Everywhere you look today, women are kicking butt: blazing trails, breaking records, shattering glass ceilings and outdated preconceptions.
These badass women are raising up more badass women, whether in their own families as they read stories to their daughters, or in the workplace as they lend a helping hand to other women on the career ladder—and if there’s anything such a diverse and extraordinary group of modern women has in common, it’s a shared delight in seeing women like them on the screen and on the page as women’s stories claim the spotlight.
Here are eight of my favorite novels written about badass women, by badass women, for badass women…
1. DRAGON SPRINGS ROAD by Janie Chang
A fierce, elegant coming of age tale starring an orphaned Eurasian girl struggling to find her place in the world among the tumultuous shifting tides of the early Chinese republic. Jialing makes for a wonderfully courageous heroine, fighting for an education, a job, a husband, anything that will give her a future, and continually having doors slammed in her face—yet never giving up.
2. MY DEAR HAMILTON by Stephanie Dray & Laura Kamoie
Eliza Hamilton may have erased herself from the narrative in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s version, but the steel-spined Founding Mother gets glorious center stage in this novel. Hamilton called her “the best of wives and the best of women” but she’s so much more: a courageous patriot in petticoats whose hand helped steer the ship of the American experiment right from the beginning.
3. MEXICAN GOTHIC by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Bluebeard’s Castle meets Rebecca as a Mexico City heiress goes to rescue her beloved cousin from a brooding husband, his isolated mountain estate, and his increasingly creepy family. The sparkling Noemí might at first seem like just another privileged debutante in a fluffy dress, but she rides to the rescue with all the verve and courage of a knight in shining armor in this deliciously creepy gothic tale.
4. SONG OF THE LIONESS by Tamora Pierce
Speaking of knights, who else grew up idolizing Tamora Pierce’s fantasy series about a lady knight? It’s the story for every little girl who wanted to play the sword-swinging rescuer instead of the princess waiting to be rescued, and every woman who yearned to be Brienne of Tarth in “Game of Thrones.” Red-haired Alanna is just ten when she decides to disguise herself as a boy for knight’s training in the fantasy world of Tortall, and she grows into a formidable champion: never the biggest, never the strongest, but always the bravest in a fight.
5. YELLOW WIFE by Sadeqa Johnson
Pheby Brown, enslaved on a Virginia plantation, is promised freedom on her eighteenth birthday, but a cruel twist of fate lands her instead in the Devil’s Half Acre, a notorious slave jail whose master intends to make Pheby his “yellow wife.” Pheby fights against the unimaginable, trying to secure freedom for herself and eventually her children, never giving up her dreams or her innate sense of self-worth. A searing story with an unforgettable woman at its heart.
6. AND THEY CALLED IT CAMELOT by Stephanie Thornton
“Badass” doesn’t always mean swinging a sword—it can also mean endurance, grit, and grace under pressure. No one exemplified grace under pressure like Jackie Kennedy, who springs to life in Thornton’s delicious biopic novel—not just Jackie the First Lady, but Jackie the survivor who steps out from behind the men in her life to become the heroine of her own story.
7. JANE DOE by Victoria Helen Stone
A darkly hilarious tale of deliciously exacted revenge, as a frank, self-aware young sociopath decides to seduce, take down, and utterly ruin the emotionally-abusive boyfriend who drove her best friend to suicide. Jane is a fabulous heroine, ferociously loyal and utterly merciless as she coolly takes down the most toxic, self-centered misogynist any woman ever had the misfortune to date.
8.THE WIDOWS OF MALABAR HILL by Sujata Massey
Perveen Mistry is a trailblazing badass in a sari: Oxford-educated daughter of a Bombay solicitor, one of the first female lawyers in 1920s India, and sometime-sleuth. Perveen juggles family expectations, her own ambitions for the future, and a painful past, but never hesitates to investigate on behalf of her female clients when she sees them subjected to injustice. The first in a marvelous mystery series.
Learn more about Kate Quinn’s new book, The Rose Code, available now!
The Rose Code is everything you love about an unputdownable novel and more. In her signature fashion, Kate Quinn expertly and vividly breaks wide open the clandestine world of Bletchley Park’s remarkable codebreakers. Filled with romance and revenge, spies and secrets, glamour and grit, The Rose Code is an unforgettable war story to be sure, but also a tale of friendship, fortitude, and forgiveness.
