Biography Girls

Meet Rebecca Contreras. Born into poverty to a drug-addicted mother, Rebecca has to fight for survival from her very first breath. When she is five years old, her mother leaves for the store and doesn't return. This abandonment is one of many betrayals, defining her youth with uncertainty, neglect, and every imaginable type of abuse, including an attempt on her life. A lost girl for almost two decades, formed from dysfunction and stuck in a generational cycle of destruction, the track of Rebecca's life suddenly changes in a transformative moment.

Growing up on welfare, food stamps, and Greyhound buses, Holly Thompson Rehder quit school at fifteen to help take care of her mother and younger sister after a devastating car accident. Getting married and pregnant soon thereafter, Holly decided that the life she had been born into was not what she intended to give her child. Two decades later she was a successful businesswoman. And today, she is a rising political star who serves as an inspiration to young women across the state of Missouri—and indeed, the entire nation—all while never forgetting where she came from.

Girl Unlearned is a raw and honest memoir about breaking generational cycles, reclaiming identity, and finding a sense of home within yourself. In this book, Anh Mian shares the story of her healing journey after being taken from her mother as a child and raised between two cultures, shaped by silence, shame, and emotional abandonment. Taught to stay small and quiet, she lived in survival mode for years until the quiet voice within her refused to be silenced.

For over two decades the identity of Melissa Witt's murderer has been hidden among the dense trees and thorny undergrowth rooted deeply in the uneven ground of a remote mountaintop in the Ozark National Forest. Determined to find answers, LaDonna Humphrey has spent the past seven years hunting for Melissa's killer. Her investigation, both thrilling and unpredictable, has led her on a journey like no other.

She was beautiful, talented, irascible, ruthless, vulnerable, and a true Hollywood legend. From abused child to dance-hall entertainer to silent-film actress, she went on to become one of Hollywood's screen goddesses with films such as Possessed opposite Clark Gable, with whom she began a torrid off-screen affair, Grand Hotel, and Mildred Pierce, her Academy Award-winning film.

The 1970s saw women coming into their own, working hard to create new roles at home and in sports, culture, politics, and business. It was also the start of the “fitness revolution.” At this unique intersection of feminism and athleticism, Lisa Lindahl’s game-changing entrepreneurial journey began.

In late 2019, Sylvia Patterson was a celebrated pop journalist, still merrily writing about the musical greats. But with the diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, a global pandemic and the collapse of her industry, life was about to take a drastic turn. It was a misadventure that would teach her many things. The power of friendship, the shock of mortality and what happens when love is tested. How a walk in the park, a spontaneous dance and a TV hero can save your life. How your perspective can shift on everything, from work, family and music, to what truly makes you happy.

Widowed Blanche Taylor Moore was about to lose her second spouse to symptoms that mysteriously mirrored those that killed her first husband—as well as her previous boyfriend. When an investigation reveals arsenic poisoning, the hideous truth about the wife and mother comes to light. Did the abuse Blanche suffered as a child at the hands of her alcoholic father turn her into a murderer she became?

Told primarily through conversations, The Tuesday Girl is raw, witty, emotional, and ultimately inspirational. Tanya takes the listener on intimate dates, walks with friends, and conversations with people in her life. She falls in love with someone who she is certain is different from anyone she’s ever met, only to discover that he is a conman. Through it all, she relies on her friend Erin and learns that romance isn’t something that just happens in books—it’s something that runs throughout your own life.

The extraordinary true story of surviving the unimaginable … In 1945, seven-year-old Barbie and her sister Eva were trapped, terrified, in wartorn Germany. With their father missing, and hundreds of miles from their mother, news of the approaching army left them confronted with an impossible choice: to face invasion, or to flee on foot.Eva, aged nineteen, was determined to find her mother.

With humor and honesty, Girls on Film looks at the good, the bad, and the unfairly written women in film. A celebration of the power of cinema and the hidden messages within media and culture, this collection of personal essays explores the women who inspired and confused a young film enthusiast.

As World War II progressed, the Okma family took six Jewish refugees into their house, hiding them in a secret room behind their fireplace. The youngest daughter, Kieks, joined the Resistance, delivering illegal newspapers, guiding British parachutists around The Hague and preparing safe houses for Special Forces who were dropped in from England.

In Buddha and the Dancing Girl, Catherine Ann Jones generously shares experiences most of us will never have: acting on the stage and screen, living for years in a South Indian hut, writing award-winning plays and screenplays, and lecturing internationally. Yet her memoir offers a deeper gift: spiritual and psychological wisdom distilled from a lifetime of reflection

The Fleet Street Girls is the inspiring story of the female journalists who broke down barriers in the 1970s as women arrived on Fleet Street for the first time. Julie Welch was the first ever female football reporter. To achieve this role at the Observer, she had to battle the National Union of Journalists nearly calling a strike when she dared to write an article as a mere secretary; an entire room of men falling silent to listen to her give her first football report over the phone, before pronouncing it passable; and many other battles in-between.

As a kid in the 1970s and 80s, Carina Chocano was confused by the mixed messages all around her; messages that told her who she could be - and who she couldn’t. Dutifully absorbing all the conflicting information the culture has to offer on how to be a woman, Chocano grappled with sexed up sidekicks, princesses waiting to be saved, and morally infallible angels who seemed to have no opinions of their own. She learned that "the girl" is not a person, but a man's idea of what a woman should be - she’s whatever the hero needs her to be in order to become himself.

Kathi Koll's acclaimed and award-winning memoir is both a love story and a survivor's tale in which Koll courageously unveils an unexpected life of joy, adventure, heartbreak, and even a little laughter as she shares the realities of being a full-time caregiver. When her husband, Don, called on his way to the hospital, Kathi Koll had no idea how dramatically their lives would change or how her loving heart and indomitable spirit would fight it.

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women, too, could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation.

Joan's neighborhood is filled with kids of all ages, but even her closest friends don't know how violent Joan's dad is or how difficult it is for her to navigate the troubled waters of her homelife. Joan becomes adept at reading her dad's mood and trying to prevent him from inflicting harm upon her mom. But time and again, her dad succeeds in his mission. As the violence escalates, Joan is plagued with the constant fear that her mother may die.

In a house teeming with life, young Maura, voted the Most Quiet Girl in Catholic school, notices everything but says little. Eager to penetrate the secret world of her father, FBI agent Joe Conlon, she is drawn to the bureau drawer where he places his badge at night. The time is the late 1960s, and Vietnam and the Cold War are fomenting unrest outside Maura's suburban Los Angeles home. Inside, the Conlons and their five children are still bound by tradition.

At the age of 15, Kelle Groom found that alcohol allowed her to connect with people and explore intimacy in ways she'd never been able to experience before. She began drinking before class, often blacked out at bars, and fell into destructive relationships. At 19, already an out-of-control alcoholic, she was pregnant. Accepting the heartbreaking fact that she was incapable of taking care of her son herself, she gave him up for adoption to her aunt and uncle. When he was nine months old, the boy was diagnosed with leukemia....