Novels with Characters Connecting Through Books

Book Summary

Beverly is on the local school board, and her archrival, Lula, has turned into a local celebrity as she’s been on a mission to rid the public libraries of all inappropriate books—none of which she’s actually read.

To counteract the “pornographic” books housed in the local library, Lula starts a little library in her front yard, full of “worthy literature.”

At night, Beverly’s adult daughter Lindsay sneaks over to Lula’s little library and replaces the books, but swaps the dust covers. Suddenly, Our Confederate Heroes actually contains Beloved and The Southern Belle’s Guide to Etiquette turns into The Girl’s Guide to the Revolution.

As Beverly and Lula’s rivalry intensifies when they run against each other to replace the mayor, the townspeople who have been changed by borrowing the books from Lula’s begin to reveal themselves. Everyone from the postman to the prom queen have something to say, eventually forcing Lindsay to confess.

Book Summary

Sally has added a book to her shelf on July 11th, her daughter Ella’s birthday, every year for forty-two years. Inside the front cover, she adds a note to Ella, but for the past twenty-two years, Ella has not seen any of the books or notes.

After a heated argument when she was twenty, Ella fled to Australia and has been estranged from her mother ever since. She now has her own life and an eight-year-old daughter. But, when Sally has a fall, Ella reluctantly travels back home to face everything she left behind.

Book Summary

In 2020, the Lost for Words bookshop was quiet, as was the rest of York…and the world. Just as everyone could desperately use a book for escape, the doors of bookstores and libraries were closed. But then, Loveday, the proprietor of the shop, gets a letter with a check enclosed, asking for her to send books.

The first letter is from Rosemary and George, who have been married for 50 years. Then the next letter comes, and Loveday finds a new purpose in matching books to readers looking to escape fear, boredom, and loneliness. And so, the “book pharmacy” was born to ease the ailments of 2020.

Warning: You may finish this book with a longer TBR list, as it’s full of real book recommendations!

Book Summary

This is a great read if you love a little magic or mystical qualities in your books! Librarian Sarah can hear books whispering to her from the shelves. 

They alert her to a town newcomer, Grace, who is in need of friendship. The only problem is that Grace resists the town and residents, especially Sarah. 

The books reiterate that Grace is exactly what the town needs. Sarah has to figure out a way to bring everyone together.

Book Summary

In Abbot Falls, Maine, three unlikely people are about to have their lives change after connecting at a bookstore. Violet is only twenty-two, but was just released from prison after nearly two years due to a drunk-driving crash that killed a local kindergarten teacher. Harriet is a retired English teacher who runs a book club at the prison. Frank is the handyman for a bookstore, and he had a complicated marriage to the woman Violet killed.

When Violet, Harriet, and Frank run into each other at the bookstore, they begin to learn about seizing second chances and the power of books to change our lives.

Book Summary

Nikki is the daughter of Indian immigrants raised in a traditional Sikh community in England. After dropping out of law school, she spends her time in cosmopolitan West London tending bar at a local pub.

When her family is in need of financial assistance, she impulsively agrees to take on a part-time job teaching creative writing at a Punjabi community center. It turns out, however, that the women enrolled in the class are primarily Sikh widows hoping to gain basic English fluency.

Though they need to learn beginner skills, these women don’t want to be taught using resources designed for young children. When one of the widows finds a book of sexy stories in English and shares it with her classmates, Nikki realizes that despite their modest white dupattas, these women are filled with both memories and fantasies. In hopes of liberating them, Nikki helps the widows to unleash their creativity and express their untold stories.

Soon, more women join the class, and they all must be careful not to attract the attention of the Brotherhood – a group of conservative young men who act as the community’s self-appointed “moral police.”

When the gossip among the women reveals shocking insights into the death of a modern young wife in the community, it sparks a scandal that puts them all in danger.

Book Summary

Emily is a librarian in Martha’s Vineyard, but her desire for a more adventurous life leads her to Ireland. Her favorite author, Siobhan Riordan, has offered her a job helping her write the long-awaiting final novel in her series.

Things would be great if it weren’t for Siobhan’s grumpy son, Kieran, who runs her bookstore. Emily’s tensions escalate with Kieran after Siobhan’s health declines. How can she help fulfill Siobhan’s desire to see her final book published with Kieran in her way?

Book Summary

Set against the backdrop of the 1953 Iranian Coup, Roya, an idealistic teenage girl, finds a literary oasis in the neighborhood book and stationery shop.

The owner of the shop introduces her to his favorite customer, the handsome Bahman, who has a passion for justice and poetry.

The two fall in love, but are separated on the eve of their marriage. Finally, they are reunited sixty years later while they are living separately in America. Together, they discover the truth of what really happened all those years ago in the town square.

Book Summary

The best way to describe this unique novel is “meta.” Three authors have collaborated to write a book about three authors collaborating to write a book.

