Emily Layden is a graduate of Stanford University and has taught at several girls' schools in the United States. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Billfold, and Runner's World. All Girls is her first novel.
Genres: General Fiction
Emily Layden recommends
High Season (2025)
Katie Bishop
"True crime meets the Cote d'Azur in this layered, insightful novel that transcends its absorbing premise. Mystery and secrets abound at the Pink House, but it's Katie Bishop's vividly drawn characters and their web of entanglements that will keep you turning pages. High Season handles its themes deftly-about trauma and memory, class and girlhood, family and forgiveness-while also offering a nuanced critique of true crime voyeurism."
The Cover Girl (2025)
Amy Rossi
"What happens when you learn to be who other people want you to be long before you learn who you are? Birdie is a muse and a model--by definition, a gauzy projection of someone else's desires. But The Cover Girl is her reckoning, an attempt to reclaim her story and her identity as her own. For fans of Pretty Baby, this is a rock'n'roll novel that resists a nostalgic lens, an industry takedown that never loses sight of fashion's artistry, and a story about one woman's journey to redemption. Birdie's world might be a rarified one, but her late-in-life liberation is deeply relatable. Immersive, evocative, and profoundly empathetic."
The House Party (2022)
Rita Cameron
"Does a place shape a person, or is a place shaped by its people? That's the conundrum at the core of Rita Cameron's smart, attentive novel. The House Party tugs on all the many interwoven threads of American suburbia - class and consequence, privilege and legacy, hope and the pursuit of happiness - without ever sacrificing read-in-one-sitting propulsion. Cameron has crafted an immersive, kaleidoscopic portrait of a community on the brink."
More recommendations
Visitors also looked at these authors
