Women's History Month: Recommended Reads—and More

Quicklinks: Adult Fiction | Adult Nonfiction | Music | Movies | Teen Fiction | Kids Fiction | Kids Nonfiction

Adult Fiction

Gone Girl: A Novel
By Gillian Flynn
On the morning of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick’s wife, Amy, suddenly disappears. The police immediately suspect Nick. Amy’s friends reveal that she was afraid of him, that she kept secrets from him. He swears it isn’t true. A police examination of his computer shows strange searches. He says they aren’t his. And then there are the persistent calls on his mobile phone. So what really did happen to Nick’s beautiful wife?
Audiobook | eAudiobook | eBook

NW
By Zadie Smith
Four Londoners—Leah, Natalie, Felix and Nathan—try to make adult lives outside of Caldwell, the council estate of their childhood. From private houses to public parks, at work and at play, their London is a complicated place, as beautiful as it is brutal, where the thoroughfares hide the back alleys and taking the high road can sometimes lead you to a dead end.
Audiobook

The Round House
By Louise Erdrich
Erdrich continues the trilogy begun with The Plague of Doves with the story of an Ojibwe woman named Geraldine Coutts who is ruthlessly attacked one summer morning in 1988. Because she refuses to speak about the event, her husband, Bazil, and their 13-year-old son, Joe, try to answer the most basic questions, e.g., was the attacker Indian or white? Frustrated, Joe rounds up three friends and hunts for the truth himself.
Audiobook

Adult Nonfiction

30 Things Every Woman Should Have and Should Know by the Time She’s 30
By Pamela Redmond Satran and the editors of Glamour
Featuring advice, wisdom and observations from an array of prominent and beloved women, 30 Things is an essential guide for women on the brink of 30—and for those who are already there!

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
By Katherine Boo
From Pulitzer Prize winner Katherine Boo, a landmark work of narrative nonfiction that tells the dramatic and sometimes heartbreaking story of families striving toward a better life in one of the 21st century’s great, unequal cities.
Audiobook | eAudiobook | eBook

Half the Sky: Turning Oppression to Opportunity for Women Worldwide
By Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
With Pulitzer Prize winners Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn as our guides, we undertake an odyssey through Africa and Asia to meet the extraordinary women struggling there, among them a Cambodian teenager sold into sex slavery and an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth. Drawing on the breadth of their combined reporting experience, Kristof and WuDunn depict our world with anger, sadness, clarity and, ultimately, hope.
Audiobook | eAudiobook | eBook

How to Be a Woman
By Caitlin Moran
Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women’s lives with laugh-out-loud funny scenes from her own, from the riot of adolescence to her development as a writer, wife and mother.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail
By Cheryl Strayed
A powerful, blazingly honest, inspiring memoir: the story of a 1,100-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.
Audiobook | eBook

Music

1991
By Azealia Banks

The Band Perry: Piano, Vocal, Guitar
By The Band Perry

Banga
By Patti Smith

Born to Die
By Lana del Rey

Fantasies
By Metric

Halcyon
By Ellie Goulding

Master of My Make-Believe
By Santigold

Not Your Kind of People
By Garbage

Sale el Sol
By Shakira

Stronger
By Kelly Clarkson

Movies

The Iron Lady
Directed by Phyllida Lloyd
2012
A surprising and intimate portrait of Margaret Thatcher, the first and only female prime minister of the United Kingdom. One of the 20th century’s most famous and influential women, Thatcher came from nowhere to smash through barriers of gender and class and be heard in a male-dominated world.

The Stoning of Soraya M.
Directed by Cyrus Nowrasteh
2010
When a journalist is stranded in her remote village, Zahra takes a bold chance to reveal what the villagers will stop at nothing to keep hidden. Thus begins the remarkable story of what happened to Soraya, a kind-spirited woman whose bad marriage leads her cruel, divorce-seeking husband to trump up false charges of infidelity, which carry an unimaginable penalty.

Teen Fiction

Code Name Verity
By Elizabeth Wein
In 1943, a British fighter plane crashes in Nazi-occupied France and the survivor tells a tale of friendship, war, espionage and great courage as she relates what she must to survive while keeping secret all that she can.

Divergent
By Veronica Roth
In a future Chicago, 16-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.
eAudiobook | eBook

The Fault in Our Stars
By John Green
Sixteen-year-old Hazel, a stage IV thyroid cancer patient, has accepted her terminal diagnosis until a chance meeting with a boy at a cancer support group forces her to re-examine her perspective on love, loss and life.

