Women Memoirs

Susie King Taylor, born a slave in 1848, would learn to read at secret schools and go on to teach countless others to read and write. Follow the course of the Civil War in her own words as she remembers her work as a nurse and teacher with an Army troop of African-American soldiers.

From beloved actress and New York Times bestselling author Valerie Bertinelli, her most vulnerable book yet offering wisdom hard-won through divorce, menopause, and generational pain, with a powerful message of self-acceptance and embracing the past with compassion. With her signature warmth and...

The British comedian of Nigerian heritage and co-executive producer and writer of the CBS hit series Bob Hearts Abishola chronicles her odyssey to get to America and break into Hollywood in this lively and humorous memoir. According to family superstition, Gina Yashere was born to fulfill the...

« Comment une mère peut-elle ne pas savoir ? » C’est une question que l’on pose souvent à propos des familles touchées par l’inceste, et les captivants mémoires d’Eleanor Cowan, Histoire d’une épouse de pédophile, apportent des réponses à la fois courageuses et bouleversantes. L’autrice a grandi au Québec dans les années 1950, au sein d’une famille nombreuse catholique où se mêlaient violences, addictions et méthodes éducatives toxiques.

Lacie Evans is here with a collection of hilarious and heartwarming stories about life on her cattle farm that’s become a viral sensation. Pet parents of creatures great and small will understand the urge to grab your baby by the horns (literally) and just totally smother them in love.

In this revealing memoir, a fan favorite America’s Next Top Model contestant pulls back the curtain on the iconic but deeply flawed reality competition show, exposing the manipulation and chaos behind the scenes. "A delicious, hilariously relatable behind-the-scenes memoir. A page-turning...

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, servicing them 251 times over a ten-hour period to set a new world record: The World’s Biggest Gangbang.

The World According to Merle is a wildly humorous and heartwarming memoir about a woman who defies age and convention. At 75, Merle is a self-described “dangerous old woman”–a vibrant force of nature who’s lived a full, rich life on her own terms. Whether she’s four-season swimming with her “Soggy Bottoms” group, learning about dung beetles in the Kalahari Desert or laughing through passionate arguments with Jeff, her husband of over 50 years, Merle has never been a fan of rules.

The Plantagenet queens of England played a role in some of the most dramatic events in our history. Crusading queens, queens in rebellion against their king, queen seductresses, learned queens, queens in battle, queens who enlivened England with the romantic culture of southern Europe - these determined women often broke through medieval constraints to exercise power and influence, for good and sometimes for ill.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER The courageous memoir of one woman’s globe-spanning journey of unraveling and awakening—breaking free of the narratives that once defined her and confronting the long-buried truths of a traumatic past—by the former CEO and co-founder of Embrace. “A brilliant and...

"Je m'appelle Nina, j'ai 16 ans, et je reviens de l'enfer. Pendant plus d'un an, je me suis vendue à des inconnus. Mon corps, mon sexe, mon sourire, j'ai tout offert... Pour de l'argent, oui. Mais moi, je me racontais que c'était pour conquérir ce dont je rêvais depuis mes 13 ans : la liberté. Au moment où j'entreprends ce récit, je ne suis rentrée de fugue que depuis six semaines. Je ne partirai plus."

A heartbreakingly honest, endearing memoir of incredible weight loss by a young food blogger who battles body image issues and overcomes food addiction to find self-acceptance. All her life, Andie Mitchell had eaten lustily and mindlessly. Food was her babysitter, her best friend, her...

At just under five feet tall, Virginia Prodan was no match for the towering six-foot-ten-inch, gun-wielding assassin the Romanian government sent to her office to take her life. It was not the first time her life had been threatened - nor would it be the last. As a young attorney under Nicolae Ceausescu's brutal communist regime, Virginia had spent her entire life searching for the truth.

Jennifer Shahade, a two-time US Women's Chess Champion, spent her teens and twenties travelling the world playing chess. Tournaments have taken her from Istanbul to Moscow, and introduced her to players from Zambia to China. In this ultra male-dominated sport, Jennifer found shocking sexism, as well as an incredible history of the top female players that has often been ignored. But she also found friendships, feminism and hope. Through her own story, as well as in-depth profiles of pioneers of the game, Jennifer invites us into the extremely competitive world of chess.

Ana Montes had spent seventeen years spying for the Cubans. She had been raised in a patriotic Puerto Rican household: Her father, a psychiatrist, was a former colonel in the US Army. Her sister worked as a translator for the FBI and helped break up a ring of Cuban spies in Miami. Her brother was also a loyal FBI agent. Montes impressed her bosses but in secret spent her breaks memorizing top-secret documents before sending them to the Cuban government. Retired FBI agent Peter J. Lapp explains the clues that led their team to catch one of the United States’ most dangerous spies.

When twenty-two-year-old Jennifer Worth, from a comfortable middle-class upbringing, went to work as a midwife in the direst section of postwar London, she not only delivered hundreds of babies and touched many lives, she also became the neighborhood';s most vivid chronicler. Woven into the ongoing tales of her life in the East End are the true stories of the people Worth met who grew up in the dreaded workhouse, a Dickensian institution that limped on into the middle of the twentieth century.

The long-awaited second memoir from Plum Johnson, bestselling author of They Left Us Everything. The Trouble with Fairy Tales is a wise and insightful reflection on the relationships that sprawl across a lifetime. In it, Plum explores how we often sacrifice our independence and identity in our...

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Professor of psychiatry Elyn R. Saks writes about her struggle with schizophrenia in this unflinching account of her mental illness. In The Center Cannot Hold, Saks draws readers into a nightmare world of medications, a misguided health-care system, and social stigmas. But she would not be defeated. With a strength and force of will that most can only imagine, Saks reclaimed her life and went on to achieve great success.

Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually traveling the globe.