Rufi Thorpe received her MFA from the University of Virginia in 2009. A native of Corona del Mar, California, she currently lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and son. The Girls from Corona del Mar is her first novel.
The True Confessions of First Lady Freeman (2026) Deesha Philyaw "Being set in the exclusive world of the wealthy, Black mega-church elite would be reason enough to gobble this novel down, but Schar's transformation from disempowered try-hard, chasing after the approval of the other First Ladies, to utterly authentic badass is so well earned and so heartfelt - I laughed, I cried, I got turned on! Philyaw has created a heroine you can't help but root for, and a book you can't help but love."
Last Night Was Killer (2026) Mary Pauline Lowry "I have never had so much fun watching a fictional character try to figure out if she killed someone or not. Wild, outrageous, silly, smart, Tilly is a heroine for the ages and Mary Lowry writes like no one else. A damn delight."
Take Me With You (2026) Steven Rowley "A wild premise and delightfully eccentric characters, but then suddenly - like one of those Magic Eye posters from the 90s - the whole novel resolves into a new level of focus and you are left with . . . beauty. Profundity. Grace. Rowley is a magician."
So Old, So Young (2026) Grant Ginder "Ginder writes with the clarity of a surgeon, but the spiritual generosity of a sage. You will see your own youth caught in all its beauty and awkwardness, scream in recognition and embarrassment, then cry with the relief and grace of being seen. Propulsive and engrossing, So Old, So Young is a delight and a triumph."
What a Time to Be Alive (2025) Jade Chang "A generous satire of the spiritual wellness space that delivers true magic in the character of Lola Treasure Gold, a heroine so dazzling and bold and psychologically healthy that you will wind up rooting for her with your whole heart. I loved it."
Seduction Theory (2025) Emily Adrian "Seduction Theory nails the campus satire with savagery and grace, and it's clear that Adrian is a major talent."
The Road to Tender Hearts (2025) Annie Hartnett "Annie Hartnett has given life to one of my favorite characters I have ever read: PJ Halliday. At sixty-three, in Birkenstocks and a zip-up sweater stitched with polar bears, good with women despite his flatulence, and charmingly dependent on his ex-wife and her new husband, PJ is, like 'The Dude' in The Big Lebowski, one of those iconic characters you just can't help falling in love with and who will live on in your heart long after the book is over."
The Snowbirds (2025) Christina Clancy "Studded with witty banter and the sparkling glamour of Palm Springs, The Snowbirds is great fun, but what Clancy really gives us is a portrait of a marriage with psychological depth and pathos and characters we can't help but fall in love with. Stunning."
The Garden (2024) Clare Beams "Deliciously eerie and brilliantly written, Beams explores motherhood and gestation in a way that feels new and trailblazing, but that will also ring true to the lived experience of every woman who has ever been pregnant. A shimmering, strange, important novel - I couldn't put it down."
A Home for Friendless Women (2024) Kelly E Hill "Hill is deliciously unsentimental and humanist in her rendering of these women and their world, resulting in a historical novel that feels both accurate and strikingly modern. A delight from start to finish."
Goodbye Earl (2023) Leesa Cross-Smith "I can't help devouring Leesa Cross-Smith's prose like it's candy, with turns of phrase so unexpected and delightful, so uniquely her own, that I just want to chew and chew them. Filled with charming characters and beautiful details, Goodbye Earl makes murder as delicious as cherry pie."
My Last Innocent Year (2023) Daisy Alpert Florin "Florin is a magician. The salaciousness, the melodrama, and moral outrage one expects in a campus novel about a teacher/student romance are stunningly absent, and in their place Florin offers you nothing but her intoxicating clear sightedness, the kind of simplicity and weight and wisdom you very rarely see in a debut novel. Her characters feel so real it is almost indecent. Monica Lewinsky, but painted by Vermeer. The recognizable stereotypes of youth and lust so honestly accounted, it is like being offered your own youth captured in glass, not as you remember it, but as it was. Astonishing."
Body Grammar (2022) Jules Ohman "Set in the gritty and fascinating world of high fashion, Body Grammar itself feels bravely unadorned, its face bare and without artifice. Ohman has a gift for articulating subtle states of mind, not just what a character is thinking, but how it feels for the thoughts to be moving through them. She lands in each moment so lightly, like a bird hovering over a branch. The result is a coming of age story that captures the terror of first love and first loss with the subtle delicacy of a watercolor. Remarkable."
The Shore (2022) Katie Runde "Runde's gift is a poetry of things: coffee cups and casseroles rush in to break your heart, expressing the truths about the anguish of love and loss that would melt like cotton candy into cliche if you tried to say them directly. The Shore is about the ugly, hard parts of loving someone, about the vacation town once the vacation is over, the awkwardness of growing up and the un-fun wisdom you learn to hold onto instead of push away. Tender, heartfelt and infinitely readable."
Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance (2022) Alison Espach "Unputdownable, insightful, funny, and emotionally profound. A book that swirls and glitters with strangeness and delight, as much a portrait of grief as a love story, both love and grief hinging on the ways we negotiate with things we cannot control, how we sit in the cockpit of the self, what we dare to share with others and what remains ineffable. Gorgeous."
End of the World House (2022) Adrienne Celt "Reading Adrienne Celt is like being granted access to a secret kingdom, another layer of reality you didn't know existed. Even mundane objects shimmer strangely under the intensity of her gaze. Haunted, romantic, unexpectedly playful, and un-put-down-able, END OF THE WORLD HOUSE will change the way you think about the immortality of art, free will, the future and the past. Adrienne Celt is brilliant and I want to read everything she ever writes."
Palm Beach (2021) Mary Adkins "A look inside the world of the ultra-rich, PALM BEACH offers up moral complexity, page-turning plotting, and deep insight into motherhood and family. Delicious, addictive, whip-smart and full of heart."
Bewilderness (2021) Karen Tucker "Karen Tucker has the chaotic truth-telling energy of a sage and a lack of sentimentality that would give Hunter S. Thompson stomach cramps. This is the novel the opiate epidemic needs."
Followers (2020) Megan Angelo "A frolicking dystopia: smart, terrifying and addictively fun. Orla and Floss have stolen my heart emoji, and I will read anything Megan Angelo writes."
Indecent (2018) Corinne Sullivan "A page turner with characters so fresh and real it's scary, Indecent will take your breath away. Sullivan explores subject matter that could be merely titillating, sex, power, desire, but is so ruthlessly honest about them that in the end she challenges everything we thought we knew."
The Gunners (2018) Rebecca Kauffman "Kauffman's prose is restrained in a way that causes it to actually vibrate in places, and her details are so richly observed they feel like gems, impossible things mined from deep under the earth. Funny, raw, and deeply elegant, The Gunners is ultimately a meditation on friendship, that least examined, most mysterious form of love, perhaps more sacred for its incompleteness, for the ways we can never fool ourselves completely into believing we truly know one another.'"
Everything Here Is Beautiful (2018) Mira T Lee "Charismatic and electrifying. Lee makes vivid the messiness of life and the way we tie ourselves in knots just trying to do the simplest things: love and be loved in return. A knockout."
