Book picks similar to
Final Girl by Lauren Milici


poetry
chapbooks
final-girls
final-girl

Nightbitch


Rachel Yoder - 2021
    She is lonely and exhausted. She had imagined - what was it she had imagined? Her husband, always travelling for his work, calls her from faraway hotel rooms. One more toddler bedtime, and she fears she might lose her mind.Instead, quite suddenly, she starts gaining things, surprising things that happen one night when her child will not sleep. Sharper canines. Strange new patches of hair. New appetites, new instincts. And from deep within herself, a new voice...With its clear eyes on contemporary womanhood and sharp take on structures of power, Nightbitch is an outrageously original, joyfully subversive read that will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. Addictive enough to be devoured in one sitting, this is an unforgettable novel from a blazing new talent.

The Book of the Most Precious Substance


Sara Gran - 2022
    A down-on-her-luck book dealer hoping for the sale of a lifetime. And a twist so shocking, no one will come out unscathed.After a tragedy too painful to bear, former novelist Lily Albrecht has resigned herself to a dull, sexless life as a rare book dealer. Until she gets a lead on a book that just might turn everything around. The Book of the Most Precious Substance is a 17th century manual on sex magic, rumored to be the most powerful occult book ever written—if it really exists at all. And some of the wealthiest people in the world are willing to pay Lily a fortune to find it—if she can. Her search for the book takes her from New York to New Orleans to Munich to Paris, searching the dark corners of power where the world’s wealthiest people use black magic to fulfill their desires. Will Lily fulfill her own desires, and join them? Or will she lose it all searching for a ghost? The Book of the Most Precious Substance is an addictive erotic thriller about the lengths we’ll go to get what we need—and what we want.

Animals Eat Each Other


Elle Nash - 2017
    The liaison is caged by strict rules and rigid emotional distance. Nonetheless, it’s all too easy to surrender to an attraction so powerful she finds herself erased, abandoning even her own name in favor of a new one: Lilith.As Lilith grows closer to Matt, she begins to recognize the dark undertow of obsession and jealousy that her presence has created between Matt and Frances, and finds herself balancing on a knife’s edge between pain and pleasure, the promise of the future and the crushing isolation of the present. With stripped-down prose and unflinching clarity, Nash examines madness in the wreckage of love, and the loss of self that accompanies it. Nash's work has been featured in Cosmopolitan, Elle, Marie Claire and others.

She Must Be Mad


Charly Cox - 2018
    Wayward nights out that don’t go as planned; the righteous anger at those men with no talent or skill or smarts who occupy the most powerful positions in the world; the strange banality of madness and, of course, the hurt and indecision of unrequited love.For every woman surviving and thriving in today’s world, for every girl who feels too much; this is a call for communion, and you are not alone.

Self-Help


Lorrie Moore - 1985
    Filled with the sharp humor, emotional acuity, and joyful language Moore has become famous for, these nine glittering tales marked the introduction of an extravagantly gifted writer.

Ghost in His Eyes


Carrie Aarons - 2017
     Carson Cole was my first love. The boy I'd shared my whole self with. He was the man who'd taken the other part of my soul and drowned it in the sea we'd grown up in. And now he's back. Ten years later, and the demons of our past are still haunting every breath trapped between us. She was as wild as the horses who owned the beach highways we drove down. Blake Sayer was the beautiful daredevil who had me wrapped around her finger from the time we were seven. Until a horrible accident stole every piece of joy from her life. Ten years later, she's a shell of the girl she once was, and it's all my fault. The whispers of our history shackle her to the island I left behind. Just like lost years and unspoken words, love had slipped from our fingers like grains of sand. We’d barely made it out alive last time, was it even possible to reconstruct the shattered pieces of us?

