For Women’s History Month, I collected together some of my favourite books, many of which can give you insight into what it’s like to be a woman now and in the past, as well as to be in relationships. I hope you can find something to inspire you!
Contemporary Fiction
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Levin
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
Luther by Raven Leilani
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat
Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth
Love and Other Experiments by Sophie Ward
Grounds for Divorce by Remy Maisel
One for Sorrow, One for Joy by Marie-Claire Amuah
The Beauty of Your Face by Sahar Mustafah
Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Great Circle by Maggies Shipstead
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
Silver Sparrow by Tayari Jones
Transit (and others in the trilogy) by Rachel Cusk
This Must Be the Place by Maggie O’Farrell
Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
The Lessons by Naomi Alderman
Gilead (and others in the trilogy) by Marilynne Robinson
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
Fingersmith, Tipping the Velvet and others by Sarah Waters
Twentieth Century Fiction
The Weather in the Streets by Rosamund Lehmann
Every Light in the House Burnin’ by Andrea Levy
An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel
Less than Angels by Barbara Pym
Our Spoons Came from Woolworths by Barbara Comyns
The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
Why be happy when you can be normal? by Jeanette Winterson
They were sisters by Dorothy Whipple
The thing around your neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Thank Heaven Fasting E. M. Delafield
The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
Sacred Country by Rose Tremain
In a Summer Season by Elizabeth Taylor
They were Sisters by Dorothy Whipple
Astonishing Splashes of Colour by Clare Morrall
The Essence of the Thing by Madeleine St John
The Making of a Marchioness by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Miss Buncle’s Book by De Stevenson
Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd
One Fine Day by Molly Panter-Downes
The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
Non-fiction
Negroland by Margo Jefferson
Explaining Humans by Camilla Pang
Gender Mosaic: Beyond the Myth of the Male and Female Brain by Daphna Joel and Luba Vikhanski
The Gendered Brain by Gina Rippon
Manifesto by Bernadine Evaristo
Period Piece by Gwen Raverat
A London Child of the 1870s (and others in the series) by M .V. Hughes
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Eve by Cat Bohannon
Gender Explorers by Juno Roche
Trans Power by Juno Roche
The Transgender Issue by Shon Faye
The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
Mom & Me & Mom by Maya Angelou
I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
Trans: A Memoir by Juliet Jacques