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Books by WomenRecent fiction without the TRA!
Hey Everyone,
After a couple of depressing years in which almost every recently published book written by women that I purchased included some kind of trans pandering, I've been on wave of luck (is the tide turning?) and thought I'd share some blessedly tra-free recent fiction, and invite you all to share some of your own.
The Briar Club by Kate Quinn: my favorite, a twisty house murder mystery with multiple women's stories set in DC during the paranoia of the McCarthy era. Recipes included.
Weyward by Emilia Hart: three generations of wise women/witches persecuted in various ways in different eras. Really enjoyed it though a fair amount of domestic violence.
Night Will Find You by Julia Heaberlin: a psychological thriller that kept me turning pages.
Mania by Lionel Shriver: okay, I admit this obliquely references TRAs by being a glorious satire of the entire goalpost moving, double speak insanity, only using intelligence instead of sex as the subject of their mania.
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke: odd, dreamlike fantasy from author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: published in Polish in 2009 but translated into English in 2018, another unique and thought-provoking murder mystery.
Also going to plug my two favorite series: the Winternight Trilogy by Katherine Arden (starts with the Bear and the Nightingale) and the Strike series by Robert Galbraith aka JKR.
Mania by Lionel Shriver sounds right up my alley, love dystopian fiction, thanks for the recommendations.
I really enjoyed The Sunset Years of Agnes Sharp. It's a murder mystery with a group of seniors investigating and is remarkably free of any current-day nonsense.
I love Kate Quinn. The Briar Club is on my TBR list and I’ve not long read The Alice Network which is a fictionalised account of some incredible women who were spies during the First World War.
Christina Dalcher is also really good and massively pissed off the TRAs with Femlandia.
I’ll check out some of your other recommendations. I like the sound of a lot of these.
I love Kate Quinn too -- highly recommend Rose Code and Diamond Eye, if you haven't read them already, but Briar Club may be my favorite. Will have to check out Femlandia!
The Lost Bookshop, Evie Woods
The Hanging of Hettie Gale, Tess Burness
Spinning Silver, Naomi Novak
The Berry Pickers, Amanda Peters
Oooo great list!
I'll add First Lie Wins by Ashley Elton. Great heist/con thriller with a lil fun love story but no violence/gore and no explicit sex.
And I'll add The Lost Queen by Signe Pike. Entertaining AngloSaxon England, characters surrounding Arthur, I'm on the second in the trilogy. Some violence and war but not terrible on the female suffering scale so it makes my list.
Been wanting to read Weyward since a TRA booktuber I no longer follow was butthurt over it because ”not all women have a uterus or want kids!!!”
I really enjoyed Mania. Have added several of your reccs to my For Later library account. Thanks.
Ooh thank you for the recs! I just finished A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers and thought it was so entertaining, there wasn’t any TRA nonsense that I can remember. It’s about a (fictional) woman food critic/serial killer, reminiscent of American Psycho but IMO better (because anything by/about a woman is automatically better in my mind).
The Most Fun We Ever Had by Claire Lombardo was another good one, although it’s been a while since I read it, I don’t remember any TRA topics in that one either. It’s about the 4 adult daughters of a married-40-years couple, tells all their intertwining family stories and secrets; I really enjoyed that one when I read it. The characters were amazing and I felt so attached to them all by the end!
If I remember anything else I’ll update this comment!
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk: published in Polish in 2009 but translated into English in 2018, another unique and thought-provoking murder mystery.
I loved this book
My best reads of relatively newish books:
Circe by Madeline Miller
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (ok, this is not newish, but I'll recommend regardless)
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (not newish either, but what a nice break from all the doom and gloom)
Circe was awesome and there's a trend of other Greek mythology uptakes.