Books like Blueprints for building better girls by Elissa Schappell

A novel about Emma Woodhouse, a young woman's struggles with matchmaking, misplaced pride, and the dangers of meddling in others' lives in 18th-century England.

A comic adventure of Joseph Andrews, a loyal footman who resists Lady Booby’s advances, escapes London with his love Fanny Goodwill, faces thieves, and ultimately marries after comedic reversals.

20s Young Woman’s Adventures in Old Edinburgh

Evelina is a comic novel of manners that follows a young London debutante as she navigates the social world of 18th‑century England, learning wit, confidence, and the subtleties of love.

Two girls from India form an unbreakable bond that takes them from a broken village to the streets of Seattle, as they confront poverty, family expectations, and violence while chasing each other across continents.

Emma Woodhouse returns to Highbury for a post‑university summer, living with her health‑conscious father while preparing her interior‑design business. She offers advice to the village’s new faces—Harriet Smith, Frank Churchill, and Jane Fairfax—witty and charmingly modern yet steeped in classic manners.

A collection of ten short stories that illuminate the daily struggles and powerful aspirations of ordinary Haitians under Duvalier’s regime.

Four women reunite for a beach retreat on a South Carolina island, where a long‑hidden loss forces them to confront past grief, rekindle their friendship, and discover unexpected truths.

A love story between a middle-aged man and a young woman from a partisans' family in London, set against the backdrop of the 1970s, exploring the seductive power of storytelling.

A dark mystery unfolds in a London garden square where a young sister's disappearance sparks suspicion and fear among the neighbors.

In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.