Biography Girls

Tales of Hardship, Love and Happiness in Tate & Lyle’s East End Factories. On an autumn day in 1944, Ethel Alleyne walked the short distance from her house to Tate & Lyle’s refinery on the shining curve of the Thames. Looking up at the giant gates, Ethel felt like she had been preparing for this moment all her life. She smoothed down her frizzy hair, scraped a bit of dirt off the corner of her shoe and strode through. She was quite unprepared for the sight that met her eyes …

Jadie never spoke. She never laughed, or cried, or uttered any sound. Despite efforts to reach her, Jadie remained locked in her own troubled world - until one remarkable teacher persuaded her to break her self-imposed silence. Nothing in all of Torey Hayden's experience could have prepared her for the shock of what Jadie told her - a story too horrendous for Torey's professional colleagues to acknowledge.

“Abbs has found a gripping and little-known story at the heart of one of the 20th century’s most astonishing creative moments, researched it deeply, and brought the extraordinary Joyce family and their circle in 1920s Paris to richly-imagined life.”—Emma Darwin, bestselling author of A...

Most of us want to be fit and healthy, but get stuck in a rut—we just don’t have the will power to get up and move. What is the incentive for you to get off that couch and work out when you have all three seasons of Game of Thrones waiting for you? Almost everyone wants to be fit, but they...

In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits a night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It was the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18, and the man she had given herself to had moved on. She'd submitted her will to his and then found that she was a slave without a master.

College student Lauren Spierer was pursuing her dreams, joining her boyfriend at a party school eight hundred miles from home. Social and gregarious, studying fashion and rooming with friends, Lauren embraced her new adventure with the zeal of a young woman who suddenly had everything she desired. But there was a dark side that she and her inner circle kept secret. And one warm June evening, after heading out with friends, she seemingly vanished.

Spaceflight historian Amy Shira Teitel tells the riveting story of the female pilots who each dreamed of being the first American woman in space. When the space age dawned in the late 1950s, Jackie Cochran held more propeller and jet flying records than any pilot of the twentieth century—man...

Jayne Mansfield was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known for her platinum blonde hair, hourglass figure, outrageously low necklines, and flamboyant lifestyle. Mansfield proved early in her career that she was adept in both comic and dramatic roles, but her tenacious search for the spotlight and her risqué stunts caused her to be increasingly snubbed in Hollywood. In the first definitive biography of Mansfield, Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called “the poet of publicity.”

Talented and ambitious, Monica Potts and her best friend, Darci, were both determined to make something of themselves. How did their lives turn out so different? “The Forgotten Girls is much more than a memoir; it’s the unflinching story of rural women trying to live in the most rugged...

True stories inspired by one of the most iconic, beloved, bestselling books of our time In the ten years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of readers to set out on paths they never thought possible, in...

International bestseller! In her groundbreaking debut essay collection, actress Lily Collins—Golden Globe-nominated star of Rules Don’t Apply, Mortal Instruments, and To the Bone—is opening a poignant, honest conversation about the things young women struggle with: body image...

Growing up in British Guiana in the 1950s, Sharon Maas has everything a shy child with a vivid imagination could wish for. She spends her days studying bugs in the backyard, eating fresh mangos straight from the tree, and tucked up on her granny’s lap losing herself in books. But with her father campaigning for Guiana’s independence and her mother away for work, there’s a void in Sharon’s heart, and she craves rules and structure. The books she devours give her a glimpse of life in a faraway country: England.

During her teens, Rachel Lloyd ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past and devoted herself to helping other young girls escape "the life". In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark world of commercial sex trafficking in cinematic detail and tells the story of her groundbreaking nonprofit organization: GEMS.

A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl. “A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an...

I penned this book to captivate and enthrall listeners. My small-town girl journey, shaped by a childhood of free play and independence, was anything but ordinary. As you journey with me through my memories, you will undoubtedly recognize a piece of yourself in my words. Be prepared for shocking revelations, as everything in this book is unquestionably the unvarnished truth--as I see it.

Bryony Gordon has OCD. It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world is about to come crashing down: that her family might die if she doesn't repeat a phrase five times, or that she might have murdered someone and forgotten about it. It's caused alopecia, bulimia, and drug dependency. And Bryony is sick of it. Keeping silent about her illness has given it a cachet it simply does not deserve, so here she shares her story with trademark wit and dazzling honesty.

Until five years ago, Alexandra Heminsley was decidedly not a runner. Nor was she athletic in any sense of the word. She was an ordinary, curvy woman who was convinced that sports of any kind, especially running, were beyond her. But she's made running part of her life, and gets to reap the rewards: not just the obvious things, like a touch of weight loss, health and glowing skin, but self-belief, and immeasurable daily pleasure.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The former middle distance Olympic runner and high-end escort speaks out for the first time about her battle with mental illness, and how mania controlled and compelled her in competition, but also in life. This is a heartbreakingly honest yet hopeful memoir reminiscent...

Just for the girls in your life, ages 8 and up, this collection of 100 extraordinary stories of praying women of faith—from the Bible, history, and today—will empower girls to know and understand how praying women have made a difference in the world and how much smaller our faith (and the biblical record) would be without them.

Like so many American women, Shauna M. Ahern spent decades feeling not good enough about her body, about money, and about her worth in this culture. For a decade, with the help of her husband, she ran a successful food blog, wrote award-winning cookbooks, and raised two children. In the midst of this, at age 48, she suffered a mini-stroke. Tests revealed she would recover fully, but when her doctor impressed upon her that emotional stress can cause physical damage, she dove deep inside herself to understand and let go of a lifetime of damaging patterns of thought.