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Louanne Piccolo wrote: ↑24 Dec 2018, 03:48 Margaret Atwood, without a doubt!
She's a great writer with interesting plot ideas and an engaging voice.

Margaret Atwood has recently become one of my favourite authors. It's incredible how she is able to write stories that are relevant regardless of how long ago they were written. So far, my favourite books by her are Life Before Man and The Heart Goes Last

I honestly was going to say something on the lines of Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë. But thinking about it, I apparently have new women I admire and I look up to. Maya Angelou, for example, is my favorite go-to lately. I love her poems so, so much. I suggest even looking on youtube for her reciting her own poems. She really was a glorious woman.
A new author I like gifting to my female friends is Rupi Kaur. Her books are the perfect gift in my opinion: they are beautiful and entertaining.
I don't have to mention Sylvia Plath, do I?

Margaret Atwood - I especially loved The Handmaid's Tale and The Robber Bride.
Daphne du Maurier - I loved both Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel.
Simone St. James - Her books are paranormal/historical mysteries, many of them taking place in 1910s/1920s England.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Purple Hibiscus is very good, but Americanah is extraordinary.
Kate Morton - My favorite of hers is The Secret Keeper.

Sarah J. Maas. She has 2 series currently. Both of witch are captivating and New York Times best selling. Her books have strong female leads as well

VOX by Christina Dalcher. With the tagline "Silence can be deafening", it's an amazing piece of literature. In America, women are silenced. Only allowed to speak 100 words a day, scientist Jean McClellan has lost her bank account, passport and job... just because she is female. Her young daughter has never been allowed to read or write, she must sit quietly in school while her brothers are free to converse with their father at the dinner table.

The Power by Naomi Alderman. I heard the hype about this book and wondered how great it could really be. But I was shocked, it's amazing! This is like the antagonist to the VOX book. Women hold all the power and extraordinary physical strength: they can electrocute using just their fingertips, they can even kill. What happens when oppressed women are finally given power over their male counterparts?

Both of the books mentioned above handle tough political and religious discord perfectly. The best books I have read so far in my life.

A book that has stayed with me for years is Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson is poignant and painful. A high school student is sexually assaulted, she calls the police but runs home in shock. Her peers ostracize her for calling the cops. She remains in silence and watches as her world collapses around her. The most heartbreaking part about this book is that similar things happen every single day. It is a must read for anyone.

Hey! I'm always plugging Lydia Davis' work. If you like experimental writing, her short pieces are incredible. Kind of oddball, often humorous, always incisive observations, rather than stories. She's also written a few longer stories and a novel called The End of the Story , which looks at memory in a very clever way.

Kate Atkinson is one of my favourite authors of the moment, her work is as compulsively readable as a thriller yet it is very literary, and really excellent writing, often relating to WWI. Life After Life is fantastic. I'm about to read her new one, Transcription .

J.K. Rowling is, of course, a default favorite. Her Harry Potter series is ground-breaking. Then I also like Nicola Yoon (The Sun is also A Star) because her characters are usually diverse.

What a great question! I'm sure you've already completed and past that class requirement, but because it's such a great question, for the sake of those who would like to read women authors, I would suggest:

Helene Hanff's 84, Charing Cross Road
Dorothy Parker
Emily Dickinson (Is poetry all right?)
Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women She lived 1759-1797.

The best female writers of color that I could recommend: Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison.

I have recently finished reading a book by Holly Jackson called A good girls guide to murder and if you like a murder-mystery then this book is for you. It is so addictive and hard to stop reading and if I’m honest it’s the best book I have read so far so I would highly recommend reading her book.

Sarah J Mass is and forever will be my favorite author. Anytime she publishes a new book, I buy it before even reading the back because I know it will be spectacular. Her stories are the perfect blend of fantasy, suspense, romance, humor, and heart. I cannot recommend her enough!!!

The more famous ones have already been mentioned: Jane Austen, JK Rowling, Virginia Woolf, Daphne Du Maurier, Agatha Christie....

I'll add:
Erin Morgenstern (her fantasy novel "The Night Circus" is AMAZING)
LM Montgomery ("Anne of Green Gables" anyone?)
Katherine Patterson (she will make you cry and cry and cry)

I've only read one book by each author, but Tathea by Anne Perry and Havah by Tosca Lee were both an incredible adventure and journey into the soul all at once. They are newer authors, definitely from the last thirty to fifty years or so.

If you are interested in reading American gothic stories, I would highly recommend Shirley Jackson. You may be familiar with some of her works such as the Haunting of Hill House(which is now a Netflix show) and We Have Always Lived In the Castle. Both books are great mix of mystery and horror. She has also written The Lottery and several other stories which are fabulous.

If you are interested in the authors of the female sex, I can recommend Lionel Shriver. Sounds like a male name, right? Strategically, she changed her name from Margaret to Lionel at age 16 because she wanted to distance herself from the "girl with the pink ribbons in her hair" as she felt was implied by the name Margaret. The tone of her writing isn't masculine or feminine but rather, blunt, humorous and factual. It doesn't sound too romantic, yet, somehow she retains the ability to hit on some hard and refreshing truths of life while using a lens always relevant to our modern age. I'm currently reading The Mandibles [A Family 2029 - 2047] published in 2016. Economically, it's eerily relevant to our current COVID-19 situation and provides in-depth examples of the challenges of many social classes, using the characters of one family.