I've been reading a lot of fantasy books with great female characters, and now I'm looking for other genres with strong female leads or supporting characters. Genre can be anything, although I have read some classics like Pride and Prejudice, Little Women, etc, so I'm looking to venture out of classics a bit as well.
by cuntyvigilante
11 Comments
Wool by Hugh Howey
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
The hunger games
If you’re up for modern mystery, Temperance Brennan, a series by Kathy Reichs.
Walter Tevis’ *The Queen’s Gambit*. Very pleasantly surprised to see such a good relatable weird girl character written by a man.
Maggie Shipstead, The Great Circle. Historical fixtion. Female protagonist is an pilot in the early days of aviation (some clear Amelia Earhart parallels but a distinct story in its own right). This was a Booker nominated novel a few years back and a really fun read overall.
Project Hail Mary.
Dear Mad’m by Patterson,
Miss Benson’s Beetle,
The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy,
Gone to Soldiers by Marge Piercy,
Their Eyes were Watching God by Hurston,
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn,
Anne of Green Gables
Detective/ crime/ mystery series by Sarah Paretsky, Sue Grafton, Lynda LaPlante, Patricia Cornwell, Elly Griffiths, Dana Stabenow, Val McDermid, and Anne Cleeves. Each has a MC who is female and either police or a PI. (0r chief medical examiner.)
If sci-fi is okay you should check out PartnerShip and The Ship Who Searched. They’re older books in a series by Anne McCaffrey; she solo wrote the first one which was…odd…but the others were all co written. Those two are my favorites. The whole series is about space ships that are run by humans who wouldn’t be viable to live in their own, so they’re built into technology they can run.
The MCs in both books are female-brained ships, and other than the setup and the sci-fi world they’re quite different in personality and in the type of plot. I recommend reading PartnerShip first, but it doesn’t really matter.
Silence of the Lambs