8 Books Like The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

At the tender age of 17, Nell Plat is already unhappily married and the mother of two baby girls, stuck in the middle of Kansas at the turn of the 20th century. She dreams of something more and finds solace in her work as a seamstress for the women in town. 

Little does she know that her humble sewing machine will take her far, all the way to Hollywood in the middle of the booming flapper era. Renaming herself Madame Annelle, she changes into the glamorous seamstress of her dreams, but doing so means leaving behind everything from her old life. And one day, the ghosts of her past are sure to knock on her door and demands answers.

Alys is a bored dilettante living in Los Angeles of the 1980s when he runs into a mysterious figure named Nesselrode. He is led into the catacombs of an empty movie house and emerges in a black and white world of 1920s glamor and intrigue. 

This is the L.A. of silent cinema, the birth of Hollywood and the modern celebrity. Alys soon finds his home in the pictures and falls in love with the seductive siren Moira Silver. But as he becomes bewitched by old Hollywood, his old life in the future comes close to fading away forever. He'll have to choose between worlds or be lost.

Normalyn is a perfectly normal young woman living in Texas until she discovers a letter that asserts her true parentage: according to this, her real mother is none other than Marilyn Monroe, the iconic but tragic movie star who inspired generations of fans. 

To uncover the truth, she travels to Los Angeles and finds herself in the middle of an untold Hollywood story. Through the memories of others, Normalyn recreates Marilyn’s secret life, including encounters with the rich, famous, and powerful who changed her life. Somewhere in the midst of this madness, maybe Normalyn will discover her own true self.

In 1940, Vivian Morris is forced to leave Vassar College due to bad grades. Her affluent parents send her to Manhattan to live with her Aunt Peg, who owns a flamboyant but ramshackle theater known as the Lily Playhouse. Vivian finds a host of new friends and inspirations among the ragtag crew of the Lily, but her new peace ends when she makes a personal mistake that results in professional scandal. 

In the modern day, now 90-years-old, Vivian recalls how the events of those years altered the course of her life, giving her purpose, understanding, and love.

Manhattan, 1964. Vivian Schuyler, newly graduated from Bryn Mawr College, has decided to eschew the privilege of her old-money New York family and enter the world of work. The blossoming industry of ad men and publishing calls to her. But when she receives a mysterious package one day, its contents lead her back to her family's past and the dawn of war in Europe in 1914. 

Violet Schuyler Grant endures her marriage to the philandering and decades-older scientist Dr. Walter Grant for the sake of her career as a young American woman working in physics in Berlin. Lionel Richardson, a captain in the British Army and her husband's former student, is immediately drawn to her and wants her to escape her marriage and the city before war falls. What happens next will change the course of history for her entire family.

France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman named Addie LaRue makes a pact to live forever. The catch: she is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. 

Centuries will pass and nobody Addie meets will ever remember a single thing about her. The ennui of living forever soon weighs heavily on her, and she becomes too used to her solitude. But then she meets Henry, a bookseller, and he says the words she never expected to hear again: "I remember you."

Before she was Hedy Lamarr, the glamorous Hollywood movie-star and inventor who changed the world, she was Hedy Kielser, a young Austrian woman hoping to find a better life for herself. 

After starring in a controversial film that would become headline news many years later, she married powerful Austrian arms dealer, allowing her to evade Nazi persecution despite her Jewish heritage. Her marriage, however, is stifling and she wishes to be free of her husband's control. The story of how Hedy escaped her home country to become one of the silver screen's most iconic actresses is far more thrilling than any movie.

Tan Yunxian was born into an elite but troubled family. Her grandparents are raising her to be educated and hard-working, something not expected of women in 15th-century China. Her grandmother is one of only a handful of female doctors in China, and she teaches Yunxian the pillars of Chinese medicine. 

Learning about women's oft-dismissed health issues leads her to form a collaborative friendship with Meiling, a young midwife in training. But when Yunxian is sent into an arranged marriage, her mother-in-law forbids her from seeing Meiling and from helping the women and girls in the household. Yunxian is to act like a proper wife, which means total submission to her husband. Yunxian has other plans.