Biography Girls

Chicago, 1924. There was nothing surprising about men turning up dead in the Second City. Life was cheaper than a quart of illicit gin in the gangland capital of the world. But two murders that spring were special - worthy of celebration. So believed Maurine Watkins, a wanna-be playwright and a "girl reporter" for the Chicago Tribune, the city's "hanging paper".

Growing up in housing commission, Rosie was cursed with a near perfect, beautiful older sister who dressed like Mariah Carey on a Best & Less budget while Rosie was still struggling with various toilet mishaps. She soon realised that she was the Doug Pitt to her sister's Brad, and that cool was not going to be her currency in this life. But that was only one of the problems Rosie faced. With two addicts for parents, she grew up amidst rehab stays, AA meetings, overdoses, narrow escapes from drug dealers and a merry-go-round of dodgy boyfriends in her mother's life.

Black women have never been more visible or more publicly celebrated. But for every milestone, every magazine cover, every new face elected to public office, the reality of everyday life for black women remains a complex, conflicted, contradiction-laden experience. An American journalist who has been living in London for a decade, Kenya Hunt has made a career of distilling moments, movements, and cultural moods into words. Her work takes the difficult and the indefinable and makes it accessible; it is razor sharp cultural observation threaded through evocative and relatable stories.

Charity Gaye Finnestad is a small-town girl with big dreams: to go to Los Angeles and make it as a writer. With only enough money to survive 60 days, she packs her bags, says goodbye to an unhappy marriage, and hits the road in search of her destiny. Struggling to pay the rent with occasional modeling jobs, Charity suddenly finds herself privy to a high-flying, fast-paced life - sipping champagne at exclusive parties with A-list celebrities in the Hollywood Hills by night, and shopping at the 99-Cent Store by day to stretch her tiny budget.

The Girls is a profound exploration of trust, ambition, betrayal, and self-discovery. Award-winning journalist Abigail Pesta unveils this deeply reported narrative at a time when the nation is wrestling with the implications of the MeToo movement. How do the women who grew up with Nassar reconcile the monster in the news with the man they once trusted? In The Girls, we learn that their answers to that wrenching question are as rich, insightful, and varied as the human experience itself.

In January of 2019, I was trapped in a hotel room in the DusitD2 in Nairobi for 17 long hours while Al-Shabaab terrorists attacked the property. I was completely alone, and certain I was going to die. However, thanks to the incomprehensibly brave men who fought to get us out, hundreds of us were extracted to safety. After the attack, though, PTSD made me so miserable that I started to wish I had died after all. This book is the in-depth retelling of the attack, combined with my personal journal entries about PTSD afterward. It's a true story about trauma.

Hitler’s Girl is a groundbreaking history that reveals how, in the 1930s, authoritarianism nearly took hold in Great Britain as it did in Italy and Germany. Drawing on recently declassified intelligence files, Lauren Young details the pervasiveness of Nazi sympathies among the British aristocracy, as significant factions of the upper class methodically pursued an actively pro-German agenda.

In his debut collection of personal essays, Emmy-nominated screenwriter Michael Jamin (King of the Hill, Just Shoot Me, Beavis and Butt-Head, Wilfred, Maron, Rules of Engagement, Tacoma FD) recounts the true stories of a sensitive, anxious man searching for the things that are most important: identity, love, forgiveness, and redemption.

Lerette, a private contractor employed by the notorious Blackwater in the early days of the Iraq War, pulls no punches in calling out the incompetence of both the US military and the Department of State during the collapse of Iraq. You can decide if the insertion of private contractors in Iraq assisted or detracted from the war effort and if the costs in blood and treasure were worth the carnage.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like talk to Parker Posey? On an airplane, with Parker as your seat companion, perhaps? Parker’s irreverent, hilarious, and enchanting memoir gives you the incredible opportunity. Full of personal stories, whimsical how-tos, recipes, and beautiful handmade collages created by the author herself, You’re on an Airplane is a delight in every way.

When Chloe Dalton was eight years old, she would practise her goal kicks in the half-time break of her brothers' rugby matches, all the while telling impressed onlookers: 'Girls don't play rugby.' Sixteen years later, Chloe Dalton won Olympic gold playing rugby sevens for Australia and is now a fixture in the AFLW. In 2020, she started her own news platform, The [Female] Athlete Project, because while she was surrounded by women achieving incredible things in sport, nobody was hearing about them.

Loose Girl is Kerry Cohen's captivating memoir about her descent into promiscuity and how she gradually found her way toward real intimacy. The story of addiction - not just to sex, but to male attention - Loose Girl is also the story of a young girl who came to believe that boys and men could give her life meaning. It didn't matter who he was. It was their movement that mattered, their being together. And for a while, that was enough.

For years, Emma Carey was a regular young adult who would wake up and go about their day on autopilot, someone who would look at a sunset and feel unaffected, someone who was living, but not really alive. That is, until something happened that enabled her to really see life for the gift it is. Emma was in a skydiving accident that made her a paraplegic. This book is not just about Emma's fall from the sky and how she learned to walk without ever regaining feeling in her legs but also about the beliefs and ideas that helped her survive.

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.

In 1978, in the tailwind of the golden age of air travel, flight attendants were the epitome of glamor and sophistication. Fresh out of college and hungry to experience the world―and maybe, one day, write about it―Ann Hood joined their ranks. After a grueling job search, Hood survived TWA’s rigorous Breech Training Academy and learned to evacuate seven kinds of aircraft, deliver a baby, mix proper cocktails, administer oxygen, and stay calm no matter what the situation.

By 22 years old, Aaliyah had already accomplished a staggering amount: hit records, acclaimed acting roles, and fame that was just about to cross over into superstardom. Like her song, she was already “more than a woman” but her shocking death in a plane crash prevented her from fully growing into one.

At age six, Sasha DiGiulian stepped into a climbing gym for the first time and was competing within a year. Decked out in all-pink gear and with her blonde hair tied into pigtails, Sasha knew from an early age what it was like to be a girl in a traditionally male-dominated sport, vowing to never sacrifice her femininity to fit in. With a fierce love for the climb and incredible natural talent, Sasha soon won her first National Sport Climbing Championship at only seventeen, and a year later took the title of World Champion.

The daughter of an artist, Helen Tworkov grew up in the heady climate of the New York School of Abstract Expressionism; yet from an early age, she questioned the value of Western cultural norms. At the age of twenty-two, she set off for Japan, then traveled through Cambodia, India, and eventually to Tibetan refugee camps in Nepal. Set against the arresting cultural backdrop of the sixties and their legacy, this intimate self-portrait depicts Tworkov's search for a true home but also into the ways each of us can better understand and transform ourselves.

Two years ago, Margaret left her Arctic home for the outsiders’ school. Now she has returned and can barely contain her excitement as she rushes toward her waiting family - but her mother stands still as a stone. This strange, skinny child, with her hair cropped short, can’t be her daughter. “Not my girl!” she says angrily. Margaret’s years at school have changed her. Now 10 years old, she has forgotten her language and the skills to hunt and fish. She can’t even stomach her mother’s food. Her only comfort is in the books she learned to read at school.

In A Good Time to Be a Girl, Helena Morrissey sets out how we might achieve the next big breakthrough towards a truly inclusive modern society. Drawing on her experience as a City CEO, mother of nine, and founder of the influential 30% Club, which campaigns for gender-balanced UK company boards, her manifesto for new ways of working, living, loving and raising families is for everyone, not just women.