Brilliant books by women to read now

As the sole mortal in a family of gods, Medusa begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt, and the only one who lives with an urgency that her family will never know. Then, when the sea god Poseidon commits an unforgivable act in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can – and Medusa is changed forever. Writhing snakes replace her hair, and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. Unable to control her new power, she is condemned to a life of shadows and darkness. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest. At last, Medusa's story is told.

This powerful and symphonic vision of America's past and present weaves three stories together with recurring notes and deepening themes. In 1893, New York is part of the Free States, and a gentle young member of a privileged family falls for a charismatic and impoverished music teacher. In 1993, Manhattan is being swept by the AIDS epidemic, and a young Hawaiian man with a wealthy older partner must hide his difficult family background. And in 2093, in a world where plague and totalitarian rule is rife, a young woman tries to solve the mystery of her husband's disappearance. 

A gripping mystery set between Australia and London, Homecoming is the much-anticipated new novel by Kate Morton. When 89-year-old Nora's health takes an unexpected turn for the worse, Jess boards the first plane out of London, her home of twenty years, to be by her grandmother's bedside in Sydney. Soon, she discovers that the usually stoic Nora has been hiding a family secret and vows to get to the heart of the mystery of what happened on a fateful Christmas Eve sixty years before. 

Vanity Fair meets Succession as Becky Sharp works her way up the journalistic greasy pole in nineties tabloid-era London. Scoop after scoop, Becky's downfall looms as she becomes more and more involved in every scandal her newspaper publishes and cares less and less about the lives she ruins in the process. A sharply intelligent and funny interrogation of how far society has really come since Thackeray's nineteenth-century Becky Sharp.

Jessica Jackson’s shock diagnosis of breast cancer turns her life completely upside down. But then she meets fellow patient Annabel, whose cancer is incurable. Together, the two women set out to make every day count. Frank, funny and poignant, Single Bald Female will leave you appreciating life and friendship with the fullest heart.

When Jess first meets Josh at their Ivy League college she dislikes him immediately: an entitled guy in chinos, ready to take over the world, unable to accept that life might be easier for him because he's white, while Jess is almost always the only Black woman in their class. But as a tempestuous friendship turns into an electrifying romance that shocks them both, Jess begins to question who she is and what she’s really willing to compromise. Can love really be enough? This hugely funny and deeply moving love story offers no easy answers.

Based on a real case from the 1920s, Other Women tells the story of Beatrice, one of the thousands of nameless and invisible unmarried women trying to make lives for themselves after the First World War, and Kate, the wife of the man Beatrice has fallen in love with. When fantasy and obsession turns to murder, two women who should never have met are connected forever.

Translated by Jamie Chang

Filled with anger, confusion and disappointment when her thirty-something daughter brings her girlfriend home, a mother finds this new definition of family impossible to accept. The dynamics of mother-daughter relationships are placed under the spotlight in this sharp and moving examination of love in all its forms, translated from the original Korean. 

An exiled Englishman in the early twentieth century, a writer trapped far from home in the future and a girl destined to die too young in the present day, each glimpse a world that is not their own, and a time-traveler is sent back from the 2400s to investigate. Emily St. John Mandel explores the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, and plays with the very line along which time should run in this, her sixth novel.

The latest book in Ann Cleeves' bestselling Vera Stanhope series. Fifty years ago, a group of teenagers spent a weekend on Holy Island. They still return every five years to celebrate their friendship, and remember a friend they once lost to the rising waters of the causeway. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before could have led to murder then, and now . . .

‘Savage, heartbreaking, beautiful and chilling. Fiona Cummins rips up the rule book in this quite brilliant story of love and loss, murder and redemption’ Chris Whitaker

It’s been a long time since the Hardwicke family has been on holiday. But their serene trip is about to be interrupted. When DC Saul Anguish is called to investigate the shooting of an ex-police officer, he quickly discovers that this is the first in a string of killings by Missy and Fox, a damaged young couple hell-bent on infamy, their love story etched in blood. And the paths of the Hardwickes and the deadly couple are about to collide. When Saul and his forensic linguist partner, Blue, arrive on the scene, they witness the unthinkable: a mother forced to make an impossible choice.