Written by Women for Women
Happy International Women's Month! 🌸
Books written by women for women do something that books written by men can never do: show real and detailed stories about women's lives.Â
For a long time in Western history, women weren’t allowed to share their own stories. Most books were written by men for men. Because of this, the way women were shown in stories was often limited. They were seen as fragile, innocent, or dependent.
When women started writing, they gave us an honest look at what it’s really like to be a woman. These books go beyond simple stereotypes and reveal the true feelings and experiences of women. They often highlight the importance of friendship and standing together, especially when fighting for independence and rights.
Enjoy books from the following:
- New Releases
- Classics
- Nonfiction
- Fiction
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New Releases:
 Women of a Promiscuous Nature
by Donna Everhart
Girl, Interrupted meets The Handmaid's Tale in 1940s North Carolina, as a young woman is accused of "promiscuity" and unjustly incarcerated at The State Industrial Farm Colony for Women...
Based on the long-buried history of the American Plan, this powerful and shockingly timely story of resistance and resilience exposes the real government program designed to regulate women's bodies and sexuality throughout the first half of the 20th century.
A Publishers Marketplace BUZZ BOOKS Selection Indie Next Pick LibraryReads Selection
"Both a cautionary tale and a deeply compassionate rendering of women wrongly imprisoned in a system designed to break them, Everhart's propulsive story is filled with injustice, intrigue, and the determination to fight back." --LISA WINGATE, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Shelterwood
On a brisk February morning while walking to the diner where she works, 24 year-old Ruth Foster is stopped by the local sheriff. He insists she accompany him to a health clinic, threatening to arrest her if she doesn't undergo testing in order to preserve decency and prevent the spread of sexual disease.
American Fantasy
by Emma Straub
NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2026
"I can hardly remember the last time I read anything that brought me such pure joy."-- Ann Patchett
"American Fantasy is such a fun, delicious, big-hearted book." -Taylor Jenkins Reid
From New York Times bestselling author of This Time Tomorrow, an irresistible story about what happens when your teenage fantasy comes true after you're already an adult.
When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous, nineties-era boy band and three thousand screaming women who have worshipped them since childhood.
Feeling slightly out of place amid this crowd is Annie, newly divorced, turning fifty with an empty nest, and here on a lark to appease her sister. Yet when the lights come up and the idols of her youth begin to sing, something is unlocked. Call it memory. Call it nostalgia. Call it the chemical reaction of hormones, hope, and sexual reawakening.Â
The World After Rain: Anne's Poem
by Canisia Lubrin
A Carol Shields Prize winner for her collection of fictions Code Noir, Canisia Lubrin now brings readers a long-form poetic tribute to her mother, praised by Dionne Brand as "incandescent"
In this stunning new poem, Canisia Lubrin's signature epic vision is distilled into a elegy to her mother, along an interwoven and unresolvable axis of astonishment that belongs as much to history as to today. Her lucid attention to what might be the oldest metaphor for grief is drawn from the searing gravity and resonance of the modern poet's decisive, interior, and inexpressible meditation on love, time, and loss in the excesses of life's ambitions.
The Astral Library
by Kate Quinn
From New York Times bestselling author Kate Quinn comes a gorgeously written fantastical adventure which poses the question: Have you ever wished you could live inside a book? Welcome to the Astral Library, where books are not just objects, but doors to new worlds, new lives, and new futures.
Alexandria "Alix" Watson has learned one lesson from her barren childhood in the foster-care system: unlike people, books will never let you down. Working three dead-end jobs to make ends meet and knowing college is a pipe dream, Alix takes nightly refuge in the high-vaulted reading room at the Boston Public Library, escaping into her favorite fantasy novels and dreaming of far-off lands. Until the day she stumbles through a hidden door and meets the Librarian: the ageless, acerbic guardian of a hidden library where the desperate and the lost escape to new lives...inside their favorite books.
Cleopatra
by Saara El-Arifi
Cleopatra tells her own story in this evocative and sensuous historical epic from the bestselling and award-winning author of Faebound and The Final Strife.
YOU KNOW MY NAME, BUT YOU DO NOT KNOW ME.
Your historians call me seductress, but I was ever in love's thrall.
Your playwrights speak of witchcraft, but my talents came from the gods themselves.
Your poets sing of my bloodlust, but I was always protecting my children.
How wilfully they refuse to concede that a woman could be powerful, strategic, and divinely blessed to rule.
Death will silence me no longer.
This is not the story of how I died. But how I lived.
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Classics:
Little Women
by Louisa May Alcott - Anna Bond
Louisa May Alcott's classic tale of four sisters in a deluxe hardcover edition, with beautiful cover illustrations by Anna Bond, the artist behind world-renowned stationery brand Rifle Paper Co.
Grown-up Meg, tomboyish Jo, timid Beth, and precocious Amy. The four March sisters couldn't be more different. But with their father away at war, and their mother working to support the family, they have to rely on one another. Whether they're putting on a play, forming a secret society, or celebrating Christmas, there's one thing they can't help wondering: Will Father return home safely?
A Room of One's Own: The Virginia Woolf Library Authorized Edition
by Virginia Woolf
This literary landmark about the male supremacy and female subordination at Oxford University shines a brave, searing light on the obstacles that must be overcome on the path toward a harmonious unity of the sexes.
