Today is International Women’s Day and I was tagged by Joanna from @jojosovertherainbowblog to show which six literary women I’d invite to my dinner party.

I feel my table would be filled with a lot of great discussions. The six women I have picked all have had a profound effect on my life in some way.
I will showcase one of their books below. I highly recommend you check them out.

*Special Collector’s Edition with printed design on the cover board, exclusive to the first print run while stocks last*
‘Brilliant! The Institution is a harrowing, nonstop story that will grab you from the first page . You’ll consume it in one sitting.’ – Bestselling sensation JEFFERY DEAVER
They’re locked up for your safety.
Now, you’re locked in with them.
Dr Connie Woolwine has five days to catch a killer.
On a locked ward in the world’s highest-security prison hospital, a scream shatters the night. The next morning, a nurse’s body is found and her daughter has been taken. A ransom must be paid, and the clock is ticking.
Forensic profiler Dr Connie Woolwine is renowned for her ability to get inside the mind of a murderer. Now, she must go deep undercover among the most deranged and dangerous men on earth and use her unique skills to find the girl – before it’s too late.
But as the walls close in around her, can Connie get the killer before The Institution gets her?
A claustrophobic, haunting crime thriller that will keep you up at night, perfect for those who couldn’t put down The Sanatorium and Amy McCulloch’s Breathless.
Lesley Kelly
The Health of Strangers

The Virus is spreading. Monthly health checks are mandatory.
Enter the Health Enforcement Team, an uneasy mix of police and health service staff. Stuck with colleagues they don’t like, politicians they don’t trust and civil servants undermining them, Mona and Bernard are fighting more than one losing battle.
Gemma Jackson
Through Streets Broad and Narrow

On New Year’s Day 1925 Ivy Rose Murphy awakes to find her world changed forever. Her irresponsible Da is dead. She is grief-stricken and alone – but for the first time in her life free to please herself.
After her mother deserted the family, Ivy became the sole provider for her da and three brothers. Pushing a pram around the well-to-do areas of Dublin every day, she begged for the discards of the wealthy which she then turned into items she could sell around Dublin’s markets.
As she visits the morgue to pay her respects to her Da, a chance meeting introduces Ivy to a new world of money and privilege, her mother’s world. Ivy is suddenly a woman on a mission to improve herself and her lot in life.
Jem Ryan is the owner of a livery near Ivy’s tenement. When an accident occurs in one of his carriages, leaving a young girl homeless, it is Ivy he turns to. With Jem and the people she meets in her travels around Dublin, Ivy begins to break out of the poverty-ridden world that is all she has ever known.
Through Streets Broad and Narrow is a story of strength and determination in the unrelenting world that was Dublin tenement life.
Lisa Jewell
The Family Upstairs

In a large house in London’s fashionable Chelsea, a baby is awake in her cot. Well-fed and cared for, she is happily waiting for someone to pick her up.
In the kitchen lie three decomposing corpses. Close to them is a hastily scrawled note.
They’ve been dead for several days.
Who has been looking after the baby?
And where did they go?
Two entangled families.
A house with the darkest of secrets.
A compulsive thriller from Lisa Jewell.

A bone-chilling family history is unearthed in a heart-stopping thriller by New York Times bestselling author Anne Frasier.
Convicted serial killer Benjamin Fisher has finally offered to lead San Bernardino detective Daniel Ellis to the isolated graves of his victims. One catch: he’ll only do it if FBI profiler Reni Fisher, his estranged daughter, accompanies them. As hard as it is to exhume her traumatic childhood, Reni can’t say no. She still feels complicit in her father’s crimes.
Perfect to play a lost little girl, Reni was the bait to lure unsuspecting women to their deaths. It’s time for closure. For her. For the families. And for Daniel. He shares Reni’s obsession with the past. Ever since he was a boy, he’s been convinced that his mother was one of Fisher’s victims.
Thirty years of bad memories are flooding back. A master manipulator has gained their trust. For Reni and Daniel, this isn’t the end of a nightmare. It’s only the beginning.

After a tragic accident which left her deeply scarred, Sage Singer retreated into herself, allowing her guilt to govern her life. When she befriends kindly retired teacher Josef, it seems that life has finally offered her a chance of healing.
But the gentle man Sage thinks she knows is in fact hiding a terrible secret. Josef was an SS officer during the Holocaust and now he wishes to die – and he wants Sage to help him.
As Josef begins to reveal his past to her, Sage is horrified.
Does this past give her the right to kill him? A compelling tale about the line between justice and mercy from the internationally bestselling author Jodi Picoult.

I am very lucky to have met four of these wonderful women at my table.
Be sure to make your own dinner plans with your six literary women and share them on social media today. Celebrating both books and women in all their glory.
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