If Lessons in Chemistry made you cheer for Elizabeth Zott and her refusal to be diminished, these 13 authors like Bonnie Garmus write fiction about brilliant women who reshape the world on their own terms.
Bonnie Garmus was 65 when she published Lessons in Chemistry in 2022, and the novel became one of the biggest debuts of the decade. Set in the early 1960s, it follows Elizabeth Zott — a chemist who is pushed out of her lab by sexist colleagues, loses the love of her life, and ends up hosting a cooking show where she teaches housewives chemistry. The novel spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, was adapted into an Apple TV+ series, and was translated into over 40 languages.
What makes Lessons in Chemistry work isn’t just the feminist anger (though there’s plenty of that) — it’s the humor. Garmus writes about institutional sexism with a comic precision that makes the book genuinely entertaining rather than didactic. Elizabeth Zott is funny without trying to be funny, which is the hardest kind of comedy to write. The dog, Six-Thirty, narrates some chapters and somehow this works perfectly. Garmus proved that a debut novel by a 65-year-old first-time author about 1960s chemistry could become the book everyone was talking about.
For more recommendations, explore our guides to best American authors, best historical fiction books, and authors like Kristin Hannah.
Authors Like Bonnie Garmus
1. Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid’s The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is about a fictional 1950s-era movie star who finally tells the truth about her life, including the woman she truly loved. Reid writes about women navigating systems designed to control them — Hollywood, the music industry, marriage — with intelligence and compassion.
Reid shares Garmus’ ability to create female characters who are both products of their era and ahead of it. Daisy Jones & The Six and Malibu Rising continue her exploration of mid-20th-century American women who bend the rules to get what they want. Her books are propulsive and emotionally satisfying in exactly the way Lessons in Chemistry is.
“I think that sexuality is a spectrum and I fall somewhere in the middle.”
Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
2. Maggie O’Farrell
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet reimagines the life and death of Shakespeare’s son through the eyes of Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes. The novel won the Women’s Prize for Fiction and is one of the most beautiful pieces of historical fiction written in the last decade. O’Farrell writes about women whose stories were overshadowed by the famous men beside them.
O’Farrell shares Garmus’ interest in women who are brilliant but constrained by their era. Agnes in Hamnet is a healer and herbalist whose knowledge is dismissed as witchcraft. The Marriage Portrait follows a Renaissance duchess who realises her husband may be planning to murder her. Both O’Farrell and Garmus write historical fiction where the personal and political are inseparable.
“She is a woman who knows things. She can feel what others cannot.”
Maggie O’Farrell, Hamnet
3. Amor Towles
Amor Towles’ A Gentleman in Moscow shares Lessons in Chemistry’s ability to make you fall in love with a character who makes the best of terrible circumstances. Count Rostov, confined to a hotel for decades, builds a meaningful life within his prison — just as Elizabeth Zott builds a career from the ashes of her destroyed lab work.
Towles writes with the same warmth and wit that Garmus brings to her fiction. His characters face injustice — political, social, personal — and respond with dignity, creativity, and a refusal to be diminished. The Lincoln Highway and Rules of Civility continue this theme. Both writers believe in the human capacity for grace under pressure. If you’re working on your own historical fiction, Grammarly can help refine your prose to match the standards of the genre.
“If a man does not master his circumstances then he is bound to be mastered by them.”
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
4. Elizabeth Gilbert
Elizabeth Gilbert’s The Signature of All Things is a sweeping novel about Alma Whittaker, a 19th-century botanist who makes significant scientific discoveries but is ignored because she’s a woman. It’s a brilliant pairing with Lessons in Chemistry — both novels are about women scientists fighting for recognition in systems that refuse to see them.
Gilbert is better known for Eat, Pray, Love, but her fiction is where the Garmus connection is strongest. City of Girls (set in 1940s New York theatre) features another woman who refuses to conform to social expectations. Gilbert writes about female desire — for knowledge, for pleasure, for independence — with the same frankness that Garmus brings to Elizabeth Zott’s story.
“I am a woman who enjoys asking questions. I am a woman who has always asked questions.”
Elizabeth Gilbert, The Signature of All Things
5. Celeste Ng
Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere is about two mothers in a wealthy Ohio suburb whose contrasting lifestyles expose the fault lines of class, race, and conformity. Ng writes about women who break rules — or don’t — and the consequences of both choices.
Ng shares Garmus’ talent for making social criticism accessible through character-driven storytelling. Neither writer lectures — they create situations where the injustice becomes obvious through the characters’ experiences. Everything I Never Told You and Our Missing Hearts continue Ng’s exploration of how American society punishes people who don’t fit its categories.
“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over.”
Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere
6. Curtis Sittenfeld
Curtis Sittenfeld’s Rodham imagines what would have happened if Hillary Rodham hadn’t married Bill Clinton. It’s speculative literary fiction that examines how one woman’s life was shaped by her association with one man, and what she might have achieved on her own. Like Garmus, Sittenfeld is interested in what women sacrifice to operate within male-dominated systems.
