100 Best Books to Read by Women Authors

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Good Housekeeping, 100 Books

Good Housekeeping team created a list of the 100 best books by women authors. Their website description is:

From gripping works of fiction to literary classics, this list of 100 books to read by women was selected by the Good Housekeeping team and shows that women's writing is complex, brilliant, moving, innovative – everything the best writing should be.

This list was originally published in 2021 and was added to this site over 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1765 A Little Life Hanya Yanagihara 2015 American English
13 Pride and Prejudice Jane Austen 1813 British English
1211 Normal People Sally Rooney 2018 Irish English
15 Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 1847 British English
3533 Girl, Woman, Other Bernardine Evaristo 2019 British English
12213 Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman 2017 British English
14547 Queenie Candice Carty-Williams 2019 British English
93 Little Women Louisa May Alcott 1868 American English
409 My Brilliant Friend Elena Ferrante 2012 American Italian
1461 Oranges are not the only Fruit Jeanette Winterson 1985 British English
157 The Color Purple Alice Walker 1982 American English
221 White Teeth Zadie Smith 2000 British English
16 To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee 1960 American English
2170 Noughts and Crosses Malorie Blackman 2001 British English
4629 Heartburn Nora Ephron 1983 American English
13284 Swimming Home Deborah Levy 2011 British English
397 Wolf Hall Hilary Mantel 2009 British English
947 Bel Canto Ann Patchett 2001 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
1285 Selected Stories of Alice Munro Alice Munro 1996 Canadian English
2641 The Power Naomi Alderman 2016 British English
575 I Capture the Castle Dodie Smith 1948 British English
14619 City Of Girls Elizabeth Gilbert 2019 American English
14006 The Five Hallie Rubenhold 2019 British English
279 The Secret History Donna Tartt 1992 American English
14407 Trans Juliet Jacques 2015 British English
29 Jane Eyre Charlotte Brontë 1847 British English
1119 The Street Ann Petry 1946 American English
32 Mrs. Dalloway Virginia Woolf 1925 British English
13551 The Lowland Jhumpa Lahiri 2013 American English
3271 The Luminaries Eleanor Catton 2013 New Zealand English
1158 Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 2006 Nigerian English
14628 Five Steps To Happy Ella Dove 2019 British English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
68 Their Eyes Were Watching God Zora Neale Hurston 1937 American English
58 Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 American English
670 Persepolis Marjane Satrapi 2000 French French
191 And Then There Were None Agatha Christie 1939 British English
4114 Brick Lane Monica Ali 2003 British English
2334 How to be both Ali Smith 2014 British English
1010 Fingersmith Sarah Waters 2002 British English
39 Frankenstein Mary Shelley 1818 British English
14450 A Spool Of Blue Thread Anne Tyler 2015 American English
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
92 The Age of Innocence Edith Wharton 1920 American English
814 The Secret Garden Frances Hodgson Burnett 1911 British English
1490 The Garden Party And Other Stories Katherine Mansfield 1922 New Zealand English
59 Rebecca Daphne du Maurier 1938 British English
359 The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy 1997 Indian English
3876 We Need To Talk About Kevin Lionel Shriver 2003 American English
433 Play It As It Lays Joan Didion 1970 American English
1450 Mary Barton Elizabeth Gaskell 1848 British English
1263 The Summer Book Tove Jansson 1972 Finnish Swedish
480 Cold Comfort Farm Stella Gibbons 1932 British English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
2708 The Help Kathryn Stockett 2009 American English
1435 Life After Life Kate Atkinson 2013 British English
1675 The Time Traveler's Wife Audrey Niffenegger 2003 American English
13967 Standard Deviation Katherine Heiny 2017 American English
2635 An American Marriage Tayari Jones 2018 American English
2485 Small Island Andrea Levy 2004 British English
13235 The Cazalet Chronicles Elizabeth Jane Howard 1988 British English
14087 The Girl With The Louding Voice Abi Daré 2020 Nigerian English
6082 My Sister, The Serial Killer Oyinkan Braithwaite 2018 Nigerian English
6438 Who Will Run The Frog Hospital Lorrie Moore 1994 American English
10988 Happenstance Carol Shields 1980 Canadian English
2127 Restoration Rose Tremain 1989 British English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
861 We Have Always Lived in the Castle Shirley Jackson 1962 American English
3121 Kitchen Banana Yoshimoto 1988 Japanese Japanese
5984 The Idiot Elif Batuman 2017 American English
236 Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone J. K. Rowling 1997 British English
5018 Me Before You Jojo Moyes 2012 British English
2588 Hamnet Maggie O'Farrell 2020 Irish English
7005 The Girl With The Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier 1999 British English
779 The Outsiders S. E. Hinton 1967 American English
1128 The Price Of Salt Patricia Highsmith 1952 American English
169 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 1961 British, Scottish English
2497 Room Emma Donoghue 2010 Irish English
1101 Outline Rachel Cusk 2014 British English
488 The Shipping News Annie Proulx 1993 Canadian English
454 The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 1978 British English
13592 We Were The Mulvaneys Joyce Carol Oates 1996 American English
2062 Girl With Green Eyes Edna O'Brien 1962 Irish English
1354 Olive Kitteridge Elizabeth Strout 2008 American English
738 The Joy Luck Club Amy Tan 1989 American English
160 My Antonia Willa Cather 1918 American English
849 Regeneration Pat Barker 1991 British English
158 Wide Sargasso Sea Jean Rhys 1966 British English
2103 The Bloody Chamber And Other Stories Angela Carter 1979 British English
6836 We are All Completely Beside Ourselves Karen Joy Fowler 2013 American English
291 The House of the Spirits Isabel Allende 1982 Chilean Spanish
1000 A Thousand Acres Jane Smiley 1991 American English
11626 May We Be Forgiven A. M. Homes 2012 American English
3604 A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing Eimear McBride 2013 Irish English
61 The Golden Notebook Doris May Lessing 1962 British English
278 A Wizard Of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 1968 American English
5990 The Children's Book A. S. Byatt 2009 British English
1585 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke 2004 British English
3179 Flight Behavior Barbara Kingsolver 2012 American English