Delia's Crossing


V.C. Andrews - 2008
    At fifteen, she leaves the rural Mexican village where she grew up and embarks on a new life in America. Coming to her wealthy aunt Isabella's huge estate in Palm Springs, California, should be a dream come true for a simple country girl like Delia -- so why does it feel like a nightmare?A prisoner of destiny...Un preso del destinoHer aunt refuses to acknowledge Delia's heritage, relegating her to servants' quarters with a licentious language tutor intent on exploiting a beautiful young foreigner. Her cousin Edward is kind, but cousin Sophia is cruel, manipulative, and resentful of Delia's smoky Latina looks. And just when Delia tries to embrace the life of a real American girl, a heartbreaking chain of events sends her spiraling back to a Mexico she hardly recognizes.... Will Delia find a place to call home?

Aphrodite Made Me Do It


Trista Mateer - 2019
    In this empowering retelling, she uses the mythology of the goddess to weave a common thread through the past and present. By the end of this book, Aphrodite make you believe in the possibility of your own healing.

Neighborhood Girls


Jessie Ann Foley - 2017
    Her father gets a years-long jail sentence, her family falls on hard times, and the whispers around town are impossible to ignore. If that wasn’t bad enough, she gets jumped walking home from a party one night. Wendy quickly realizes that in order to survive her father’s reputation, she’ll have to make one for herself. Then Wendy meets Kenzie Quintana—a cigarette-smoking, Catholic-school-uniform-skirt-hiking alpha—and she knows that she’s met her savior. Kenzie can provide Wendy with the kind of armor a girl needs when she’s trying to outrun her father’s past. Add two more mean girls to the mix—Sapphire and Emily—and Wendy has found herself in Academy of the Sacred Heart’s most feared and revered clique. Makeover complete. But complete is far from what Wendy feels. Instead, she faces the highs and lows of a vapid, toxic friendship, the exhaustion that comes with keeping up appearances, and the only loss that could hurt more than losing herself.

To The Women: words to live by


Donna Ashworth - 2020
    

Forgive Me My Salt


Brenna Twohy - 2016
    Widely known for her performance poetry, which has been viewed over 3 million times on YouTube, author Brenna Twohy's debut collection reads like a letter to all that haunts her-- letting them know that despite her wounds, she's still alive.

Dead Poets Society


N.H. Kleinbaum - 1988
    As Keating turns the boys on to the great words of Byron, Shelley, and Keats, they discover not only the beauty of language, but the importance of making each moment count. But the Dead Poets pledges soon realize that their newfound freedom can have tragic consequences. Can the club and the individuality it inspires survive the pressure from authorities determined to destroy their dreams?

Heavenly Bodies


Imani Erriu - 2022
    A prophecy that promises she will fall for a Star, and it will kill them both.But when one descends to wreak havoc on Elara's Kingdom, she is forced to flee into the arms of her enemy in the neighbouring country.As she learns more about her own magic, and the depth of the Stars' deceit, she also finds herself learning more about the country she is forced to take refuge in, and the enemy prince forced to train her into a weapon.Something dark brews within her, a power made of night and shadows that begs to be broken free.

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Writings


Charlotte Perkins Gilman - 1989
    Probably best known as the author of "The Yellow Wallpaper," in which a woman is driven mad by chauvinist psychiatry, Gilman wrote numerous other short stories and novels reflecting her radical socialist and feminist view of turn-of-the-century America. Collected here by the noted Gilman scholar Ann J. Lane are eighteen stories and fragments, including a selection from Herland, Gilman's novel of a feminist utopia. The resulting anthology provides a provocative blueprint to Gilman's intellectual and creative production.Content:The yellow wallpaperIf I were a manTurnedThe cottagetteAn honest womanMaking a changeMr. Peebles' heartThe widow's mightSelections from HerlandSelections from Women and economics : a study of the economic relation between men and womenSelections from The man-made world : our androcentric culture.

Cyanide


Ella Fields - 2017
    Conceited. Shallow. Three simple words to describe me. I had everything a girl could ask for, yet nothing I truly needed. I'd made peace with who I was and the expectations set upon me long ago. Only to have that peace shattered when a nameless hero rode into my world. I wasn't allowed to have him. Too bad I never cared much for the word no. Because I'd soon learn the hard way that too much self-indulgence could result in incurable consequences.