Classic or Best-Selling books by Women Authors (20th & 21st Century)

1900 – To Have and To Hold by Mary Johnston

1904 – Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm by Kate Douglas Wiggin

1905 – The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

1911 – Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

1925 – Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

1927 – To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

1928 – The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall

1930 – Cimarron by Edna Ferber

1931 – Back Street by Fannie Hurst

1931 – The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

1934 – The Children’s Hour by Lillian Hellman

1934 – Mary Poppins by Pamela L. Travers

1936 – Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

1938 – Out of Africa by Isak Dinesen

1938 – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

1938 – The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

1939 – And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie

1939 – The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen

1940 – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

1946 – The Snake Pit by Mary Jane Ward

1947 – Gentlemen’s Agreement by Laura Z. Hobson

1949 – The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir

1952 – Giant by Edna Ferber

1952 – Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor

1954 – Under the Net by Iris Murdoch

1955 – A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor

1956 – Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

1957 – Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

1958 – The Best of Everything by Rona Jaffe

1959 – The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

1959 – Toys in the Attic by Lillian Hellman

1960 – To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

1961 – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

1962 – The Group by Mary McCarthy

1962 – Sex and the Single Girl by Helen Gurley Brown

1962 – Ship of Fools by Katherine Ann Porter

1963 – The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

1963 – The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan

1964 – I Never Promised You a Rose Garden by Joanne Greenberg

1966 – Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann

1967 – The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton

1967 – Diary of a Mad Housewife by Sue Kaufman

1970 – The Female Eunuch by Germaine Greer

1970 – I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

1970 – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

1972 – Captains and the Kings by Taylor Caldwell

1972 – The Optimist’s Daughter by Eudora Welty

1972 – Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler

1973 – Fear of Flying by Erica Jong

1973 – Going Home by Danielle Steel

1975 – Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner

1976 – Ordinary People by Judith Guest

1976 – The Grass is Always Greener Over the Septic Tank by Erma Bombeck

1977 – The Women’s Room by Marilyn French

1978 – Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

1978 – Scruples by Judith Krantz

1980 – The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel

1980 – Princess Daisy by Judith Krantz

1982 – The Color Purple by Alice Walker

1982 – The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende

1982 – Mistral’s Daughter by Judith Krantz

1982 – The Women of Brewster Place by Gloria Naylor

1983 – Heartburn by Nora Ephron

1983 – Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins

1983 – The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon

1985 – The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

1987 – Beloved by Toni Morrison

1987 – Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg

1988 – The Queen of the Damned by Anne Rice

1989 – The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan

1989 – Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

1990 – The Plains of Passage by Jean M. Auel

1992 – Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates

1992 – Sex, Art and American Culture: Essays by Camille Paglia

1992 – The Volcano Lover by Susan Sontag

1993 – The Giver by Lois Lowry

1993 – The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

1993 – The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields

1996 – Bridget Jone’s Diary by Helen Fielding

1996 – Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells

1997 – Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling

1997 – Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell

1998 – The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

1999 – Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson

2000 – Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling

2002 – City of the Beasts by Isabel Allende

2002 – The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold

2002 – The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

2004 – Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

2005 – Toxic Bachelors by Danielle Steel

2005 – Predator by Patricia Cornwell

2005 – Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

2006 – Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

2007 – Blood Brothers by Nora Roberts

2008 – Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich

2008 – The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer

2009 – Bad Mother by Ayelet Waldman

2009 – The Help by Kathryn Stockett

 

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