Book It: 11 Books By and For Women You'll Want To Read and Give Now
Here are some of the 11 Best 2025 Books by women authors in multiple genres for you to gift yourself or anyone on your list.
Winding down 2025 is a good time to pick up a book for yourself, friend, family member or colleague that they can enjoy as keen insight into their working life, an inspiration from historic and current women changing history, or perhaps an escape into times that have shaped destiny. All are works of excellent storytelling and truth.
“In the spirit of #GivingTuesday, please consider giving to @TakeLeadWomen where your gift can assist in the mission of gender equity. #womensleadership https://lead.taketheleadwomen.com/campaign/739999/donate”
And they each tie in well with the mission of Take The Lead, advocating for harnessing the power of your own story and truth and effectively using strategies and tools to achieve change.
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So Take The Lead is choosing 11 books (for its 11 years of history) that are new this year. These books can be respite for your mind and heart, and also offer tangible steps for change through memoir, historical fiction, essays, deep research, strategic step by step nonfiction and deeply emotional biography. Whether you are an ink on paper reader, audiobook listener or digital reader, all are ready to dig in and learn.
Sales of print books are overall down less tan 1 percent in the first nine months of this year with 531 million print books sold. Publishers Weekly reports, “Sales of adult nonfiction improved slightly in the third quarter. Sales of self-help books continued to do well, up 16.1%.”
According to EReader, “Year-to-date E-Book revenues were up 0.5%, as compared to the first eight months of 2024, for a total of $703.1 million. Digital audiobooks were up 0.6% to $673.5 million in revenue.”
People are reading, listening and consuming books of all kinds.
Here are Take The Lead’s 11 book recommendations for 2025, listed alphabetically by author.
1. Christine Brennan, On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women Sports,
Honored at the 2025 Take The Lead Power Up Conference with the Leading Media Award, Christine Brennan is an award-winning, bestselling author, journalist and broadcaster whose latest book is a fascinating capture of the importance of the career of a young basketball player in the WNBA who changed the profile of women’s sports and all American sports. Brennan as a USA Today columnist and also commentator for CNN, PBS, ABC and NPR, writes with precision and style, chronicling an unprecedented shift in sports fandom.
Read more in Take The Lead on Christine Brennan
2. Veronica Chapa, Malinalli. Recently awarded Best Novel Historical Fiction (English) at the 2025 International Latino Book Awards, this first historical fiction gem by Veronica Chapa traces the history of the 16th century Indigenous woman who served as Hernan Cortes’ translator when he and the Spanish invaders conquered what is now Mexico. Working for years on the meticulous research and writing of this novel sprinkled with magical realism, what Chapa accomplishes is rewriting the history of a powerful goddess who changed the world. It is a lesson in timeless boldness, embodying power and embracing resilience.
“What author Veronica Chapa accomplishes in MALINALLI is rewriting the history of a powerful goddess who changed the world. @atriabooks #powerful #womenshistory”
3. Meghan French Dunbar, This Isn’t Working: How Working Women Can Overcome Stress, Guilt and Overload to Find True Success. The author tells Forbes that women “no longer have to abide by the status quo but can, instead, redefine it.” What spurred her writing this book was her “achievement addiction,” COVID, caring for her 9-monht-old son and leaving her CEO position of a company she founded. “I don’t want to completely destroy myself in the name of success and work nights and weekends and sacrifice all my relationships,” French Dunbar says. She offers strategies to change approaches and cultures and summarizes that there is hope after burnout.
4. Eszter Hargittai, (with John Palfrey), Wired Wisdom: How To Age Better Online. Recently named one of the Best Books of 2025 About Healthy Aging by the Wall Street Journal, this well-researched and wickedly insightful book offers surprises and insights into the habits of people over 60 and how they navigate the digital world. Eszter Hargittai is the chair of Internet Use & Society in the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich and John Palfrey is president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. “Digital inequalities signal how social inequality reflects that age is what matters the most,” Hargittai said recently. “Older adults are not a siloed group or a silenced group.”
