Nightclubs, bad romance and self discovery: Nila is a 19-year-old student, the daughter of Afghan refugees and a certified party girl who can’t quite escape her own history. Set in Berlin, Good Girl beautifully charts Nila’s life in the city and her relationship with an American writer, Marlowe Woods, whom she meets along the way.

Shop Good Girl by Aria Aber (Bloomsbury) at Bookshop.org, £16.14

A semi-famous artist announces her plan to drive cross-country from LA to New York. Thirty minutes after leaving her husband and child at home, she spontaneously exits the freeway, beds down in a nondescript motel and immerses herself in a temporary reinvention that turns out to be the start of an entirely different journey. All Fours tells the story of one woman’s quest for a new kind of freedom and transcends expectations while excavating our beliefs about life lived as a woman.

Shop All Fours by Miranda July (Canongate) at Bookshop.org, £19

The Persians follows five women from three generations of a once important and legendary Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down in the US. As the synopsis reads: “Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.” The characterisation in this novel and the writer’s ability to separate and distinguish between so many voices but immerse the reader into their stories is brilliant.

Shop The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji (Harper Collins) at Bookshop.org, £16.14

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in a murder investigation, defending a man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea.

Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories.

Shop Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout (Penguin) at Bookshop.org, £16.14

It’s been 15 years since the second world war, and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel lives her life by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep, as a guest – there to stay for the season. In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire, leading to a discovery that unravels all she has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva nor the house are what they seem. 

Shop The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (Penguin) at Bookshop.org, £16.14

Sharp and full of wisdom, Fundamentally centres on Nadia (heartbroken, working for the UN in Iraq) and Sara (a 15-year-old girl from east London who joined ISIS) who bond over their shared lives and humour. Nadia is struck by how similar they are: both feisty and opinionated, from a Muslim background, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines. A powerful friendship forms between the two women, until a secret confession from Sara threatens everything Nadia has been working for.

Shop Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis (Orion) at Bookshop.org, £16.14