American novelists Kat, Cassie, and Emma met and bonded at literary events despite coming from very different backgrounds. Kat writes erotic urban fantasy. Cassie is a southern mom juggling multiple cozy mystery series. And Emma is a New England blue blood who pens historical fiction about forgotten women.

Their editor, Rachelle, agrees to foot the bill for this trio to attend a writing retreat where they can work on writing a novel together. The women jump at the chance to travel to the Scottish Highlands.

On a remote island, literary superstar Brett Saffron Presley recently purchased the historic gothic Castle Kinloch. He purchased the castle as a showpiece for his brand and to lure paying guests with a taste for writerly glamour.

Now Presley has been found dead – under bizarre circumstances – in the castle tower’s book-lined study. Everyone is a suspect, and Detective Chief Inspector Euan McIntosh must take statements from the three American novelists. The ladies claim to have come to write about the castle’s lurid past and its debauched laird, who himself ended up creatively murdered years ago. But as McIntosh questions them, the women’s stories about how they know Presley don’t quite line up.

Book Summary

As London is emerging from WWII, Juliet Ashton, a writer, is looking for the subject of her next book. She begins exchanging letters with a man she’s never met – a native of the island of Guernsey. Through their letters, Juliet is drawn into the world of the man and his eccentric friends. Though they range from pig farmers to phrenologists, they are all literature lovers.

As Juliet learns about their tastes in books, she also comes to understand the impact that the German occupation has had on their lives.

Book Summary

Macy and her dad spend their weekends at a house in the charming town of Healdsburg, where they are able to escape their daily life in San Francisco. While it starts as a place to process their grief, they gain even more than they expected. The large family across the street, starting with son Elliot, quickly becomes more than just casual neighbors.

Elliot and Macy soon bond over their love of books and their favorite words. Over time, their teenage friendship grows into romance.

The book is told in a split timeline as you watch their relationship develop as teens, but then you also see Macy eleven years later working on her pediatrics residency in San Francisco. She’s engaged to someone else when she unexpectedly runs into Elliot at a coffee shop.

Upon seeing him, her long-repressed emotions come rushing back. Something happened in the past to tear them apart, but their chemistry is as strong as ever. For a shot at a future, they’ll be forced to come to terms with both the past and the present.

Book Summary

Liesel Meminger is a 9-year-old foster girl living in Nazi Germany in 1939. While trying to avoid all the death around her, she learns to read and begins stealing books. Soon, she’s sharing the books with neighbors and the Jewish man hidden in their basement. 

It’s a heartbreaking read like so many others that cover this subject, but The Book Thief also underscores the vast power of books to help you through a terrible time.

Book Summary

When teenage library worker Aleisha finds a list of little-known novels in the back of To Kill a Mockingbird, she decides to read every book on the list. Each story is magical to her for different reasons.

Widower Mukesh worries about his bookworm granddaughter, Priya. To connect with her, he visits the library and meets Aleisha. When she shares the found list with him, they begin to form an unexpected friendship and discover the healing that is desperately needed for each of them.

Book Summary

Librarian Chloe is struggling to take care of herself and her three younger siblings when she stumbles across a rare edition of a book from the 1960s at the local flea market. She’s shocked when her cranky neighbor, Jasper, offers to buy it for an exorbitant price. But then she spots old notes scribbled in the margins between long lovers and realizes some of the handwriting is Jasper’s.

This kickstarts a literary scavenger hunt through not only this book but others in town with similar notes. Is there more to Chloe’s cranky neighbor than meets the eye?

Book Summary

In 1996, Hanna, an Australian rare book expert, was offered the job of a lifetime working on the conservation of the famed Sarajevo Haggadah, one of the earliest Jewish manuscripts ever illuminated with illustrations. The priceless book was rescued during the Bosnian War.

When Hanna discovers a series of tiny artifacts in the book’s ancient binding—an insect wing fragment, wine stains, salt crystals, and a white hair—she begins to unlock the book’s mysteries.

Inspired by a true story, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Geraldine Brooks has created a novel of sweeping historical grandeur. In Bosnia during WWII, a Muslim risked his life to protect the book from the German army. At the turn of the century in Vienna, the book became a pawn in the struggle against the city’s rising anti-Semitism. In inquisition-era Venice, a Catholic priest saved the book from being burned. In Barcelona in 1492, the scribe who wrote the text sees his family destroyed by the agonies of enforced exile. And in Seville, the reason for the Haggadah’s extraordinary illuminations is finally disclosed.

WARNING: This book includes a scene of graphic rape.

Book Summary

Set in a bleak, dystopian future, this novel transports us to an unspecified city near the middle of the US after two atomic wars. Guy Montag is a fireman, but rather than putting out fires, his job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities – books, as well as the houses in which they are hidden. 

