An online survey of the Top Five female authors

It has been eight years since Life of Pi was published to international critical acclaim, and won the 2002 Man Booker Prize.

Not one for the fainthearted, Yoko Ogawa explores exploitative sexual politics and power relations in her newest novel Hotel Iris.

Kiran Desai’s 2006 award winning novel The Inheritance of Loss

The title of Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth comes from the protagonist’s “auditory-gustatory” synaesthesia, a rare condition that causes Linda Hammerick to literally taste the words she hears.

Terry Pratchett is a man of many thousands of words, hundreds of which are wittily twisted into the nonsensical phrases that make up the fictional Discworld series, and fifty-plus other collaborations that span across a 30 year career as a novelist.

Is this what authors now think we want to read/hear? I sincerely hope not because the only word I have been able to think of to describe it is “tosh”.

a celebrated account of one woman diving head first into indulgence, enlightenment and spirituality – it’s a grown up gap year.

Men are from mars and women are from Harrods?

Heartstone is the fifth novel in Sansom’s best-selling ‘Shardlake’ series; Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign and Revelation.

Aurora Teagarden; an unlikely character to have avid interest in historical murders.

Whether or not Karl is a Gervais creation, which I dearly hope he isn’t, appreciate it for what it is and laugh heartily.

Meet Bunny Munro, a self-centred, chain-smoking, irresponsible sex addict who “just found this world a hard place to be good in”.

At its heart The Female Eunuch is a call for freedom from a constricting conformity that still exists.

This is certainly not an emotionally uplifting read, yet Atwood’s tale will leave you contemplating whether aspects of Gilead already exist in our modern society?

In times of bitter rejection or ultimate betrayal, nothing is more satisfying than imagining the punishment you dream to deal your cold-blooded nemesis.