Okay, okay; "Women's Fiction Friday" isn't actually a regular series on this blog, but we have so many excellent women's fiction titles on our list—both backlist and forthcoming—that it should be! Look forward to more posts like this on upcoming Fridays... if I remember.
Today we're celebrating all of the great novelists that Rebecca Vnuk, author of READ ON... WOMEN'S FICTION and WOMEN'S FICTION AUTHORS, highlighted in "Rebecca’s Rules: Defining Women’s Fiction" over on BooklistOnline.com. So how exactly do we categorize women's fiction? Vnuk says,
"These are novels that explore the lives of female protagonists, focusing on all kinds of relationships, be it lovers, spouses, parents, children, friends, or members of a community. The common thread is that the central character is female, and the main thrust of the story is something happening in the life of that woman (as opposed to the overall theme being a romance or a mystery of some sort). Emotions and relationships are the common thread between books that belong in this category. A woman is the star of the story, and her emotional development drives the plot."
She goes on to offer a few guidelines on categorizing a book as women's fiction, but admits that "for most casual readers, it makes no difference whether we call it a romance or we call it women’s fiction, they just want something good to read about women."
On her list of "10 authors that reader’s-advisory librarians should be familiar with in order to best serve their women’s fiction fans" are:
Barbara Taylor Bradford
Barbara Delinsky
Emily Giffin
Jane Green
and Kristin Hannah
All of whom are published by St. Martin's Press! See the full list here. [...]
