Anthologies
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| New Woman, New Fiction | 1990 | Buy |
Children’s
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| What Kind of Feet Does a Bear Have? | 1963 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| To The Precipice | 1966 | Buy |
| Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid | 1969 | Buy |
| Any Minute I Can Split | 1972 | Buy |
| Looking for Mr. Goodbar | 1975 | Buy |
| Attachments | 1977 | Buy |
| Emmeline | 1980 | Buy |
| August | 1983 | Buy |
| His Little Women | 1990 | Buy |
| Olivia or The Weight of the Past | 1994 | Buy |
| Perfidia | 1997 | Buy |
Judith Rossner was born Judith Perelman on March 31, 1935, in the Bronx, New York. She attended public schools and briefly enrolled at City College of New York before dropping out to marry Robert Rossner in 1954. While working as a secretary, she completed her first novel, To the Precipice (1966), about a young woman who marries her way out of poverty. Her second and third books, Nine Months in the Life of an Old Maid (1969) and Any Minute I Can Split (1972), further explored female identity and independence in New York City.
Her fourth novel, Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1975), became a cultural event. Inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn, a schoolteacher killed by a man she picked up in a singles bar, the book sold over four million copies and gave Rossner financial independence. She followed it with Attachments (1977), about two women who marry conjoined twins, and Emmeline (1980), a historical novel set in 1840s Lowell, Massachusetts, about a young mill worker whose buried secret destroys her years later. August (1983), a bestselling portrait of the bond between a psychoanalyst and her patient, spent 19 weeks on The New York Times list.
After contracting viral encephalitis, which caused short-term memory loss, Rossner struggled to write for several years. She returned with His Little Women (1990), a modern spin on Louisa May Alcott’s classic, and later published Olivia or The Weight of the Past (1994) and Perfidia (1997), a mother-daughter novel inspired, like Goodbar, by a real murder. Rossner died on August 9, 2005, at age 70 in Manhattan.