Biography Girls

Sola Mahfouz was born in Afghanistan in 1996. That same year, the Taliban took over her country for the first time. They banned television and photographs, presided over brutal public executions, and turned the clock backwards on women’s rights, practically imprisoning women within their own homes and forcing them to wear all-concealing burqas. As time passed, Sola began to understand that she was condemned to the same existence as millions of women in Afghanistan. Driven by this devastating realization, Sola began a years-long fight to change the trajectory of her life.

What They Meant for Evil is the account of that unimaginable journey. With the candor and purity of a child, Rebecca recalls how she endured fleeing from gunfire, suffering through hunger and strength-sapping illnesses, dodging life-threatening predators - lions, snakes, crocodiles, and soldiers alike - that dogged her footsteps, and grappling with a war that stole her childhood. Her story is a lyrical, captivating portrait of a child hurled into wartime, and how through divine intervention, she came to America and found a new life full of joy, hope, and redemption.

It was a time, much like today, when Americans feared for the future of their democracy, and women stood up for equal treatment. At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement was a young lawyer named Jill Wine Volner (as she was then known), barely 30 years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called "the mini-skirted lawyer" by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts - and prevailed.

A shattering, utterly immersive work of investigative journalism, The Good Girls slips behind political maneuvering, caste systems and codes of honour in a village in northern India to tell the real story behind the tragic deaths of two teenage girls and an epidemic of violence against women.

Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls: 100 Immigrant Women Who Changed the World is the third book in the New York Times best-selling series for children. Packed with 100 all-new bedtime stories about the lives of incredible female figures from the past and the present, this volume recognizes women who left their birth countries for a multitude of reasons: Some for new opportunities, some out of necessity. Listeners will whip up a plate with Asma Khan, strategize global affairs alongside Madeleine Albright, venture into business with Rihanna, and many more.

In 1971, Robin Green had an interview with Jann Wenner at the offices Rolling Stone magazine. Green thought she was interviewing for a clerical job like the other girls in the office, a "real job". Instead, she was hired as a journalist. Brutally honest and bold, Robin Green reveals what it was like to be the first woman granted entry into an iconic boys' club. Pulling back the curtain on Rolling Stone magazine in its prime, The Only Girl is a stunning tribute to a bygone era and a publication that defined a generation.

Inspired by the author's experiences working with Hunter S. Thompson, an exhilarating, full-speed-ahead roman à clef about an ambitious young writer who takes a job as an assistant to an unmotivated, drug-addled literary icon and helps him finish his long-awaited novel - by any means necessary.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis is used to looking after children from difficult home situations, but she finds herself struggling when she agrees to take in Taylor and her younger brother, Reece, for a short while. Taylor tries desperately not to fit in, to be the tough young teen that she has had to become, making it clear that she cares about nothing and no one, while Reece is just desperate for someone to love him.

Rebeka Uwitonze was born in Rwanda with curled and twisted feet, which meant she had to crawl or be carried to get around. At nine years old, she gets an offer that could change her life. A doctor in the US might be able to turn her feet. But it means leaving her own family behind and going to America on her own. Her Own Two Feet tells Rebeka's inspiring story through her eyes, with the help of one of her hosts. She travels from Rwanda to Austin, Texas, to join the Davis family, despite knowing almost no English.

Jackie Moggridge was just nineteen when World War Two broke out. Determined to do her bit, she joined the Air Transport Auxiliary. Ferrying aircraft from factory to frontline was dangerous work, but there was also fun, friendship and even love in the air. At last the world was opening up to women... or at least it seemed to be.

Stacy Pershall grew up as an overly intelligent, depressed, deeply strange girl in Prairie Grove, Arkansas, population 1,000. From her days as a 13-year-old Jesus freak through her eventual diagnosis of bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, this spirited memoir chronicles Pershall's journey through hell and her struggle with the mental health care system.

Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow’s essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture.

With an in-depth look at the two most empowering years in the life of Marilyn Monroe, The Girl details how The Seven Year Itch created an icon and sent the star on an adventure of self-discovery and transformation from a controlled wife and contract player into a businesswoman and unlikely feminist whose power is still felt today. When Marilyn Monroe stepped over a subway grating as The Girl in The Seven Year Itch and let a gust of wind catch the skirt of her pleated white dress, an icon was born.

In 1993, U.S. women earned the right to fly in combat, but the full story of how it happened is largely unknown. The Fly Girls Revolt chronicles the actions of a band of women who overcame decades of discrimination and prevailed against bureaucrats, chauvinists, anti-feminists, and even other military women. Drawing on extensive research, interviews with women who served in the 1970s and 1980s, and her personal experiences in the Air Force, Eileen Bjorkman weaves together a tale of the women who fought for the right to enter combat and be treated as equal partners in the U.S. military.

Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully stared death in the face. Fly Girls recounts how a cadre of women banded together to break the original glass ceiling: the entrenched prejudice that conspired to keep them out of the sky.

In Alpha Girls, award-winning journalist Julian Guthrie takes listeners behind the closed doors of venture capital, an industry that transforms economies and shapes how we live. We follow the lives and careers of four women who were largely written out of history - until now. These women, juggling work and family, shaped the tech landscape we know today while overcoming unequal pay, actual punches, betrayals, and the sexist attitudes prevalent in Silicon Valley and in male-dominated industries everywhere.

Since 2012 the organization Girls Who Code has taught computing skills to and inspired over 10,000 girls across America. Now its founder, Reshma Saujani, wants to inspire you to be a girl who codes! Bursting with down-to-earth explanations of coding principles and real-life stories of girls and women working at places like Pixar and NASA, this audiobook shows what a huge role computer science plays in our lives and how much fun it can be.

An insightful and uplifting memoir about a young Haitian girl in post-earthquake Haiti and the profound, life-changing effect she had on one journalist's life.

Maeve Higgins was a best-selling memoirist and comedian in her native Ireland when, at the grand old age of 31, she left the only home she’d ever known in search of something more. Like many women in their early 30s, she both was and was not the adult she wanted to be. At once smart, curious, and humane, Maeve in America is the story of how Maeve found herself, literally and figuratively, in New York City.

Shyima Hall was born in Egypt on September 29, 1989, the seventh child of desperately poor parents. When she was eight, her parents sold her into slavery. Shyima then moved two hours away to Egypt's capitol city of Cairo to live with a wealthy family and serve them eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. When she was ten, her captors moved to Orange County, California, and smuggled Shyima with them. Two years later, an anonymous call from a neighbor brought about the end of Shyima's servitude - but her journey to true freedom was far from over.