18 Of Our Favourite Books Featuring Journalists

Whether you are seeking a lighthearted read, looking for some inspiration to get writing (or reading) again, or want to bookmark for your TBR, we’ve got you covered.

We’ve curated a reading list of books involving journalists or journalism, which we will regularly update. With a variety of genres, we hope there’s something here for everyone — perfect for your late summer holidays, or inspiration heading back to the September work and university crunch!

Ghosts (2020) by Dolly Alderton

Journalist, author, and podcaster Dolly Alderton — who studied a journalism MA at City, University of London — has authored several non-fiction books, and her best-selling memoir Everything I Know About Love was adapted and dramatised for screen in 2022.

Dolly made her fiction debut in 2020 with the novel Ghosts, which follows protagonist Nina Dean, a 30-something food journalist and cookbook author navigating the mayhem of modern dating.

As the title suggests, the book explores the emotional turmoil of ghosting — a modern dating phenomenon we could all do without, the gamification of love (relevant), and the creeping self-comparison of adulthood.

Although it’s a romantic comedy at its heart, Ghosts also gives substantial airtime to Nina’s career as a food journalist, the not-so-glamorous side of her work, and how her life impacts her writing — and vice versa.

Cat Lady (2022) by Dawn O’Porter

Without giving too many spoilers, the journalism link is not evident until later in the story with this one. But we’ve popped it in here because it’s a good example of the ethics and ambiguities often involved with personal writing and lived experience.

Written by journalist Dawn O’Porter, Cat Lady follows Mia (and Pigeon the cat) as the life she has built around her, and the life she thought she was comfortable living, starts to shift. Somehow, she ends up at a pet bereavement group despite the fact she has not lost Pigeon.

Nonetheless, it becomes a lifeline for Mia as things fall apart around her. However, unbeknownst to her and the rest of the group, one of the members is actually a journalist pretending to be a bereaved pet owner to write a feature for a national paper. The result is a highly exploitative piece of writing, passed off as a funny, lighthearted piece.

And that is all you are getting for now. We have already given too much away.

Single Bald Female (2023) by Laura Price

Written by Laura Price, author, food journalist, and host of the Life in Food podcast, Single Bald Female follows protagonist Jessica Jackson, who, at 30 years old, embodies everything she thought she would be: an exciting new writing job at a glossy, a flat with her boyfriend (and cat), and a close group of girlfriends — but all that quickly spirals following a shock breast cancer diagnosis early on in the book. While Jess endures a physical, mental, and emotional battle, she also starts to see things — and people — in a new light.

Then, she meets 27-year-old Annabel, who is living with incurable cancer. As Jess’s life deviates from the script she had allocated it — and while her friends’ lives stay on course — Annabel shows Jess what is truly important in life.

The story is well-balanced between Jess’s journalistic career at the magazine, her personal life, including her friends, family, and romantic relationships, and the unavoidable cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

Laura’s inner food journalist also shines through. Jessica started at a baking magazine before pivoting to her dream glossy magazine job, and food and cooking carried important themes throughout her life. Laura is also living with stage four breast cancer herself. Diagnosed in 2012 at the age of 29, she also really did write a viral blog about her dating experiences as a young woman with cancer, which Jess does in Single Bald Female.

For Breast Cancer Now, whom Laura also hosts a podcast with, she wrote about how writing Single Bald Female has helped her process her grief. Although she had always written a diary since she was a little girl, it stopped when she started having treatment. While Price blogged throughout, looking back, she says it didn’t reflect the fear and sadness she really felt. While Laura says she is sad she can’t look back at diary entries from that time, writing Single Bald Female has made up for it.

Flatshare (2019) by Beth O’Leary

Flatshare follows Leon, a cancer nurse, and Tiffy, a journalist at a digital London magazine, as they navigate a flatshare. The twist? They don’t actually live together. Instead, they share a flat in shifts, communicating via Post-it notes.

Perhaps one of the more tenuous journalism links, Flatshare is largely about the living situation and the dynamics resulting from the unconventional living situation that is sharing a one-bed flat in shifts with someone you’ve never met before.

