Novels with a Female Protagonist?

[Bobby Sharma]

Hi there everyone.

Have you read some detective or fantasy novels with a female protagonist ? please recommend me some good ones.
I have read Girl with a dragon tattoo series, Game of thrones, Agatha Christie novels but wants some more.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

The Weather Warden series was good. And if it can be young adult, the Icons series is good.

[Bear Bibeault]

Female? Detective? Fantasy? You need to check out the Samantha Moon series and get all three in one.

[Luke Leber]

Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" novels might be up your alley if you don't mind adult oriented (very intense imagery of violence, cruelty, and other things that I can't write here.) content. In fact, I had to take a break from them at times...and that is saying a lot for me. To the books' credit though, they tell a story of the morally righteous standing against clearly evil forces with all but no hope. What attracted me to the series was the "good vs evil" aspect.

There are two main protagonists, one male and one female.

Redundant Disclaimer: these novels are the most graphic that I have ever read...nothing on television even comes close to matching some of the scenes presented therein.

[Michael Matola]

There's Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone mystery series ("A" is for Alibi, "B" is for Burglar...).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinsey_Millhone

Many of Ursula LeGuin's science fiction/fantasy novels and stories feature female protagonists.

[margaret gillon]

Vonda McIntyre has many great science fiction novels and series with female protagonists. My all time favorite by her is "DREAMSNAKE". She wrote Star Trek novels as well as her own series. If you will read books in ebook format she is part of an authors cooperative that has other authors also writing science fiction and fiction. Some of the ebooks are ebook editions of books originally published in paper. Others are ebook originals. The cooperative is Book View Cafe .

[margaret gillon]

For fantasy novels with female protagonist here is a list of strong female fantasy on goodreads.com with approximately 3,662 books. The list is described as

Best "Strong Female" Fantasy Novels. List of fantasy novels featuring strong women.
This includes: general fantasy, urban fantasy, young adult fantasy, fairy tale retellings, etc.... These women kick ass!

[chris webster]

I enjoyed the fantasy novel The Scar by China Mieville.

[Stevens Miller]

Much of the work of Anne McCaffrey meets your criteria.

[margaret gillon]

Fantasy , one of my favorites, by author mentioned already:
Dragonsong (Pern: Harper Hall #1) by Anne McCaffrey is one of my favorite books about a young girl who loves music but lives in a fishing community that thinks her talent is frivolous. Her father goes to great measures to stop her from playing music and she eventually runs away and bonds with a group of miniature dragons. This is the first book in a trilogy.

For mysteries --
Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon mystery series is good. Anna is a national park ranger.
Alafair Burke's Ellie Hatcher series. Ellie is a NYPD detective.
Joy Castro's Nola Cespedes Mysteries. Nola is a crime reporter for a post-Katrina New Orleans newspaper.
Tess Gerritsen's Rizzoli & Isles series. The TV show is based on these books but the books are much richer, and darker, than the tv series.

Deborah Crombie's Duncan Kincaid & Gemma James series. Both protagonists are British police Inspectors at Scotland Yard. They eventually marry. At different times they work under each other. Both want a good personal life but both are career oriented and love their work as detectives. Interesting dynamics between the relationship, the work, and the politics at work when they find internal coverups in their investigations.

Patricia Cornwell's Kay Scarpetta series. Scarpetta is "Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia at Richmond. She is also known as one of the top forensic pathologist in the country. " These are dark and sometimes stark.

[Frank Silbermann]

For mystery, there is a huge collection of novels in the Bobsey Twins series.

[Stevens Miller]

Frank Silbermann wrote:For mystery, there is a huge collection of novels in the Bobsey Twins series.

Nancy Drew!

[margaret gillon]

Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and Bobsey Twins are children's books with a reading age beginning around 6 to 7 years old.

[margaret gillon]

Chris you said

I enjoyed the fantasy novel The Scar by China Mieville.

.

This book is the second book of a series. It looks interesting. Did you have to read the first book or does this book work as a stand alone novel?

[chris webster]

margaret gillon wrote:Chris you said

I enjoyed the fantasy novel The Scar by China Mieville.

.

This book is the second book of a series. It looks interesting. Did you have to read the first book or does this book work as a stand alone novel?

Yes, it follows on from "Perdido Street Station", but there's no real overlap and you can read them independently. I think "Perdido Street Station" is really excellent, but "The Scar" is very good too, so I enjoyed them both a lot.

[Paweł Baczyński]

A fantasy with a female protagonist?

You should try Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson!

[fred rosenberger]

Zoe's Tale, by John Scalzi, is a Sci-fi novel with a female protagonist.

It's technically vol. 4 of the "Old Man's War" saga, and is a re-telling of the 3rd novel from a different character's perspective (the titular Zoe).

[margaret gillon]

Luke suggested

Terry Goodkind's "Sword of Truth" novels

The kindle version of the first novel in this series is on sale today at Amazon for $1.99 (regular price $8.99). Better yet you can buy the Audible audio version of the book for only $0.99 (regular price $27.97) if you buy it with the Kindle version. I buy the Kindle + Audible books all the time because of the amazingly low prices. There is an Audible app for playing the files on Android phones.

Amazon Daily Deal Wizard's First Rule (Sword of Truth Book 1)

[Bobby Sharma]

Thank You Very Much, Everyone.

[Tim Holloway]

margaret gillon wrote:Chris you said

I enjoyed the fantasy novel The Scar by China Mieville.

.

This book is the second book of a series. It looks interesting. Did you have to read the first book or does this book work as a stand alone novel?

It stands alone. The only "series" that China Mieville has been doing is that he's committed to a set of books in different genres - fantasy, sci-fi, western, detective and so forth. He rather likes the planet and the city, but doesn't use them in many of his works.

The Scar links to Perdido Street Station, but only lightly. It's sort of a Moby Dick Genre, I suppose, although the "real" Moby Dick Novel in his set involves a world paved with railways!

I didn't see "God's War" mentioned. I thought it was pretty good and may eventually go back for the sequels.

A popular series also is the Rachel Morgan books which has just entered its final volume. I'm not sure feminists would entirely approve of her emotional issues. Plus I hate it when vampires (or other things) can exert irresistable compulsion on people. From everything I've ever seen, there's nothing truly irresistable in the world, and taking away free will sucks a lot of the interest out of the matter. You lose the tension you can build when someone puts pressure on the protagonist and they have to fight to break free or can only refuse with horrible consequences.

Actually, I could care less about the gender of either protagonist or author. A good story is a good story and that's all I really want. Good stories often have strong females, and have all the way back to Odysseus and before.

[Ahsan Bagwan]

Judging by the above replies, The Scar has definitely sparked an interest in me.

Offtopic, if you use Kindle do you find it easier to maintain and manage books at one place? Also how comfortable has your reading experience been?