Saturday, July 5, 2025

Five novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles

Ruth F. Stevens likes to create stories that will make readers laugh and cry. A former public relations executive in New York and Los Angeles, she is a produced playwright and author of the novels Stage Seven, My Year of Casual Acquaintances, and The Unexpected Guests. Stevens is a proud member of the Women's Fiction Writers Association and the Dramatists Guild of America and serves as a volunteer and acquisitions editor for AlzAuthors. She lives in Torrance, California, with her husband. In her spare time, she enjoys travel, hiking, hip-hop and fitness classes, yoga, Broadway musicals, wine tasting, leading a book club, and visiting her grandsons in NYC.

At Shepherd Stevens tagged five of the best novels on smart, quirky women facing personal struggles. One title on the list:
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

This book contained everything I love in a novel: a sympathetic and unforgettable hero and a story that’s funny, original, and often surprising.

Elizabeth Zott is a beautiful woman and a gifted scientist, and I could feel her frustration as she tried to compete in the male-dominated professional world of the early 1960s. I cheered her on when she met her soulmate, fellow researcher Calvin, and abandoned her lonely existence.

When Elizabeth later ended up hosting a popular TV cooking show, where she taught her female fans how to break out of the stereotypical housewife rut to become modern women, I cheered even louder at her bold defiance of the status quo.
Read about the other entries on Stevens's list.

Lessons in Chemistry is among Lorna Graham's seven top workplace novels and Claire Alexander's five books to read for when you’re lonely.

--Marshal Zeringue