Ode to Aphrodite - The Poems and Fragments of Sappho
by Sappho Sappho - John Myres O' Hara - Henry De Vere Stacpoole
Sappho (c. 630-c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from the island of Lesbos famous for her lyric poetry. Also known by such names as the "Tenth Muse" and "The Poetess", Sappho was a prolific poet widely regarded as one of the greatest lyric poets of ancient times.Â
The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed. Deserves the highest praise. -- "San Francisco Chronicle"
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou - Oprah Winfrey
Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS's American Masters.
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right.
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Non-Fiction:
Educated: A Memoir
by Tara Westover
#1 NEW YORK TIMES, WALL STREET JOURNAL, AND BOSTON GLOBE BESTSELLER - One of the most acclaimed books of our time: an unforgettable memoir about a young woman who, kept out of school, leaves her survivalist family and goes on to earn a PhD from Cambridge University
"Extraordinary . . . an act of courage and self-invention."--The New York Times
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW - ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR - BILL GATES'S HOLIDAY READING LIST - A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY - FINALIST: National Book Critics Circle's Award In Autobiography and John Leonard Prize For Best First Book - PEN/Jean Stein Book Award - Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent.Â
Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men
by Caroline Criado Perez
The landmark, prize-winning, international bestselling examination of how a gender gap in data perpetuates bias and disadvantages women.
#1 International Bestseller * Winner of the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award * Winner of the Royal Society Science Book Prize
Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development to health care to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems.
And women pay tremendous costs for this insidious bias: in time, in money, and often with their lives.
Celebrated feminist advocate Caroline Criado Perez investigates this shocking root cause of gender inequality in Invisible Women. Examining the home, the workplace, the public square, the doctor's office, and more, Criado Perez unearths a dangerous pattern in data and its consequences on women's lives.
Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
by Mikki Kendall
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
"The fights against hunger, homelessness, poverty, health disparities, poor schools, homophobia, transphobia, and domestic violence are feminist fights. Kendall offers a feminism rooted in the livelihood of everyday women." --Ibram X. Kendi, #1 New York Times-bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist, in The Atlantic
A potent and electrifying critique of today's feminist movement announcing a fresh new voice in black feminism
Today's feminist movement has a glaring blind spot, and paradoxically, it is women. Mainstream feminists rarely talk about meeting basic needs as a feminist issue, argues Mikki Kendall, but food insecurity, access to quality education, safe neighborhoods, a living wage, and medical care are all feminist issues. All too often, however, the focus is not on basic survival for the many, but on increasing privilege for the few. That feminists refuse to prioritize these issues has only exacerbated the age-old problem of both internecine discord and women who rebuff at carrying the title. Moreover, prominent white feminists broadly suffer from their own myopia with regard to how things like race, class, sexual orientation, and ability intersect with gender. How can we stand in solidarity as a movement, Kendall asks, when there is the distinct likelihood that some women are oppressing others?
The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts
by Maxine Hong Kingston
NATIONAL BESTSELLER Â - NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNERÂ
"A classic, for a reason." --Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Our Missing Hearts, via Twitter
As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother's "talk stories." The fierce and wily women warriors of her mother's tales clash jarringly with the harsh reality of female oppression out of which they come. Kingston's sense of self emerges in the mystifying gaps in these stories, which she learns to fill with stories of her own. A warrior of words, she forges fractured myths and memories into an incandescent whole, achieving a new understanding of her family's past and her own present.
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Fiction:
The Nightingale
by Kristin Hannah
A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK
A #1 New York Times bestseller, Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year, and soon to be a major motion picture, this unforgettable novel of love and strength in the face of war has enthralled a generation.Â
With courage, grace, and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of World War II and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--a heartbreakingly beautiful novel that celebrates the resilience of the human spirit and the durability of women. It is a novel for everyone, a novel for a lifetime.
The Joy Luck Club
by Amy Tan
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Amy Tan's modern classic that examines the sometimes painful, often tender, and always deep connection between mothers and daughters--now with a new preface
"For me, [The Joy Luck Club] was one of those once-in-a-lifetime reading experiences that you cherish forever. It inspired me as a writer and still remains hugely inspirational."--Kevin Kwan, author of Crazy Rich Asians
"Brilliant."--The Washington Post Book World
"A jewel of a book."--The New York Times Book Review
"Amy Tan [is] a writer of dazzling talent."--Chicago Tribune
In 1949, four Chinese women, recent immigrants to San Francisco, begin meeting to play mah jong, remember the past, and gossip into the night. United in unspeakable loss and new hope, they call themselves the Joy Luck Club.
With wit and sensitivity, Amy Tan examines the memories that display these women's strength, worries, and determination. As each woman reveals her secrets, trying to unravel the truth about her life, the strings become more tangled, more entwined. Mothers boast or despair over daughters, and daughters roll their eyes even as they feel the inextricable tightening of the matriarchal ties that they believe have stymied their ability to face the uncertainties of the future.
The Vanishing Half: A GMA Book Club Pick (a Novel)
by Brit Bennett
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
From The New York Times-bestselling author of The Mothers, a stunning new novel about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white.
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Many years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' storylines intersect?
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