A UCLA study suggests that friendships between women are special. When faced with stressful situations, a hormone is released that buffers the fight or flight response and encourages women to tend children and gather with other women, an activity that further counters stress and produces a calming effect. Join the company of women in these books from the Lititz Public Library.
How Lucky You Are by Kristyn Kusek Lewis
Friends since age 14, three women – the owner of a bakery, a homemaker and a politician’s wife – try to keep their longstanding friendships alive as pressures rise around them.
Love Anthony by Lisa Genova
Two recently-separated women meet by accident on a Nantucket beach, each trying to make sense of troubles and tragedies in their lives.
The Unfinished Work of Elizabeth D. by Nichole Bernier
Inheriting her best friend’s diaries after a tragic accident, a woman learns unknown aspects of her late friend’s life, from her deeply troubled childhood to her feelings of powerlessness as a wife and parent.
These Girls by Sarah Pekkanen
Three very different women living together in New York City find the support they need from each other as they navigate the complications of careers and love.
Four of a Kind by Valerie Frankel
Four women with children attending the same private school are thrown together for the school’s Diversity Committee which turns into a monthly get-together.
Falling Together by Marisa de los Santos
An urgent summons to a reunion forces a young mother to reexamine her relationships with two best friends from college.
Astrid and Veronika by Linda Olsson
A 30-year-old Swedish writer coming to terms with a recent tragedy rents a home in a rural village where she gradually befriends an older, reclusive neighbor.
Call Me Irresistible by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Ostracized for her role in halting her best friends’ wedding, a woman finds herself stranded in a hostile Texas town where she unexpectedly falls for her friend’s ex-finance.
Delta Belles by Penelope J. Stokes
Twenty-five years after breaking up, a widowed woman is reunited with her old friends and fellow members of the popular musical group when they are asked to perform at their college reunion.
Joy for Beginners by Erica Bauermeister
Six women gather to celebrate their friend’s recovery from cancer where she strikes a bargain to celebrate her new lease on life by doing the one thing that’s always terrified her if each of them will also do one difficult thing.
Second Chance by Jane Green
Reunited by the tragic death of one of their number, a group of former schoolmates work through their shared grief while evaluating the unforeseen ways in which each of their lives has been impacted.
Sheer Abandon by Penny Vincenzi
Meeting by chance in 1985, three young women spend time together in Thailand before going their separate ways and are reunited many years later, unaware that the daughter abandoned at birth by one of them is now searching for her birth mother.
Summer Reading by Hilma Wolitzer
The lives of three very different women – an insecure newlywed and unwilling stepmother, her nosey housecleaner and the head of a local book group – intersect over the course of a summer in the Hamptons.
Previously published on January 25, 2013 in the Lititz Record Express.