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Elizabeth Berg focuses on character-driven relationship fiction featuring relatable, flawed, and introspective characters. Her stories may be bittersweet but are also romantic and heartwarming. She has also written award-winning short story collections and her Facebook postings have been collected into two books. |
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Robyn Carr writes heartwarming and sensual contemporary romance with a focus on community in a small town in the northwest California mountains. Many characters have a military background. Storylines are character-driven with a heart-warming, moving, bittersweet, and amusing tone. |
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Sonali Dev writes multicultural contemporary romances with characters torn between Indian cultural tradition and modern Western culture. Likable, well-drawn protagonists believe in true love but may be thwarted by dark family pasts. Her mildly sensuous stories have an upbeat tone and feature smart women intent upon self-discovery.
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Emily Giffin writes women's stories that handles serious matters such as infidelity, childlessness, and unwanted pregnancies in a heartwarming and slightly lighthearted manner. She creates likable characters who are easy to relate to and experience a full emotional spectrum.
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Lauren Groff writes introspective, lyrical, and bittersweet stories about personal discovery in unorthodox environments.
Intricate plots and atmospheric writing thrust readers into quirky realms of contemporary society, and she presents insightful observations about those on the fringes of our world.
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Kristy Woodson Harvey's issue-oriented, emotionally intense relationship fiction addresses controversial themes centered around women and family. The tone is inspirational but may be bittersweet; the coastal setting and culture is lavishly described. Her style is somewhat literary as befits her characters' professions as writers and journalists.
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Emily Henry writes intricately plotted, fast-paced adult contemporary romantic fiction. Her witty, heartwarming, and steamy stories are complemented by empathetic, likable characters who are never less than authentic. Her upbeat books are lush, engaging, and filled with banter and atmosphere.
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Kristan Higgins authors contemporary romance and relationship fiction set primarily in small towns on the American East Coast. Her novels are amusing, moving, and engaging stories that impeccably balance humor and comedy with just a touch of drama to create uplifting, hopeful reads.
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Jean Kwok’s novels tell moving stories of women and immigrants with grace, lightness, and humor. Her focus is on the barriers immigrants face as they work toward the American Dream. She delves into the family secrets, changes, dislocation, and generational misunderstandings many immigrants must work through
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Alice McDermott focuses her work on relatable aspects of life such as love, romance, and family relationships.
Rather than simply spin a tale, McDermott skillfully imbues her characters and plots with descriptive details, emotional energy, and an almost poetic style of narrative writing in which her intensity emerges.
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Ann Patchett writes contemporary literary fiction and intensely personal memoirs featuring complex characters who she never judges. Patchett uses unpredictable pairings to create compelling and heart-breaking stories that highlight the complexity of human relationships.
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Taylor Jenkins Reid's historical and contemporary novels focus on romantic, familial, or platonic relationships. Her heroines are women facing complex and difficult situations. Readers may shed a few tears when reading Reid's stories of loss, grief, divorce, and second chances, but these poignant novels end on a satisfying note of hope.
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Rebecca Serle is known for her moving relationship fiction, whimsical love stories, and contemporary romances. Her character-driven novels feature sympathetic characters and have a strong sense of place. Lush and witty writing adds a whimsical and slightly mystical tone to the books.
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Zadie Smith's compelling and reflective novels feature complex, quirky Muslim characters in sardonic, leisurely-paced stories that are both entertaining and thought-provoking. Poking fun at political, academic, and literary pretensions, she leaves no-one unskewered—including herself.
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National Book Award-winner Jesmyn Ward writes character-driven literary fiction often set in small towns on the Mississippi Gulf coast. Her stylistically complex work follows the lives of poor families facing disaster. The resulting bleak but moving Southern-inflected tales carry a sobering resonance no matter where one lives.
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Tia Williams is a former magazine beauty editor whose page-turning novels focus on African American characters and feature plenty of glitz and glamour. Her character-driven novels are steamy and atmospheric and feature intricately plotted storylines and complex characters using a tell-it-like-it-is writing style. |
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