I am an award-winning New Zealand-born Canadian author with a love of fairy tales and female empowerment. I grew up reading books about boys for boys and found it hard to find a strong female heroine I could relate to. I wrote Contest of Queens, Queen's Catacombs, and Queendom Come to give young readers that character I so longed for as a child and set the series in a world where gender norms are reversed to expose some of the silly gender norms we adhere to in our own lives. I hope to make my readers think while also shining a little more kindness into their lives.
In Alderman’s novel, young women get the power to electrocute others by touch overnight, and the young women are then able to awaken this power in the older women.
In a very short space of time, the world’s power structure is flipped on its head as women realize that they no longer have to fear nor submit to the strength of men.
The novel follows multiple characters in different facets of society, we see these changes evolve through the eyes of a political figure, a mob boss’s daughter, a troubled teen who founds a new religion, a handsome male reporter, and many others.
I loved the questions her novel raised in me about the true nature of power and how so many acts we normalize as gender-based, have nothing to do with gender at all and everything to do with power dynamics between the strong and the weak.
This book was wildly influential when I was writing the first book in my series: Contest of Queens. As I was writing a story set in a matriarchy, there were a few elements to this that I shied away from as I thought it would alienate readers.
But reading this novel emphasised that I hadn’t pushed the envelope enough, and inspired me to dig much deeper into the “what ifs” of a woman-run world.
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017
'Electrifying' Margaret Atwood
'A big, page-turning, thought-provoking thriller' Guardian
----------------------------------
All over the world women are discovering they have the power. With a flick of the fingers they can inflict terrible pain - even death. Suddenly, every man on the planet finds they've lost control.
The Day of the Girls has arrived - but where will it end?
----------------------------------
'The Hunger Games crossed with The Handmaid's Tale' Cosmopolitan
'I loved it; it was visceral, provocative and curiously pertinent . . . The story has stayed…
Another huge influence on my series, this book follows a female guard as she overcomes baddies and her own social anxiety.
I loved the portrayal of a strong female lead who wasn’t an emotionless tank. She had her own limitations, she upheld positive relationships with her friends, she cared, she was vulnerable, and she still got the job done. When writing my own women-led military, I needed a reason why men would be barred from serving.
This novel had female guards working in pairs and I loved this idea. Women working together to topple bigger, stronger criminals by outmaneuvering their foes became the focus of my military.
A New York Times bestseller from the fantasy author who is legend herself: TAMORA PIERCE. In this first book in the Beka Cooper Trilogy, Beka uses her unique magic and street smarts to crack the kingdom's worst cases!
Keep out of the way. Obey all orders. Get killed on your own time.
Beka Cooper is one of the newest trainees in the Provost's Guard. As a rookie—known as a Puppy—she's assigned to the realm's toughest district: the Lower City. It should be a death sentence. The Lower City is filled with pickpockets who are fast as lightning, murderers stalking the…
Until I read this book, I hadn’t read a coming-of-age story that focused on womanhood (it would be a few more years until I read Jane Eyre). I don’t think I realized all of the nuanced experiences that reading books about boys becoming men obviously couldn’t explore.
This book was like a lightning strike through my soul, and reading about a woman growing up and trying to make a name for herself in a male-oriented field (science), really exposed all of the invisible barriers women face.
She is raised with every opportunity, and yet barred from entering many scientific fields simply because of her sex. Finding a loophole in the field of botany, she is able to flourish. Together with her attempts to navigate her relationships with the women and men in her life, it is just such an important book.
_______________
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
_______________
'Quite simply one of the best novels I have read in years' - Elizabeth Day, Observer
'Charming ... extensively researched, compellingly readable' - Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph
'Sumptuous ... Gilbert's prose is by turns flinty, funny, and incandescent' - New Yorker
_______________
A captivating story of botany, exploration and desire, by the multimillion copy bestselling author of Eat Pray Love
Everything about life intrigues Alma Whittaker. Her passion for botany leads her far from home, from London to Peru to Tahiti, in pursuit of…
This one I read when I was much younger and think about often.
Georgia, a tomboy with an awful stepbrother and a serious lack of parental support, makes friends with an old man in an antique store who gives her the key to traveling to another world.
What sticks with me most about this book is that she spends the majority of it ashamed of her own skin, hiding who she is, dressing as a boy, and shrinking from who she truly is. Throughout the course of the novel, she finds her voice, discovers her strength, and claims the beauty what she has to offer the world.
This was such an important book when I was a teenager, as I felt incredibly uncomfortable in my rapidly changing body. To read about a girl who earns her own love was truly empowering.
Sequel to City of Masks, the setting is again Talia, the parallel world very similar to 16th-century Italy, but the main character in this book is Georgia - who has a love of horses. She is desperate to buy a little, dusty winged horse that has appeared in a local antique shop. This tiny, winged horse proves to be the talisman that transports Georgia right into the rivalries and the high-octane excitement of the hugely competitive Stellata horse race. Mary Hoffman proved herself a mistress of a narrative tour-de-force with City of Masks and this sequel will not disappoint. Fans…
In the era of Bridgerton and in the wake of 2005’s Pride and Prejudice film, my heart has been swallowed whole by regency era period pieces.
This novel has the best banter I have ever read. The female lead, Abigail, considers herself a spinster (in her *gasp* late twenties) and thus past the age of romance. She resigns herself to caring for her very high-maintenance relatives. Until she meets Mr. Calverleigh.
She is so determined to loathe him, but can’t help but be charmed by his conversation. I loved watching this independent woman learn to put herself first and reluctantly fall in love with the last person she expected.
He had nothing to recommend him but his smile. Miss Wendover's efforts to detach her niece from a fortune-hunter are complicated by the arrival in Bath of Miss Caverleigh.
For those who enjoy fantasy adventure, the Faerie Tales from the White Forest series offers a new twist on the traditional faerie tales so loved by young readers.
From devastating curses to death-defying quests, Brigitta and her growing collective of misfit friends face greater and greater challenges when destiny calls upon them to “make the balance right again” after the Great World Cry has left their world in elemental chaos.
Brigitta wished she had paid more attention to her Auntie Ferna's lessons. Being able to string a thunder-bug symphony wasn't going to help them now. She didn't know exactly what would happen when the Hourglass ran out, since no living faerie knew a time when the Hourglass didn't protect the forest . . . But even though she couldn't remember the details, she did know that without the Hourglass there would be no White Forest . . . A charming middle-grade fantasy series, "Faerie Tales from the White Forest" watches the journey…
Winning the crown was just the beginning. Jacs, now the rightful Queen of Frea, seems to be Queen in title alone. She scrambles to learn the customs and traditions of a Realm she had only read about in books. The Council of Four have her firmly under their thumb, and their ideas for the Queendom are oppressive and outdated. Their knowledge of her mother and Master Leschi’s whereabouts is the only leverage they need to make the new Queen dance to their tune.
Jacs is determined to find those who were taken from her and do what’s right for her Queendom. But in her search for answers, Jacs uncovers a much darker truth from the Queendom’s past that will forever change its future.
11,000+ authors have recommended their favorite books and what they love about them.
Browse their picks for the best books about
dystopian,
Regency,
and
police.