Sittenfeld’s earlier novels — Prep, American Wife, Eligible (a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice) — all feature smart women navigating social expectations. Her writing is sharp, observant, and unsparing. She shares Garmus’ ability to be funny about serious subjects without minimizing the seriousness.
“What would it mean to be judged on your own merits? Most women will never know.”
Curtis Sittenfeld, Rodham
7. Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life follows a woman who is born, dies, and is reborn repeatedly throughout the 20th century, living different versions of her life each time. It’s structurally ambitious and emotionally devastating — a novel about the roads taken and not taken, and whether any single life can contain all we’re capable of.
Atkinson shares Garmus’ love of structurally inventive fiction with a feminist core. Her Jackson Brodie detective series is equally sharp. A God in Ruins (the companion to Life After Life) is one of the finest World War II novels written this century. Both Atkinson and Garmus write about history through the lens of individual lives, making the personal political.
“What if we had a chance to do it again and again, until we finally did get it right?”
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
8. Kate Quinn
Kate Quinn’s The Rose Code is about three women working at Bletchley Park during World War II — the British codebreaking centre where Alan Turing and others cracked the Enigma cipher. Quinn writes historical fiction about women who did extraordinary things in the shadows of famous men, and her research is impeccable.
Quinn shares Garmus’ focus on women in STEM (or STEM-adjacent) fields, fighting for recognition in eras that didn’t value female intellect. The Alice Network (about female spies in WWI), The Diamond Eye (about a Soviet female sniper), and The Huntress all feature women whose contributions were overlooked by history.
“History doesn’t remember the women. That’s why we write the stories.”
Kate Quinn
9. Ann Patchett
Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House is about two siblings and their complicated relationship with the house they grew up in, the stepmother who kicked them out, and the mother who left before that. Patchett writes about family, loss, and the slow work of building a life with whatever materials you have.
Patchett shares Garmus’ warmth and her belief in the resilience of people who’ve been dealt bad hands. Both writers create characters who face institutional and personal injustice and respond with stubborn creativity rather than despair. Bel Canto and Commonwealth are equally worth your time.
“The best we can do is reach toward each other in the dark.”
Ann Patchett, Bel Canto
10. Barbara Kingsolver
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead won the Pulitzer Prize in 2023 — a retelling of David Copperfield set in Appalachian Virginia, tackling the opioid crisis through the eyes of a kid fighting to survive a broken system. Kingsolver writes about class, poverty, and resilience with the same clear-eyed anger that Garmus brings to gender discrimination.
Kingsolver’s career stretches back to The Bean Trees (1988), and she’s consistently written about people ignored or exploited by American systems. The Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behavior are equally powerful. Both Kingsolver and Garmus believe that fiction should make you angry about injustice while also making you believe change is possible.
“The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for.”
Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams
11. Monica Ali
Monica Ali’s Brick Lane follows a Bangladeshi woman in London’s East End who was married off at eighteen and gradually discovers her own desires, ambitions, and voice. Ali writes about women who were never supposed to have agency slowly claiming it anyway — the same arc that drives Lessons in Chemistry.
Ali shares Garmus’ interest in how societies use marriage, domesticity, and motherhood to contain women’s potential. Love Marriage (2022) continues this theme in a contemporary London setting. Both writers are funny about serious subjects and compassionate toward characters navigating impossible constraints.
“The thing about coming to a new country is that you have to decide who you want to be.”
Monica Ali, Brick Lane
12. Claire Keegan
Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These is set in 1980s Ireland, where a coal merchant discovers that a local convent is holding young women prisoner. It’s a quiet, devastating novella about moral courage in a community that would prefer silence. Keegan writes about ordinary people choosing to do the right thing when doing nothing would be easier.
Keegan shares Garmus’ belief that individual acts of decency matter. Elizabeth Zott teaches chemistry to housewives; Bill Furlong speaks up for imprisoned women. Neither is trying to be a hero — they’re just doing what’s right. Keegan’s prose is more spare than Garmus’, but both writers pack enormous emotional power into tight, controlled narratives.
“In life, there are ordinary moments when you realise what matters.”
Claire Keegan
13. Kristin Hannah
Kristin Hannah’s The Great Alone is set in 1970s Alaska, where a family moves to the wilderness and a teenage girl must survive both the brutal environment and her increasingly violent father. Hannah writes about women who endure impossible situations and build new lives from the wreckage.
Hannah shares Garmus’ ability to write about female resilience without making it feel like a cliché. The Nightingale (set in occupied France) and The Women (about nurses in Vietnam) continue the theme — women in historical situations where the odds are stacked against them, fighting not just to survive but to matter. Both writers make you angry on their characters’ behalf and then make you hopeful.
“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”
Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale