To celebrate Women’s History Month, we’re sharing 16 books based on real women, past and present. From the women of Ancient Egypt to pioneering women of medicine and strong political figures, this list of books to read for Women’s History Month has something for every type of reader to enjoy!
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Synopsis: In 1936, Charlotte Cross is offered a coveted spot on an archaeological dig in Egypt. She makes the discovery of a lifetime, but tragedy strikes and casts a dark shadow on that time in her life.
Over 40 years later, 19 year old Annie Jenkins lands her dream job helping prepare for the Met Gala in New York City. When her team borrows some Egyptian artifacts from the museum for the show, her path crosses with the Met’s associate curator, Charlotte.
Disaster strikes when one of the artifacts is stolen the night of the Gala. Charlotte and Annie unite to track down the artifact which leads them to the one place Charlotte swore she’d never revisit.
The Woman Behind The Book: Large portions of this book center around the life of Hatshepsut, who was one of three women who became pharaoh during Ancient Egypt’s 3,000 year history. Hatshepsut’s name is changed to Hathorkare in the book, but the author explains at the end how closely Hathorkare’s story mimics that of Hatshepsut.
If you’d like to see some of the real life places mentioned in the book, check out our post on UNESCO Sites That Celebrate The Women of Ancient Egypt.
Synopsis: The newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of World War One.
Meanwhile, hundreds of girls work amidst the glowing dust of the radium-dial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe, making them light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive―until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.
The Women Behind The Book: The Radium Girls were real women who suffered medical tragedies from working long hours with radium. They would leave their jobs each night glowing from the poisonous chemical covering their skin and clothes. While this at first seemed magical, they slowly learned that it was deadly. The companies they worked for downplayed their health problems and tried to sweep the horrors they faced under the rug. The determination and resilience of these women revolutionized workplace safety.
Synopsis: Craig Brown is of the impression that most biographies about Queen Elizabeth II are… boring. In his own biography of Britain’s longest reigning monarch, Brown’s goal is to shine a light on the more interesting and lesser known tidbits of her life. The non-traditional approach of this biography makes it a fast read that is tabloid-esque and will have you laughing out loud.
Synopsis: Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and death, crime and debacle that unfolds in the close-knit community.
Months earlier, Martha documented the details of an alleged rape committed by two of the town’s most respected gentlemen—one of whom has now been found dead in the ice. But when a local physician undermines her conclusion, declaring the death to be an accident, Martha is forced to investigate the shocking murder on her own.
As the trial nears, and whispers and prejudices mount, Martha doggedly pursues the truth. Her diary soon lands at the center of the scandal, implicating those she loves, and compelling Martha to decide where her own loyalties lie.
The Woman Behind The Book: Martha Ballard was a real midwife who is credited with delivering over 1,000 babies in the 1700s without losing any of the mothers. Her diary has provided insight into the medical practices of the time and the day to day life of colonial frontier women.
Synopsis: Alice Wright is excited about leaving her stifling life in England to marry a handsome American, named American Bennett Van Cleve. But the small town in Kentucky where she moves to is equally as claustrophobic and living with an overbearing father-in-law isn’t exactly the married life she had in mind.
So when there’s a call for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt’s new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The heroic traveling librarians refuse to be cowed by men or by convention. And though they face all kinds of dangers, they’re committed to their job: bringing books to people who have never had any, arming them with facts that will change their lives.
The Women Behind The Book: The Pack Horse Library Project was a real project in Kentucky that delivered books to remote Appalachian areas between 1935 and 1943. The project helped employ around 200 people (a large number of them being women) and delivered books to around 100,000 Kentucky residents.
If being a horseback librarian sounds like your dream job, check out our Books page for more reading recommendations!
Synopsis: In this autobiography, Malala Yousafzai tells the harrowing tale of how the Taliban took control of her region of Pakistan when she was 10 years old and transformed the peaceful area into one of fear. Malala began writing blog posts about her life under Taliban control which gained the attention of the media.
