The best books about extraordinary women

American settler Cy Bellman leaves his daughter Bess to search for giant monsters in a Kentucky swamp.

It’s a brilliant story of a man’s obsession. But it’s Bess who fascinates.  While others doubt Bellman’s sanity, Bess believes in him. Young and vulnerable, when danger strikes, she’s as fierce as the wilderness her father faces.

She’s left to grow up in the care of an indifferent aunt. When Bess is touched inappropriately by the librarian, the girl takes evasive action. When the yard hand almost rapes her, she fights back, then with a snap, regains her composure to deal with a shocking death.

Davies uses words economically and poetically: they leave me breathless. Though short, the book’s an epic.

Both Irene and Clare are married to successful men. But that aside, these mixed-race friends from childhood deal with the racism of early 20th century New York differently.

While both can ‘pass’ as white, Irene lives within her Harlem community while Clare wants to straddle both worlds. She coerces Irene into facilitating a double life.

I’ve no personal experience of ‘passing’ so learnt a lot about the issues the women grappled with; opportunity verses deception, the quest for self-identify and self-worth in a racist rule-bound society, the need to belong, and how that’s negotiated.

In the shocking final scene, we are left to reach our own conclusion of what it takes to survive. 

We all have a bit of Olive Kitteridge in us.

The book is about an indomitable retired New England school teacher who has lived by the rules and done what was expected of her until midlife when she starts to wake up. Perhaps it was being taken as a hostage or meeting a woman with anorexia and realising they are both ‘starving’. Olive’s world tilts.

She struggles to make sense of her life, suffers regret, and feels she’s failed. Strout employs different characters to tell stories; in some, Olive plays only a tiny part. But the technique deepens our appreciation that beneath her cool exterior beats a big heart.

Her story is a plea for pursuing the humanity at the centre of us all. 

Mary Anning was a gifted fossil hunter. She found evidence of previously undiscovered giant marine reptiles in the Lyme Regis cliffs. But being uneducated, she was ignored by the scientific male-dominated world of the 19th century.

The novel, based on a true story, describes Mary’s battle to be believed. She developed a supportive relationship with Elizabeth Philpot, a middle-class woman who helped her negotiate the challenges she faced.

I found this beautifully paced story inspiring. Despite the era with its fixed ideas of gender and class, Mary had the temerity and dogged self-belief to survive and succeed.

You can’t approve of Ursula Kuczynski, codename ‘Sonya’.

She was a spymaster, bomb-maker, and secret agent for the Soviet Union. Her work helped the Soviets build the atom bomb. But you can’t help being intrigued by this devoted wife and mother-of-three who rode her bicycle across the countryside to gather scientific information and used her children’s teddies to smuggle radio parts.

Ursula’s story, told by Macintyre in forensic, referenced detail, is astonishing. This cool, clever woman fooled everyone. I’m fascinated by the photographs, too; one of her cuddled up with her children in the garden, another of her in Berlin selling communist literature from a book barrow. They added to the feeling of alarm; so much went on in clear view.