journalist Miss Skeeter aka Eugenia Phelan, who wants change, not least so she can find Constantine, who raised her, then disappeared. Enter Aibileen and Minny, black "helps" also wanting change, especially for their children. They recruit other "helps" who find the courage to act when it is dangerous to do so.

Boundaries are crossed, and unlikely friendships are formed. Brill book!

I love this book because it has everything, believable, engaging characters, a riveting plot, a vivid setting, and a cause. Larger-than-life Margery O’Hare and lady-like Alice are unlikely friends, but friends they become in this great story.

When I first saw photos of those "librarians on horseback," the wonderful women who responded to Eleanor Roosevelt’s call to take books to the rural poor of Kentucky in the depressed 1930s, I longed to know more. Jojo Moyes gives us lots more. There’s an array of well-drawn characters, but it’s Margery and Alice who drive the story forward, defying the odds to achieve their aims and find men who love and appreciate them.

Yes, it’s a love story, too, and a whodunnit? Perfect!

Again, this has everything I like in a book, characters I care about, a great page-turning plot, a fight for what’s right, and a beautiful romantic thread.

By amazing coincidence, it’s also about inspiring librarians, two very different women who join forces to bring books to people who need them. Clara Button, recently widowed and under pressure to be respectable, is very different from racy unmarried Ruby Munroe, but the two form a strong bond grounded in mutual respect.

Based on historical fact, it tells the story of the underground library, built in the disused Bethnal Green tube station in 1944 when the Blitz was wreaking havoc in wartime London. Feel-good fiction at its best. Brill!

This is another story bringing history to life, in this case, the famous Rajah Quilt, made by convict women in 1841 while being transported to Tasmania.

I’m not a patcher myself, but my mum was, and I know how patching brings disparate women together, though not as disparate as these "dangerous women" and their leader, the Quaker philanthropist Kezia Hayter.

Hope Adams takes a worthy story and turns it into a gripping whodunnit, beginning with a murder on page one. It is hard at times to keep track of all the characters, but well worth the effort because their unlikely friendships are fascinating and crucial to the solving of the mystery.  

I loved every minute of this book.

This is the type of book you read with tabbies and attach them to all the amazing lines that strike a chord with you.

Set in charming Charleston, this story is about community, friendship, and self-discovery. It’s heartwarming, endearing, and packs an emotional punch.

This was the first book I read from Natalie Walters and it was fabulous! She is an auto-buy for me with a riveting story that is not only crime-centric but with relatable and real characters! Her romance is light and expertly woven through a story that will keep you guessing, biting your fingernails, and skipping dinner!

The daughter of Taiwanese immigrants, Tam is on the phone with her husband when he is killed in traffic. Their last conversation is about the little boy they were going to adopt from China. Mia, an undocumented Chinese immigrant with an American-born daughter, tells the other half of the story. Reading about Chinese orphanages in the 90s—and now—was heartbreaking. It was also moving because of the way some nannies cared for the abandoned children. In Chinese mythology, the red thread of fate unites through love. Drawing from the author’s Taiwanese culture and her experience adopting her son from China, this is a story about love: between parents and children, friends who help each other, caretakers and orphans—and even unexpected romance.

This riveting American Gothic novel, set in 1865, follows a widowed Civil War Army nurse home to New Hampshire after her bloody stint of tending the wounded and sick, only to find that her beloved, but unstable, sister is dead in a fall from the roof of the asylum. The cause is ruled a suicide, but she is not convinced and determines to find the truth at all costs. The period is synchronic with that of The Abolitionist’s Daughter and the depth of research fascinated me. Blakemore’s writing and extensive attention to sensual detail is exceptional. Since I have my own yet-to-be-titled historical mystery due for release in the Spring of 2022, I loved delving into this twisting page-turner with a woman of determination in an equivalent period of history.

Eden Wallace’s husband is dead and she’s deeply phobic about the dark, but she’s going to take the northern Michigan vacation he planned for them anyway — at a "sky park" where there’s no light pollution at night to keep you from seeing the spectacular starry skies. The dream turns into a nightmare when she becomes the prime suspect in a grotesque murder and subsequently suffers unexpected torments.  Rader-Day delivers a fiendishly clever plot and there are truly superb twists along the way. This is finely wrought crime fiction with great psychological depth. The dialogue is natural all the way through, the characters are beautifully individualized, and the author deftly builds tension while taking us deep into the heart of Eden’s grief. All of that makes her eventual triumph over both circumstances and her crippling fear truly unforgettable.

This book is the first in the Verity Kent series set just after World War I in England.

Verity is a war widow and had worked for the Secret Service during the war. After declining an invitation to attend a party on a secluded island, she changes her mind when she receives a letter intimating that her husband had been a traitor. The partygoers are mostly former soldiers who had served under her husband.

This book has it all—a secluded island, many secrets, a storm, and a huge surprise. And I mean huge. Verity doesn’t know who she can trust but somehow manages to figure it all out. I’m way behind on reading this series but I mean to catch up soon!