In October 2012, Malala was targeted by the Taliban on her way home from school in an effort to silence her activism against them. She was shot in the head and nearly lost her life, but she persisted. Malala is an international symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner. Her story will open your eyes to another world and how one person can inspire change in their community and beyond.
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
Synopsis: Augusta Stern is on the cusp of turning 80 and is newly retired from being a pharmacist. She relocates to a lively retirement community in Florida, where she unexpectedly crosses paths with Irving Rivkin – the delivery boy from her father’s old pharmacy and the man who broke her heart 60 years ago.
In this dual timeline, we’re transported to the pharmacy shop in 1920s Brooklyn. Augusta’s mother has recently passed away, so her Great Aunt Ester moves in to help out. Augusta yearns to be a great pharmacist like her father, but Aunt Esther’s unconventional methods of healing people involve potions and mysterious soups that goes against everything her father has taught her.
Augusta finds herself torn between loyalty to her father and fascination with her aunt, all the while trying to navigate the budding romance with Irving. Seeing Irving 60 years later stirs up these old memories and has her questioning the decisions she made long ago that changed the course of her life.
The Woman Behind The Book: This book is filled with magical realism, but Augusta Stern was inspired by the author’s husband’s great-grandmother who was a pharmacist in the 1920s – a job that was very uncommon for women of the time.
Synopsis: Set in Iceland in 1829, this book tells the story of Agnes Magnúsdóttir – the last person to be executed in Iceland. During the final days leading up to her execution, Agnes is sent to live with a family on an isolated farm. The family at first does their best to ignore Agnes, but the landscape is brutal and they quickly realize it is better to have her help to keep their homestead going.
The family cannot help but be drawn to Agnes as they learn more about her life and her side to the story of the murder she’s been charged with committing. The Icelandic winter storms rage on, and so too do the thoughts swirling around in Agnes’s mind as she tries to come to terms with her looming death.
The Woman Behind The Book: This book is based on true events. Agnes Magnúsdóttir was a real woman who had romantic interests in a man named Natan and went to work as a maid on his farm. However when she arrived, another woman was there to do the same job. Agnes hoped Natan would choose her, but that did not happen. The two women became part of a plan with another man to murder Natan for his money. Though Agnes maintained that she played a minimal part in the crime, she was beheaded in 1830.
Synopsis: Sarah Gilchrist has fled London and a troubled past to join the University of Edinburgh’s medical school in 1892, the first year it admits women. She is determined to become a doctor, but quickly finds plenty of barriers at school itself: professors who refuse to teach their new pupils, male students determined to force out their female counterparts, and―perhaps worst of all―her female peers who will do anything to avoid being associated with a fallen woman.
Desperate for a proper education, Sarah turns to one of the city’s ramshackle charitable hospitals for additional training. The St Giles’ Infirmary for Women ministers to the downtrodden and drunk, the thieves and whores with nowhere else to go. But when one of Sarah’s patients turns up in the university dissecting room as a battered corpse, Sarah finds herself drawn into a murky underworld of bribery, brothels, and body snatchers.
The Women Behind The Book: While the characters in this book are fictionalized, the challenges the women at the medical college were faced with because of their gender are very real. For example, there is a scene in the book where the men put red ink on the benches so that when the women sit down, it will appear that they started their periods. This is a true event that is archived in the National Library of Scotland.
This book also made our list of 14 Books Set in Scotland!
Synopsis: Women can be heroes. When twenty-year-old nursing student Frances “Frankie” McGrath hears these words, it is a revelation. Raised in the idyllic world of Southern California and sheltered by her conservative parents, she has always prided herself on doing the right thing. But in 1965, the world is changing, and she suddenly dares to imagine a different future for herself. When her brother ships out to serve in Vietnam, she joins the Army Nurse Corps and follows his path.
As green and inexperienced as the men sent to Vietnam to fight, Frankie is over-whelmed by the chaos and destruction of war. Each day is a gamble of life and death, hope and betrayal; friendships run deep and can be shattered in an instant. In war, she meets―and becomes one of―the lucky, the brave, the broken, and the lost.
