So I realized a lot of books I read have male protagonists, which is fine, but I want to read more books with female protagonists too. As I said above, no YA please. For genres, I prefer crime, horror, and science fiction. Here’s the kicker: I like all these genres to be combined with literary fiction. I like character-driven stories with individualistic, complex characters. Some plot-driven novels are okay, so if you don’t have a recommendation that counts as character-driven or literary, that’s fine as long as you let me know in the comments. What do you recommend?
by you_gotta_hold_on
41 Comments
Kindred by the late great Octavia Butler. It’s sci-fi + (eerily accurate) historical fiction themes. I highly highly recommend. I would argue that much of what happens in it is horror in the way that such events have happened in reality. It changed me for the better and that book will stay with me forever. The protagonist is an amazing 25ish y.o. woman named Dana.
Lonesome Dove has really good female characters, but it’s omniscient third person, so it has the perspective of both male and female characters. There are three female perspectives throughout the book, though. But it is definitely a character driven book, and I think it’s one of the best in that regard, which is why I’m gonna recommend it. It’s a western though, so none of the genres you mentioned, but I think most people who have enjoyed this book had never read any other westerns before.
Also, Shirley Jackson books like the Haunting of Hill House or We Have Always Lived in the Castle probably fit as well.
For horror, I’d suggest Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
For crime, Mildred Pierce by James M. Cain.
Conflict of honors by Sharon Lee
Broken Earth series by NK Jemisin
Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn. It’s a thriller, so the plot is important, but the characters are what made it stand out to me.
Also maybe Earthlings by Sayaka Murata?
All The Light We Cannot See
Life After Life
Try the Claire DeWitt trilogy by Sara Gran. Quirky detective novels, most definitely character driven.
Read Joan Didion. Play it as it Lays and Run River are my favorites of hers.
The Poppy Wars Trilogy; the crimes and horrors are war related, but it does a phenomenal job of building complex characters with layered motivations and drives.
Gothic Horror/Mystery/Sci-Fi/Thriller/literary prose and phenomenal character development: The Girl from Rawblood by Catriona Ward.
For something older/classic literature, try Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read and absolutely still holds up).
The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde (and the whole Thursday Next series) is perfect for you. It’s Sci fi for literature lovers.
beloved by toni morrison. sorry by gail jones.
An absolutely remarkable thing by Hank green
Paladin of Souls by Lois Bujold. It works well as a standalone novel.
Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon is sci fi about a woman left alone on a colony world.
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is science fiction about a woman set to an an ambassador from an independent world to the nearby empire. She also has to solve the murder of her predecessor.
Milkman by anna Burns is a strange book. it is literary and poetic and is one of my favorite reads of last year.
Foster by Claire Keegan is another book by an Irish author. Very different and absolutely wonderful.
Summer Book by Tove Jansson – main characters are a small girl, her grandmother and an island.
Shadow Life by Hiromi Goto is a comic book about an old woman who ran away to hide from her death.
Vera Stanhope series by Ann Cleeves. Vera is one of my favorite detectives.
The Sentence by Louise Erdritch is funny and sad and highly recommended
*The Trespasser* by Tana French. It’s technically part of a series (Dublin Murder Squad) but they are very loosely related to each other so you don’t need to read the other books. I think all the other ones are worth reading, but that’s the better of the 2 (out of 6) that have a female protagonist.
Ever read Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy? It’s literary, although it doesn’t fit closely with the genres you mentioned. I guess it could count as a crime novel, very loosely, as crimes are committed. I wouldn’t count it as a romance or anything because people get jerked around too much and no one has any fun.
Thank you all for the comments so far, I didnt expect this many responses!
Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Connie Willis has a number of books with a female protagonist, though she doesn’t restrict herself to them, and she’s one of the best living sci-fi authors. If you want to start out with something short, I’d try _Bellwether_. Her Oxford Time Travel series mostly has multiple POV characters, with a mix of male and female. She also has a collection of short stories, _Impossible Things_, with some MCs being male, some female.
