March is Women’s History Month! To help bookstores and libraries celebrate, we’ve put together this roundup of 16 books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction to spotlight all month and year-round. (We publish longer reading lists each month as well—check out our most recent reading list for Women’s History Month for more books to feature!)
Poetry
The Confines by Anu Kandikuppa
Veliz Books | March 23, 2025
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 9781949776188
The short stories in this debut collection “deliver us into the cultural expectations, hierarchies, and taboos that define and limit our lives, especially the lives of women.”
Hair on Fire: Afghan Women Poets
Two Lines Press | September 2, 2025
Distributor: Publishers Group West
ISBN: 978-1-949641-84-4
Five Afghan poets “wield language to combat the loneliness, absurdity, and claustrophobia of life in a war-torn country and its diaspora” in this anthology.
purl by Michele Evans
Finishing Line Press | February 14, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 979-8888388433
According to Brooke C. Obie, in these poems Evans “bends Greek mythology into a vessel to deftly capture the rage, the love, and the memory of generations of Black American women longing to be heard.”
The Strange Wondrous Works of Eleanor Eleanor by Kathryn Cowles
Fence Books | January 20, 2026
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9798989978533
This hybrid poetry collection “lays bare the depths of the confines still facing women in Western life, even while we’re told we’re free to choose.”
Nonfiction
Worthy of the Event by Vivian Blaxell
LittlePuss Press | April 1, 2025
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781964322995
In this essay “set against a backdrop of trans life that begins with her own transition in the 1960s,” Blaxell “takes us on a witty and expansive sweep through history.”
Emergent Dharma: Asian American Buddhist Feminists on Practice, Identity, and Resistance
North Atlantic Books | December 9, 2025
Distributor: Penguin Random House
ISBN: 9798889842330
The essays in this anthology edited by Sharon A. Suh “reclaim a vibrant feminist Dharma against whitewashing, patriarchy, and model-minority stereotypes.”
Isn’t She Great: Writers on Women-Led Comedies from 9 to 5 to Booksmart
Read Furiously | January 16, 2024
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9781960869012
Edited by Elizabeth Teets, this anthology is “a collection of the most beloved female-centric comedies and the audiences who adore them.”
Graphic Rage: Comics on Gender, Justice, and Life As a Woman in America by Aubrey Hirsch
Split/Lip Press | October 7, 2025
Distributor: Asterism Books
ISBN: 9781952897467
“From the impossible standards of beauty to the very real dangers of living in a legislated body,” this collection of graphic essays “channels frustration into fearless humor and incisive critique.”
Abbreviate by Sarah Fawn Montgomery
Harbor Editions | May 8, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9781957248509
In this “small collection of small essays,” Montgomery “examines how the injustice and violence of girlhood leads women to accept—and even claim—small spaces and stories.”
Fiction
The Good War by Elizabeth Costello
Regal House Publishing | January 28, 2025
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 9781646035465
This historical novel about a mother and daughter “unfolds over the course of watershed summers in the lives of two very different women who share a desire to make it new even as they reckon with painful truths.”
Marisolandia by Michelle Cruz Gonzales
WTAW Press | March 25, 2025
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 9798989872916
In this speculative novel, “The new Republic of California is forcing Marisol, a Mexicana woman, to marry a white man to create a homogenous race in the new nation.”
Tomorrow Will Bring Sunday’s News: A Philadelphia Story by Beth Kephart
Tursulowe Press | April 1, 2025
Distributor: Ingram
ISBN: 9781957057194
This historical novel “evokes 1918 Philadelphia, a city of war and racism, women’s rights and women’s work, the ferocious paralysis of a bloody race riot, and a flu that will prove to be more deadly than the war.”
The Divining Season by Gwendolyn Paradice
Aunt Lute Books | March 31, 2026
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781951874124
In this novel, eleven-year-old Emily’s “arrival in Larissa, Texas, changes the search for the missing children and the way the women of Larissa relate to each other.”
On Strike Against God by Joanna Russ
Feminist Press | July 23, 2024
Distributor: Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ISBN: 9781558613140
This novel is “a lost feminist masterwork by a speculative fiction icon about a lesbian’s coming-to-consciousness during the social upheaval of the 1970s.”
There’s Nothing Left for You Here by Allegra Solomon
Four Way Books | March 15, 2025
Distributor: Chicago Distribution Center
ISBN: 9781961897441
The stories in this collection are “ranging in subject but joined by their keen attention to the lives of contemporary young women of color.”
Hungerheart: The Story of a Soul by C. Marshall St. John
Sinister Wisdom | January 15, 2025
Distributor: Independent Publishers Group
ISBN: 9781944981709
The protagonist of this novel, originally published in 1915, “longs for love and passion, leading her to Catholicism, and most importantly, a desire for women.”
