The 100 best books about nature and the environment by women

Runaway by Alice Munro, Tar Baby by Toni Morrison and The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot lead the 100 best books about nature and the environment by women, ranked by literary regard. To start, Runaway by Alice Munro is the most approachable of the highly regarded books here, about 5.5 hours to read.

Each point of light is one of the 100, placed by how hard it is to read. The brighter, the higher it ranks. The dotted line is one way up.

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No. 1 of 100

Runaway

Alice Munro · 2004

Difficulty 45/1005.5 hours

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About 721 hours for 99 of 100 books with measured lengths. Estimates use 250 words a minute, adjusted for each book's difficulty. At 2 hours a day, about 361 days for those books.

1–10 · 93 hours

  1. One of Munro's most celebrated collections, frequently cited as the peak of her mature work. Winner of the Giller Prize and numerous international honors.

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  2. On Isle des Chevaliers, a Caribbean island reshaped by Haitian labor and American money, Valerian Street — a retired Philadelphia candy magnate — cultivates hydrangeas in his greenhouse and avoids his neighbors. His wife Margaret, his butler Sydney and cook Ondine, and his niece Jadine, a model trained in Paris, share the villa in a state of maintained tension. When Son — a Black American fugitive who stowed away on their supply boat — is discovered hiding in the house, he breaks open every unspoken arrangement the household depends on. Morrison uses the folk tale of the tar baby as the novel's armature: Jadine and Son become stuck to each other in a relationship that neither can survive and neither can leave. She embodies what he calls racial betrayal — educated in Europe, photographed in furs, at home nowhere. He embodies what she calls romantic primitivism — a man out of time, faithful to a Black Southern past that she finds suffocating. Morrison writes this conflict without a referee. The Caribbean setting is not backdrop but argument — the swamp, the rain forest, the blind horsemen who ride the hills at night all carry the weight of African spiritual history beneath the colonial surface. The novel ends on a mythic image: Son running toward those horsemen, Jadine flying back to Paris. Morrison offers no verdict on who was right.

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  3. No. 3 on this list. The Mill on the Floss

    George Eliot · 1860

    Challenging15 hours

    Taught in schools: AQA GCSE and A-level English Literature (UK)

    Firmly established in the Victorian literature curriculum and regularly taught in surveys of 19th-century British fiction. It stands as Eliot's second-most-studied novel after 'Middlemarch,' valued for its feminist themes, psychological depth, and semi-autobiographical portrayal of female intellectual awakening in a restrictive provincial society.

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  4. The great American novel of Southwestern landscape and faith. Bishop Latour's decades in New Mexico became meditation on vocation, place, and mortality. Core text in American literature courses.

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  5. Winner of the Nebula Award for Best Novel (1999). Widely taught in speculative fiction, Afrofuturism, and American dystopia courses. The Parable duology is among the most assigned works in contemporary SF syllabi and is firmly canonical within the genre; its canonical standing in broader American literary culture continues to grow.

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  6. No. 6 on this list. My Antonia

    Willa Cather · 1918

    Challenging8.4 hours

    My Antonia appears on thousands of university syllabi across American literature, women's literature, and immigrant experience courses. It is included on the Modern Library's 100 Best Novels list and is a fixture in American high school and university curricula, representing the prairie immigrant experience as few other novels do.

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  7. Surfacing is widely taught in Canadian literature, feminist literature, and postcolonial studies courses at universities across North America and the UK. It appears on virtually every Canadian literary canon list and is considered essential reading for understanding the development of Canadian fiction as a distinct literary tradition. No syllabus data was available in the database, but its presence in academic curricula is well established.

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  8. Lispector holds a firm place in comparative literature and Latin American literature syllabi globally, and her work appears in women's writing and world literature courses at major universities. No Open Syllabus data is available for this specific collection, but Lispector as an author is consistently included in world literature canons alongside Borges and García Márquez. The 2015 New Directions translation by Katrina Dodson dramatically expanded her anglophone reach and prestige.

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  9. A Thousand Acres won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 and secured major recognition as a contemporary American realist masterpiece. It occupies a prominent place in contemporary literary canon, particularly within discussions of feminist revision of literary inheritance and the domestic novel.

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  10. Szymborska is a staple of world poetry courses and a Nobel laureate, and this collection is the standard English edition of her work. Its place is secure, though below Hamlet or Gatsby in universal syllabus presence.

