Personal Memoirs Women

Meredith Hall's moving but unsentimental memoir begins in 1965, when she becomes pregnant at sixteen. Shunned by her insular New Hampshire community, she is then kicked out of the house by her mother. Her father and stepmother reluctantly take her in, hiding her before they finally banish her altogether. After giving her baby up for adoption, Hall wanders recklessly through the Middle East, where she survives by selling her possessions and finally her blood.

In Shark Tales, Barbara shares her hilarious stories about growing up, getting into trouble, failing miserably, and then starting over again. In each chapter, she comes back to one of her mom's unconventional lessons, and how it applies in the real world of business. Whatever your calling, the homespun lessons that work for Barbara will help you use what you've got to create success in your life.

"In Paris (or anywhere else, really) a table for one can be a most delightful place." --Alone Time, as seen in The New York Times A wise, passionate account of the pleasures of traveling solo In our increasingly frantic daily lives, many people are genuinely fearful of the prospect of solitude...

From acclaimed poet and creator of the popular twitter account @SoSadToday comes the darkly funny and brutally honest collection of essays that Roxane Gay called "sad and uncomfortable and their own kind of gorgeous." Melissa Broder always struggled with anxiety. In the fall of 2012, she went...

Beth is a sweet-natured child who appears to have been well looked after. But it isn't long before Cathy begins to have concerns that the relationship between Beth and her father is not as it should be. Little Beth, aged 7, has been brought up by her father Derek after her mother left when she was a toddler. When Derek is suddenly admitted to hospital with psychiatric problems, Beth is taken into care and arrives at Cathy's.

From the charming and wickedly funny co-creator and star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, a collection of hilarious personal essays, poems and even amusement park maps on the subjects of insecurity, fame, anxiety, and much more. Rachel Bloom has felt abnormal and out of place her whole life. In this...

Ann Evans and her husband were thriving. Or, so Ann thought. They were members of a vibrant, progressive Christian congregation where her husband was minister and she was an engaged partner, helping facilitate workshops and selling his books.

When Tanja Pajevic’s mother died, she felt alone and unsupported. She didn’t want her grief to sideline her, as it had when her father died. This time around, she wanted to grieve consciously. But how? In a society that no longer has clear rituals or traditions around grief, Tanja set out to create her own. As the weeks and months passed, Tanja, a first-generation Serbian-American woman, delved into her anger, rage and sorrow, as well as explored the complicated issue of forgiveness.

This program is read by read by Sura Siu with an exclusive note written and read by the author. One of TIME and Oprah Daily's Most Anticipated Books of 2025 “Siu's measured, compassionate delivery honors Nguyen's story, which balances the raw emotion of trauma with the strength of survival...

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.

Destrozada por la muerte de su madre y, al mismo tiempo, desconcertada y "más que un poco avergonzada" por la intensidad de su reacción, Arundhati Roy comenzó a escribir estas memorias en un intento de comprender sus sentimientos hacia la madre de la que huyó a los dieciocho años, "no porque no la amara, sino para poder seguir amándola". Así empieza esta historia asombrosa, que Roy lleva "escribiendo toda la vida", un texto radicalmente honesto, divertido y profundamente conmovedor. .

In "Bare," Raina O’Dell takes you on a journey that traverses many lifetimes all in one. She lays bare the realities of her life, from the highs of her success in business to the lows of divorce, illness, and bankruptcy. Yet, by moving through it all with fearless awareness, she discovers her truth, which she shares here with deep conviction: where we are today does not dictate where we’ll be tomorrow.

Follow Ruth through a rip-roaring, hilarious decade of not quite making it as a supermodel. Fueled by little more than cigarettes and the stress of her spiraling debt she crisscrosses the world in pursuit of fame and fortune. But how far is she willing to go for this wildly unrealistic dream?

Sifting gingerly through memories of her late mother, brilliant newcomer Sarah McColl has penned an indelible tribute to the joy and pain of loving well. Even as her own marriage splinters, McColl drops everything when her mother is diagnosed with cancer, returning to the family farmhouse and laboring over elaborate meals in the hopes of nourishing her back to health. In a series of vibrant vignettes - lipstick applied, novels read, imperfect cakes baked - McColl reveals a woman of endless charm and infinite love for her unruly brood of children.

In a coming-of-age memoir about a woman who loved being a girl and what made her finally grow up, Kelly Corrigan brilliantly explores the "middle place" between childhood and adulthood and how one woman made the leap to the other side.

Two days after the winter solstice in 2019, Kerri and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways 2020 was unlike any year we had seen before. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby.

Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at age 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighborhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pajamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario - especially to his wife and three children.

On April 18, 2017, Charlie unexpectedly loses her only child, sixteen-year-old Isaac. Devastated, she throws herself into investigating the circumstances of his death, which she suspects was related to medical negligence. As Charlie falls into darkness, she begins to sense that Isaac is communicating with her from the other side, a spiritual realm where he returns after crossing over. There, Isaac calls upon four generations of his ancestors to help him save his mother’s life.

From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman. She had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man....

An inspiring and revealing essay about motherhood, self-acceptance, and overcoming the fears that hold you back by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Open Book.