His life is the same day in and day out. He causes destruction and ruin in the name of censorship without ever questioning his actions. All the while, his wife spends her time staring at the television (which has become, for many, a replacement for friends and family).

Everything begins to change when Guy meets his seventeen-year-old neighbor, Clarisse, who loves nature, despises TV, and introduces him to the ideas of individualism and critical thought. She also causes him to question, for the first time, whether he is happy – and what happiness even means.

Book Summary

Kit is the head librarian in the town of Riverton, New Hampshire, but for her, the library is more than just a job. It is a place of peace. When she’s there, no one expects her to talk about the calamitous events that have recently turned her settled, suburban life completely upside down. Instead, she can submerge herself in books and forget about her real-life problems for a while.

Kit’s quiet sanctuary changes suddenly, however, when a 15-year-old named Sunny is assigned community service at the library for the whole summer. Sunny was arrested for shoplifting a dictionary, and the judge threw the book at her, quite literally. Sunny is bright, curious, and eager to connect with someone other than the off-the-grid hippie parents who school her at home. She’s determined to coax Kit out of her self-imposed isolation.

Then there’s Rusty. He’s a Wall Street high-flyer who has recently crashed down to the Earth. In this small town library, this unlikely trio is drawn together, along with a cast of other quirky regulars. They will be forced to examine how their lives have unraveled, but they’ll also help knit them together again.

Book Summary

This is the memoir of a woman who spent four months living with a bookseller and his family in Kabul in the spring of 2002, after the fall of the Taliban.

The bookseller, Khan, had spent more than 20 years defying the authorities by supplying books to the people of Kabul. In doing so, he was arrested, interrogated, and imprisoned. But his love of books never wavered, and he continued to hide tens of thousands of books in attics around the city to prevent them from being burned in the street by Taliban soldiers.

While Khan was passionate about his love of books and hatred of censorship, in other ways, he held much stricter, more conservative views – including about the role of women in society. As an outsider, however, Åsne was in a unique position to move freely between the public lives of the men and the much more private and restricted world of the women. Through her experiences, we see a uniquely intimate portrait of a family in Afghanistan against the backdrop of a country in turmoil.

Book Summary

Erin is reeling from a recent tragedy when she accidentally donates her favorite book to a local little library in her community. She is devastated when she realizes what has happened to her heavily annotated copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which also contains a precious memento.

Miraculously, her book turns back up in the little library a week later, and it now contains fresh notes in the margins. She and her new pen pal embark on a life-changing conversation written in the margins of beloved classic books.

As Erin and her Mystery Man continue to exchange books, following each other through the pages of their favorite novels, they begin to open up, forming a close friendship that might turn into something more.

However, the duo also has a painful shared history that neither of them has guessed.

Book Summary

Lily is an assistant who dreams of moving out of the non-fiction division. She would much rather be an editor for children’s books. While awaiting the promotion that’s been eluding her for years, she finds comfort in corresponding with a one-book author who penned her favorite fantasy novel. Through their emails, they begin to form a friendship that feels like it could become even more… until he ghosts her.

Months later, Lily is in need of a date for her sister’s wedding and thinks that her new neighbor, Nick, might be able to set her up with someone. Little does she know that Nick is the author she’d been corresponding with.

Lily only knew the author by his pen name, N. R. Strickland, but it didn’t take long for him to realize that she was the same Lily he fell in love with over email. He agrees to set her up with a wedding date, but there’s nothing simple about this favor, because he can’t get her off of his mind.

Book Summary

Nina loves her life as a librarian at a small neighborhood library. So when it’s downsized from the system, she’s devastated.

Should she give in and work for the large branch that is mainly a tech center helping people on computers versus being surrounded by books? Or is it time to stop playing things safe and follow her dreams of starting her own mobile bookshop to serve small towns?

Book Summary

At the age of 32, Jess enjoys comfort and safety and is perfectly content with her quiet and predictable life. But when she loses her job at the local library after more than a decade and then loses her beloved grandmother, she is suddenly in need of a fresh start.

She decides to move to a cottage in the English countryside, packing up all of her grandmother’s cherished books to take with her. Upon moving into the new cottage, Jess is surprised to discover that she’s now the owner of an old red phone box that sits on the property.

Missing her library job, Jess decides to give back to the local community by turning the telephone box into the littlest library in England. Soon enough, the borrowed books begin to bring the villagers together and help Jess find a place in her new community.

Book Summary

Shy librarian June is more comfortable with books than the idea of leaving her small English village. However, she’s forced outside her comfort zone when her library is targeted for closure. 

Thirty-year-old June’s campaign to save the library means opening up to others for the first time since her mother’s death. One of her new allies is lawyer Alex, who she hasn’t seen since high school. Maybe June’s fight for the library will save more than the books.