Biography Girls

The evidence is overwhelming: Sports help girls grow into strong women. Both scientific studies and anecdotal evidence confirm that athletic girls not only grow up to be healthier, but they also learn teamwork, gain inner confidence, and grow into society's leaders. Sports help preteen and teenage girls make the right choices in a society that is sending them incredibly mixed messages about who they are supposed to be. Yet no one is speaking directly to these girls.

On a cold night in December 1956, two young girls mysteriously vanished after a night at the movies on the Southwest Side of Chicago, beginning one of the greatest searches to ever take place in the history of the city. Three weeks later, the bodies of the two lost girls, Barbara and Patricia Grimes, were found on the side of a secluded, snow-covered road, miles from where they disappeared. The discovery of their battered corpses created one of the greatest unsolved mysteries to ever baffle post-war America. Where had the girls been for the past three weeks?

Just for the girls in your life, ages 8 and up, this collection of 100 extraordinary stories of women of faith--from the Bible, history, and today--will empower them to know and understand how women have made a difference in the world and how much smaller our faith (and the biblical record) would be without them.

Two sisters give a hilarious and poignant account of boarding school life in Ireland in the 1960s. Mary and Valerie Behan were 11 years of age when they were sent to Loreto Abbey Rathfarnham, a convent on the outskirts of Dublin. The Abbey was the Mother House of the Loreto Order of nuns who had established convents throughout the world. Now in their 60s and living in the United States and Canada, Mary and Valerie began a correspondence about their six years at the Abbey.

When pirates attacked her town and the captain took a liking to her, she saw a way out. Zheng Yi Sao agreed to marry him only if she got an equal share of his business. When her husband died six years later, she took command of the fleet. Over the next decade, the pirate queen built a fleet of over 1,800 ships and 70,000 men. On land and sea, Zheng Yi Sao's power rivaled the emperor himself. Time and again, her ships triumphed over the emperor's ships.

Four days after Rick and Karen Santorum welcomed their eighth baby into the world, they were given the devastating news that their little girl, Bella, was going to die. The full story of life with Bella has never been told until now. This inspiring family memoir explores what it means to embrace and celebrate the life of each person and find hope even in the midst of painful challenges.

Picking up where he left off at the end of his widely praised debut memoir, One of These Things First, Gaines recounts his hilarious, sometimes poignant attempt to forge a writing career and a successful love life in the gay world of the 1970s. He has limited success until he falls in love with an older woman dying of cancer.

These memoirs are delightful to listen to, from the mischievous tales of Peter growing up to the emergence of Peta, a young woman who chose to dedicate her life to serving others as a nurse and midwife. Her story is a life of daring, daring to stand up and speak out, daring to be that voice for others, daring to be different, and do it all with kindness and empathy.

In this candid, sensational memoir, I will show you how I achieved all my wildest dreams, what happened when everything I’d built collapsed, and how I eventually came back stronger than ever. There are lessons here for every entrepreneur about how to successfully navigate the extraordinary highs and lows of running your own business, and how it can all go wrong. A million dollars, hot girls and a Ferrari are out there, and they’re closer than you think. Come on this journey with me, and I’ll show you how to get everything you’ve ever dreamed of.

From the New York Times best-selling author of Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History comes the highly anticipated follow-up, a beautifully illustrated collectible detailing the lives of women creators around the world.

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.

Joan Rivers was more than a legendary comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition, and her massive insecurities.

Nigel Delphian was a poor misfit without direction when he surprised everyone around him and joined the navy. As he embarked on his new adventure, Nigel had no idea that his decision would place him on a path he never expected.

Soldier Girls follows the lives of three women on their paths to the military. These women, who are quite different in every way, become friends, and we watch their interaction and also what happens when they are separated. We see their families, their lovers, their spouses, their children. We see them work extremely hard, deal with the attentions of men on base and in war zones, and struggle to stay connected to their families back home.

This personal memoir is brought to you by Tracie Keolalani, a true local girl tita ē. Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, she takes us on her journey of discovering the truth behind her homeland and her people. As a "brownish" local girl, she weaves in personal experiences of systemic racism, prejudice, and struggle. Honestly and wholeheartedly, she lets us peek into the sorrow, beauty, and humor of her world as she struggles to find her own identity and voice.

In Bana's own words, and featuring short, affecting chapters by her mother, Fatemah, Dear World is not just a gripping account of a family endangered by war; it offers a uniquely intimate child's perspective on one of the biggest humanitarian crises in history. Bana has lost her best friend, her school, her home, and her homeland. But she has not lost her hope - for herself and for other children around the world who are victims and refugees of war and deserve better lives.

So much is surprising and captivating about this coming-of-age story of a culture-rich, pre-and-proto-’60s upper class girl with rebellion and independence wired in. Lale’s early decades were a complex mixture of innocence, sophistication, doubt, passion, adventure, and brutal self-criticism. They live in a small East Side walk-up, but her mother orders custom-made clothes from Christian Dior in Paris. Finally finding focus for her passion, she powers her way into her chosen profession: architecture.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree was most famous for her successful defense of an indigent Black man accused of the murder of Mary Pinchot Meyer, a prominent White Washington, DC, socialite, in 1965. Despite her triumph in this high-profile case, Roundtree continued to represent the poor and the underserved. She was the first lawyer to bring a bus-desegregation case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, clinching the ruling that enabled Robert F. Kennedy to enforce bus integration. She was also among the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

From finding your passion to getting your friends and community involved, this guide makes changing the world fun. Take Action: You Can Make the World a Better Place is a great resource for the next generation of leaders and changemakers.

Roaring Girls tells the game-changing life stories of eight formidable women whose grit, determination and radical unconventionality saw them defy the odds to forge their own paths. From the notorious cross-dressing thief Mary Frith in the 17th century to rebel slave Mary Prince and adventurer, industrialist and LGBT trailblazer Anne Lister in the 19th, these diverse characters redefined what a woman could be and what she could do in pre-20th-century Britain.