I liked Clan of the Cave Bear ok. After that I think the series gets increasingly repetitious and mechanical as Ayla invents all of human culture single handedly.
I'll just give you some more of my favorite authors: Jane Rule wrote a lot of very good fiction about lesbians (most so-called "lesbian fiction" is trashy). But the one I would recommend for you is called "Memory Board." The central characters are a lesbian couple, but that is not the point, they just happen to be lesbians and the book could have been a lot the same if they were a straight couple. The point is that they are older and one of them has some kind of dementia (never labelled Alzheimer's, but it could be). The book is about how they cope with that and how their loving and positive ways of coping strengthen the whole family around them.
Marge Piercy is one of my favorite poets. But she also writes novels and essays. One of her most powerful novels is "Woman on the Edge of Time." It is simultaneously a dystopian novel of how bad things could get if we stay on the course we are on (and it was written in 1976, so she was pretty prescient) and a utopian novel showing a lovely picture of different ways of doing things.
Jean Hegland, "Into the Forest." is one of those novels of survival after the collapse of civilization as we know it. But it is not grim. Very little is even said about how/why things collapse. It is the story of one family coping when electricity and everything depending on it goes away. It avoids the common cliches of this genre. There is no sudden and dramatic change in the lives of the two young main characters. There isn't an immediate awareness on the part of the community that something awful and terrifying is occurring. People don't suddenly go berserk. Marauding gangs of psychopaths don't appear out of nowhere to prey upon the vulnerability of their fellow citizens. Every character, every behavior, every reaction is believable and easily explained within the context of known human behavior. Everyone initially clings desperately to the belief that things haven't really changed, that the situation isn't that bad, that tomorrow, things will all return to normal. It's just a matter of holding on and continuing with their daily routines. And it is an uplifting story of love and courage.
Hegland also wrote "Windfalls." This is chick-lit of the highest sort, the story of two different women in very different circumstances as they cope with unplanned pregnancies and how their choices play out in their lives. Beautifully written, full of courage and emotion and hope. I would be interested to see if it would mean as much to a male reader.
For historical fiction, I recommend two different WWII novels: "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay. It is about WWII and what happened to the Jews, but focusing on occupied France. It shows some about the horror of the camps from a child's point of view, but interwoven with a modern woman in Paris trying to re-discover the history. And Marge Piercy again: "Gone to Soldiers." This is a huge novel, showing the war from a bunch of different perspectives, including the women left behind as their men go to war. Parts of it are in the camps and are intense, not at all light reading, but an amazing job of making the whole story come to life, not just the parts of it we already know.
In my eco-fiction category I have Margaret Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy, "Oryx and Crake," "Year of the Flood," and "MaddAddam" and Linda Hogan "Solar Storms." The MaddAddam books are more post apocalypse, but "Solar Storms" is about right now, told from the view of Native American characters. Very poignant, but again not light reading.
For something just fun there's "A Walk in the Woods." by Bill Bryson, now out as a movie which I haven't seen. The book is not actually a novel, but reads like one. It's the story of Bryson's attempt to walk the Appalachian trail. It is very nice about what the Appalachian Trail is like, but also hilariously funny.
I could go on and on.... Can you tell I love books and usually read one or two novels a week?
.) It's also okay for me to start with short stories with someone I'm not familiar with. That's what I did last year with AppleStar's suggestion of Connie Willis.