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11–20 · 82 hours

  1. No. 11 on this list. A Number · Caryl Churchill · 2002

    One of Churchill's most frequently performed plays and a standard text in contemporary drama courses. Widely recognized as a landmark of twenty-first-century theater.

    Difficult58 min

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  2. No. 12 on this list. Dear Life · Alice Munro · 2012

    Munro's final collection, published the year before her Nobel Prize. Regarded as a fitting capstone to one of the great careers in short fiction.

    Easy4.6 hours

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  3. No. 13 on this list. Adam Bede · George Eliot · 1859

    Adam Bede appears regularly on Victorian literature and 19th-century British fiction syllabi at universities worldwide, and is the standard entry point to George Eliot's work in courses that cannot assign the longer Middlemarch. It is included in most survey courses of the Victorian novel. Its canonical status within the Eliot corpus is secondary only to Middlemarch and The Mill on the Floss, but within the broader Victorian canon it holds a secure if not dominant position — consistently anthologized, consistently in print, and consistently cited as a foundational work of Victorian realism.

    Moderate13 hours

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  4. No. 14 on this list. The Wall · Marlen Haushofer · 1963

    Recognized as a masterpiece of Austrian literature and feminist writing, taught in German literature courses and increasingly included in world literature curricula as an essential post-war text.

    Challenging6.6 hours

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  5. No. 15 on this list. O Pioneers! · Willa Cather · 1913

    O Pioneers! is widely taught in American literature courses as the founding text of the prairie novel tradition. It appears regularly on Great Plains and American regionalism syllabi, and holds a secure place in the Library of America's Cather volumes. It falls short of the saturation of Gatsby or Mockingbird but is standard in any serious survey of early 20th-century American fiction.

    Moderate3.6 hours

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  6. No. 16 on this list. The Wonderful Adventures of Nils · Selma Lagerlöf · 1906

    On Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century, with a Wikipedia article in 39 languages. Commissioned as a geography reader for Swedish schools, it is a national classic in Sweden and a children's classic worldwide, though rarely on university syllabi.

    Easy9.2 hours

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  7. No. 17 on this list. Always Coming Home · Ursula K Le Guin · 1985

    Always Coming Home appears on 72 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus Project data (46th percentile), primarily in science fiction, utopian literature, and feminist studies courses. Its Wikipedia article exists in only 4 languages — modest global reach for a book of this ambition. The book is well-known within Le Guin scholarship and SF studies but has not achieved the broad canonical presence of Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness or The Dispossessed. It was a National Book Award finalist in 1985 and is included in the Library of America's Le Guin edition, which confirms critical recognition without mass adoption.

    Challenging14 hours

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  8. No. 18 on this list. The Farthest Shore · Ursula K Le Guin · 1972

    The Earthsea cycle appears widely on science fiction and speculative fiction syllabi, and this third volume, the National Book Award winner for 1973, is firmly part of that canon. It is less commonly assigned than A Wizard of Earthsea but holds strong placement in fantasy literature courses and children's/YA literature curricula. Its Wikipedia article exists in over fifteen languages, indicating sustained international recognition.

    Challenging5.8 hours

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  9. No. 19 on this list. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves · Karen Joy Fowler · 2014

    Won the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and appeared on numerous year-end best book lists, establishing it as a significant 21st-century literary novel. The book entered academic discourse around animal studies, narrative ethics, and contemporary fiction's engagement with science. While too recent for canonical permanence, it occupies a strong position in discussions of literary fiction addressing interspecies relationships and family trauma.

    Challenging6.7 hours

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  10. No. 20 on this list. Woman on the Edge of Time · Marge Piercy · 1976

    Widely taught in feminist literary studies, utopian fiction, and American literature courses since its 1976 publication, the novel holds a firm place in academic syllabi as a landmark of feminist science fiction. No syllabus count data is available, but its sustained presence across women's studies and speculative fiction curricula for five decades marks it as canonical within those fields, comparable in reach to other key feminist texts of the second wave.

    Difficult18 hours

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21–30 · 75 hours

  1. No. 21 on this list. The Mysteries of Udolpho · Ann Radcliffe · 1794

    The Mysteries of Udolpho is a foundational text taught in 18th-century literature, Gothic studies, and women's writing courses in universities worldwide. Its Wikipedia article spans over 40 languages. Jane Austen's parody in Northanger Abbey has guaranteed it a permanent place in the British literary canon—any reader of Austen eventually encounters Udolpho. It sits at the center of every Gothic fiction course.

