Great Epistolary Books (Told Through Letters & Other Documents)

Book Summary

Six days after becoming the first astronaut to walk on Mars, Mark now thinks he’ll be the first to die there. A surprise dust storm caused his crew to evacuate after he was presumed dead. Although he is left alone with no way to communicate and short supplies, it’s time for his engineering skills to shine.

With extreme dedication and ingenuity, he conquers obstacle after obstacle. But will it be enough to survive until someone discovers he is still alive and can return to pick him up?

Book Summary

Fifty-something Imogen Fortier is a magazine columnist living on Camano Island outside of Seattle. When she receives a fan letter, containing a gift of saffron, from 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom in LA, she writes back. Thus begins an unlikely friendship between these two women.

As the years pass, their letters to one another help them through the ups and downs of the world – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy – as well as the unexpected twists and turns in their own lives. From world events to romantic relationships, through their letters, they discover that food and a good life can’t be separated. Can anything shake the trust they’ve built over their years of correspondence?

Book Summary

When Jane’s father dies unexpectedly, she is crushed by grief twice. First, with his death, and then again when she finds a stack of letters pointing to a secret life. Her father may have had a child with another woman.

Across the country, teenager Adam is going through an equally turbulent season of life. His adoptive parents never intended to show him the unsigned letters from his birth mother, but he is desperate for answers, even if they hurt.

Jane and Adam are set on a collision course as they both look for a woman who didn’t want to be found.

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

Thirty-three-year-old Jolene prefers to keep her work life and personal life separate. She is an admin for Supershops, Inc., and for all eight years that she’s been at the company, she has limited her interactions with her colleagues to only those necessitated by her official duties.

Much to her annoyance, her coworkers don’t seem to have the same boundaries. In order to deal, she vents her frustrations in petty email postscripts, but changes the text color to white so that she knows they are there, but no one else can see them. Or so she thinks. When one of her secret messages is exposed, she’s sentenced to sensitivity training with the head of HR.

Additionally, her email is supposed to be rigorously restricted. Instead, thanks to an IT error, she’s granted access to the entire department’s private emails and direct messages (DMs). The right thing to do would be to report the glitch, but Jolene can’t resist the temptation to peek at what her coworkers are saying to one another.

Through the private emails, she learns that layoffs are coming and decides she can use the intel to try to save her own job. But as she goes further down the rabbit hole into her coworker’s private worlds, the walls she’s put up begin to crumble, and she can’t help but care what happens to them.

Book Summary

This middle-grade memoir all began with a school assignment. Caitlin and her classmates wrote to students in Zimbabwe, and Martin – the recipient of Caitlin’s pen-pal letter – wrote back. And thus began a correspondence that spanned the next six years and changed both of their lives.

In this dual memoir, Caitlin and Martin recount how they became friends and how their long-distance exchange made them both better people.

Book Summary

Bea is a plus-sized fashion blogger tired of watching casts full of size 0 models. After a drunken post about the unrealness of the reality dating show, Main Squeeze, she gets a shocking call asking HER to be the next star of the show.

Can she trust the male contestants with her heart, or is it safer to remember she’s on the show for her career?

Book Summary

In this classic horror novel, Jonathan, a young English solicitor, travels to Transylvania to assist the enigmatic Count Dracula with the purchase of a London estate. In the crumbling, bat‑haunted castle, Harker soon realizes he is a prisoner and that his host is no ordinary aristocrat but a centuries‑old vampire. When Dracula departs for England, Jonathan plots a desperate escape.

Meanwhile, his fiancée, Mina, and her friend Lucy begin to witness strange phenomena, including mysterious bite marks on Lucy’s neck. Despite blood transfusions from three devoted suitors, Lucy succumbs to a wasting illness and rises as the undead, forcing her friends to confront the horrific truth.

Professor Abraham Van Helsing, an eccentric Dutch doctor versed in obscure lore, assembles a team to track Dracula’s movements and end his reign of terror. Their pursuit spans eerie crypts, misty English streets, and finally the rugged Carpathian landscape, where courage, faith, and friendship are tested.

Book Summary

Bernadette lives with her husband and her teenage daughter in Seattle – a city where she’s never felt she fits in. She was once a renowned architect, but now spends most of her time in the house hiding from the other moms of her daughter’s elite prep school.

Unlike her Microsoft employee husband, Elgie, who has fully embraced the granola-eating, public transport-using, bike-riding culture of 2010s Seattle, Bernadette spends her days in the house relying on a virtual assistant in India for many of her daily tasks. This becomes a real problem when her daughter’s stellar report card earns her a family cruise to Antarctica, and Bernadette becomes overwhelmed by the planning and preparations. When Bernadette disappears before the trip, her daughter Bee is determined to track her down, unraveling a web of secrets.

Book Summary

Through a series of deathbed letters, a Black father attempts to make amends with his estranged gay son. Through these heartfelt letters, Jacob recounts his upbringing in rural Arkansas, shaped by rigid notions of masculinity and the lingering shadows of slavery’s aftermath.

As Jacob reflects on his life, candidly examining his own failures, he confronts the generational traumas and societal expectations that influenced his actions. He seeks redemption while also hoping to impart wisdom and love to his son before it’s too late.

Book Summary

Tina Hopgood and her friend Bella had big plans to travel to Denmark to see an archaeological discovery, the Tollund Man, at the Silkeborg Museum. However, when Bella passes away, Tina writes a letter to the museum instead.

Andres, the museum curator, writes back, encouraging Tina to visit. From there, regular correspondence begins between Tina and Andres. A strong friendship is formed only through their letters, and you’ll learn about their present lives as well as their past.

