Passes the "Bechdel Test" Public

Created by Phil in SF

This list contains books that:

  • have at least two women in them,
  • who talk to each other,
  • about something other than a man.

Wikipedia has a decent intro on the origins of the metric: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bechdel_test

Beware that this test is very limited in probative value. "The Bechdel test only indicates whether women are present in a work of fiction to a certain degree. A work may pass the test and still contain sexist content, and a work with prominent female characters may fail the test." This is just one thing a person may want to consider in their reading. There are many others.

I (@kingrat@sfba.club) track this in my reading as a check to make sure I am including reading that includes non-token female characters because American publishing often overly focuses on men's stories, and that is quite often reflected even more …

  1. The Traitor by  (Alias Emma, #2)

    British spy Emma Makepeace goes undercover on a Russian oligarch’s superyacht, where she’s one wrong move away from a watery …

  2. Station Eternity by  (The Midsolar Murders, #1)

    Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an …

  3. Blanche on the Lam by  (Blanche White, #1)

    No rating

    Blanche White is a plump, feisty, middle-aged African-American housekeeper working for the genteel rich in North Carolina. But when an …

  4. New Mutants Lethal Legion by , , , and 1 other

  5. The Relentless Moon by  (Lady Astronaut, #3)

    It's 1963, and riots and sabotage plague the space program. The climate change caused by the Meteor is becoming more …

  6. The Consuming Fire by 

    The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible is …

  7. Little (Grrl) Lost by 

    No rating

    Fourteen-year-old T.J. and her new friend, sixteen-year-old Elizabeth, a six-inch-high "Little" with a big chip on her shoulder, help one …

  8. Hollow Beasts by  (Jodi Luna, #1)

    After a long stint in academia, Jodi Luna leaves Boston for the wilds of New Mexico to start a new …

  9. The Last Emperox by 

    The collapse of The Flow, the interstellar pathway between the planets of the Interdependency, has accelerated. Entire star systems—and billions …

  10. The City Inside by 

    The City Inside, a near-future epic by the internationally celebrated Samit Basu, pulls no punches as it comes for your …

  11. All That Is Mine I Carry with Me by 

    One afternoon in November 1975, ten-year-old Miranda Larkin comes home from school to find her house eerily quiet. Her mother …

  12. Sing Her Down by 

    No Country for Old Men meets Killing Eve in this gritty, feminist Western thriller from the award-winning author of These …

  13. Relentless Melt by 

    Stranger Things meets the Golden Age of Detective fiction in a rollicking supernatural detective thriller that introduces Artie Quick, a …

  14. The Murders in Great Diddling by 

    The best stories are the ones we didn’t know needed to be told.

    The small, rundown village of Great …

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