Great Books by Women Authors

On March 8th New York Public Library’s Gwen Glazer published a wonderful list of books in celebration of International Women’s Day: 365 Books by Women Authors to Celebrate International Women’s Day All Year.

In the spirit of continuing to celebrate female authors past the confines of Women’s History Month, we’ve gathered some of these books into a special collection called Great Books by Women Authors to make it easier to find your next exceptional read. You will also find these books via Open Library as listed below. Happy reading!

Great Books by Women Authors
Leila Aboulela, The Kindness of Enemies
Susan Abulhawa, The Blue Between Sky and Water
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun
Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Svetlana Alexievich, Voices From Chernobyl
Clare Allan, Poppy Shakespeare
Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake
Isabel Allende, Eva Luna
Karin Altenberg, Island of Wings
Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies
Tahmima Anam, The Good Muslim
Natacha Appanah, The Last Brother
Chloe Aridjis, Asunder
Bridget Asher, All of Us and Everything
Margaret Atwood, Oryx & Crake
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
Mariama Bâ, Scarlet Song
Toni Cade Bambara, Those Bones Are Not My Child
Gioconda Belli, The Inhabited Woman
Karen Bender, Refund
Elizabeth Bishop, Geography III
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre
Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights
Gwendolyn Brooks, The Bean Eaters
Lauren Buekes, The Shining Girls
NoViolet Bulawayo, We Need New Names
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity
Leonora Carrington, The hearing trumpet
Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee
Susan Choi, American Woman
Kate Chopin, The Awakening
Sonya Chung, Long for This World
Caryl Churchill, Top Girls
Lucille Clifton, Mercy
Simin Daneshvar, Sutra & Other Stories
Tsitsi Dangarembga, Nervous Conditions
Edwidge Danticat, Claire of the Sea Light
Meaghan Daum, Unspeakable
Dola de Jong, The Tree and the Vine
Grazia Deledda, After the Divorce
Anita Desai, Clear Light of Day
Emily Dickinson, The Poems of Emily Dickinson
Joan Didion, Democracy
Rita Dove, On the Bus With Rosa Parks
Yasmine El Rashidi, Chronicle of a Last Summer
Nawal El Saadawi, Woman at Point Zero
George Eliot, Middlemarch
Buchi Emecheta, The Joys of Motherhood
Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower
Paula Fox, Desperate Characters
Lauren Francis-Sharma, Til the Well Runs Dry
Ru Freeman, On Sal Mal Lane
Rivka Galchen, Atmospheric Disturbances
Mary Gaitskill, The Mare
Petina Gappah, The Book of Memory
Elena Garro, First love ; &, Look for my obituary
Louise Gluck, Faithful and Virtuous Night
Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist
Jorie Graham, Erosion
Linda LeGarde Grover, The dance boots
Paula Gunn Allen, America the Beautiful: Last Poems
Marilyn Hacker, Names
Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness
Lorraine Hansberry, A Raisin in the Sun
Eve Harris, The Marrying of Chani Kaufman
Saidiya Hartman, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route
Shirley Hazzard, The Transit of Venus
Bessie Head, The Collector of Treasures
Amy Hempel, Reasons to Live
Cristina Henriquez, The Book of Unknown Americans
Christine Dwyer Hickey, The Cold Eye of Heaven
Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt
Arlie Hochschild, The Second Shift
Alice Hoffman, Survival Lessons
Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, Deception on All Accounts
bell hooks, Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics
Keri Hulme, The Bone People
Dương Thu Hương, Paradise of the Blind
Hồ Xuân Hương, Spring Essence
Ulfat Idilbi, Grandfather’s Tale
Elfriede Jelinek, Women As Lovers
Han Kang, The Vegetarian
Mary Karr, The Liar’s Club
Kazue Kato, Blue Exorcist
Rupi Kaur, Milk and Honey
Porochista Khakpour, The Last Illusion
Vénus Khoury-Ghata, A House at the Edge of Tears
