Showing titles in Women

In this deeply etched and haunting memoir, Vivian Gornick tells the story of her lifelong battle with her mother for independence. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the principal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond. Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband.

While on the campaign trail, Elizabeth Edwards met many others who have had to contend with serious adversity in their lives, and in Resilience, she draws on their experiences as well as her own, crafting an unsentimental and ultimately inspirational meditation on the gifts we can find among life's biggest challenges.

Sharon Osbourne's life has always been full of drama, heartbreak and passion. When she completed her best-selling first book, Extreme, she had hoped to find some peace and stability after her rollercoaster years. It was not to be. In Survivor, her brand-new memoir, she reveals what really happened next. From famous celebrity feuds, to her eventful experiences on The X Factor, to her turbulent relationship with her father and the tragic impact of his death, Sharon remains as frank and insightful as ever.

There are countless books about the great rock/pop icon of the 20th century David Bowie. But there's only one written by the woman who met him aged just 19, married him, had a child with him, and helped shape his image and the early stages of his career. In one of the great rock 'n' roll exposés, Angela Mary Hartnett Bowie gives a riveting account of her years with Bowie and his progress from aspiring young singer to international rock stardom. 

Kate Langbroek’s deliciously funny, irreverent, and inspiring memoir about moving to Bologna with her family to seek la dolce vita is a glorious reminder of what we can learn from the Italians about living life to the fullest - and what really matters when the world goes to hell in a handbasket.

When a state trooper appeared at Rachel Zimmerman’s door to report that her husband had jumped to his death off a nearby bridge, she fell to her knees, unable to fully absorb the news. How could the man she’d married, a devoted father and robotics professor at MIT, have committed such a violent act? How would she explain this to her young daughters? And could she have stopped him? A longtime journalist, she probed obsessively, believing answers would help her survive. She interviewed doctors, suicide researchers, and a man who jumped off the same bridge and lived.

Close your eyes and get ready to see the world in a new and more positive way. As a child in Toronto, Molly Burke was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and became completely sightless as a teenager. Now an award-winning YouTube star and global influencer, Molly shares what it’s like to be a purple-haired, pink-obsessed fashion and makeup lover in a seeing world. She speaks with authenticity and candor about how she tackles the preconceived notions we have around blindness; Molly has made it her mission to make us see her - and ourselves- in a wholly empowering way.  

My life was flipped upside down on April 7, 2001, one day before my 43rd birthday. I received the DNA test results that had answered a lifetime of questions. Everything—and I mean everything—I knew about myself wasn’t true. I turned into my own private investigator, digging through records and interviewing nurses who worked at the hospital, where my life changed forever. It’s a devastating and bizarre story, so out of this world that my life even garnered worldwide attention. The research and wisdom I have gained regarding trauma have given me hope and understanding.

Born in 1921, Pippa Latour was a covert special operations agent who parachuted into a field in Nazi-occupied Normandy. Trained by the British as a Special Operations Executive, Pippa was lauded for her fluency with languages and her coding ability—both attributes she put to remarkable use as she posed as a teenage soap seller, often selling soap to the German soldiers, and sending back information via code to the UK.

Linda Lear offers the astonishing portrait of an extraordinary woman who gave us some of the most beloved children's books of all time. Beatrix Potter found freedom from her conventional Victorian upbringing in the countryside. Nature inspired her imagination as an artist and scientific illustrator, but "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" brought her fame, financial success, and the promise of happiness when she fell in love with her editor, Norman Warne. After his tragic and untimely death, Potter embraced a new life as the owner of Hill Top Farm in the English Lake District.

In this wise and intimate new book, Sharon Olds tells the story of a divorce, embracing strands of love, sex, sorrow, memory, and new freedom. As she carries us through the seasons when her marriage was ending, Olds opens her heart to the listener, sharing the feeling of invisibility that comes when we are no longer standing in love’s sight; the surprising physical bond that still exists between a couple during parting; the loss of everything from her husband’s smile to the set of his hip; the radical change in her sense of place in the world.

When Sheila Kohler was 37, she received the heart-stopping news that her sister Maxine, only two years older, was killed when her husband drove them off a deserted road in Johannesburg. Stunned by the news, she immediately flew back to the country where she was born, determined to find answers and forced to reckon with his history of violence and the lingering effects of their most unusual childhood - one marked by death and the misguided love of their mother.

No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm, or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith. Michael Coveney's biography shines a light on the life and career of a truly remarkable performer, one whose stage and screen career spans six decades.

Donna Hayes had fortitude and smarts. At the top of her game, thriving in New York City no less, her career was soaring on Wall Street, and she was starring in her own one woman show off Broadway. To be scammed by a man she had met on a dating app shocked and shamed her. In Jamaica as a child, death had come for Hayes three times. Each time she survived it.

After surviving a traumatic childhood in 1970s New York and young adulthood living in the shadow of her flamboyant mother, Rita, a makeup-addicted former television singer, Elissa Altman has managed to build a very different life, settling in Connecticut with her wife of nearly 20 years. After much time, therapy, and wine, Elissa is at last in a healthy place, still orbiting around her mother but keeping far enough away to preserve the stable, independent world she has built as a writer and editor. Then Elissa is confronted with the unthinkable.

A memoir from Joe Biden’s younger sister, trusted confidante, and lifelong campaign manager, Growing Up Biden details Valerie’s decades-long professional career in politics, and the central role she played in her brother’s life as an insightful adviser, an ever-loyal advocate, and a best friend. This memoir, full of candor and warmth, brings listeners into the Biden home and shares stories from growing up in Delaware as the only daughter of the close-knit Irish Catholic family.

By Winston Churchill's own admission, victory in the Second World War would have been "impossible without her". Until now, however, the only existing biography of Churchill's wife, Clementine, was written by her daughter. Sonia Purnell finally gives Clementine her due with a deeply researched account that tells her life story, revealing how she was instrumental in softening FDR's initial dislike of her husband and paving the way for Britain's close relationship with America.

Are sports good for kids? Does participation in athletics improve a persons life? Yes, says Betsy Mitchell 2x Olympian, 7x NCAA champion, and collegiate athletic director. But according to Mitchell, amateur sports are only beneficial when the focus remains on acquiring skills, developing sportsmanship, and having fun. In this inspirational memoir, Betsy writes a love letter to amateur athletes, revealing how the joy and challenges of sports shaped her life and sharing twelve pivotal lessons she learned along the way.

Fear Is Just a Word begins on an international bridge between Mexico and the United States, as fifty-six-year-old Miriam Rodríguez stalks one of the men she believes was involved in the murder of her daughter Karen. He is her target number eleven, a member of the drug cartel that has terrorized and controlled what was once Miriam’s quiet hometown of San Fernando, Mexico, almost one hundred miles from the U.S. border. Having dyed her hair red as a disguise, Miriam watches, waits, and then orchestrates the arrest of this man, exacting her own version of justice.

Joni Mitchell is a cultural touchstone for generations of Americans. In her heyday she released 10 experimental, challenging, and revealing albums; her lyrics captivated people with the beauty of their language and the rawness of their emotions, both deeply personal to Mitchell and universally relatable to her audience. In this intimate biography, composed of dozens of in-person interviews with Mitchell, David Yaffe reveals the backstory behind the famous songs.