Women's Wednesdays: Female Authors

Today just a quick list of 10 great female authors.

1. The Bronte Sisters. I love them for the extraordinariness of ordinary women in books like Jane Eyre or Agnes Grey. 
2. Agatha Christie. I love that I can never guess the murderer, no matter how many I read. After all, it might be the narrator, or one of the victims, or who even knows! (Roger Ackroyd, And Then There Were None, etc.) 
3. L.M. Montgomery. I first fell in love with the Emily Trilogy, and my current favourite is The Blue Castle. I love that she believes in romance and beauty, but writes them with humour and darkness, so they're never saccharine or cloying. 
4. Harper Lee. She only wrote the one book but it is perfect. 
5. Ursula Le Guin. The Earthsea Series is a good place to start but I've recently been enjoying her science fiction like The Word for World is Forest and Changing Planes. Such beautiful writing.
6. Jane Austen. No introduction necessary, correct? I think I like Mansfield Park best.
7. Rumer Godden. Start with An Episode of Sparrows. Characterization and insight into human nature always on point.
8. Laura Ingalls. Start at the beginning of the Little House series and read all the way through. Her memory is so sharp; not only does she capture all the details of pioneer life (it's practically a manual), but whatever age she's writing about, she inhabits that little girl or young woman so well, it's hard to believe it's not a diary.
9. Astrid Lindgren. Well-known for the firecracker humour and imagination of Pippi Longstocking, which is, of course, fabulous, but for something a little less on the beaten track, try Ronia the Robber's Daughter.
10. Madeline L'Engle. A beautiful marriage of theology, science, and humanity in every book, but never pontificating or out-of-place in the fiction. A Swiftly Tilting Planet is probably my favourite.