This March, we’re celebrating Women’s History Month by burying ourselves in books! We want to share some of the many amazing women-written books that Grove Atlantic has published, ranging from provocative and heartfelt novels to incisive poetry and short story collections. Whether you’re in the mood for a hilarious yet heartfelt tale of mother-daughter turmoil or an exhilarating thriller with a bad-ass female lead, we have at least a few books that you’ll love reading.   

 

Difficult Women by Roxane Gay 

From a girls’ fight club to a wealthy subdivision in Florida where neighbors conform, compete, and spy on each other, each story in this collection is a tale of rare force and beauty, of hardscrabble lives, passionate loves, and quirky and vexed human connection. The women in these stories live lives of privilege and of poverty, are in marriages both loving and haunted by the past. Playing with structure and pacing and creating worlds that are realist or fantastically far-fetched, Gay gives voice to a chorus of unforgettable women in this scintillating short story collection. 

 

“The characters who inhabit Difficult Women . . . aren’t just characters. They are our mothers, sisters and partners. They are human. They are us . . .  Gay makes mosaics out of these women, seeing them as perfectly imperfect wholes in a world that routinely tries to break them down to pieces.” —Jaleesa M. Jones, USA Today (4/4 stars) 

 

Blood and Guts in High School by Kathy Acker

Blood and Guts in High School is a masterpiece of surrealist fiction that established Kathy Acker as the preeminent voice of post-punk feminism. It follows ten-year-old Janey as she lives with Johnny—her “boyfriend, brother, sister, money, amusement, and father”—until he leaves her for another woman. What follows is a hallucinatory collage of her exploits that take her from Merida to New York City, and New York City to Tangiers, where a torrid affair leads to her demise. Fantastical, sensual, and fearlessly radical, Blood and Guts in High School is both a comic and tragic portrait of erotic awakening.

 

“Kathy Acker’s writing is virtuoso, maddening, crazy, so sexy, so painful, and beaten out of a wild heart that nothing can tame. Acker is a landmark writer.”—Jeanette Winterson, author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

 

Crooked Hallelujah by Kelli Jo Ford 

It’s 1974 in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and fifteen-year-old Justine— a mixed-blood Cherokee girl— grows up in a family of tough, complicated, and loyal women, presided over by her mother, Lula, and Granny. After Justine’s father abandoned the family, Lula became a devout member of the Holiness Church — a community that Justine at times finds stifling and terrifying. But Justine does her best as a devoted daughter, until an act of violence sends her on a different path forever. With lush and empathic prose, Crooked Hallelujah follows four generations of proud, stubborn Cherokee women who will sacrifice anything for those they love despite larger forces of history, religion, class, and culture.  

 

“Electrifying… A riveting and important read.”—Booklist (starred review) 

 

Here Lies by Olivia Clare Freidman  

Louisiana, 2042. Spurred by the effects of climate change, states have closed graveyards and banned burials, making cremation mandatory and the ashes of loved ones state-owned unless otherwise claimed. In the small town of St. Genevieve, Alma lives alone and struggles to grieve in the wake of her young mother Naomi’s death, during which Alma failed to honor Naomi’s final wishes. Now, Alma decides to fight to reclaim Naomi’s ashes, a journey of unburial that will bring into her life a mysterious and fiercely loyal stranger, Bordelon, who appears in St. Genevieve after a storm, as well as a group of strong, rebellious local women who, together, teach Alma anew the meaning of family and strength. 

 

“Vividly imagined… Friedman’s novel poses questions about the replacement of traditional expressions of grief and the possibilities of women to reimagine the future.”—National Book Review 

 

The End of the Alphabet by Claudia Rankine 

This collection of poems—intrepid, obsessive, and erotic—tell the story of a woman’s attempt to reconcile despair. Beginning near the end and then traveling back to a time before her disquiet, The End of the Alphabet is about living despite one’s alienation from the self. Drawing on voices from Jane Eyre to Lady MacBeth, Rankine welds the cerebral and the spiritual, the sensual and the grotesque, courting paradox into the center of her voice.  

 

“Nothing is so impressive in The End of the Alphabet as this poet’s ability to sustain over one hundred pages an examination of pain so sensitive, so painstaking, that it nearly outdoes the exquisiteness of the pain itself, its superinventive, invasive, and pervasive ‘life.’ Here, wits at once keen and tenacious match themselves against grief’s genius.”—Boston Review  

 

Lost on Me by Veronica Raimo 

Vero is born into a family with an omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the center of their attention. Restless and bored in her childhood home, she periodically attempts to strike out but is no match for her mother’s relentless tracking methods and masterful guilt trips. Spiky and clever, Vero begins to invent stories for her own sanity and delights in her own devious schemes. As she guides us through her failed attempts at emancipation, her discovery of sex and fixations with unwitting men, and ultimately her contentious relationship with reality, she also brings alive Rome from the 1980’s through the early 2000’s.  

