When I used to visit bookstores in New York City when I worked there, I was struck by how few women writers of mysteries and spy stories were on sale. Publishing was yet another male-dominated business.

Just a decade or two later, it’s just the reverse.  Women are running most big publishing houses, and female writers of great skill are popping up everywhere. They have already enriched my reading life, and I’m building a personal festival around them this week.

The four books are The Traitor by Ava Glass, A World Of Curiosities by Louise Penny, The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner, and Three Hours by Rosamund Lupton.

I’ve read that 80 percent of contemporary fiction is written by women and purchased by women. Wow.

Agatha Christie was an anomaly; men dominated spy and mystery writing for years. I’m an avid reader of good British mysteries and everything John LeCarre ever wrote. I struggled to find successors for him after he died, but women spy writers are beginning to fill that void for me, and it seems, for others.

In spy fiction especially, there has been a lot of angst and anger about the genre, which has typically favored male writers and protagonists ( Le Carre dominating the field), ignoring women, or marginalizing them in spy stories.

That has been changing.

Female writers like Ava Glass, Alma Katsu, I.S. Berry, and a half dozen others use their real-life experiences and literary skills to shake up the spy genre and have female spies and heroes narrating their books. I just ordered Glass’s second spy novel, The Traitor,  featuring her brave and savvy secret agent, Emma. I also ordered her first best-seller, Always Emma.

Critics love the heroine, Emma. Few of LeCarre’s heroes were likable.

From the uniform rave reviews of both, I can’t wait to read about Emma Makepeace, the protagonist and hero. Few of LeCarre’s spy heroes were likable; most were screwed up and tragedy prone. Makepeace is an appealing character, pleasant, determined, and enthusiastic. Like LeCarre, Glass has had some government experience, she is not as cynical and bitter as he was.

It seems a reach to me to compare any new spy writer to LeCarre, who showed us decades of brilliance before he died recently. It sounds like Glass (not her real name) is off to a good start.

I’m fascinated by this long overdue literary revolution in the spy and mystery genre and literary fiction. The new novels by female first novelists are the best books I’ve read in a long time. I’ve written six first novel books by women and was dazzled by every one of them.

The once-misogynist publishers are gone.

It’s white men’s turn to find it challenging to get published. I’m one of those older white men irrelevant authors, but I love to read and am grateful for the brave and heart-touching books women are writing. I’m devoting my rest time to four of these books this week.

I’ve been instructed to rest at least three or four hours daily while recovering from my brain bleed and my concussion. I’ve been browsing, sniffing, and poring through reviews and interviews to develop four books by ascending or brand-new female writers. Louise Penny is a Canadian  Agatha Christie; I’m hooked on Chief Inspector Armand Gamache. Her latest book, A World Of Curiosities, is coming tomorrow.

It’s about a murder in a remote religious sect far from civilization. Gamache investigates with his deeply troubled son-in-law; the two fight terribly at the monastery.

It’s not a first novel, and Penny isn’t new to mystery or spy fiction, but she is a powerhouse symbol of the rise of women mystery writes, and I have enjoyed all of the books in this series.

I’ve also ordered Jennifer Weiner’s new book, The Breakaway, a story about Abby Stern, a 30-year-old woman who is often weight-shamed by her mother and drawn to strange boyfriends who have no idea what she’s doing with her life.  Stern loves to have sex and eat. The book sounds different, fun, and arresting.

In the late summer of 2023, Abby led a 700-mile bicycle trip 700 miles from her home to Niagara Falls.

Along the way, a bizarre male lover and her fat-shaming mother appear. Reviewers call the book “delicious,” “sly,” funny and touching. Weiner is a famous advocate for bodily independence and women’s rights. The movie is about self-pride, the abortion struggle, the twisted way body weight and appearance afflict women in our culture, and brutal boyfriends and mothers. The book also deals with the abortion controversy.

Abby is no victim; she knows how to stand up for herself, a trait she will need.

It’s coming tomorrow.

The fourth book I’ve ordered is Rosamund Lupton’s Three Hours, a gripping and best-selling novel about a private school assaulted and held hostage by two mysterious killers who have wounded the school’s headmaster.

The headmaster is saved by his students, who fight to keep him alive, and features a CID who has little time to figure out who the killers are, what they want, and how they can be stopped. It’s a sadly relevant plot for Americans and the British, apparently thoughtfully and intelligently done. Only one shot was fired. The police have three hours to stop more killings and determine who the murderers are.

All during the brutal invasion, some children are safe in the school auditorium, where they hole up and continue rehearsing MacBeth to stay sane. The book is described as a gripping thriller that is immensely satisfying. Despite its fast and powerful face and subject matter, its natural resonance lies in exploring the mysteries of human consciousness, especially under such awful pressure and fear.

I would have considered this subject matter too unsettling to read a novel about, but every critic I researched said they could not put the book down and did not regret reading it for a second. It sounds uplifting and inspiring.

The story has a lot of love and courage and isn’t meant for people who love blood and violence. It focuses on a young student who fights to save his brother, the courageous headmaster, and Detective Inspector Rose Polstein, a pregnant forensic psychologist who has to put together a picture of the monster capable of planning such an attack.

My books will all be here by the end of this week, and I plan to get through them all by the end of next week. I’m calling it my Woman’s  Book Festival. Penny and Lupton are not first-time novelists but part of a new generation of women writers with huge and admiring followers. I’m in.