Biography Girls

One of the first personal narratives written by an ex-slave, this is also one of the few written by a woman. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was enslaved, along with her family, in North Carolina under a ruthless master who sexually harassed her. After several failed escape attempts, and several years of hiding, she finally made her way North to freedom, where she was eventually reunited with her children. The book was published in 1861.

In this breathtakingly inventive autobiographical novel, Eileen Myles transforms life into a work of art. Told in her audacious voice, made vivid and immediate in her lyrical language, Chelsea Girls cobbles together memories of Myles's 1960s Catholic upbringing with an alcoholic father, her volatile adolescence, her unabashed "lesbianity," and her riotous pursuit of survival as a poet in 1970s New York.

Aged nine Joss came home from school to discover her father's suicide. She's never got over it. This is the true story of Joss, 13, who is angry and out of control. At the age of nine, Joss finds her father's dead body. He has committed suicide. Then more recently her mother remarries, and Joss bitterly resents her stepfather, who abuses her mentally and physically.

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.

Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds.

In the fall of 2010, in the all-American town of Apple Valley, Ohio, four people disappeared without a trace: Stephanie Sprang; her friend, Tina Maynard; and Tina's two children, 13-year-old Sarah and 11-year-old Kody. Investigators began scouring the area, yet despite an extensive search, no signs of the missing people were discovered.

Sarah Forsyth has spent most of her life in fear. After overcoming the hurt and heartbreak of a horrific childhood, Sarah managed to build a new life for herself as a nursery nurse. Then, one day, she spotted a newspaper advert for a job in a crèche in Amsterdam. Excited by the prospect of a fresh start abroad, she eagerly signed up. But within minutes of stepping off the plane in Amsterdam her life began to fall apart.... There was no crèche and no job. That night, at just 19 years of age, her life - her real life, her life as Sarah Forsyth - ended.

One late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert - after running through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach screaming for her life - went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about what had happened to the 24-year-old: She was a Craigslist escort who had been fleeing a scene - of what, no one could be sure. The Suffolk County police, too, seemed to have paid little attention - until seven months later, when an unexpected discovery in a bramble alongside a nearby highway turned up four bodies, all evenly spaced, all wrapped in burlap.

Six-year-old Amelie lives with her mother, Kelly, who suffers from bipolar disorder. After Kelly attempts to burn down their family house, it becomes clear that her daughter is in grave danger. Amelie is quickly taken into care. When she arrives with foster carer Casey Watson, Amelie acts much younger than her age. Casey must get to the root of Amelie’s behaviour, while doing what she can to keep the family together. Will Amelie ever find the safety of home?

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

At just 21, the age when most people are starting to drink (well, legally at least), Victoria James became the country’s youngest sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Even as Victoria was selling bottles worth hundreds and thousands of dollars during the day, passing sommelier certification exams with flying colors, and receiving distinction from all kinds of press, there were still groping patrons, bosses who abused their role and status, and a trip to the hospital emergency room.

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade.

In A Girl's Story, Annie Ernaux revisits a night 50 years earlier when she found herself submerged and controlled by another person's desire and willpower. It was the summer of 1958, the year she turned 18, and the man she had given herself to had moved on. She'd submitted her will to his and then found that she was a slave without a master.

Widowed Blanche Taylor Moore was about to lose her second spouse to symptoms that mysteriously mirrored those that killed her first husband—as well as her previous boyfriend. When an investigation reveals arsenic poisoning, the hideous truth about the wife and mother comes to light. Did the abuse Blanche suffered as a child at the hands of her alcoholic father turn her into a murderer she became?

The Ridiculous Misadventures of a Single Girl gives listeners an intimate look into what Gabrielle went through when she returned home from her grand European adventure, the challenges she faced as she tried to put the pieces back together, the men - new and old - who shook her world, and the epic conclusion to the real-life story so many have become invested in.

As the creator of the breakout Instagram account @GirlWithNoJob, Claudia Oshry has turned not wanting an ordinary career into a thriving media company and pop culture-focused podcast and morning show. The origins of her pop culture obsessions can be traced back to household debates over boy bands and her flair for the dramatic to her young emulation of Blair Waldorf. When she started @GirlWithNoJob, Claudia entered that world as a social media influencer, sharing her unbelievable encounters with some of her favorite A-listers as she navigates her incredible access.

Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety—perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.

Ten of the Bible's best-known femmes fatales parade across the pages of Bad Girls of the Bible with situations that sound oh-so-familiar. Eve had food issues. Potiphar’s wife and Delilah had man trouble. Lot’s wife and Michal couldn’t let go of the past, Sapphira couldn’t let go of money, and Jezebel couldn’t let go of anything. Yet the woman at the well had her thirst quenched at last, while Rahab and the sinful woman left their sordid histories behind.

Millions of families are affected by eating disorders, which usually strike young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty. But current medical practice ties these families' hands when it comes to helping their children recover. Conventional medical wisdom dictates separating the patient from the family and insists that 'it's not about the food', even as a family watches a child waste away before their eyes.

To the outside world, Emily looks like a typical girl, with a normal family, living an ordinary life. But inside, Emily does not feel typical, and the older she gets, the more she realises that she is different. As she finally discovers when she is 16, Emily is autistic. Girl Unmasked is the extraordinary story of how she got there - and how she very nearly didn't.