 

“[Lost on Me] is wild, funny and disturbing, all I ask of a book about mothers and their daughters.”—Roddy Doyle, Irish Times, Best Books of 2023 Pick 

 

Cat Brushing by Jane Campbell

Published author’s 80th year, this debut novel vigorously explores the sensual worlds of thirteen older women. Through their stories they unearth their passions, libidinal appetites, integrity, and sense of self as they fight against prevalent misconceptions and stereotypes of the aging. Written in spikey, incisive prose, this alluring cast of characters falls in love, relive and reflect on their pasts, and even seek revenge. With timeless wisdom and dark wit, Jane Campbell inspires and challenges, shocks and comforts as she examines the inner lives of women who fight to lead the rest of their lives on their own terms.

 

“It’s not every day—or every year—that you encounter a debut as fresh, assured and fun as Jane Campbell’s Cat Brushing from a writer of any age… [An] excellent, pathbreaking collection.”—New York Times

 

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad 

Before Isabella Hammad’s Recognizing the Stranger was Enter Ghost, a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. After years away from her family’s homeland, and reeling from a disastrous love affair, actress Sonia Nasir returns to Haifa to visit her older sister Haneen on her first trip back since the second intifada and the deaths of their grandparents. At Haneen’s, Sonia meets the charismatic and candid Mariam, a local director, and finds herself roped into a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. Yet as Sonia begins to explore the daunting, exhilarating possibility of finding a new self in her ancestral home, it becomes clear just how many violent obstacles stand before a troupe of Palestinians. 

 

“The complexities, dangers, and haunting realities of contemporary Palestinian existence seep through the tightly-woven plot and beautifully moving prose of Enter Ghost.”—Electric Literature, A Best Novel of the Year 

 

Invisible Woman by Katia Leif  

After a pioneering career 25 years ago as one of the few women to break into the all-male Hollywood club of feature film directors, Joni Ackerman’s decision to raise children came with a steep cost. However, a scandal rocks the film industry and forces Joni to revisit a secret from long ago involving her friend Val. Though Joni is adamant that the time has come to tell the story, Val and Paul are reluctant, for different reasons, and her marriage frays as Joni struggles with old resentments about the sacrifices she made on her family’s behalf. She takes solace, of sorts, in the novels of Patricia Highsmith—particularly the masterpiece Strangers on a Train, with its duplicitous characters and their murderous impulses—until the lines between reality and fantasy become blurred. 

 

“A wily, provocative literary thriller—classic but timely, retro yet right-this-minute—with brains in its head and ice in its veins. High-tension, high-class, and highly recommended.”—A.J. Finn, #1 New York Times bestseller of The Woman in the Window

 

Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro 

In 2014, in Lookout Mountain, Alabama, the Prophet—a seventy-year-old man who paints his visions—lives off the grid in a cabin near the Georgia border. While scrounging for materials at the local scrapyard, the Prophet sees a car pull up to an abandoned gas station with a teenage girl in its backseat wearing zip ties on her wrists. Her name is Michael, and the Prophet decides he must rescue her from her current life as he feels certain that she is a messenger sent by God to take his end-time warnings to the White House. Michael finds herself in the Prophet’s remote, art-filled cabin, and as their uncertain dynamic evolves into tender friendship, she is offered a surprising opportunity to escape her past—and perhaps change her future.  

 

“Quatro writes with the musicality and command of a mystic poet. Her sentences are also propulsive; the novel is a page-turner.”—Melissa Broder, New York Times  

 

Neighbors and Other Stories by Diane Oliver 

A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. There’s the nightmarish “The Closet on the Top Floor” in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; “Mint Juleps not Served Here” where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; or “Spiders Cry without Tears,” in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love. As much a social and historical document, these are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. 

 

“Put this collection of short stories . . . on your shelf alongside Toni and Zora—yes, it’s that good.” —Marion Winik, Oprah Daily    

 

Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid

A radical, rip-roaring counternarrative, Queen Macbeth delivers an illuminating portrait of Shakespeare’s most famous villain, and the treacherous pursuit of ambition that made her legendary. A thousand years ago in an ancient Scottish landscape, a woman is on the run from men who will not hesitate to kill her–because she is the only one who stands between them and their violent ambition. This feminist retelling of “The Scottish Play” reveals a tale of passion, forced marriage, bloody massacre, and the harsh realities of medieval Scotland. Her struggle won her a country. But now it could cost her life.

 

“[A] radical revision of Shakespeare’s most familiar plot and characters . . . McDermid offers a leader whose humanity feels striking and deeply familiar . . . Though this is far from the modern crime fiction she’s known for, McDermid weaves Queen Macbeth from the same understanding of longings for safety, justice, and yes, love.”—​Beth Kanell, New York Journal of Books

 

Shred Sisters by Betsy Lerner 

Meet the Shreds: Olivia is the stunning yet unpredictable sister in the spotlight, while younger sister Amy is cautious and studious to the core. As Amy comes of age and seeks to find her place—first in academics, then New York publishing, and through a series of troubled relationships—every step brings collisions with Ollie, whose physical beauty and charisma mask the mental illness that will shatter Amy’s carefully constructed life. Spanning two decades, Shred Sisters is an intimate and bittersweet story exploring the fierce complexities of sisterhood, mental health, loss, and love. 

 

“Shred Sisters is the kind of novel readers won’t want to end . . What comes at us, page after page, is new news, for which—laughter and pain alike—we’re ultimately grateful. The ride feels real.” —Joan Frank, Washington Post 

 

Casualties of Truth by Lauren Francis-Sharma 

Prudence Wright seems to have it all: a loving husband, Davis; a spacious home in Washington, D.C.; and the former glories of a successful career at McKinsey, which now enables her to dedicate her days to her autistic son, Roland. But when she and Davis head out for dinner with one of Davis’s colleagues, the last thing she expects is for this peer to be Matshediso, a man from Prudence’s past. While studying as a law student in South Africa in 1996, Prudence attended the Truth and Reconciliation hearings that uncovered the human rights abuses of the Apartheid state—and experienced personal horrors as well, long hidden and now at risk of coming to light with the appearance of this unwelcome guest. With keen insight and gripping tension, Casualties of Truth explosively mines questions of whether we are ever truly able to remove the stains of our past and how we may attempt to reconcile with unquestionable wrongs.  

 

“Piercing and provocative . . . [Francis-Sharma] pushes her characters to the edge, where they must confront the moral costs of their darkest desires.”—Nadia Owusu, Boston Globe 

Keep an eye out for these upcoming books!

 

33 Place Brugmann by Alice Austen 

Coming out 3/11/2025.

As whispers of German occupation become a reality in Brussels, life for the residents of 33 Place Brugmann is about to change forever. An art student in apartment 4L witnesses the beloved family of 4R disappear to become refugees, nurses, and reluctant heroes, while the seamstress on the 5th floor deepens a dangerous affair with a wartime compatriot of a German general in 3R. When confronted with a cruel choice—submit to the regime or risk their lives to resist—every member of this community learns the truth about what, and who, matters to them the most. 

 

“Kaleidoscopic . . . Both epic in scope and intimate.”—Publishers Weekly 

 

Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata

Coming out 4/15/2025.

As a girl, Amane discovers with horror that her parents “copulated” to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination as has become the norm in mid-twentieth century Japan. Despite her disdain for what she considers indoctrination into this strange “system” by her mother, Amane’s infatuations with anime characters and real people have an undeniable sexual force. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage, Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Here, where men are pregnant by way of artificial wombs and all children remain nameless, Amane wonders if this new world will purify her of her strangeness once and for all. 

 

“An intimate and disturbing speculative tale . . . blunt and bizarre humor is on full display, as is her incisive commentary on contemporary Japan. This nightmarish fable is impossible shake.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review) 

 

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard by Kiran Desai

Reissue coming out 5/13/2025.

Sampath Chawla was born in a time of drought into a family not quite like other families, in a town not quite like other towns. After years of failure and spending his days dreaming in tea stalls, it does not seem as if Sampath is going to amount to much—until one day he climbs a guava tree in search of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a holy man, sending his tiny town into turmoil. A syndicate of larcenous, alcoholic monkeys terrorizes the pilgrims who cluster around Sampath’s tree, spies and profiteers descend on the town, and none of Desai’s outrageous characters goes unaffected as events spin increasingly out of control. Originally printed in 1998, this hilarious story of life, love, and family established Kiran Desai as a vivid literary voice eight years before her novel The Inheritance of Loss won the Man Booker Prize. 

 

“With remarkably complex characters, unpredictable plot twists and vivid descriptions . . . A spectacularly fresh vision.”—Reena Jana, San Francisco Chronicle 

 

Sunbirth by An Yu

Coming out 8/5/2025.

In An Yu’s much anticipated third novel, a young woman tends to her pharmacy while the sun slowly shrinks above the remote village of Five Poems Lake. As the temperature drops and despair takes hold, the Beacons begin to appear—ordinary people with heads replaced by searing, blinding light, like miniature suns. While the town’s residents wonder if these strange beings hold the answer to their salvation or are just another sign of impending ruin, the young woman and her sister realize that a photograph of their father, who died of mysterious circumstances twelve years ago, might provide a clue in the mystery of the Beacons. 

 

Praise for Ghost Music: 

“Spellbinding and atmospheric . . . With its quiet, dreamy bending of reality and its precise depiction of many different strains of alienation, Ghost Music is an evocative exploration of what it means to live fully—and the potential consequences of failing to do so.”—Alexandra Kleeman, New York Times Book Review