4.28 avg rating — 1,791,163 ratings

" Elizabeth Zott is a chemist; but in the 1950s, a female chemist is unacceptable, and when she finds herself pregnant, unwed, and unemployed, instead of conducting the research she lives for, she ends up the reluctant host of a cooking show. Her unique take on cooking is a big hit, and before long, she is challenging her mainly female audience to not just improve their cooking, but to improve their lives."

4.12 avg rating — 857,226 ratings

"The Vignes twin sisters live polar opposite lives, with one remaining with her Black daughter in the same southern town they had both tried to escape, and the other passing for white with a husband who knows nothing of her past. But the twins' fates are still intertwined, and when their own daughters’ storylines cross, it becomes clear that the past is not finished with them all yet."

4.22 avg rating — 264,347 ratings

"In 1936, Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry, decides to combat her loneliness by becoming a librarian, riding across treacherous terrain to deliver reading material to the impoverished citizens of Eastern Kentucky. Along the way, she confronts suspicions, forges friendships, and brings comfort to the complex characters that populate rural Kentucky."

4.35 avg rating — 206,228 ratings

"In 15th-century China, Yunxian is educated by her grandparents, learning about women’s illnesses with her friend and midwife-in-training Meiling. However, when she is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law orders her to conform to the role of a proper wife, a role Yunxian is determined to break free of in order to fulfill her destiny of providing medical care to other women and girls at every level of society."

3.75 avg rating — 69,066 ratings

"In 1957, when Gretchen Tilbury contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, Jean Swinney is eager to be assigned to investigate as a means to escape her lonely life spent alone with her mother. But as Jean’s life becomes intertwined with Gretchen, her daughter, Margaret, and her husband, Howard, happiness seems within reach, if only Jean is willing to pay the price for it, a price that could destroy them all."

4.39 avg rating — 4,118,147 ratings

"Monique Grant’s personal and professional lives are both faltering, so when she is selected to write the biography of aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo, she leaps at the chance. But as Evelyn tells her tale, a story that spans the 1950s to the ‘80s as well as seven husbands, with numerous twists along the way, Monique begins to feel that her life intersects with Evelyn’s in ways she would never have imagined."

3.95 avg rating — 89,295 ratings

"In Ireland at the end of the First World War, Nurse Julia Power works at an understaffed hospital where expectant mothers who have been inflicted with the Spanish Flu are quarantined together. Joining Julia in this ward are Doctor Kathleen Lynn, rumored to be wanted by the police, and volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney; over the next three days, as these women tend to their patients through flu and pregnancy, they will change each other’s lives in unexpected ways and find new ways to hope despite what seems like insurmountable odds."

3.93 avg rating — 147,829 ratings

"In Havana, 1958, Elisa Perez is a high society girl sheltered from politics, until she falls in love with a revolutionary far below her social status. In 2017, Marisol Ferrera has been tasked with scattering the ashes of her grandmother Elisa’s ashes in the country of her birth, a journey that will bring Marisol into contact with the beauty and danger of Cuba, and will bring Elisa’s forgotten history back into the light."

3.90 avg rating — 4,743 ratings

"Although Dottie Krasinky seems like a 1930s modern girl, she is at her heart a traditional Jewish daughter, and when she finds herself pregnant after one careless night, she is unsure where to turn. Dottie’s immigrant mother, Rose, longs to return to the social activism of her youth, but when she discovers she, too, is pregnant, both mother and daughter will be forced to find a way to reconcile their faith with their desires."

3.97 avg rating — 46,636 ratings

"Isobel Gamble carries many secrets with her when she sails with her opium-addicted husband from Scotland to Salem for a fresh start. But when her husband abruptly abandons her in the New World, Isobel is forced to survive by any means possible, a task that becomes lighter as she is drawn ever closer to a young Nathaniel Hawthorne, a man with many secrets of his own."

3.68 avg rating — 21,561 ratings

"In Denver 1962, Kitty Miller lives an unconventional single life, running a bookshop with her friend, enjoying total freedom over her life, and experiencing tantalizing dreams of an alternate life while she sleeps, where she is Katharyn Andersson, married to Lars, raising children together. As this alternate dream life becomes more real, Kitty must choose which life she truly wants and which life is real at all."

3.77 avg rating — 33,731 ratings

"Constance Kopp is an unconventional woman for 1914, uninterested in men, marriage, or domesticity, and forced to isolate from the world with her sisters because of a family secret. But when a silk factory owner runs down their buggy and a dispute over damages turns into gang warfare, Constance is going to have to put her past behind her and defend her family in a way few women have been willing to try. "