Want to Read More Books Like Enola Holmes? Here Are 15 Books With Strong Female Leads

It's 1921 in Bombay, and Perveen Mistry, the heroine of The Widows of Malabar Hill by Sujata Massey, has just become one of the first female lawyers in India. A fresh-faced graduate of Oxford Law School, Perveen is employed by her father's highly respected law firm and decides to devote her entire career to protecting women's rights. But Perveen's first case is far from conventional. Handling the deceptively unremarkable will of a wealthy Muslim mill owner, Perveen discovers her client has left behind three widows, all of whom have suspiciously signed over their inheritance to a charity. As Perveen shifts from lawyer to detective, tensions rise and murder ensues. It's up to her to expose the injustices taking place behind closed doors.

In Stacey Lee's Outrun the Moon, 15-year-old Mercy Wong is an Asian-American girl living in San Francisco during the early 1900s. Though she resides in impoverished Chinatown, her social circle at school is made up of the daughters of San Francisco's rich and famous, an elite crowd she tries to fit in with, masquerading as a Chinese heiress. But Mercy's world is turned completely upside down by the Great Earthquake and Fire of 1906. With her city and her personal life in shambles, this disaster unearths the city's sociopolitical issues, which Mercy must carefully navigate as a Chinese-American girl caught between two very different worlds.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante is the first installment of the Neapolitan Novels, a series set in post-World War II Naples, Italy. Destined for an underprivileged life of poverty and illiteracy in a violent society, Elena Greco uses education to fight for a better future for herself away from the city her family has lived in for generations. She falls into a toxic and tumultuous lifelong friendship with her neighbor, Lila, who always seems to effortlessly be steps ahead of Elena in nearly every chapter of their lives. Inspiring the critically acclaimed HBO series, this coming-of-age novel paints a stunning, emotionally charged portrait of 1950s women in Italian society.

A whodunit novel set at UC Berkeley in the 1980s, Murder in the English Department by Valerie Miner addresses the historically unethical treatment of women in intellectual spaces and higher education. Combating sexual harassment and abuse on campus while working toward securing tenure, Professor Nan Weaver finds herself as the prime suspect of a murder involving a misogynistic professor in her department. Without anyone on her side, Nan does everything in her power to prove her innocence and prove her place as a female scholar in a male-dominated profession.

An American south, modern-day twist on the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Legendborn is a gripping novel filled with equal parts mystery, history, and Black Girl Magic. On her first day at the University of North Carolina, Bree Matthews accidentally witnesses a demon feeding on human energies in the middle of the night. Becoming tangled in a strange reality, she meets a teenage boy named Merlin who attempts to wipe Bree's memory of everything she saw, but fails in the process, thereby unlocking Bree's magic and her buried memories. In the blink of an eye, Bree becomes equipped with painful knowledge about her mother's death, as well as a newfound ability to bring justice to her loss.

When Murder at Archly Manor opens, it's 1923 in London and Olive Belgrave is in search of a job that's as unconventional as she is. Upon being presented with suspicious information about her cousin's mysterious fiancé Alfred, Olive jumps on the opportunity to conduct a background investigation about him. Expecting to find conclusive answers, Olive instead finds questions and finds herself as the head detective of her first case. Then when a blue-blooded murder occurs at a glamourous aristocratic party, it's up to Olive to uncover the truth amidst all the twists and turns overcomplicated by London high society.

Daughter of Fortune tells the story of Eliza Sommers, a young Chilean girl orphaned at birth who is characterized by her innately independent and open-hearted spirit. Having spent her whole life in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, Eliza is eager to seek adventure elsewhere. Leaving behind her home and the family that raised her, Eliza heads to California during the Gold Rush of 1849 in pursuit of the love of her life. But Eliza finds something other than love in California — Eliza finds herself, her freedom, and her place in society as dictated by the corrupt morals of her home country and her new one.

Though the Lilac Girls live oceans apart from each other, they are very much together in their fight for social justice during World War II. Lilac Girls follows the individual experiences of three women: Caroline is a New York socialite working at the French consulate, Kasia is a Polish teenager, and Herta is an ambitious German doctor. When Hitler's army invades Poland in September 1939, their worlds are forever changed, but these strong-willed women never give up on hope, freedom, and second chances.

The first novel in its eponymous series, Girls With Sharp Sticks is set in an elite all-girls boarding school that grooms its students to be poised, subservient, and "perfect" women through classes like "Growing a Beautiful and Prosperous Garden," but Mena just wants to do mathematics, be independent, and have a voice. Fed up by the overbearing gaze of the Guardians, Mena, along with a group of her fellow students, begins to investigate. The dark truth about Innovations Academy begins to unravel, motivating the girls to find out who they are and what they are capable of.

The Shark Club immediately draws readers in with a flashback: Maeve Donnelly is enjoying another relaxing summer in Florida, full of blood orange sunsets and key lime pies. The beach is only a few steps away from her home, and except for the boy she kissed and the shark that bit her, she has hardly a care in the world. It's not until 18 years later that Maeve realizes this summer was a life-defining one. Now a world-traveling marine biologist studying shark psychology, Maeve returns home to investigate an illegal shark-finning operation. As confident and sure as she is in the water and in her research, nothing has prepared Maeve for what she's about to face.

Inspired by the true story of Saint Hilda of Whitby, Hild chronicles the adamancy, selflessness, and bravery that lead this heroine to become one of the most pivotal figures of her time. Hild knows of no other reality besides the violence and brutality that dominates life in Great Britain during the Middle Ages. The niece of the king, Hild establishes herself as his seer and quickly becomes his right-hand person. With the violent emergence of new kingdoms and the spread of new religion at bay, Hild is at the heart of all the bloodshed, bribery, and power complexes of the seventh century.

Caucasia is the story of Birdie and Cole, sister activists living through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1970s. Born to a white mother and a Black father, Birdie is light-skinned, while Cole is dark-skinned. Though they promise to stick together through thick and thin, their parents decide to separate, and Cole is taken to Brazil by her father. Without her sister by her side, white-passing Birdie attempts to navigate 1970s America, learning the complexities of race and identity in a season of personal and social change.

What really happened in the village of Herron Mills? The answer lies within the three teenage protagonists of I Killed Zoe Spanos. Unsettled by the weak and inconclusive police evidence in the disappearance and subsequent murder of Zoe Spanos, skeptical Martina Green decides to takes matters into her own hands. Documenting her findings in her podcast Missing Zoe, Martina spearheads her own investigation. In her quest to seek the truth, Martina's own life becomes intertwined with Anna Ciccone, a girl who not only bears an eerie resemblance to Zoe, but who also ends up confessing to her murder.

PopCo narrates the adventure of 20-something Alice Butler, a brilliant mathematician and cryptography enthusiast who works at a corrupt company called PopCo that manufactures toys for teenage girls. Alice's controlled life at the toy company gets upturned when she encounters an underground anticorporate society made up of suppressed intellectuals like her. Alice finds a sense of purpose in this group of anarchist revolutionaries, and with her companions, she leads a rebellion from the inside, outsmarting the system in which she's been trapped.

Set in 1950s Houston, The After Party offers a glimpse into sophisticated Texan high society through the lens of two wealthy housewives, Joan Fortier and her partner-in-crime CeCe Buchanan, who aren't nearly as naïve as they seem. Despite being a socialite who seems to be on full public display in every gossip column in River Oaks, Joan's life is actually shrouded in secrecy. Exploring classism, female sexuality, and social expectations, The After Party is a suspenseful narrative that throws the idea of the conventional southern belle right out the window.