Book about woman doing something interesting
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Anonymous
| The Signature of all Things, Elizabeth Gilbert |
Anonymous
| “Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy” is about four women during the civil war. Nonfiction. |
Anonymous
| If you like science fiction, I enjoyed the Lady Astronaut series by Mary Robinette Kowal. It’s an alternate history where the space race was much accelerated in the 1960s due to an environmental catastrophe that will render the earth uninhabitable. The protagonist is a “computer” a la Hidden Figures. Fun read! |
Anonymous
| Miss Benson’s Beetle (fiction) and Eighty Days (nonfiction) would be good additions to a list. |
Anonymous
| The series with Izzy Spellman, by Lisa Lutz. |
Anonymous
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I read mostly historical mysteries and most of the series I read have female leads. There's often a slow burn relationship with a sleuthing partner.
Maisie Dobbs by Jacqueline Winspear was already mentioned. That's an epic series that starts before WWI and ends after it. Book 1 is the origin story and it's a great standalone. Veronica Speedwell books by Deanna Raybourn are about a 20-something raised by aunts who starts getting hunted when they die. I won't ruin it, but she goes on to juggle being a museum curator and butterfly hunter (an acceptable occupation in the Victorian era). She does investigations with her partner, a taxidermist. It's funny and outrageous. Kat Halloway books by Jennifer Ashley - she's a cook for a society family in Victorian England. Her possible beau is some sort of detective or agent. It's a clever series! Not cozy, though. Perveen Mistry books by Sujata Massey - Set in the 1920s Bombay. Perveen was educated at Oxford, but comes home to help at her father's firm and she's the first female lawyer in India. She gets seemingly boring, mundane jobs because of her sex, but she has great adventures. I could go on and on. |
Anonymous
| A few years ago, I read “The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America” by Elizabeth Letts. The title pretty much gives it away; it’s a non-fiction book about a woman in Maine who sets off on horseback in the 1950s to ride across the country to see the Pacific Ocean. She has her dog with her but very little else, including money, and she essentially relies on the kindness of strangers to get her through. |
Anonymous
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Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn They’ve spent their lives as the deadliest assassins in a clandestine international organization, but now that they're sixty years old, four women friends can’t just retire – it’s kill or be killed in this action-packed thriller
Similar theme - Second Cindy Dees Retirement isn't easy for a former CIA assassin. For fifty-five-year-old Helen Warwick, it may be impossible. Even Helen's family doesn't know the true nature of the work she's done for decades—the secret black ops, the sanctioned executions. But her plan to spend time reconnecting with her grown children has just been blown up-along with her son's house—by hired killers. Why is she being targeted now—and by whom? A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent Marie Brennan Marie Brennan begins a thrilling new fantasy series in A Natural History of Dragons, combining adventure with the inquisitive spirit of the Victorian Age. You, dear listener, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart - no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments - even at the risk of one's life - is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten….All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries: Book One of the Emily Wilde Series Heather Fawcett Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world’s first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party—or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people |
Anonymous
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Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton
A moving and fascinating meditation on freedom, trust, loss, and our relationship with the natural world, explored through the story of one woman’s unlikely friendship with a wild hare. Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle-feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and slept in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. For political advisor and speechwriter Chloe Dalton, who spent lockdown deep in the English countryside, far away from her usual busy London life, this became her unexpected reality. |
Anonymous
Yep! |
Anonymous
| Also Alma Katsu writes excellent spy novels with a female protagonist. |
Anonymous
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The Woman Who Knew Everyone: The Power of Perle Mesta, Washington’s Most Famous Hostess Hardcover
by Meryl Gordon #1 New Release in Political Leader Biographies A TOWN & COUNTRY MUST READ BOOK OF 2025 AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE MONTH - BIOGRAPHIES & MEMOIR |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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The Maisie Dobbs series starts out strong and gets worse
The Maggie Hope series is a similar idea, but set in WWII, and it's good through the end |
Anonymous
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PP already said but
Great Circle, Maggie Shipstead |