Fiction and Nonfiction to Read If You Love 'Lessons in Chemistry'
The buzz around Bonnie Garmus's debut novel Lessons in Chemistry, published last year, barely had a chance to die down before finding even more fans through the Apple TV+ adaptation starring Brie Larson. The story follows single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant host of a science-based cooking show where she puts her talents as a gifted chemist to use after being thwarted by the sexist 1950s science establishment. The novel is funny and heartwarming with an underlying sadness (and fury) for what could have and should have been. While it's hard to replicate the magic of Lessons in Chemistry, one of the books below may be just the ticket for your next read. Some share similar themes of talented women held back by society, while others strike a similar tone of wit, charm, and resilience.
Lessons in Chemistry
by Bonnie Garmus
In the early 1960s, chemist and single mother Elizabeth Zott, the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show due to her revolutionary skills in the kitchen, uses this opportunity to dare women to change the status quo.
Fiction
Early Morning Riser
by Katherine Heiny
Falling in love with Duncan, the world’s most prolific seducer of women, Jane finds herself part of an unconventional family, which includes his best friend and ex-wife, when one terrible car crash permanently intertwines her life with Duncan’s.
The World According to Garp
by John Irving
T.S. Garp, a man with high ambitions for an artistic career and with obsessive devotion to his wife and children, and Jenny Fields, his famous feminist mother, find their lives surrounded by an assortment of people, including teachers, whores, and radicals.
Park Avenue Summer
by Renée Rosen
In 1965, small-town aspiring photographer Alice Weiss finds herself working as a secretary for the new editor-in-chief at Cosmopolitan, and must navigate her way through office politics, city life, and unscrupulous men while trying to hold on to her dreams.
Where'd You Go, Bernadette?
by Maria Semple
Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect; and to her 15-year-old daughter Bee, she is her best friend. Then Bernadette vanishes. To find her, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, and secret correspondence—creating a touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.
Her Hidden Genius
by Marie Benedict
Rosalind Franklin knows if she just takes one more X-ray picture—one more after thousands—she can unlock the building blocks of life. Never again will she have to listen to her colleagues complain about her, especially Maurice Wilkins who'd rather conspire about genetics with James Watson and Francis Crick than work alongside her. Then it finally happens—the double helix structure of DNA reveals itself to her with perfect clarity. But what happens next, Rosalind could have never predicted.
Recipe for a Perfect Wife
by Karma Brown
In a dual-narrative novel, a modern-day woman finds inspiration in hidden notes left by her home’s previous owner, a quintessential 1950s housewife, causing her to question the foundation of her relationship with her husband.
The Friend
by Sigrid Nunez
Becoming the guardian of her late best friend's enormous Great Dane, a grieving woman is evicted from her no-pets apartment and forges a deep bond with the equally distraught animal in ways that initially disturb her friends.
The Kitchen Front
by Jennifer Ryan
An indebted young widow, a freedom-seeking kitchen maid, the wife of a wealthy but unkind man and a trained chef navigating sexism compete for a once-in-a-lifetime spot hosting a BBC cooking program during World War II.
This Burns My Heart
by Samuel Park
On the eve of her marriage, Soo-Ja Choi receives a passionate proposal from a young medical student. Caught up in her desire to pursue a career, she turns him away, having impetuously chosen another man who she believes will let her fulfill her dreams. Instead, she finds herself tightly bound by tradition and trapped in a suffocating marriage, her ambition reduced to carving out a successful future for her only daughter. Through it all, she longs for the man she truly loves, whose path she seems destined to cross again and again.
The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmao
by Martha Batalha; translated by Eric M.B.
Euridice is young, beautiful and ambitious, but when her rebellious sister Guida elopes, she sets her own aspirations aside and vows to settle down as a model wife and daughter. And yet as her husband's professional success grows, so does Euridice's feeling of restlessness. Her tradition-loving husband is not interested in an independent wife. And then one day Guida appears at the door with her young son and a terrible story of hardship and abandonment.