    Challenging21 hours

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  2. No. 22 on this list. Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead · Olga Tokarczuk · 2019

    Appears on 90 university syllabi according to Open Syllabus data (48.8th percentile), with a Wikipedia article in 11 languages. The novel has found a foothold in world literature and feminist ecology courses but has not yet achieved the widespread canonical status of older Nobel Prize winners. Its recognition is growing rapidly following Tokarczuk's 2018 Nobel.

    Challenging7.3 hours

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  3. No. 23 on this list. The Secret Garden · Frances Hodgson Burnett · 1911

    Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US)

    The Secret Garden has stayed in print since 1911 and remains a staple of children's classics lists and school reading across the English-speaking world. The Common Core State Standards (2010) name it among their text exemplars for upper-elementary grades, and it is regularly set in children's literature courses.

    Easy4.6 hours

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  4. No. 24 on this list. The Summer Book · Tove Jansson · 1972

    Increasingly recognized as a Scandinavian masterpiece. A quiet classic with a devoted readership.

    Easy1.5 hours

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  5. No. 25 on this list. The Saga of Gosta Berling · Selma Lagerlöf · 1891

    Gösta Berling, a defrocked priest, joins a company of cavaliers on an estate in rural Sweden, where he embarks on a series of romantic adventures. Lagerlöf's debut novel, rich in folklore and Romanticism, established her as a major voice and paved the way for her Nobel Prize.

    Moderate6.2 hours

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  6. No. 26 on this list. Close Range: Wyoming Stories · Annie Proulx · 2000

    Proulx's 'Brokeback Mountain' is widely anthologized and taught, and Close Range is a staple of contemporary American short fiction courses. It is not yet at the level of canonical novels.

    Moderate5.3 hours

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  7. No. 27 on this list. The Secret River · Kate Grenville · 2006

    The Secret River (2005) is a modern Australian classic, taught in Australian schools and in university courses on Australian and postcolonial literature. It is among the most widely read Australian novels of the century so far.

    Challenging11 hours

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  8. No. 28 on this list. My Side of the Mountain · Jean Craighead George · 1959

    Taught in schools: CSEC English B – Caribbean Examinations Council

    A Newbery Honor book and one of the most enduring wilderness survival novels for young readers. Continuously in print since 1959.

    Very Easy1.7 hours

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  9. No. 29 on this list. Flight Behaviour · Barbara Kingsolver · 2013

    Flight Behavior established itself as a significant cli-fi (climate fiction) novel and appears regularly in environmental humanities syllabi and contemporary literature surveys. While not yet achieving canonical permanence like older classics, the novel occupies an important position in 21st-century American fiction addressing ecological crisis. Its combination of literary craft and urgent environmental subject matter ensures ongoing academic and cultural relevance.

    Moderate9.7 hours

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  10. No. 30 on this list. Delta Wedding · Eudora Welty · 1946

    Delta Wedding holds a firm place in the Southern American literary canon and is regularly taught in Southern literature and American women's writing courses. No syllabus or Wikipedia data is available in the database, but Welty's novel appears on numerous American literature reading lists and has maintained continuous academic attention since its 1946 publication. It is not a curriculum fixture on the scale of Beloved or The Great Gatsby, but it is an essential text for anyone studying mid-century American fiction.