If you’re looking for literature-quality writing, there’s always the older classics. For crime, there’s Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple books; one of the things that’s always been said about Agatha Christie’s books is that she wrote about *people* better than anyone, which is why her books don’t go out of print.
If youre willing to go out exploring the All Souls trilogy by Deborah Harkness might give you the character depth although it’s more fantasy than sci-fi. Crime urban fantacy: the Firebrand series by Helen Harper, she has to figure out her own murder in the first book. And maybe check out Jennifer estep she is very action packed
Pretty Girls (or really any other book) by Karin Slaughter
Kathy Reich’s series the show Bones was based on (Tempe Brennan series)
Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder series.
Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson and His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman
*American Elsewhere*, by Robert Jackson Bennett, is awesome. I won’t tell you the *real* genre because that would give away too much, but it reads like episodes of *Twin Peaks*, *LOST*, and *The X-Files*.
The female protagonist is relatable; she’s someone you can get behind. She’s not a sassy babe who ultimately needs a man to save her. Neither is she an unstoppable killing machine who can do nothing wrong. She’s written like a real person – basically good, but not without flaws.
This is a book I never wanted to end.
“A Memory Called Empire” by Arkady Martin. A sci-fi political thriller/ mystery so a bit more plot driven but still beautifully written.
Stories and Monkey Grip by Helen Garner
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
Never let me go
Klara and the sun
The mountain in the sea
– Most of Octavia Butlers books. My fav is probably Lilith’s Brood
– Meet Me In Another Life by Catriona Silvey
– Light From Uncommon Stars
– The Power by Naomi Alderman
– The Outside by Ada Hoffman
– The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson
– We Are Sattelites by Sarah Pinsker
The Rook by Daniel O’Malley
I just realized that most of the books I read have female protagonist
The Color Purple. Jane Eyre. Rebecca.
Severance by Ling Ma
Nightbitch by Rachel Yoder
Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin
Earthings by Sayaka Murata
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé
Oh boy! Let me comb through my bookshelf for a couple things I’m pretty sure won’t be duplicate recs.
*The Crimson Petal and The White* by Michel Faber
Back cover synopsis: Meet Sugar, a nineteen-year-old prostitute who yearns for escape to a better life. From the brothel of the terrifying Mrs. Castaway, she begins her ascent through society. Beginning with William Rackham, a perfume magnate whose lust for Sugar soon begins to smell like love, she meets a host of loveable, maddening, unforgettable characters as her social rise is overseen by assorted preening socialites, drunken journalists, untrustworthy servants, vile guttersnipes, and whores of all kinds.
This is a THICK book full of complex characters and I thought it was absolutely entrancing.
*Beautiful You*, *Damned*, and *Invisible Monsters* by Chuck Palahniuk. All female protags, probably more closely aligned with your genre preferences.
Do you like graphic novels? *Paper Girls* by Brian K. Vaughan, Cliff Chiang, Matt Wilson, and Jared K. Fletcher might be worth checking out. It’s firmly in the sci-fi category.
The Vanished Birds by Simon Jiminez
– “[The Devil’s Eye](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/3076046)” and “[Seeker](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/352777.Seeker)” by Jack McDevitt
– [“Annihilation”](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17934530-annihilation?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=AbCReIvNTV&rank=1) by Jeff VanderMeer
– “[Coraline](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17061.Coraline)” by Neil Gaiman
– “[To Be Taught, If Fortunate](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48657666-to-be-taught-if-fortunate)” By Becky Chambers
I think you’d probably really enjoy {{Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer}}. I’d argue it’s fairly literary, and is definitely character-focused (it’s really almost a character study).
Oh, and maybe {{Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro}}, too.
Bloody Rose by Nicholas Eames. It’s a fantasy book, but it has a female protagonist. And while you don’t have to read the first book Kings of the Wyld is fantastic.
What’s YA
I like Nora Roberts’s books in general for their strong female leads.
The circle trilogy
Angels Falls
In blood series (as J D Robb, bit of a pulp fiction crime thriller, but still I like it!)