Women Memoirs

The Landscapes of Anne of Green Gables explores L. M. Montgomery's deep connection to the landscapes of Prince Edward Island that inspired her to write the beloved Anne of Green Gables series. From the Lake of Shining Waters and the Haunted Wood to Lover's Lane, you'll be immersed in the real places immortalized in the novels. Using Montgomery's journals, archives, and scrapbooks, Catherine Reid also explores the many similarities between Montgomery and her unforgettable heroine, Anne Shirley.

Sara Fay Egan has never lived a “by-the-book” kind of life. From orchestrating high-profile events to grappling with her daughter's life-threatening illness, she’s faced more twists and turns than most. In The Through Line, Sara Fay shares her deeply personal journey, blending raw emotion with the practical know-how she’s gained from years of balancing a successful career with family responsibilities.

In this celebration of style, from the moment she entered the public eye during her husband’s U.S. Senate campaign through her time as the first Black First Lady and today as one of this country’s most influential figures, Michelle Obama shares how she uses the beauty and intrigue of fashion to draw attention to her message.

Orphaned at a young age, Edith Stuyvesant Dresser claimed lineage from one of New York's best known families. She grew up in Newport and Paris, and her engagement and marriage to George Vanderbilt was one of the most watched events of Gilded Age society. But none of this prepared her to be mistress of Biltmore House. Before their marriage, the wealthy and bookish Vanderbilt had dedicated his life to creating a spectacular European-style estate on 125,000 acres of North Carolina wilderness.

As a young girl, Maggie Rowe took the idea of salvation very seriously. Growing up in a moderately religious household, her fear of eternal damnation turned into a childhood terror that drove her to become an outrageously dedicated born-again Christian - regularly slinging Bible verses in cutthroat scripture memorization competitions and assaulting strangers at shopping malls with the "good news" that they were going to hell.

Few books have had such an impact as Wild Swans: a popular best seller which has sold more than 13 million copies and a critically acclaimed history of China; a tragic tale of nightmarish cruelty and an uplifting story of bravery and survival.

With a sharp eye for comic detail and a wicked ear for the absurdities of life, Dawn French shows just how an RAF girl from the west country with dreams of becoming a ballerina/bridesmaid/thief rose to become one of the best-loved comedy actresses of our time.

Tananarive Due, best-selling author and American Book Award winner, and her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, guide listeners through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Told in alternating chapters, their story is a triumphant memoir of their experiences with everyday people fighting for equality as members of grassroots organizations in the South. Filled with drama, heartache and rousing successes, Freedom in the Family will inspire and enlighten with its riveting account of one of America’s most progressive times.

In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content," but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive.

When Brooke Shields welcomed her newborn daughter, Rowan Francis Henchy, into the world, something unexpected followed: a crippling depression. Now, for the first time, Brooke talks about the trials, tribulations, and finally the triumphs that occurred before, during, and after the birth of her daughter.

“A vivid, clear-eyed glimpse into American politics from a woman who grew up in the hinterlands of Mississippi and against all odds propelled herself into the rooms of power in Washington and New York City. Disarmingly honest, Hinton has invited us into her extraordinary life, from her complicated relationship with the Mississippi Delta of her youth, to the famous—too often, infamous—men she met along the way in her career in Democratic politics. Hinton’s first book is brimming with the steady perseverance, relentless ambition and maddening frustrations of a talented woman who found...

In 1850s South Carolina, an enslaved woman named Rose faced a crisis: the imminent sale of her daughter Ashley. Thinking quickly, she packed a cotton bag for her with a few items, and, soon after, the nine-year-old girl was separated from her mother and sold. Decades later, Ashley’s granddaughter Ruth embroidered this family history on the sack in spare, haunting language. Historian Tiya Miles carefully traces these women’s faint presence in archival records, and, where archives fall short, she turns to objects, art, and the environment to write a singular history of slavery.

At age four, Molly Shannon’s world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress.

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill 12 students and a teacher and wound 24 others before taking their own lives. For the last 16 years, Sue Klebold, Dylan's mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong?

Published in the US for the first time, Fearless and Free is the memoir of the fabulous, rule-breaking, one-of-a-kind Josephine Baker, the iconic dancer, singer, spy, and Civil Rights activist. After stealing the spotlight as a teenaged Broadway performer during the height of the Harlem Renaissance, Josephine then took Paris by storm, dazzling audiences across the Roaring Twenties. In her famous banana skirt, she enraptured royalty and countless fans—Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso among them.

Cinco años después de publicar su ópera prima, Cuando era puertorriqueña, Esmeralda Santiago continuó la narración de sus memorias en Casi una mujer. En este volumen, “Negi”, mote cariñoso que recibe la autora, cuenta sus años adolescentes en un Nueva York convulso en plena década de los años sesenta. En un pequeño apartamento de Brooklyn, rodeada de 10 hermanos y una madre que se apoyaba en ella por ser la mayor, vive el cambio de niña a mujer.

Come to Paris, August 2021, when the City of Lights was still empty of tourists and a thirst for long-overdue pleasure gripped those who wandered its streets. After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend’s apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it.

Over a quarter of a century after its first publication, the great and simple wisdom in this book continues to influence women's lives.

What would it be like to sit down for an impassioned, entertaining conversation with Hillary Clinton? In Something Lost, Something Gained, Hillary offers her candid views on life and love, politics, liberty, democracy, the threats we face, and the future within our reach. She describes the strength she draws from her deepest friendships, her Methodist faith, and the nearly fifty years she’s been married to President Bill Clinton—all with the wisdom that comes from looking back on a full life with fresh eyes.

The long-awaited memoir of her tumultuous year in office, A Woman First: First Woman is an intimate first-person account of the public and private lives of Selina Meyer, America's first woman president.