    Moderate6.6 hours

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31–40 · 58 hours

  1. No. 31 on this list. Devotions

    Mary Oliver · 2017

  2. No. 32 on this list. The Birds and Other Stories

    Daphne du Maurier · 1952

  3. No. 33 on this list. Under the Feet of Jesus

    Helena Maria Viramontes · 1995

  4. No. 34 on this list. Primeval and Other Times

    Olga Tokarczuk · 1996

  5. No. 35 on this list. Carpentaria

    Alexis Wright · 2006

  6. No. 36 on this list. The Beginning of Spring

    Penelope Fitzgerald · 1988

  7. No. 37 on this list. The Wild Iris

    Louise Glück · 1992

  8. No. 38 on this list. The Island of Missing Trees

    Elif Shafak · 2022

  9. No. 39 on this list. Get a Life

    Nadine Gordimer · 2006

  10. No. 40 on this list. The Quick and the Dead

    Joy Williams · 2000

41–50 · 67 hours

  1. No. 41 on this list. Postcards

    E. Annie Proulx · 1993

  2. No. 42 on this list. Elmet

    Fiona Mozley · 2017

  3. No. 43 on this list. A Children's Bible

    Lydia Millet · 2020

  4. No. 44 on this list. We Need to Talk About Kevin

    Lionel Shriver · 2005

  5. No. 45 on this list. House of Day, House of Night

    Olga Tokarczuk · 1998

  6. No. 46 on this list. Reeds in the Wind

    Grazia Deledda · 1913

  7. No. 47 on this list. The Mother

    Grazia Deledda · 1920

  8. No. 48 on this list. Florida

    Lauren Groff · 2018

  9. No. 49 on this list. Tom Lake

    Ann Patchett · 2023

  10. No. 50 on this list. Dream Work

    Mary Oliver · 1986

51–60 · 76 hours

  1. No. 51 on this list. Women Without Men: A Novel of Modern Iran

    Shahrnush Parsipur · 2004

  2. No. 52 on this list. The Last Lover

    Can Xue · 2005

  3. No. 53 on this list. The God of the Woods

    Liz Moore · 2024

  4. No. 54 on this list. Ducks, Newburyport

    Lucy Ellmann · 2019

  5. No. 55 on this list. The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

    Louise Erdrich · 2001

  6. No. 56 on this list. In the Forest

    Edna O'Brien · 2002

  7. No. 57 on this list. The Dark Is Rising

    Susan Cooper · 1973

    Taught in schools: Common Core text exemplars (Appendix B) (US)