However, Tiffy’s chapters still focus on her job as a young reporter trying to keep her head above the water. The far-from-ideal pay is why she’s ended up in this flat share. We see how Tiffy navigates the competition with her other early-career colleagues. When the three of them are pitted against each other to pitch a digital feature for the website’s homepage, it’s perhaps unsurprising that the editor piques an interest in Tiffy writing about her personal life rather than hearing her other ideas.

Another thread running through the story is Tiffy’s relationship with Leon’s brother Richie, who is in prison for a crime he did not commit. Keen to help campaign for his release, Tiffy works with him over a period of time to write a story, which, despite her initial efforts, is sensationalised by the publication she works for.

The book offers a pretty accurate portrayal of the industry and being an early-career journalist.

Queenie (2019) by Candice Carty-Williams

Candice Carty-Williams’s debut novel, Queenie follows 25-year-old Queenie Jenkins, a Jamaican-British woman living in London, as she navigates the unspoken expectation of neatly fitting into two cultures, both at work and in her personal life. Queenie is a journalist at a national paper, who hopes to cover the Black Lives Matter movement, making a name for herself in the industry as she does so.

We come into Queenie’s life as she approaches an incredibly difficult period. Following a traumatic breakup with her long-term white boyfriend, deep-rooted pain from Queenie’s past begins to build, wreaking havoc as it reaches a crescendo. The awful men Queenie encounters in the aftermath of her breakup further dismantle her self-worth, and will make you clench your jaw in anger.

Queenie is working as a journalist at a national paper, where the majority of her colleagues are white and middle-class, and so we see Queenie having to navigate this, both on a personal level, and in the stories the publication is covering. Namely, how several of Queenie’s colleagues view the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ultimately, Queenie is a story about friendship — she calls her friends, who all hail from very different parts of her life, ‘The Corgis’ because she is the Queen(ie) — self-discovery, and growth.

Candice handles the topic of mental health sensitively and holistically, and leaves sufficient space for nuanced exploration of themes such as race, class, and consent.

Winner of the 2020 British Book Awards Book of the Year, Queenie was quickly confirmed to be adapted for screen after being commissioned by Channel 4 drama. Executive produced by Carty-Williams, we should see Queenie hit our screens later this year.

Olive (2020) by Emma Gannon

A fictional debut from Emma Gannon, Olive follows Olive (surprise) and her long-time friendship group as they navigate their professional and personal lives during their thirties. It soon becomes apparent they want different things from life, and no matter how close they once were, it will not stop things from changing.

Olive explores the changing dynamics, particularly those which result from the friends’ different perspectives and desires regarding motherhood. Specifically, Olive’s realisation that she does not want children.

Olive is a journalist who presides over the lifestyle section of a ‘feminist’ digital magazine. We see how her personal and professional lives overlap and what this means for her journalistic work. Emma herself has worked in journalism and publishing, having written columns for The Times and The Telegraph, and hosted the WEBBY-nominated creative careers podcast Ctrl, Alt, and Delete. She also writes the incredibly successful newsletter, The Hyphen.

The Devil Wears Prada (2003) by Lauren Weisberger

Ashamedly, I will admit I didn’t realise this was a book before a film. But I was only three when it was published, so if you could let me off this one time, that would be great. A New York Times bestseller, Lauren’s novel is loosely based on her time as an assistant to the legend of Condé Nast, Anna Wintour. (Reliable) rumour has it that the famed editor never takes her sunglasses off and has a timer set for when anybody is interviewing her. I don’t know if I could hack it.

Lauren also worked as a writer and editor for Vogue and Departures Magazine before writing The Devils Wears Prada, plus a whole load more books, including two further sequels to The Devil Wears Prada.

The now iconic story follows Andrea Sachs, a recent graduate who dreams of working as a journalist in New York. The woman who can help her do that? Runway Magazine‘s successful editor-in-chief, Miranda Priestley.

Luckily, Andrea has landed a job as Miranda’s assistant — the job “a million girls would die for”. Unluckily, she is also the boss from hell. As Andrea grapples with her boss’s increasingly unrealistic demands, and gets an insight into what goes on at the top, she questions whether the job at the end of it is really worth it.

The film version came three years later, with the star-studded cast we all know and love. Meryl Streep’s magnus opus, surely?

Bridget Jones’s Diary (1996) by Helen Fielding

Did you know that the fictional character of Bridget Rose Jones first appeared in a column for The Independent in 1995?

