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Ann Napolitano

Ann Napolitano is the author of the novels A Good Hard Look and Within Arms Reach. She received an MFA from New York University; she teaches fiction writing for New York Universitys School of Continuing and Professional Studies and for Gotham Writers Workshop. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Genres: Literary Fiction, Historical

Novels

   Within Arm's Reach (2004)
   A Good Hard Look (2011)
   Dear Edward (2020)
   Hello Beautiful (2023)

Ann Napolitano recommends

Sophie, Standing There (2026)
Meg Mason
"The lucky reader of Sophie, Standing There peers at the world through Sophie's eyes, and wonders how her life shaped this view. When the answers are revealed - about her marriage, her childhood, the gaps in her understanding - we experience a kind of wholeness with her. Or at least the possibility of wholeness. I loved Sophie, and I love Meg Mason's brain and the strange, wonderful, funny stories she gives us."

Waiting on a Friend (2026)
Natalie Adler
"A fun, sexy, heartbreaking, inventive whirl of a novel."

Like Family (2025)
Erin O White
"Once I entered the world of Like Family, I didn't want to leave. I loved these three couples and their tangles of children. The way these characters renegotiate what it means to love - and how to not just name their connections to one another, but to keep those names soft and pliable, expansive with compassion - makes this novel feel contemporary in the best way: it is an answer to and an answering of the questions of this moment."

Sister Creatures (2025)
Laura Venita Green
"A creative whirlwind that takes leaps with gusto to investigate whether we can carry the past with grace, or must sink under its weight."

The Names (2025)
Florence Knapp
"The Names is a truly gorgeous, heart-opening novel. I couldn't put it down, and I'm grateful to have Cora and her children living inside my heart now. What a wonderful book!"

The Usual Desire to Kill (2025)
Camilla Barnes
"I love nothing more than reading about eccentric families, and the family in The Usual Desire to Kill is just that. Miranda and her sister work to uncover the true story of their parents' marriage, only to have their brilliant, quirky mother and father deflect them at every turn. Barnes has written a witty, moving novel about characters who, even when they seem incapable of speaking honestly, are worth listening to nonetheless."

The Float Test (2025)
Lynn Steger Strong
"What I loved most about The Float Test is the sense of place, and how the sticky, dense heat of Florida, the relentless sun, the flat roads ending at the ocean, is woven into the Kenner family's DNA. The adult children of the family - all at crisis points in their own lives - gather on the hot ground of their childhood following their mother's death, where they try to untangle decades of betrayals and sorrow, and reclaim their sense of home."

This Is a Love Story (2025)
Jessica Soffer
"Written with delicate and beautiful brush strokes, this is a love story of a long marriage, a love story of Central Park, a story of how hard life can be, and how the hard leaves its mark, but the love does too. Every once in a while I read a novel and think, What a gift. This is one of those books."

Mutual Interest (2025)
Olivia Wolfgang-Smith
"Olivia Wolfgang-Smith writes with gusto, confidence, and humor, and it's a magical combination."

Isola (2025)
Allegra Goodman
"What a gift this novel is: vast, lush, feminist, and brilliantly crafted. Allegra Goodman is one of our finest writers."

A Reason to See You Again (2024)
Jami Attenberg
"I loved leaping through time with the four Cohen women - Frieda, Nancy, Shelly, and Jess. Each woman is intelligent and self-sabotaging - the way we all can be - and they love each other fiercely, often from a careful distance. Attenberg's writing is sharp and incisive - it's a pleasure to watch the patterns she created unfold over forty years of these women's lives."

The World After Alice (2024)
Lauren Aliza Green
"The World After Alice is a lovely debut novel that glimmers with fine writing and notes of human insight. There's a quiet beauty to Lauren Aliza Green's work, and I am now a fan."

The Cliffs (2024)
J Courtney Sullivan
"A stunning achievement, and J. Courtney Sullivan's best book yet. Sullivan weaves a narrative that's fascinating and thought-provoking. I literally could not put this book down."

Swift River (2024)
Essie Chambers
"A powerful novel about how our family history shapes us; it is only when Diamond learns about the women that came before her - their strengths and losses mirroring her own - that she can finally imagine a better future for herself. Swift River broke my heart, and then offered me hope."

The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club (2024)
Helen Simonson
"The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club is an absolute joy of a book. Warm and romantic, it also has so much to say about the lives of women in the years following World War I. This is historical fiction of the highest order - pleasurable and smart."

Days of Wonder (2024)
Caroline Leavitt
"Caroline Leavitt has crafted a novel rich in empathy and a story that will resonate with every reader. When Ella and Jude's young love goes awry, they struggle for a maturity that allows them to see that their past mistakes are in fact doors to a new, more beautiful life."

The Great Divide (2024)
Cristina Henríquez
"A gorgeous, sweeping epic that draws together a truly unforgettable cast of characters. I loved it."

Redwood Court (2024)
DeLana R A Dameron
"A beautiful exploration of a family putting down roots despite the world being against them, and choosing to love one another - the broken parts and the whole - with every breath in their lungs and every beat of their enormous, powerful hearts . . . I found this family's story deeply moving."

Happiness Falls (2023)
Angie Kim
"I fell in love with the fascinating, brilliant family at the center of this riveting book."

Talking at Night (2023)
Claire Daverley
"Talking at Night is a love story, certainly, but it's much more than that. I was rapt. I highly recommend this wonderful novel."

Swan Light (2023)
Phoebe Rowe
"Phoebe Rowe expertly interlaces the fascinating world of competitive shipwreck searching with a wonderful mystery about a vanished lighthouse. Two protagonists and two timelines can be tricky to pull off, but Rowe does so with aplomb in this excellent debut - I adored both the lighthouse keeper Silvestre Swan and the intrepid diver Mari Adams. I highly recommend this delightful novel."