Book Summary

In this fully epistolary novel, you’re brought behind the scenes into the Fairway Players, a local theatre group preparing for their next show. What begins as everyday back and forth about rehearsals takes a turn when director Martin Hayward and his wife Helen, the play’s star, experience a family tragedy. Their young granddaughter has been diagnosed with a rare cancer.

The castmates band together to raise money for an experimental treatment, but not everyone believes this treatment is a good idea or that those involved have good intentions. Tensions grow to the point that a dead body is found the day after an explosive rehearsal. While an arrest is quickly made, two lawyers sifting through emails, messages, and letters wonder if the real killer is still hiding in plain sight.

Book Summary

It’s 1885 and newly married Colonel Allen Forrester has received the commission of a lifetime. He is being sent to lead a small group of men to navigate Alaska’s Wolverine River. Finding a way to pass the river is the key to opening Alaska to the outside world, but previous attempts have been fatal.

Sophie is pregnant and not excited about being relegated to a year in the military barracks away from her husband while he attempts the impossible. She’s worried about her pregnancy and what will happen while apart from Allen.

Book Summary

Independent Opal can’t imagine settling into a real career. She believes she was made to be a star. Opal leans into her Afro-punk style as she tries to find her niche within rock music. When she meets another aspiring artist, British singer/songwriter Neville, the unlikely duo begins making music together for the fledgling Rivington Records.

As Opal & Nev establish themselves in the early 70s New York music scene, everything changes when a fellow band from their label brandishes a Confederate flag. Opal boldly protests, which sets off a wave of violence and unfortunate repercussions.

Decades later, in 2016, a music journalist digs deeper into the events of the 70s. Her discoveries and a nasty new allegation threaten to tear apart Opal and Nev’s planned reunion.

Book Summary

Landscape architect Isaac is working at a beautiful estate in Cornwall, but he knows he’ll soon be called away to what seems to be the inevitable war. Cordelia is the daughter of the estate, and despite her mother’s concerns that it is unladylike to play in the dirt, she’s drawn to the garden as her escape. Isaac secretly teaches Cordelia how to tend the gardens so the house will still be able to produce food while the men are at war.

Although the connection between Isaac and Cordelia is clear, their love is forbidden as they are from different classes, and Isaac is an employee of the estate. However, when he’s called off to fight, he doesn’t forget her and begins sending letters. When the letters stop, Cordelia is determined to find out what happened.

Book Summary

Bridget chronicles her daily successes and (more often) her perceived failures in her determined quest for self-improvement. She’s convinced she’ll finally be happy if she can lose 7 pounds, stop smoking, develop a functional relationship with a responsible adult, and learn to program her VCR.

Her diary entries are “devastatingly self-aware” and laugh-out-loud funny!

Book Summary

After a tragic event tears apart the quaint suburb of Majestic, Pennsylvania, everyone in town sees survivor Lucas as a hero. But Lucas doesn’t see it that way, and he believes that his deceased wife, Darcy, is visiting him every night as an angel.

When Eli, an ostracized 18-year-old, begins camping in Lucas’ backyard, they begin to form an unlikely alliance that will help heal their neighbors and themselves.

Book Summary

This story of friendship introduces us to three young women in 1943 New York. Although their struggles are different than those who had the war on their doorstep in Europe & around the world, they were each impacted in different ways.

Margaret works at the Navy Yard by day, but at night, she knits socks for soldiers. When she sticks a note inside a pair of socks, she ends up with an unexpected pen pal. 

Gladys is a feminist before the rise of feminism, but when she meets someone who respects her, she wonders if she can have it all. 

Dottie’s fiancé has been deployed to fight. However, she became pregnant before he shipped out. She’s terrified her parents will make her give up the baby if she tells them, so her friends are even more important than ever.

Book Summary

It’s Lincoln O’Neill’s job to read other people’s email. He thought his role as “internet security officer” would be more glamorous – building firewalls and crushing hackers. Instead, he spends his days reading his coworkers’ emails and writing a report each time someone forwards a dirty joke.

Everyone in the office knows someone is reading their emails (it’s company policy), but that doesn’t stop them. Beth and Jennifer exchange endless emails filled with details about their personal lives. Lincoln knows he should report them, but instead, he finds himself enjoying their stories and, worst of all, falling in love.

This book will transport you back to the 1990s when email was new in the business world, Y2K was a significant fear, and before internet dating was a thing.

Book Summary

Written in 1970, this classic love story is a collection of letters between the author, Helen Hanff, at the time a freelance writer living in New York City, and a used-book dealer in London at 84, Charing Cross Road.

The letters take place over 20 years from 1949-1969 and they include both heart-warming moments and humor. You’ll finish with insight into the evolving world over two decades.

Book Summary

We can’t wait to pick up this novel, which explores the friendship between Ella Fitzgerald, the Queen of Jazz, and iconic movie star Marilyn Monroe. Although Ella’s career was initially limited by her gender and race, her tireless ambition gave the world an opportunity to hear her perfect pitch.

In 1952, glamorous Hollywood star and sex symbol Marilyn Monroe needed a vocal coach. While Ella Fitzgerald was not a singing teacher, Marilyn wanted only the best and pursued Ella’s help. While Ella initially declined, they became fast friends once they met. Both women had a track record of fighting for independence in a world and industry run by men.

In addition to covering Ella and Marilyn’s decade-long friendship, the book highlights their individual struggles to find a healthy relationship with a man while still retaining power over themselves.