The column, which didn’t have a byline, appeared like real diary entries from a thirty-something woman living in London. It was initially dreamed up by Charlie Leadbeater, The Independent‘s features director. Keen to reach a new readership of young professional and semi-professional women, the idea was to appeal to the kind of young women working on the features desk.

In this article about the true story of Bridget Jones, Charlie said: “They would come in to work in the morning and one minute they would be talking about Gordon Brown and the next about their make-up.”

He thought a fictional column which reflected “that kind of thinking, which doesn’t compartmentalise things” would work well. When Leadbeater ran the idea by his wife, a writer for the Independent on Sunday, she suggested her colleague Helen Fielding.

Based on Fielding’s experiences as a young single woman in London navigating life, love, work, and friendship, the Bridget Jones column ran until 1997 in The Independent. It appeared in Daily Telegraph when Fielding moved to the publication before returning to The Independent from 2005–2006. Bridget became a social phenomenon, summing up the experiences of a generation of women.

The column’s first novelisation, Bridget Jones’s Diary, was published in 1996, followed by The Edge of Reason in 1999. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy came in 2013, and Bridget Jones’s Baby was published as a book and released as a film in 2016.

In the latter, Bridget works as a TV news producer, and tries to discover the identity of her unborn child’s father by inviting him in as a guest on the show in a bid to retrieve a DNA sample. So many ethical and legal questions.

As well as Bridget’s wonderfully unconventional romantic endeavours, a decent amount of the story is focussed on her experiences of working in TV news. A satire of the media’s Move To Digital, it highlights the often ageist nature of the broadcast industry.

The List (2023), by Yomi Adegoke

Hailed as the book of summer 2024, The List follows the story of Ola Olajide, a journalist at feminist website Womxxxn, and her fiance Michael Koranteng. The book opens 27 days before their wedding — just one day before Michael’s name is circulated as part of an anonymous list of abusive men in the media.

While the plot primarily asks questions about our lives online and the ramifications that extend beyond our screens (with some interesting clashes between those who don’t spend their lives online) there’s a lot to unpack about journalism in The List too.

Ola made a name for herself with her previous work on the #MeToo scandal and is painfully aware of the conflict of interest and principles the list is causing her — complicated further when her manipulative boss asks her to write about the scandal.

Yomi also asks questions about the way journalism is funded and run too; are we expecting journalists to turn their trauma into content? Does a brand ever really stand by its values? And when is enough, enough?

Honey & Spice (2022), by Bolu Babalola

And, finally for our fiction picks, a romance. When we interviewed Bolu about the book back in 2022 she explained: “Honey & Spice is longer than your average rom-com, but for me and the story that I wanted to tell, that’s the right length.”

It tells the story of Kiki Banjo, a presenter on her student radio station who is determined to save her listeners from romantic heartbreak, situationships and wastemen — and hopes her show can land her a competitive internship in New York. That is until she kisses Malakai, exactly the type of guy she’s been telling everyone to avoid.

“I don’t know if I have someone exactly like Kiki [in my life,” Bolu told us, “but for me, Kiki is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Does that make sense? She’s in so many of my friends. And she’s definitely a huge part of me as well. I don’t even know where she begins and I end.”

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (2017) by Taylor Jenkins Reid

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a historical fiction novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid, which, thanks to BookTok, entered the New York Times’s bestseller list four years after it was first published.

The novel follows young magazine reporter Monique Grant, who, for reasons unknown to her (and her editor), has been personally chosen to profile Hollywood film great Evelyn Hugo. To her further surprise, Evelyn, who has never spoken to the press about her ‘scandalous’ past, tells Monique no information about her life is off limits. Evelyn is happy to tell Monique everything, including the story behind each of her seven marriages. And, what’s more, Monique will be given the rights to publish a biography, too.

The story is sectioned into parts according to each of Evelyn’s seven husbands. We switch between the 1950s–1980s and the present day, where Monique continues to debate why on earth she’s been asked to do this. It’s an incredibly satisfying novel. And, ugh, the twist. You’re not ready.

The novel is also being made into a film for Netflix; seemingly Taylor’s words were made for the screen, as her 2021 novel Malibu Rising (which features some character crossover with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo) is also currently being developed into a TV series for Hulu.