Read more in Take The Lead on Hargittai and Palfrey’s new book
“WIRED WISDOM: 1 of @WSJ Best Books of 2025 About Healthy Aging @UChicagoPress is a wickedly insightful book offering insights into the digital habits of people over 60. @eszter, John Palfrey @macfound #books”
5. Nancy Johnson, People Of Means. This evocative, exceptionally well-written fictional account of Black generational excellence recently earned its way to NPR’s Most Loved Books of 2025. Beginning in the Jim Crow era and onto the present with the George Floyd murder, this novel astutely relays stories of a Black family and their trials and accomplishments, maintaining Legacy and cultural connections.
6. Laney Katz Becker, In The Family Way. Set in the 1960s and moving forward, this emotionally charged and eloquent novel tells the stories of close women friends and the young women they take in who are unmarried and pregnant at a time when abortion was dangerous and illegal. An award-winning author, former literary agent writes about these urgent relationships women create at a time when they cannot get a mortgage, their own credit cards and are fired from their jobs if they become pregnant. This illuminating book is a must-read at a time when women’s reproductive rights are again assaulted.
“Laney Katz Becker’s latest, IN THE FAMILY WAY, @harpercollins is an illuminating book set in the 1960s that is a must-read at a time when women’s #reproductiverights are again assaulted. #womenshistory #bestbooks ”
7. Sally Mann, Art Work: On the Creative Life. Digging deep into her award-winning and iconographic career in photography, Sally Mann exposes her inspirations, inner struggles and creative adaptations in this memoir that every person who creates content of any kind can learn from and enjoy. At a recent book event in Chicago, Mann said, “In my own leadership experience and now as someone who trains and consults with leaders, I observe that those who engage in any of the arts, whether as an active participant or a fan, benefit greatly from it. It lets you see differently, think differently, and do differently. Art shakes out the mental cobwebs so you can innovate and solve complex problems. It builds empathy and enables you to coalesce others around a vision.”
Read more in Take The Lead on Sally Mann
8. Mary Annette Pember, Medicine River: A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools. Award-winning journalist and national correspondent for ICT News, Mary Annette Pember writes the stunning and deeply traumatic truth of the thousands of Native Americans who survived Indian boarding schools, including her mother. Facing the generational trauma endured and surmounted, Pember tells the meticulous story of community, hope and family in a courageous chronicle of an insufferable American past. “It’s emblematic of the assimilationist policies that the United States foisted upon native people for so many years, forbidding us from speaking our language,” Pember said at the recent Journalism & Women Symposium. “When we look at our history and we look at the degree to which we have held on to our language and culture, we may be among the greatest example of a cultural and language survival in the world.”
“Mary Annette Pember on @penguinrandom MEDICINE RIVER: “When we look at our history, we may be among the greatest example of a cultural and language survival in the world.” #IndianBoardingSchools #truthtelling ”
Read more in Take The Lead on Mary Annette Pember
9. Brigid Schulte, Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for A Better Life. Former Washington Post journalist who won a Pulitzer Prize, best-selling author and director of the Better Life Lab, Brigid Schulte addresses the overwhelming nature of work and how to redefine priorities and choices to live and feel better. Deftly researched, reported and written with care and craft, Schulte offers historic insight, context and solutions to addressing the imbalance of work and life.
10. Eveline Shen, Choosing To Lead Against The Current: The Courageous Operating System for Changemakers. Creating her own Courageous Operating System as principal of Leading Courageously, Eveline Shen, former executive director of Forward Together, gathers research, stories, her own experiences and offers a guiding framework for those who want to innovate and build a better world. She rallies for changemakers to take the time to follow the blueprint for standing up and creating new systems. Shen writes, “The most important insight I have gained through my work and by supporting other leaders is that when we are going upstream against a formidable current, we need more than a box of leadership tools, We need an internal leadership system that we can call on to guide us as we make our way upstream effectively.”
“Eveline Shen in CHOOSING TO LEAD AGAINST THE CURRENT: “We need an internal leadership system that we can call on to guide us as we make our way upstream effectively.” @penguinrandom #leadership #books”
11. Vauhini Vara, Searches: Selfhood In The Digital Age. Prize-winning author and journalist, Vauhini Vara has been fascinated by the exploration of AI and its effects on culture and life and writes a forthright book of brilliant essays about the time we live in, implications for humanity and how to deal with the abrupt changes we cannot control.
Wherever you can find inspiration or information, the insight you gain can broaden the way you think about yourself, the world and your role in it.
