May is Mental Health Awareness month. To promote a supportive community and reduce stigma, we are featuring women’s fiction that depicts mental health struggles.
Days Made of Glass by Laura Drake
(Smashwords Edition, 2016)
Shared blood defines a family, but spilled blood can, too.
Harlie Cooper raised her sister, Angel, even before their mother died. Life isn’t easy, but worse, there’s something wrong with Angel. The doctor orders institutionalization in a state facility. When a rep from the Pro Bull Riding Circuit suggests Harlie train as a bullfighter, rescuing downed cowboys from their rampaging charges, Harlie must learn to trust her partner and herself and learn to let go of what’s not hers to save.
The Weird Girl by Carla Damron
(Stillwater River Publications, 2025)
Social worker Georgia Thayer has spent her career fighting for the vulnerable, but nothing could prepare her for being a foster mom to Tessa, a teenager haunted by her traumatic past. Determined to give her a normal life, Georgia’s hopes are crushed when a neighborhood party spirals into disaster, leaving one girl fighting for her life while another vanishes in the dead of night.
An ongoing battle with the recurring voices in her head complicates Georgia’s search for the missing girl. She uncovers a dangerous fentanyl trade that snakes from hospital emergency rooms to high school hallways to the darkest corners of her city, pitting her against a charismatic candidate for attorney and a powerful drug kingpin. With her chosen family threatened, her faith in herself shaken, and an unexpected ally emerging from the shadows, Georgia’s efforts to save one girl put her own in danger.
Lucky Break by Jaclyn Westlake
(Avon, 2025)
Eliza has always had a plan…until her meticulously plotted life implodes and her engagement falls apart, leaving her second-guessing everything she thought she wanted. When she’s offered the chance to start over in Juneberry Lake, a charming Midwestern lake town, she shocks everyone — including herself — and says yes.
What she finds there is more than she bargained for: delightful neighbors (with secrets!), an unexpected romance, and the slow, hard-won realization that her recent string of bad luck was never really her fault. With the support of friends and family, new and old (plus a great therapist), Eliza is finally ready to ditch the blueprint and build a future that’s entirely her own.
A Fine Layer of Dust by Barbara Conrey
(Red Adept, 2025)
Attorney Jake Trenton’s perfectly ordered life unravels when he loses a promotion and his wife announces she wants to become a surrogate. While he spends even more time at the office to prove his worth, he worries about the effects on their family if Sophia carries a baby for a stranger.
Once Sophia explains how important it is to her to bear a child for someone who can’t, Jake reluctantly agrees. However, when the embryo transfer is successful, Jake’s carefully constructed world crumbles beneath the memory of his brother’s death by suicide, which occurred years ago in the same month the baby is due.
With nightmares plaguing his sleep and rage consuming his days, Jake makes a devastating choice that will forever alter the lives of two families. Suddenly, he is the kind of man he never thought he would be. Jake must confront the darkest parts of himself and question everything he thought he knew about love, loss and what it truly means to heal.
Games of Chance by Raquel Drosos
(Raquel Drosos Publications, 2022)
In the aftermath of a tragedy, Alex, Seb, and Emilia are taken in and raised as siblings in an Italian-American family in New Jersey. Alex is smart, charismatic and easily carried away when it comes to partying and pretty girls; Seb is fearful, pensive, and used to living in Alex’s shadow; and Emilia, the only girl, is a competitive runner and a perfectionist. They are all best friends. As the three of them grow from childhood to adulthood, they have romantic relationships — some fulfilling, some toxic — start careers, and take risks. Their choices lead them everywhere from dive bars in Boston to medical school in New York, from museums in Italy to the depths of mental illness. Their past mistakes put a strain on their family — and one of them goes too far astray. Games of Chance is a novel about what family means and what keeps certain families together while others fall apart.
Unconventionally, Elle by Jourdana Webber
(Everwild Publishing, 2025)
Elle Watson had it all — or so she thought. So why is she at the edge of her New Orleans balcony, ready to jump?
Blindsided by a betrayal at work and utterly burned out, Elle says goodbye to the life she thought she wanted and tries to reclaim her happiness. She trades the corporate grind for a fresh start in Boston to pursue her long-abandoned dream of becoming a writer.
As her savings dwindle and deadlines approach, the last thing Elle expects is to fall for Boston’s most eligible bachelor, the magnetic Barrett Henry. With his piercing blue eyes and unapologetic dreamer’s charm, he’s both a distraction she can’t afford — or ignore. But then there’s the effortlessly suave Jude Ashford. Once collateral damage in her battle between ambition and love, he’s the man who knows her better than anyone and the person her heart can’t quite let go.
Caught in a whirlwind of emotions as her past and present collide, Elle must confront old wounds in therapy, consider new possibilities, and ponder the hardest question of all: What — and who — is she willing to fight for?
Together on Our Own by Eliana Megerman
(EM Lit Press, 2025)
Alex Galen, a 31-year-old emergency medicine resident, is unraveling after a patient’s unexpected death lands her on probation. Isolated and anxious, she begins confiding in the hospital’s new AI system and even gives it a name. But it is not real, and everything she shares is recorded. As Alex and a real colleague investigate another suspicious hospital death, Alex must confront what it means to truly connect, and whether she’s been trusting the wrong version of intimacy all along.
Written by a practicing emergency room doctor, Together on Our Own evokes the gritty intensity of “The Pitt” in a quietly suspenseful story about burnout, vulnerability, and the subtle ways technology can both numb us to intimacy and expose our deepest thoughts.
Plain Sight by M. E. Delaney
(2023)
Dr. Simon Brust, an uptight professor and rising star in immunology research at Yale, has blind spots when it comes to relationships. He suffers a fall and, while concussed, meets Alex Argyle. She’s a vivacious free spirit who dotes on him as he heals from his injuries. They discover uncanny compatibility and seem like a perfect match.
But Simon is so busy helping his mother and researching how cancer hides from the immune system that he ignores warning signs. The red flags escalate into crippling panic attacks that are about to destroy his chance at tenure and his ability to continue his life’s work. Under pressure from all sides, will he meet the arduous standards for tenure and continue his life’s work? And will he finally see the truth?