Daisy Jones and the Six (2019) by Taylor Jenkins Reid

While we’re here, we may as well highlight another of Taylor Jenkins Reid’s big hits: Daisy Jones and the Six, because there’s a journalism link there too.

Interestingly, Taylor has never worked in journalism, and a quick Google reveals she began her career in film production, also working at a high school before bagging a book deal.

The story unfolds through a series of interviews with the band members. We are aware the 70s band split notoriously one night years before. But it is through these interviews (we do not know who the interviewer is until the end) that we learn about how the band formed, their rise to fame, and their relationships with one another.

As well as this journalistic narrative, the novel explores the ’70s music journalism scene (how accurately, we aren’t sure) and how artists, agents, and journalists navigated it.

It was recently adapted into a TV miniseries for Prime Video starring the likes of Riley Keough, and Brits Sam Claflin and Suki Waterhouse.

Dear Mrs Bird (2018) by AJ Pearce

A historical fiction fan, this one had been on my TBR for ages. I finally started it a few months ago and quickly devoured the trilogy. Thankfully, it doesn’t look like the series has finished quite yet and I’m patiently awaiting a fourth instalment. 

Set in 1941 in London, Dear Mrs Bird is the first book in the Emmy Lake Wartime Chronicles.

The story follows Emmeline Lake, a young secretary and part-time Fire Service volunteer, who lives in a flat with her equally plucky best friend Bunty. Refusing to be deterred by the destruction around them, the young women, who grew up together in a small village, are determined to live their London life to the full — while doing their bit to support the community. Emmy, who is a magnet for mix-ups, hopes to one day become a war correspondent. When she sees a job advert to work at London’s most notable newspaper, it seems all the stars have aligned. After a successful application, Emmy can’t wait to get started. Yet, her excitement goes down like a lead balloon when it turns out the job is at Woman’s Friend, the publisher’s women’s magazine, as assistant to agony aunt notorious Mrs Henrietta Bird.

As far as agony aunt’s go, Mrs Bird is… harsh. She won’t have any letters published that contain even a smidge of ‘scandal’: sex, love, pregnancy – all off the cards. However, Emmy feels compelled to reply to these women, some of whom are in great distress. Perhaps it’s not the war reporting career she dreamed of, but she might have just found a new calling. It’s a shame Mrs Bird throws such a spanner in the works. 

Great characters and authentic writing that will leave you wanting more. 

AJ Pearce has spoken about the origins of her best-selling wartime novels, which she says began with “an enthusiastic bout of procrastinating on eBay”. For £4.95, Pearce picked up a 1939 British women’s magazine, which ultimately led to a vast collection of vintage magazines and a new writing career.

The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II (2021) by Judith Mackrell

It might also be a nice time to mention Judith Mackrell’s 2021 book The Correspondents: Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II. Not to decry Emmy Lake’s wartime endeavours nor the work of agony aunts throughout history, but Mackrell’s book looks at six women who reported on the frontlines of WW2.

In The Correspondents, Judith explores and celebrates the work and lives of Martha Gellhorn, who covered D-Day by travelling as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Vogue cover star Lee Miller, who became the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who reported on the Nazi regime while concealing her Jewish identity; Virginia Cowles, an American gossip columnist who went from covering fashion and celebrities to frontline war; Clare Hollingworth, who was the first English journalist to break the news of WW2 as a rookie journalist for The Daily Telegraph when travelling from Poland to Germany; and Helen Kirkpatrick, an American war correspondent who continually reported from the frontlines, and who became the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men.

There are also various other books about these trailblazing women, including Martha Gellhorn’s Travels With Myself and Another (1978), Sigrid Schultz’s Germany Will Try It Again (1944), Virginia Cowles’s Looking for Trouble (1941), and Helen Kirkpatrick’s This Terrible Peace (1939).

Ten Days in a Mad-House (1887) by Nellie Bly

Trailblazing journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochrane, better known by her pseudonym Nellie Bly, is remembered for her groundbreaking work as an investigative reporter, which subsequently inspired a whole generation of ‘girl stunt reporters’.

Bly’s first journalism gig was with the Pittsburgh Dispatch in 1885. The paper hired her after she sent a letter in response to an article frowning upon women’s education and employment. The paper did a callout to find the letter’s author, to which she responded and got a job. Many of Bly’s articles explored social issues, particularly those affecting women. However, these were later deemed too controversial, so she was moved instead to writing about more palatable topics like fashion and parties.

