By Nava Atlas | On March 11, 2026 | Updated June 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
There have been plenty of roundups of famous first sentences from beloved novels. I even did one here. But famous last lines? Or more accurately, not-so-famous last lines — it’s time to take a look at how eleven women writers chose to tie up their iconic works. Don’t be afraid to look, there are no spoilers here.
The best first lines surely are evocative, and set the stage for what’s to come, like this one from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
And what devoted reader isn’t familiar with the first line of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice — “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On February 11, 2026 | Updated June 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
Rereading favorite books from childhood as an adult is the literary equivalent of a warm bowl of comfort food or a soft blanket. Their nostalgic pull is undeniable, likely because the stories we wish to return to invoke a feeling of safety and predictability — the opposite of what adult life often feels like.
Here are seven such revisits, some focusing on single books, others on entire series. Let’s dive in with several by Literary Ladies Guide contributor Marcie McCauley, who is our resident expert on revisiting beloved children’s literature with an adult perspective.
These are followed by two others, one by Nancy Snyder and another by Jill Fuller. Here’s what’s ahead: Read More→
By Marcie McCauley | On February 4, 2026 | Updated February 7, 2026 | Comments (0)
E.L. Konigsburg summed up her stories as being about the “everyday, corn-flakes, worn-out-sneakers way of life” when she won the Newbery Award for her children’s novel From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler in 1968.
This prize-winning novel was a favorite of mine from the first reading—the first sentence, even — because it begins with Claudia’s failure.
She knows she’s never going to be able to run away in “the old-fashioned way”— in the “heat of anger with a knapsack on her back.” She reflects on her situation and makes a plan: she learns to rise to meet challenges in her own way. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 15, 2026 | Updated September 15, 2026 | Comments (0)
Founded in 2022, Quite Literally Books is a woman-owned indie publisher with a mission of creating new editions of forgotten or neglected classics by American women authors.
Bremond Berry MacDougall and Lisa Endo Cooper, the two women behind Quite Literally Books, are longtime BFFs who have been bonding over their love of reading since they were twelve.
Learn more about Quite Literally Books on their website and Substack. Read More→
By Juliet Allarton | On October 25, 2025 | Updated October 30, 2025 | Comments (0)
Despite having been written more than 200 years ago (published in 1818, to be exact), Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has stood the test of time. There have been around a thousand adaptations of the story to date — with yet another, the 2025 film Frankenstein from Guillermo del Toro the most recent to have joined their ranks.
In her book, with Frankenstein’s creature as her canvas, Mary Shelley (1797 – 1851) formed a distinct picture of society. Our “good” side manifests in the creature’s unexpected intelligence and elegant language, yet the “bad” layers of depression and violence begin to show as the story unfolds. Read More→
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