Joanna Miller was raised in Cambridge, UK, and studied English at Oxford University. After a decade in education, she set up an award-winning poetry gift business and her rhyming verse has been filmed twice by the BBC. Miller recently graduated from Oxford again, with a diploma in creative writing. She lives with her husband and three children in Hertfordshire. The Eights is her first novel.

A Goodreads Most Anticipated Book of Spring

"The Eights is an entertaining and moving imagining of four smart women dealing with the engrained misogyny of the time. I came to love these four women as though they were my sisters."
--Tracy Chevalier, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Glassmaker

"A story about women taking their place in a man's world, The Eights beautifully captures the power of friendship and love in the wake of extraordinary loss. It was a pleasure to read."
--Pip Williams, New York Times bestselling author of The Dictionary of Lost Words

"Miller's engrossing debut follows the first women undergraduates eligible to earn degrees at Oxford University. .... They're unlikely allies, a novelistic trope that Miller transcends through insightful and surprising characterizations.... It's a memorable tale of a fast-changing world."
--Publishers Weekly

"Miller describes campus life in vivid detail, and her protagonists are complex, with hidden motivations and insecurities that are gradually revealed as their friendships develop. This pairs well with Helen Simonson's The Hazelbourne Ladies Motorcycle and Flying Club and Kate Quinn's The Briar Club."
--Booklist

"A heartfelt, thoughtful and engaging book about the first women students to go to Oxford University - their friendships, their secrets, their ambitions and their opponents - in the tremulous, haunted years immediately after the First World War. Joanna Miller brings 1920s Oxford to life with a vivid immediacy and makes us care deeply about four young women who find themselves pioneers in a strange new world, trying to find a way forward in the aftermath of war. A thoroughly lovely debut that will win many hearts, with its celebration of friendship and the persistence of hope."
--Joanna Quinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Whalebone Theatre

"My book of the year. The writing is wonderful, the subject fascinating and the storylines utterly absorbing. I'm so sad I've finished it. I loved everything about this book. I ADORED it."
--Jill Mansell, Sunday Times bestselling author of Rumor Has It

"I so enjoyed The Eights and became completely involved in the lives of the four pioneering heroines whose friendship is the beating heart of the book."
--Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

"I fell in love with this book from the first chapter... A vivid portrait of young women finding their way in a man's world under the long shadow of the Great War. It's dripping with historical detail...The true strength of this novel is the realisation of how powerful female solidarity can be. A joyous anthem to friendship, it made me want to pick up the phone to my best girlfriends."
--Kate Thompson, author of The Little Wartime Library

"Witty and charming ... an atmospheric testament to the power of friendship and the tenacious young women who led the charge for equality of opportunity."
--Jessica Bull, author of A Fortune Most Fatal

"Readers will root for the well-written characters and share in their trials. Recommended for readers who enjoy historical fiction as well as women's fiction."
--Library Journal

"Historical fiction fans will want to flag this buzzy debut, which tells the story of four of the first-ever women to earn degrees at Oxford University."
--Goodreads

Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons

Pub date: 2025-04-15

Length: 384 pages