So, Bly later left for York City, where she got a job writing for The New York World under editor Joseph Pulitzer (of the Pulitzer Prize). Ten Days in a Mad-House was initially published as a two-part exposé in 1887 in New York World called “Behind Asylum Bars”, for which Bly went undercover as a patient in the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell Island.

She endured and subsequently exposed the horrific conditions and treatment in the asylum, which resulted in an official investigation and significantly more funding for the Department of Public Charities and Corrections. Ian L. Munro compiled the reports into a book — Ten Days in a Madhouse — the same year.

In 2015, the book was adapted into a film, and later, in 2019, another film made for TV: Escaping the Madhouse: The Nellie Bly Story, starring Christina Ricci as Bly.

She Said (2019) by Jodi Cantor and Megan Twohey

In 2018, the Pulitzer Prize was awarded to The New York Times for Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey’s reporting and seminal investigation uncovering the truth about Harvey Weinstein’s campaign of sexual harassment and sexual assault — and the widespread culture of coverups and corruption.

In 2017, the duo began their long and arduous investigation into Weinstein. They painstakingly gathered evidence, conducting confidential interviews with actresses, former Weinstein employees, and many other sources, coming up against Weistein’s people — lawyers, private investigators — hired to quiet the investigation.

Jodi and Megan eventually got sources to go on the record, which was vital in bringing the whole web of corruption to light. While the publication of the initial article caused an explosion of revelations about the wrongdoings of powerful men and reignited the #MeToo movement globally (the term had first been used in 2006 by activist Tarana Burke to highlight the voice of abuse victims), the pair have since revealed they had no idea how people would react.

She Said provides an in-depth insight into the inner workings of the Weinstein investigation, as well as investigative journalism (and the human side of it) more broadly. A film version of the book was released in 2022, starring Carey Mulligan as Twohey and Zoe Kazan as Kantor.

The Lido (2018) by Libby Page

Libby Page’s debut novel, The Lido, follows the lives of Rosemary and Kate as the impending closure of London’s Brockwell Lido brings them together. Although it is a fictional story, Lambeth Council really did close the pool in 1990 to cut costs before two former council employees reopened it in 1994.

Rosemary, an 86-year-old widow, has swum in the Lido every day since it opened when she was a child, even throughout the war. Kate is an anxious and adrift 20-something, working as a journalist for the local newspaper, The Brixton Chronicle, itching to write Stories That Matter.

For Rosemary, the Lido symbolises all the big moments in her life — the war, growing up, falling in love, and grief — but also the little ones. So, when the future of the Lido comes under threat, Kate and Rosemary join forces to fight the developer gunning for the Lido contract.

As Kate’s friendship with Rosemary grows, along with her affinity for the pool and the people who swim in it, she writes more and more stories about the ongoing campaign. When the nationals catch wind of the story, The Guardian commissions Kate to write about it. While you would probably never get that much time to work on a story IRL, it’s still a pretty realistic (and relatable) portrayal of trying to break into the industry. It totally makes sense that Libby Page is a former journalist and leading campaigner for fairer internships.

An intergenerational story of community, grief, and hope, highlighting the prevalent issue of gentrification in London and other UK cities, The Lido is perfect for if you’re looking for some inspiration to get writing again.

House of Journalists (2013) by Tim Finch

The House of Journalists is written by Tim French, who has had a career in journalism, including as a correspondent at Westminster’s BBC Political Unit. It is about a ‘fashionable’ house in London with a global reputation for accommodating exiled writers needing refuge.

The refuge is run by a successful writer and broadcaster named Julian Snowman. His guests include a newspaper editor who has had his hands smashed by hammers; a journalist who spoke out about a brutal coup; a photojournalist who documented her country’s descent into civil war; and a displaced journalist who had a harrowing journey to safety. Then, there is a new fellow, AA, who ‘guards his story’ closely.

One cannot help but think the premise could be based on the real-life La Maison des Journalistes in Paris, which supports persecuted professional journalists forced to flee their home countries because of their work.

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So, dig your library card out or rifle through the bookshops, it’s time for a recline and an afternoon of books.

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