I loved the Trixie Belden and Judy Bolton mysteries when I was a kid. I read Nancy Drew, too, but preferred the Dana Girls (another Stratemeyer series). All of those, of course, had brothers and friends and such, but the girls were definitely the main characters. Read a lot of Miss Pickerell books when I was a kid, too.
The Diana Tregarde books by Mercedes Lackey. The Valdemar books were good, too, but my favourites were the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, which have a male main character.
The Frostflower and Thorn series by Pyllis Ann Karr. (Frostflower is a mage, Rosethorn a warrior.)
Dicey’s Song. Friday. Podkayne of Mars. Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Sassinak (Moon & McCaffrey).
Tanith Lee writes good female characters: The Birthgrave, Delerium’s Mistress, and the Don’t Bite the Sun/Drinking Sapphire Wine duology in particular.
Same for C.J. Cherryh, especially Cyteen.
Also the Jinian Star-Eye trilogy by Tepper. And Beauty. Much of her other books are too strident for me to like their main characters, though.
McKillip also writes good female protagonists, although The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is all that’s coming to mind right now. Alphabet of Thorn, maybe? don’t remember if it was one main character or not.
Touching on the YA genre, I enjoyed the recent Mad Skills by Walter Greatshell, The Dust of 100Dogs by A.S. King, and How To Ditch Your Fairy by Justine Larbalestier. And considerably older (and first read when I was around the same 12 or 13 as the protagonist) A Coming of Age by Timothy Zahn. (And now that I mention that, it brings to mind Mirable by Janet Kagan, read at roughly the same time.)
I was fond of The Hunger Games at first, until it became increasingly illogical as the series went on. But I felt that Katniss Everdeen was an interesting character, although it did feel as if the author wrote Katniss as being a female character with a male brain sometimes.
She felt like a woman to me (a woman.) But I’ve never felt that I have a brain much different than any man’s.
I actually think the series got better as it went on, but that was in part because I think it’s one of the most realistic depictions of PTSD I’ve seen in a novel. It does fall apart structurally and get repetitious, but then so does reality when you have PTSD. And I loved the ending.
I am an adult male and I adore the whole Hunger Games series. I don’t care if it is high literature or not. I saw the themes clearly and thought they were well done and powerful.
The other one is Gone With The Wind. Scarlett O’Hara is one nasty and complex bitch but she also has her good points.
Oh, another childhood favorite (that I never considered having a problem with for the POV character being a girl) was The Girl Who Owned a City. The ability to accept a female protagonist probably depends on the subject matter, though–I doubt I would have been as favorable for AreYou There, God, it’s Me, Margaret.
I’ll second that that sounds interesting. I like historical fiction. And underdogs.
I’ve liked the J.A Konrath series Jack (Jacklyn) Daniels. About a dozen books. About a police detective in Chicago. It can get violent, but has quite a bit of humor.
Also have like Angela Marsons Kim Stone series. About another female police detective. They can be a bit dark though.
I actually just read a great book with a female protagonist - in fact, nearly the entire cast of characters is female. It’s called* Red Sister*, and it’s a fantasy (or possibly science fiction) novel by Mark Lawrence, author of the excellent* Broken Empire *and Red Queen’s War trilogies. It also has one of the best opening lines I’ve read in a long time:
It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent, Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men.
Second Pride & Prejudice (and to a lesser extent Austen’s other novels), To Kill a Mockingbird, The Hunger Games, Thursday Next, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, and others that have been mentioned.
Also The Help by Kathrynn Stockett, Walking Across Egypt by Clyde Edgerton, A Green Journey by Jon Hassler, and probably many others that don’t happen to spring to mind right now.
I could identify with Ulf’s observation:
I agree with the distinction between books that are perceived (and marketed) as “girls’ books” vs. books whose main characters happen to be female. And I think a similar distinction can be made in the case of grown-up literature, with romance (and its various subgenres) and “chick lit” being marketed toward and read by pretty much exclusively females; and I, as a male, don’t really have any desire to read any of that stuff. But I’m perfectly happy with books like Pride & Prejudice or The Help, which show women’s concerns from women’s POV and which may not pass a reverse Bechdel test—as long as they’re good books. But I’m wondering how to nail down the difference between chick lit and genuine good literature about female characters.
Regarding Moll Flanders, I just wanted to add (in case you’ve never read any 18th-century novels) that Defoe can be tough going at first—he writes very long sentences, and doesn’t put paragraph breaks into dialogue. I suggest trying an audiobook edition, if you’re okay with that. I recommend the version by Virginia Leishman.
Then I will again recommend Elleander Morning by Jerry Yulsman, to you in particular. Some strong thematic similarities between the two; if you like one I suspect you’ll like the other.
Some of my favorites have been mentioned, including Pride and Prejudice and Corelia’s Honor. One that I am surprised has not come up yet is Modesty Blaise, both the novels and the comic strips. Modesty’s side kick, Willie Garvin, is a major character but Modesty is (almost?) always the POV.
You’re probably thinking of The Eyre Affair, the first of the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde.
You weren’t asking me, but I read The Eyre Affair before having read Jane Eyre and I did feel this left me at a disadvantage. A small but significant part of the story involves Thursday entering the world of Jane Eyre and meddling in the plot so Jane Eyre ends differently. This “different” ending is the real ending to Jane Eyre and the version Thursday first encounters is an alternative one invented by Fforde, but while I was able to figure this out it really would have been a lot more interesting and effective had I already known how Jane Eyre was supposed to end.
FWIW, I really didn’t care for The Eyre Affair even though it seemed like just the sort of thing I would like, but maybe you’d enjoy it more. I would recommend reading (or at least watching a decent movie/miniseries adaptation of) Jane Eyre first, though. When I did get around to reading Jane Eyre I actually enjoyed it a lot more than I’d expected.
