Top Female Authors on My TBR (2022 Edition)

As part of #FebruarySheWrote I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge the many amazing female authors on my TBR who I have yet to read. Like all my TBR lists, this one hardly covers every author I hope to one day read, but are definitely high priority authors. To help avoid double-dipping, I didn’t mention any authors on similar lists I’ve done before – but I’m linking them below if you’d like to check them out! Sadly, despite writing those lists a year and a half ago, I’ve read exactly one of those authors. Yikes, still plenty of work to do!

Women Authors on My Adult SFF TBR
Women Authors on My Young Adult SFF TBR

If these authors and their works sound appealing to you, I’m linking all covers to Goodreads! Enjoy your reading everyone!

Mary Robinette Kowal
I am a HUGE sucker for space race stories. I watched APOLLO 13 more times than I can count, and recently was quite taken with the alt history TV series FOR ALL MANKIND. It therefore follows that THE CALCULATING STARS, which imagines an alternate timeline where a meteorite hitting the Earth makes getting to space a necessity, not an ideal, would be exactly my thing. I’ve had the first book in the LADY ASTRONAUT UNIVERSE series for a bit now, and keep wanting to give it a try!

Jacqueline Carey
KUSHIEL’S DART has been on my TBR for a while, and I’ve been working up the nerve to take the plunge. This series has a rep for being extremely spicy in the sex department (being about a courtesan), but also for having incredible political intrigue as well. It’s a strong candidate to be read this year but, uh, it’s 1000 pages and that’s quite the commitment! Still, KUSHIEL’S DART keeps hovering near the top of my TBR, so I need to find a way to read it some time in the near future.

Namina Forna
I don’t read a ton of YA these days, but THE GILDED ONES definitely snagged my attention. When sixteen-year-old Deka’s blood is revealed to be gold, a mark of impurity. Facing exile from her village, Deka is given a chance to join the emperor’s army made up of similarly blooded girls. There, she’ll discover her blood brings her rare gifts, but also danger. This is apparently fairly dark for a YA book, but also a pretty powerful read.

Naomi Novik
Technically, I’ve read one of Novik’s books in the form of her standalone fantasy UPROOTED, but I’ve barely scratched the surface of her lexicon. Her TEMERAIRE series alone gets her on my list of Must Read Someday, as it imagines the Napoleonic Wars but with dragons. While I’ve heard a few mixed things about her more recent series that starts with A DEADLY EDUCATION, I’ve always got an interest in magical school tropes, so it’s definitely somewhere on my TBR.

E.J. Beaton
Everywhere I turn, I see gushing about THE COUNCILLOR a political court fantasy with a queer lead. I love love fantasy intrigue, and this story is all about a woman who is both trying to choose the next monarch and also discover who murdered the previous one. Um, yes please?

Everina Maxwell
A standalone political sci-fi court drama with a healthy splash of romance? Yes please! In WINTER’S ORBIT, Jainan is the widower of a prince who is forced to marry the prince’s cousin in a bid to keep strained political tensions between two planets on a simmer. While struggling to deal with their new circumstances, the two must also figure out if the prince’s death was an accident or a murder.

Robin LaFevers
If putting this list together has taught me anything, its that I apparently have a yen for fantasy romance that I am clearly not scratching. Case in point, GRAVE MERCY is about a young woman who escapes an arranged marriage by joining a convent dedicated to the god Death, where she trains to be an assassin working in his service. She’s sent out on assignment – and finds herself falling in love with the target. I would very much like to settle down with this book NOW.

Margaret Owen
I picked up an ARC of THE MERCIFUL CROW at Comic Con a few years back, and it has been glaring at me from my TBR cart ever since. A duology about a member of a class of undertakers, a prince on the run, and his body guard, I was already intrigued by Margaret’s work. But her most recent book, LITTLE THIEVES seems to be even more impressive, as Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune steals the life of Princess Gisele, putting Gisele out on the streets as a penniless nobody. Vanja lives a life of luxury, but is also leading a double life (triple life?) as a jewel thief, until she crosses a god and gets herself cursed. Wow, dark gods, curses, heists, please give this to me now!!

Angela Boord
Let’s take a dip into self-published fantasy, shall we? The hefty tome FORTUNE’S FOOL was a Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off Finalist, and seems to be a tale rife with danger. Kyrra is a woman out for revenge, navigating a world of great Houses that are constantly maneuvering against each other, hanging out with spies and mercenaries while also pretending to be a man. This is a high priority for my self-published TBR this year!

Trudie Skies
Last, but not least, my attention has recently been snagged by the recently self-published THE THIRTEENTH HOUR, which has a steadily growing following. Featuring a complex world of gods and steampunk, It follows Kayl, a woman who discovers soul-destroying powers, and Quen, a man trying to save the city of Chime from the destruction that he saw in his vision. I’ve gotten the sense that you have to be on board with a lot of world-building to get into this series, but honestly, that sounds alright to me!