Showing titles in Women

"The Road Taken" is a coming-of-age memoir in which a woman discovers her independence on the wheels of a motorcycle traveling the world and competing in the Peking to Paris Car Rally. She also draws upon her training as an artist to create an Australian homestead for herself in Sonoma, California.

Mary Welsh, a celebrated wartime journalist during the London Blitz and the liberation of Paris, meets Ernest Hemingway in May 1944. He becomes so infatuated with Mary that he asks her to marry him the third time they meet—although they are married to other people. Eventually, she succumbs to Ernest's campaign, and in the last days of the war joined him at his estate in Cuba. Through Mary's eyes, we see Ernest Hemingway in a fresh light. Their turbulent marriage survives his cruelty and abuse, perhaps because of their sexual compatibility and her essential contribution to his writing.

With self-deprecation and surprising wit, Marla reveals what it's like to see the world through her eyes, how it feels to grow up "disabled" in a society where expectations are often based on perceived abilities, and what it means to compete at the world-class level despite the fact that - quite literally, for her - there is no finish line.

Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the 20th century. Based on extensive archival materials, new documents, and exclusive access to Perkins' family members and friends, this biography is the first complete portrait of a devoted public servant with a passionate personal life, a mother who changed the landscape of American business and society.

Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother and uncle in the small Southern town of Stamps in Arkansas. Struggling with rejection, they endure the prejudice of their white neighbours and suffer several racist incidents. One day, their father unexpectedly returns and takes the children to live with their mother in St Louis, Missouri. Aged only eight, Maya is abused by her mother's boyfriend, an experience that haunts her for a lifetime.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

Ana Montes had spent seventeen years spying for the Cubans. She had been raised in a patriotic Puerto Rican household: Her father, a psychiatrist, was a former colonel in the US Army. Her sister worked as a translator for the FBI and helped break up a ring of Cuban spies in Miami. Her brother was also a loyal FBI agent. Montes impressed her bosses but in secret spent her breaks memorizing top-secret documents before sending them to the Cuban government. Retired FBI agent Peter J. Lapp explains the clues that led their team to catch one of the United States’ most dangerous spies.

She is one of the most recognizable women of our time. America knows Jane Fonda as an actress and an activist, a feminist and a wife, a workout guru and a role model. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, Fonda reveals that she is so much more. From her youth among Hollywood's elite and her early film career to the challenges and triumphs of her life today, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths.

Jessica Lange: An Adventurer's Heart, the first full-length biography of Lange, presents a comprehensive study of the life and work of an exceptional actress. Beginning with her upbringing in Minnesota, author Anthony Uzarowski traces Lange's formative years as a restless soul who found solace in art and a life on the road before turning to acting.

An acclaimed bow hunter who defies the stereotype that hunting is a man's game, Eva Shockey is a TV and social media phenomenon at the forefront of a new wave of women and girls who are passionate about outdoor sports.

A Ingrid Rojas Contreras la magia le corre por las venas. No era una niña fácil de sorprender: creció en medio de la violencia política de los años ochenta y noventa en Colombia, en una casa siempre atestada de gente que venía a que su madre le leyera el futuro. Su abuelo materno, Nono, era un curandero de renombre, dotado de lo que la familia llamaba “los secretos”: el poder de hablar con los muertos, predecir el futuro, tratar a los enfermos y mover las nubes. La madre de Ingrid, la primera mujer en heredar los secretos, era igualmente poderosa. 

Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife... but as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less. A man who bled quietly to death in his living room. Sarah Krasnostein has watched the extraordinary Sandra Pankhurst bring order and care to these, the living and the dead - and the book she has written is equally extraordinary.

Long before "women in rock" became a media catchphrase, African-American guitar virtuoso Rosetta Tharpe proved in spectacular fashion that women could rock. Born in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, in 1915, Tharpe was gospel’s first superstar and the preeminent crossover figure of its golden age (1945-1965). Shout, Sister, Shout! is the first biography of this trailblazing performer who influenced scores of popular musicians, from Elvis Presley and Little Richard to Eric Clapton and Etta James.

In 1611, 34-year-old Nur Jahan, daughter of a Persian noble and widow of a subversive official, became the 20th and favorite wife of Emperor Jahangir, who ruled the vast Mughal Empire. Nur's confident assertion of talent and power is revelatory; it far exceeded the authority of her female contemporaries in Renaissance Europe, including Elizabeth I. Here, she finally receives her due in a deeply researched and evocative biography that awakens us to a fascinating history.

This is the incredible true story of the greatest spy you’ve never heard of - as told to the author by the woman herself. At the outbreak of World War Two, Nancy Wake’s glamorous life in the South of France seemed far removed from the fighting. But when her husband was called up for military service, Nancy felt she had just as much of a duty to fight for freedom. By 1943, her fearless undercover work even in the face of personal tragedy had earned her a place on the Gestapo’s "most wanted" list.

From earliest experimentation to habitual excess to full-blown abuse, 24-year-old Koren Zailckas leads us through her experience of a terrifying trend among young girls, exploring how binge drinking becomes routine, how it becomes "the usual". With the stylistic freshness of a poet and the dramatic gifts of a novelist, Zailckas describes her first sip at 14, alcohol poisoning at 16, blacked-out sexual experience at 19, and total disorientation after waking up in an unfamiliar New York City apartment at 22.

Tras la invasión de Holanda, los Frank, comerciantes judíos alemanes emigrados a Amsterdam en 1933, se ocultaron de la Gestapo en una buhardilla anexa al edificio donde el padre de Ana tenía sus oficinas. Eran ocho personas y permanecieron recluidas desde junio de 1942 hasta agosto de 1944, fecha en que fueron detenidos y enviados a campos de concentración. En ese lugar y en las más precarias condiciones, Ana, a sus trece años, escribió su estremecedor Diario.

Whitney Houston (1963-2012) was a superstar. Few in the world of show business reach the career heights that she attained with what seemed such ease. Her megastardom peaked in 1992 with the release of the hit movie The Bodyguard and the international number-one hit "I Will Always Love You". The movie soundtrack still stands as one of the best-selling albums of all time. She won six Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, thirty Billboard Music Awards, and twenty-two American Music Awards, and amassed a vast fortune. Her death has shocked the entertainment world and her fans.

Perhaps one of the best known of the English monarchs, Queen Victoria forever shaped a chapter of English history, bequeathing her name to the Victorian age. In Queen Victoria, Lucy Worsley introduces this iconic woman in a new light. Going beyond an exploration of the queen merely as a monarch, Worsley considers Victoria as a woman leading a truly extraordinary life in a unique time period.

This is the autobiographical novel by Harriet Wilson, the first African-American to publish a novel in North America. Originally published in 1859, it was rediscovered in 1982.