Half Life
by Jillian Cantor
In Poland in 1891, Marie Curie (then Marya Sklodowska) was engaged to budding mathematician Kazimierz Zorawski. But when his mother insisted she was not good enough, he broke off the engagement. Heartbroken, Marya left Poland for Paris, where she would study chemistry and physics. Eventually Marie Curie would go on to change the course of science forever and be the first woman to win a Nobel Prize. But what if she had made a different choice? What if she had stayed in Poland, married Kazimierz and never attended the Sorbonne or discovered radium? What if she had chosen a life of domesticity?
The Woman With the Cure
by Lynne Cullen
In 1940s and ’50s America, polio is as dreaded as the atomic bomb. Outbreaks of the virus across the country regularly put American cities in lockdown. Some of the world’s best minds are engaged in the race to find a vaccine. The man who succeeds will be a god. But Dorothy Horstmann is not focused on beating her colleagues to the vaccine. She just wants the world to have a cure. She hunts down the monster where it lurks: in the blood. This discovery of hers, and an error by a competitor, catapults her closest colleague to a lead in the race. When his chance to win comes on a worldwide scale, she is asked to sink or validate his vaccine—and to decide what is forgivable, and how much should be sacrificed, in pursuit of the cure.
Lady Tan's Circle of Women
by Lisa See
Sent into an arranged marriage, Tan Yunxian, forbidden to continue her work as a midwife-in-training as well as see her forever friend Meiling, is ordered to act like proper wife and seeks a way to continue treating women and girls from every level of society in fifteenth-century China.
Nonfiction
A Lab of One's Own: One Woman's Personal Journey Through Sexism in Science
by Rita R. Colwell and Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
A Lab of One's Own documents all Colwell has seen and heard over her six decades in science, from sexual harassment in the lab to obscure systems blocking women from leading professional organizations or publishing their work. Along the way, she encounters other women pushing back against the status quo, including a group at MIT who revolt when they discover their labs are a fraction of the size of their male colleagues'.
KitchenWise: Essential Food Science for Home Cooks
by Shirley O. Corriher
The James Beard Award-winning author of BakeWise shares 30 favorite recipes and down-to-earth advice on how to fix common cooking problems while using science-based techniques to achieve desired results.
Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
by Claire Lisa Evans
Celebrates the contributions of women to the history of technology, sharing brief profiles of such boundary-breaking innovators as Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, Elizabeth "Jake" Feinler, and Stacy Horn. This inspiring call to action shines a light on the bright minds whom history forgot, and shows us how they will continue to shape our world in ways we can no longer ignore.
A Portrait of the Scientist as a Young Woman
by Lindy Elkins-Tanton
A memoir from a world-renowned planetary scientist explores her remarkable life story, the struggles she faced as a woman in the field, and her work as the leader of NASA's Psyche mission to explore the largest known metal-rich asteroid.
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
by Bob Spitz
It’s rare for someone to emerge in America who can change our attitudes, our beliefs, and our very culture. It’s even rarer when that someone is a middle-aged, six-foot three-inch woman whose first exposure to an unsuspecting public is cooking an omelet on a hot plate on a local TV station. And yet, that’s exactly what Julia Child did. The warble-voiced doyenne of television cookery became an iconic cult figure and joyous rule-breaker as she touched off the food revolution that has gripped America for more than fifty years.
Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
by Mary Gabriel
The impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting—not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.
Course Correction: A Story of Rowing and Resilience in the Wake of Title IX
by Ginny Gilder
Chronicles one young woman's transformation from a couch potato-in-training into an elite athlete who reached the highest echelon of her sport. Set against the backdrop of unprecedented cultural change, Gilder’s story personalizes the impact of Title IX, illustrating the life-changing lessons learned in sports but felt far beyond the athletic arena.
Plenty: A Memoir of Food & Family
by Hannah Howard
Food writer Hannah Howard is at a pivotal moment in her life when she begins searching out her fellow food people—women who’ve carved a place for themselves in a punishing, male-dominated industry. Women whose journeys have inspired and informed Hannah’s own foodie quests. On trips that take her from Milan to Bordeaux to Oslo and then always back again to her home in New York City, Hannah spends time with these influential women, learning about the intimate paths that led them each toward fulfilling careers.
Summaries provided via NYPL’s catalog, which draws from multiple sources. Click through to each book’s title for more.