Women Bios Memoirs

For the first time, Lady Colin Campbell reveals the fascinating and moving life of The Queen Mother. With unparalleled sources, including members of the Royal Family, aristocrats, and friends and relatives of Elizabeth herself, this mesmerizing account takes us inside the real and sometimes astonishing world of the royal family.

In this glittering biography, Elizabeth Lev reexamines Caterina Sforza's extraordinary life and accomplishments. Raised in the court of Milan and wed at age ten to the pope’s corrupt nephew, Caterina was ensnared in Italy’s political intrigues early in life. After turbulent years in Rome’s papal court, she moved to the Romagnol province of Forlì. Following her husband’s assassination, she ruled Italy’s crossroads with iron will, martial strength, political savvy—and an icon’s fashion sense. In finally losing her lands to the Borgia family, she put up a resistance that inspired all of Europe.

At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education.

The Turkish Lover, the third installment of Puerto Rican writer Esmeralda Santiago’s memoirs, is the story of her love affair with Ulvi Dogan, a Turkish man 17 years older than her. Initially he provides an escape from her family home but soon winds up being even more demanding than her mother. The story begins in Brooklyn, passes through Miami, and finishes in Massachusetts, where Santiago graduated magna cum laude from Harvard.

Malala's memoir of a remarkable teenage girl who risked her life for the right to go to school is now abridged and adapted for chapter book listeners. Raised in a changing Pakistan by an enlightened father from a poor background and a beautiful, illiterate mother, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. Her story of bravery and determination in the face of extremism is more timely than ever.

There has never been an athlete like Serena Williams. She has dominated women’s tennis for two decades, changed the way the game is played, and - by inspiring Naomi Osaka, Coco Gauff, and others - changed, too, the racial makeup of the pro game. But Williams’s influence has not been confined to the tennis court. As a powerful Black woman who struggled to achieve and sustain success, she has emerged as a cultural icon, figuring in conversations about body image, working mothers, and more.

When Ned Kelly's mother, Ellen, arrived in Melbourne in 1841 aged nine, British convict ships were still dumping their unhappy cargo in what was then known as the colony of New South Wales. By the time she died aged 91 in 1923, having outlived seven of her 12 children, motor cars plied the highway near her bush home north of Melbourne, and Australia was a modern sovereign nation.