  8. No. 58 on this list. Jamaica Inn

    Daphne du Maurier · 1936

  9. No. 59 on this list. Flight Behavior

    Barbara Kingsolver · 2012

  10. No. 60 on this list. The Vaster Wilds

    Lauren Groff · 2023

61–70 · 55 hours

  1. No. 61 on this list. The Blue Flower

    Penelope Fitzgerald · 1998

  2. No. 62 on this list. Where the Crawdads Sing

    Delia Owens · 2018

  3. No. 63 on this list. Lost Children Archive

    Valeria Luiselli · 2019

  4. No. 64 on this list. Desolation

    Gabriela Mistral · 1936

  5. No. 65 on this list. The Bedlam Stacks

    Natasha Pulley · 2017

  6. No. 66 on this list. A Green Equinox

    Elizabeth Mavor · 1973

  7. No. 67 on this list. The Bass Rock

    Evie Wyld · 2020

  8. No. 68 on this list. Prodigal Summer

    Barbara Kingsolver · 2000

  9. No. 69 on this list. Orbital

    Samantha Harvey · 2024

  10. No. 70 on this list. I Give You Eyes and You Looked Toward Darkness

    Irene Solà · 2025

71–80 · 74 hours

  1. No. 71 on this list. The Good Apprentice

    Iris Murdoch · 1985

  2. No. 72 on this list. Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

    Mary Oliver · 2006

  3. No. 73 on this list. Things in Nature Merely Grow

    Yiyun Li · 2025

  4. No. 74 on this list. State of Wonder

    Ann Patchett · 2012

  5. No. 75 on this list. The Pine Islands

    Marion Poschmann · 2019

  6. No. 76 on this list. Annabel

    Kathleen Winter · 2011

  7. No. 77 on this list. The Emperor of Portugallia

    Selma Lagerlöf · 1914

  8. No. 78 on this list. The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World

    Robin Wall Kimmerer · 2024

  9. No. 79 on this list. A Spell of Winter

    Helen Dunmore · 1997

  10. No. 80 on this list. The Idea of Perfection

    Kate Grenville · 2001

81–90 · 63 hours

  1. No. 81 on this list. The Bees

    Laline Paull · 2015

  2. No. 82 on this list. Knowledge of Angels

    Jill Paton Walsh · 1994

  3. No. 83 on this list. Night's Master

    Tanith Lee · 1978

  4. No. 84 on this list. The Dry

    Jane Harper · 2016

  5. No. 85 on this list. The New Wilderness

    Diane Cook · 2020

  6. No. 86 on this list. The Adventures of China Iron

    Gabriela Cabezón Cámara · 2020

  7. No. 87 on this list. Jamrach's Menagerie

    Carol Birch · 2011

  8. No. 88 on this list. The Elected Member

    Bernice Rubens · 1970

  9. No. 89 on this list. The Stone Carvers

    Jane Urquhart · 2001

  10. No. 90 on this list. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

    J.K. Rowling · 2001

91–100 · 77 hours

  1. No. 91 on this list. The Golem and the Jinni

    Helene Wecker · 2013

  2. No. 92 on this list. The Birdcatcher

    Gayl Jones · 2022

  3. No. 93 on this list. The Vivisectors

    Missouri Williams · 2026

  4. No. 94 on this list. The Yips

    Nicola Barker · 2012

  5. No. 95 on this list. The Wilderness

    Angela Flournoy · 2009

  6. No. 96 on this list. The Likeness

    Tana French · 2008

  7. No. 97 on this list. The Pelican Child

    Joy Williams · 2025

  8. No. 98 on this list. Pod

    Laline Paull · 2023

  9. No. 99 on this list. Work Like Any Other

    Virginia Reeves · 2016

  10. No. 100 on this list. The Funeral Cryer

    Wenyan Lu · 2023

About this list

These 100 books are the highest-scoring eligible books about nature and the environment by women currently in the catalogue. About 721 hours of reading in all, for the 99 with measured lengths. Difficulty runs from 47 to 62 out of 100 for the middle half of the list; the summit is Surfacing at 76.

This list is ranked by literary regard, with a consistent order for equal scores. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. A book is here when ReadingRate files it under Nature & Environment as one of its primary reading domains, at a confidence of 0.8 or more. Catalogue coverage and the historical canon both limit what this list can represent.

When we matched the Canons dataset to our catalogue in October 2026, our canonical-status scores rose with the number of school curricula, publisher series and lists in it that cite a work: the median score was 72 for books one such source cites, 84 at two, 88 at three, 92 at four and 93 at five or more. Prizes are left out of that count. Outside the state curricula, the dataset’s sources choose mostly from what has been translated into English or French, so it is a weaker check on other literatures. Source: Canons (Andrew Piper), CC BY 4.0

Questions people actually ask

What are the best books about nature and the environment by women?
By literary regard, which weighs canonical status, critical standing and influence: Runaway by Alice Munro, Tar Baby by Toni Morrison, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather and Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler. ReadingRate ranks 100 such books, each with a difficulty score and a reading-time estimate.
Which books about nature and the environment by women should I read first?
Start from difficulty, not from rank. The most approachable books on this list that still carry top literary regard are Runaway by Alice Munro (about 5.5 hours), Tar Baby by Toni Morrison and The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot.
What are the shortest of the best books about nature and the environment by women?
Among the top 25, the shortest are A Number by Caryl Churchill (about 58 min), The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (about 1.5 hours) and Selected Poems of Wisława Szymborska by Wisława Szymborska (about 2.4 hours), at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty.
Which of the best books about nature and the environment by women are the established classics?
By canonical status, how firmly a book sits in curricula, anthologies and the canon: My Antonia by Willa Cather, Runaway by Alice Munro, The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot, The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett and A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley.
Can I read any of these books about nature and the environment by women for free?
8 of the 100 open in ReadingRate's reader with a free account, from public-domain editions: The Mill on the Floss, Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Antonia, Adam Bede, O Pioneers! and 3 more.
How long would it take to read the top ten?
About 93 hours, at an average pace of 250 words a minute adjusted for each book's difficulty: 47 days at two hours a day. Set your own pace on the page and the list's reading times change to it.
How hard are books about nature and the environment by women to read?
Most of this list sits between 47 and 62 on ReadingRate's 100-point difficulty scale, where 40 to 55 is moderate. The summit is Surfacing at 76. Every entry carries its own score, so a reader can pick a great book at a difficulty they will finish.
How is this list ranked?
On literary-regard data: how canonically established a work is, its critical standing, and its influence on later writing. It is not a readers’ poll, which is why recent bestsellers rarely appear. Membership follows authors and co-authors, not translators or editors. Lists by country, author, period, theme or difficulty keep to literature (fiction, poetry, drama and philosophy), their novels, poems and plays first and their philosophy after them; a list of a kind of book, such as memoir or criticism, keeps every book of that kind. Every list holds at most three works by one author. A book is here when ReadingRate files it under Nature & Environment as one of its primary reading domains, at a confidence of 0.8 or more.