The Half Moon (2023)
Mary Beth Keane
"Mary Beth Keane is one of our finest writers on the interior complexities of marriage and family. She shines a flashlight on the intricate clockwork of love and longing that runs inside us; and because of the thoughtfulness of that examination, beauty and possibility are visible. I ran my finger over sentences while reading, thinking: Yes, exactly. This kind of fiction recognizes us, and allows us to look around our own lives with respect and kindness, and is therefore a great gift."

Life and Other Love Songs (2023)
Anissa Gray
"Life and Other Love Songs builds beautifully - we care about these characters while coming to understand that the ground beneath their feet is constructed of secrets. Anissa Gray's novel feels musical in structure - the octaves rise when the music calls for it; truths are revealed by the invisible beats of this gorgeous, rich story."

The Great Reclamation (2023)
Rachel Heng
"The Great Reclamation is a beautifully written novel. I loved so much in this book: the richly imagined setting, the varied languages and motivations at play in this burgeoning country, the complicated love story between Lee Ah Boon and Siok Mei, and the heartbreaking way history can tear apart a family. I'm grateful to Rachel Heng for writing this gorgeous novel."

Beyond That, the Sea (2023)
Laura Spence-Ash
"Beyond That, the Sea is a lovely, addictive novel. I was absorbed by the interesting premise--an eleven year old girl arrives to live, temporarily, with a new family--and by the myriad love stories that change and deepen over the decades the novel covers. Laura Spence-Ash has written a gorgeous novel filled with wonderful characters."

Winterland (2022)
Rae Meadows
"Winterland gripped me from the first page. I loved this story of strong women fighting to keep their humanity in the face of terrible forces: Siberian winters, demanding gymnastics coaches, lost mothers and Gulag camps. Rae Meadows is a gifted writer, and I was thrilled to find myself in a landscape I knew nothing about, rooting for a young gymnast named Anya."

It All Comes Down to This (2022)
Therese Anne Fowler
"It All Comes Down to This answered a need I didn't even know I had-to read a big-hearted novel about middle-aged women reckoning with their own heavy secrets, and each other. This novel is entertaining, in the best sense of the word, and a true page-turner."

Walk the Vanished Earth (2022)
Erin Swan
"Erin Swan's debut novel enthralled me from the first page. Walk the Vanished Earth is weird, wonderful and beautifully written; I never knew what would happen next, but was deeply satisfied by each turn of the story. A floating city! Seven generations of a single family line! Life on Mars! I highly recommend this novel."

Marrying the Ketchups (2022)
Jennifer Close
"This novel is laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply resonant to our times. I was so happy to be in the Sullivan family's Chicago bar, caught in the swirl of three generations of grudges, love affairs and fraught personal decisions. Jennifer Close has written a smart, hilarious book that I was delighted to escape into."

The Good Left Undone (2022)
Adriana Trigiani
"A wildly entertaining story about the life of the remarkable Italian nurse Domenica Cabrelli and her daughter Matelda. The novel is a wonderful love story, rife with sea captains and childhood sweethearts and a family that never gives up on one another. I adored it."

This Shining Life (2021)
Harriet Kline
"Harriet Kline’s This Shining Life captivated me because it’s peopled with lovely and lovable characters who are all trying to solve the problem of grief. Ollie, at eleven years old, sees this equation in the starkest terms, but his mother, Ruth, Aunt Nessa, and grandparents are all struggling, too, following the death of Ollie’s dad, Rich. This beautiful book shows us that grief is not a problem to solve but an expression of love, as we watch a family come together in the most heartwarming way."

Morningside Heights (2021)
Joshua Henkin
"Morningside Heights is a lovely novel, and a moving meditation on how the act of loving a specific person changes us. When Pru Steiner’s marriage to Spence Robin is tragically cut short, she has to take stock of who she has become in the intervening years. Henkin has written a beautifully nuanced story that I was unable to put down."

What Comes After (2021)
JoAnne Tompkins
"JoAnne Tompkins writes about the people in this small town with wisdom and grace."

Gold Diggers (2021)
Sanjena Sathian
"Gold Diggers is so many things—truly funny, insightful, smart, and filled with wonderful characters. I loved reading this novel, and loved watching Neil Narayan grow up and grapple with the America his immigrant parents believed in. Neil's journey to figuring out what he believes, which includes a multi-layered exploration into the properties of gold, and his strange and wonderful friendship with his next door neighbor, Anita, make this story unmissable."

In the Quick (2021)
Kate Hope Day
"I read In the Quick with wonder at the deeply imaginative world Kate Hope Day created. Feminist and thrilling, this novel centers around a precocious, brilliant character named June. I happily followed June into deep space, but I would have followed her anywhere. What a wonderful story. I highly recommend this novel."

Miss Benson's Beetle (2020)
Rachel Joyce
"I fell in love with the unlikely friendship between two wildly different women—their devotion to each other as they trek up and down mountains in someplace called New Caledonia is a hysterical delight. This novel made me realize how hungry I am for stories about women loving each other into being their best selves."

The Book of V. (2020)
Anna Solomon
"The Book of V. is brainy and sexy and roots us so completely in these three women’s bodies and lives, that I couldn’t put it down. The writing is so brilliant some passages took my breath away, and when I thought I knew where the novel was headed, I was wrong. This novel is a gift, and I highly recommend you read it."

If I Had Your Face (2020)
Frances Cha
"It’s difficult to believe that this is Frances Cha’s first novel—she’s a masterful storyteller. I was riveted reading about a world I knew nothing about, and from the first page, it was clear Cha was the best possible guide."

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