Suki Kim, Without You, There Is No Us
Jamaica Kincaid, See Now Then
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior
Natsuo Kirino, Out
Sana Krasikov, One More Year
Jean Kwok, Girl in Translation
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Laila Lalami, Secret Son
Nella Larsen, Passing
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, Random Family
Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
Yiyun Li, Kinder Than Solitude
Gloria Lisé, Departing at Dawn
Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star
Inverna Lockpezer, Cuba: My Revolution
Alia Mamdouh, The Loved Ones
Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess
Ronit Matalon, The Sound of Our Steps
Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie
Eimear McBride, A Girl Is a Half-Formed Thing
Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
Claire Messud, The Woman Upstairs
Ai Mi, Under the Hawthorn Tree
Gabriela Mistral, Selected Poems of Gabriela Mistral
Nadifa Mohamed, Black Mamba Boy
Lorrie Moore, Bark
Marianne Moore, The Poems of Marianne Moore
Toni Morrison, Sula
Bharati Mukherjee, The Tree Bride
Alice Munro, Family Furnishings
Iris Murdoch, A Severed Head
Eileen Myles, School of Fish
Azar Nafisi, The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books
Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You
Hualing Nieh, Mulberry and Peach
Sara Nović, Girl at War
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, I Do Not Come to You by Chance
Silvia Ocampo, Thus Were Their Faces
Nnedi Okorafor, Binti
Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic
Helen Oyeyemi, Mr. Fox
Ruth Ozeki, All Over Creation
Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies
ZZ Packer, Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
Grace Paley, The Little Disturbances of Man
Suzan-Lori Parks, Topdog/Underdog
Shahrnush Parsipur, Kissing the Sword
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
Anna Politkovskaya, A Russian Diary
Katha Pollitt, Pro: Reclaiming Abortion Rights
Claudia Rankine, Citizen
Alifa Rifaat, Distant View of a Minaret and Others Stories
Suzanne Rivecca, Death Is Not An Option
Riverbend, Baghdad Burning
Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
Vedrana Rudan, Night
Sonia Sanchez, Does Your House Have Lions?
Sappho, The Complete Works of Sappho
Noo Saro-Wiwa, Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria
Åsne Seierstad, The Angel of Grozny
Anne Sexton, The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton
Murasaki Shikibu, The Tale of Genji
Kyung-sook Shin, Please Look After Mom
Sei Shonagon, The Pillow Book
Ana Maria Shuah, The Weight of Temptation
Leslie Marmon Silko, Almanac of the Dead
Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Marivi Soliven, The Mango Bride
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Susan Sontag, Styles of Radical Will
Ahdaf Soueif, The Map of Love
Gertrude Stein, Fernhurst, Q.E.D., and other early writings
Aoibbhean Sweeney, Among Other Things, I’ve Taken Up Smoking
Elizabeth Crane, When the Messenger Is Hot
Amy Tan, The Valley of Amazement
Valerie Taylor, The Girls in 3-B
Lygia Fagunda Telles, The Girl in the Photograph
Lynne Tillman, No Lease on Life
Dubravka Ugresic, Thank You For Not Reading
Chika Unigwe, On Black Sisters Street
Kirstin Valdez Quade, Night at the Fiestas
Jean Valentine, Little Boat
Lara Vapnyar, There Are Jews in My House
Marja-Liisa Vartio, The Parson’s Widow
Josefina Vicens, The Empty Book
Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith
Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter
Phillis Wheatley, The Poetry of Phillis Wheatley
Zoe Wicomb, You Can’t Get Lost In Cape Town
Joy Williams, The Visiting Privilege
G. Willow Wilson, Ms. Marvel
Virginia Woolf, Orlando
Alexis Wright, Carpentaria
Sarah E. Wright, This Child’s Gonna Live
Tiphanie Yanique, Land of Love and Drowning
Samar Yazbek, Cinnamon
Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen
Haifa Zangana, Dreaming of Baghdad