Kids Fiction

Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls Series: Moving Day, Book 1
By Meg Cabot
Scholastic, 2008 (Ages 8 and up)
When 9-year-old Allie Finkle’s parents announce that the family is moving, Allie’s sure her life is over. She has to move to a scary new house, change schools and leave her precious geode collection behind. With a room she’s half-scared to go into, the burden of being “the new girl,” and her old friends a half hour away, how will Allie ever learn to fit in???
Audiobook

Close to Famous
By Joan Bauer
Viking, 2012 (Ages 10 and up)
Twelve-year-old Foster McFee and her mother escape from her mother’s abusive boyfriend and end up in the small town of Culpepper, W.Va., where they use their strengths and challenge themselves to build a new life with the help of the friends they make there.
eBook

Crafty Chloe
By Kelly S. DePucchio, illustrated by Heather Ross
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012 (Ages 4 and up)
Chloe is very good at sewing and crafts, and when her best friend’s birthday approaches, she creates a fabulous gift but also saves the day for a classmate who had been unkind to her.

Me—Jane
By Patrick McDonnell
Little, Brown, 2011 (Ages 3–6)
Holding her stuffed toy chimpanzee, young Jane Goodall observes nature, reads Tarzan books and dreams of living in Africa and helping animals. Includes biographical information on the prominent zoologist.
Audiobook

Olivia and the Fairy Princesses
By Ian Falconer
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2012 (Ages 3 and up)
Olivia is having an identity crisis! There are too many ruffly, sparkly princesses around these days, and Olivia has had quite enough. She needs to stand out! She has to be special! What will she be? Join Olivia on a hilarious quest for individuality in this latest book in the Olivia series, and rest assured, you won’t find THIS pig in pink.
Spanish

Kids Nonfiction

Almost Astronauts: The True Story of the “Mercury 13” Women
By Tanya Lee Stone
Candlewick Press, 2009 (Ages 10 and up)
Here is the tale of 13 women who proved that they were not only as tough as the toughest man but also brave enough to challenge the government. But even though the Mercury 13 women did not make it into space, they did not lose, for their example empowered young women to take their place in the sky, piloting jets and commanding space capsules.

Amelia to Zora: Twenty-Six Women Who Changed the World
By Cynthia Chin-Lee, illustrated by Megan Halsey and Sean Addy
Charlesbridge, 2005 (Ages 8 and up)
Twenty-six amazing women; 26 amazing stories. From Amelia Earhart, pilot and adventurer, to Zora Neale Hurston, writer and anthropologist, learn about the hardships and triumphs that inspired each woman to change the world around her.

Annie and Helen
By Deborah Hopkinson
Schwartz & Wade Books, 2012 (Ages 4 and up)
Hopkinson describes the relationship between Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, and includes excerpts from letters written by Annie about her work with Helen.

Jane Addams: Champion of Democracy
By Judith Bloom Fradin and Dennis Brindell Fradin
Clarion Books, 2006 (Ages 10 and up)
Although many people labeled her “unpatriotic” for her pacifist activities, Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 and, at the time of her death, was one of the most respected and admired women in the world.

Our Eleanor: A Scrapbook Look at Eleanor Roosevelt’s Remarkable Life
By Candace Fleming
Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2005 (Ages 10 and up)
From securing safe, low-cost housing for Kentucky’s poor, to helping her grandchildren hang a tire swing on the White House’s south lawn, to representing America as the first female delegate to the United Nations, Eleanor rarely kept a second of her life for herself—and she wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Rosa
Written by Nikki Giovanni, illustrated by Bryan Collier
Henry Holt, 2005 (Ages 4 and up)
An inspiring account of an event that shaped American history. Fifty years after her refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus, Rosa Parks is still one of the most important figures in the American civil rights movement. This picture-book tribute to Parks is a celebration of her courageous action and the events that followed.

Rosie the Riveter
By Christine Petersen
Children’s Press, 2005 (Ages 9 and up)
A look at the role of women in the United States as they replaced men in defense plants, factories and offices during the Second World War.

What To Do About Alice?: How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy!
By Barbara Kerley, illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham
Scholastic, 2008 (Ages 7 and up)
A witty and stylish biography of a maverick American heroine—the outspoken, irresistible daughter of Teddy Roosevelt.