10 Epic Female-Authored Series to Love So Your Reading Obsession Can Extend Well Beyond One Book

Elena Ferrante invites her readers into the rarified world of female friendship with uncommon grace and unerring honesty. Following the stories of two young girls who develop a fierce and enduring friendship over the course of their lives, Ferrante’s novels are brutal, compelling, and candid. So, when you’re looking for love and finding it in all the wrong places, take some time for yourself with this window into the world of family, friendship, and the limitless potential of the future. If you get started now you’ll be all caught up when the fourth, as of yet untitled volume in the series is be published later in 2015.

Start with: My Brilliant Friend

If you’ve ever churned your own butter (or wanted to); if you own you’ve made your own broom (or googled how to); if you’ve dreamt about pork crackle, taken up knitting, or made your own clothes, you’ll love the work of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Taking up the tale of a strong-willed, well-loved prairie girl, the Little House on the Prairie Series will warm your heart and welcome you into a world both foreign and all-too familiar.

Start with: Little House In the Big Woods

As I write, I sit with a paper crown on my head, wishing it were a proper tiara. If you, like me, happily imagine yourself in the role of monarch at every possible opportunity, Hilary Mantel’s epic saga tracing the life of Thomas Cromwell through his rise to power in the court of Henry VIII and his brutal downfall at the height of his power is absolutely essential reading. Get started now and you’ll be ready and waiting when the final installment in the trilogy, The Mirror and the Light, is published this coming year.

Start with: Wolf Hall

Barbara Kingsolver brings intimacy into the open with her sumptuous characters pragmatically carrying on despite the harsh realities of small-town life. The Bean Trees begins with a young girl taking on an abandoned child in the heart of Kentucky, and from there Kingsolver traces bloodlines, lifelines, and storylines throughout her beautifully wrought series.

Start with: The Bean Trees

Marilynne Robinson has contributed immensely to contemporary literature with her direct, poignant prose. Taking on the story of America at the time of the Great Depression through the lens of stoic, Midwestern small-town life, Robinson’s stories are unrelentingly honest and achingly beautiful. Beginning with Gilead itself, Marilynne Robinson traces the story of a community in Iowa, through the restless, thoughtful, devoted preacher Jon Ames, his dear friend, and his second wife in the following volumes respectively. Each unique narrative finds its own time, place, and style while exploring similar themes among the well-trod footpaths of the same small town.

Start with: Gilead

I first encountered Cherry Ames on the cusp of adolescence, and this series knocked me out. Imagine Nancy Drew taking on the forces of evil manifested in the form of disease and disorganization, get excited, and you’re ready for a few long nights with Cherry Ames. Beginning with her training at the Spencer Hospital School of Nursing and continuing for more than 27 volumes with adventures at home and abroad, Charity “Cherry” Ames belongs with Nancy Drew and James Bond. Love her among the beloved crime fighting protagonists of the past rescued from obscurity and preserved forevermore as pop culture icons.

Start with: Cherry Ames, Student Nurse

Sometimes you simply want to lose yourself in the lives of others, and with Nora Roberts, you’re guaranteed to find yourself smiling, laughing, and crying hysterically as you struggle to make time for eating and sleeping while turning page after page after page. Bring your tissues and prepare your chamomile tea — you’re in for a rocky ride as you follow the delicately interwoven stories of a maid’s daughter, an adopted daugher, and the biological daughter of the fabulously wealthy Templeton family, all living under the same roof yet driven towards different destinies. If that won’t satisfy your soap opera sweet tooth, nothing will.

Start with: Daring to Dream

If you didn’t encounter The Giver as required reading in middle school, do yourself a favor and take up this incredible allegory of narrative, memory, and the power of nostalgia. Beginning with the beautifully told story of a young boy chosen to be the keeper of memories in a dystopian future society that has purged itself of the personal identity in favor of a policy of sameness, Lowry asks important questions about the very nature of civilization with her clear, unwavering prose. Throughout the series Lowry continues to explore more insidious and endemic elements of the dysptopic regime presented in The Giver through the eyes of different characters, tying it all together in the epic and satysfying conclusion to the quartet, Son.

Start with: The Giver

Beginning as so many great stories do on a dark and stormy night, and carrying its protagonists to the very edges of the universe and the furthest reaches of time itself, Madeleine L’Engle’s Time Quartet is a different kind of young adult fiction worthy of attention from readers of any age. If you can lose yourself in a story of adventure, mystery, physics, and family, you’ll never want to put down this genre-bending epic of unusual wit and wisdom.

Start with: A Wrinkle In Time