But war is just the beginning for Frankie and her veteran friends. The real battle lies in coming home to a changed and divided America, to angry protesters, and to a country that wants to forget Vietnam.
The Women Behind The Book: Frankie McGrath is a fictionalized character, but her story was inspired by interviews with veterans and the veteran nurses who served during the Vietnam War. This book shines a light on all women who put themselves in harm’s way and whose sacrifice and commitment to their country has too often been forgotten. A memorial to the women who served in Vietnam was erected in 1993, finally erasing the false idea from many people’s minds that women did not serve in the Vietnam War.
Synopsis: Nefertiti and her younger sister, Mutnodjmet, are expected to be wives to Egyptian rulers. After all, their powerful family has supplied wives to the rulers of Egypt for centuries. Nefertiti is destined to marry Amunhotep. Her strong and charismatic personality is hoped to water down Amunhotep’s heretical desire to forsake Egypt’s ancient gods, overthrow the priests of Amun, and introduce a new sun god for all to worship. Nefertiti is loved by the people of Egypt, but it is not enough to keep the powerful priests and military from turning against them if she is unable to produce an heir?
Only Mutnodjmet is brave enough to tell her sister of the shift in political winds. When Nefertiti learns of the precariousness of her reign, she declares that her sister must remain at court and marry for political gain, not love. This goes against everything Mutnodjmet wants for herself. Does she have the strength and courage to defy her sister, the most powerful woman in Egypt?
The Woman Behind The Book: Nefertiti was the queen of the 18th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. She is known for having unprecedented power and changing Egypt’s religion from polytheistic to monotheistic. Read our posts on Egypt to learn how you can walk in the footsteps of this Egyptian queen!
Synopsis: With humor and heart, Zauner tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food.
As Zauner got older, her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her.
The Woman They Could Not Silence
Synopsis: In 1860, America is on the brink of Civil War. For Elizabeth Packard though, her husband is the enemy. Elizabeth is intelligent, independent, and unwilling to stifle her thoughts. So her husband has her committed to an insane asylum.
The horrific conditions inside the Illinois State Hospital in Jacksonville, Illinois, are overseen by Dr. Andrew McFarland, a man who will prove to be even more dangerous to Elizabeth than her traitorous husband. But most disturbing is that Elizabeth is not the only sane woman confined to the institution. There are many rational women on her ward who tell the same story: they’ve been committed not because they need medical treatment, but to keep them in line – conveniently labeled “crazy” so their voices are ignored.
The Woman Behind The Book: This book is based on true events. Elizabeth Packard was committed by her husband into an insane asylum, and she remained there for three years. Once released, she became an advocate for women who were put in the same situation. She ultimately revolutionized the rights of married women as well as the treatment of people with actual mental illnesses.
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles
Synopsis: This book brings to life the fascinating story of Mary, who became the Queen of Scots when she was only six days old. Raised in the glittering French court, returning to Scotland to rule as a Catholic monarch over a newly Protestant country, and executed like a criminal in Queen Elizabeth’s England, Queen Mary lived a life like no other.
The Woman Behind The Book: Margaret George weaves the facts into a stunning work of historical fiction. Mary Queen of Scots lived an extraordinary and controversial life. This book is incredibly well researched and vividly brings Mary’s story to life.
Want to walk in the footsteps of Mary Queen of Scots? We have several posts on Scotland that include historical sites where Mary lived and ventured!
Synopsis: In her memoir, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her – from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work to her time spent in the White House. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it – in her own words and on her own terms.
This book also made our list of best audiobooks for a road trip!
Synopsis: By examining the lives of six specific women, Marilynne Roach shows readers what it was like to be present throughout the horrific time of the Salem Witch Trials and how it was impossible to live through it unchanged. This nonfictional account shines a light on the 6 women most often discussed with the Trials – both the accused and the accusers. Roach wants readers to understand that beneath the event that has sparked so much attention and speculation over the years, were real people whose stories deserve to be remembered.
Do you have recommendations on books to read for Women’s History Month? Let us know in the comments below!
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