Women Childhood

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history. Contents: Harriet Tubman, the slave who helped hundreds of other slaves to escape; Emmeline Pankhurst, who wanted women to be able to vote; Maria Montessori, the doctor who found a new way to teach children; Helen Keller, the deaf and blind woman who became a famous teacher; Eva Perón, the actress who helped poor and sick people in Argentina; Nancy Wake, the Second World War spy.

With poignant prose and a deeply authentic personal story, this harrowing account exposes the stark and painful realities of childhood abuse, painting a heart-breaking picture of the lasting pain and fear that it inflicts on its victims. Spanning 30 years, in this coming-of-age memoir, author Christina Vitagliano recounts in vivid detail the frightening nights spent when her father loomed in the doorway of her bedroom, along with the psychological toll that the relentless familial abuse took on her psyche.

With her family struggling amidst the nightly bombing raids in London’s East End, Ida Brogan is doing her very best to keep their spirits up. The Blitz has hit the Brogans hard, and rationing is more challenging than ever, but they are doing all they can to help the war effort. When Ida’s oldest friend Ellen returns to town, sick and in dire need of help, it is to Ida that she turns. But Ellen carries a secret, one that threatens not only Ida’s marriage but the entire foundation of the Brogan family. Can Ida let go of the past and see a way to forgive her friend?

The beloved American Girl History Mysteries features intrepid girls faced with intriguing situations. The author of this installment, Kathryn Reiss, has received the ALA Best Book for Young Adults Award. In Riddle of the Prairie Bride, it's 1878 and Ida Deming and her papa are looking forward to meeting his mail-order bride. But is this woman really who she claims to be?

We all have a lot to learn from the diary of a teacher named Esmé Raji Codell, an educator who has struggled to maintain individuality in the face of bureaucracy and whose defiant stand against mediocrity will reverberate in companies as well as classrooms everywhere.

Laurel and her son Simon are planning on a quiet Christmas at home in New York, when she gets a call from her father saying he needs her in Lake Summers in the heart of the Adirondacks. As twinkling lights go up and snowflakes begin to fall, Laurel can’t wait to leave New York behind to help her father run the family business and make snow angels with her son, even if it’s just for Christmas. But when she walks through the door, she’s shocked to find the inn in disrepair, and a letter saying her father will be gone until Christmas Eve.

For many years Elizabeth Lawson has battled single-handedly to run the family's historic horse stud in memory of her beloved father. But a devastating loss puts her dreams at risk. With no options left, Liz is forced to turn to her estranged sister Kayla for help. Kayla has built a new life in the city as a wedding planner, far removed from the stableyard sweat and dust of her rural upbringing. She never thought she'd go back. But when Liz calls out of the blue, Kayla forms a plan that could save their childhood home.

As the female CEO of a tech startup, Dr. Cristal Glangchai was outnumbered 20 to one. At Google, Twitter, and Facebook, women currently fill just 10 to 20 percent of technical jobs. While career opportunities in science, technology, engineering, and math have increased dramatically in the past 20 years, the achievement gap between men and women has only grown wider. In VentureGirls, Glangchai offers a unique solution based on her own experience as an engineer and entrepreneur as well as the founder of the VentureLab, an academy of entrepreneurship and technology for girls.

Flora Miller Biddle was born a blue-blood. The granddaughter of the Whitney museum founder, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, her childhood played out in a sort of Wharton landscape as she was shielded from the woes of the world. But money itself is not the source of happiness. In this wonderfully evocative memoir, Flora Miller Biddle examines, critiques, and pays homage to the people and places of her childhood that shaped her life.

Sadie's life is calm and complete. She is a mother, a good friend, and the robust survivor of a marriage she deliberately left behind. She has come to believe that she has everything she wants, or deserves. But now her father is dying; the vital, elusive man who spent his life creating perfumes for other women is slipping away from her. When she realises that she can never make her peace with him, Sadie begins to look back over her childhood to confront the truth about her father.

Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.

Seeking refuge, determined to pull her life back together, Sabrina Swann returns to the sleepy Southern island of her childhood summers. The last person she expects to encounter there is Zach Tremayne, the boy who stole her heart when she was a girl. There's a haunted look in his eyes that makes her wonder what kind of man he's become.

Enduring Childhood Abuse is a heart-wrenching and awe-inspiring story of Connie F. Webster's early life. Through this audiobook, you see her childhood and young adult life full of trials: sexual abuse at a young age, kidnapping, an unexpected teen pregnancy that ends due to an accident-induced miscarriage, a long-term relationship with a substance and alcohol abuser. Unflinchingly, she tells us her stories and what she's learned from each, helping us look for the grace to overcome our own challenges.

When Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males appeared in 1998, it was hailed as "a crucial book" (Baltimore Sun) and "undoubtedly one of the most important tools the African American parent can possess" (Kweisi Mfume, President NAACP). Now, in response to enormous demand, the authors turn their attention to African American young women. Statistics indicate that African American females, as a group, fare poorly in the United States.

In The Genius of Judy, her remarkable story is revealed as never before, beginning with her as a mother of two searching for purpose outside of her home in 1960s suburban New Jersey. The books she wrote starred regular children with genuine thoughts and problems. But behind those deceptively simple tales, Blume explored the pillars of the growing women’s rights movement, in which girls and women were entitled to careers, bodily autonomy, fulfilling relationships, and even sexual pleasure.

Her Last Death begins as the phone rings early one morning in the Montana house where Susanna Sonnenberg lives with her husband and two young sons. Her aunt is calling to tell Susanna her mother is in a coma after a car accident. She might not live. Any daughter would rush the thousands of miles to her mother's bedside. But Susanna cannot bring herself to go. Her courageous memoir explains why.

In a small Alabama town in Zion County, life is finally looking up for 20-year-old Donnette Sullivan. Having just inherited her aunt's old house and beauty shop, she's taken over the business, and her husband Tim, recently crippled in an accident, is beginning to cope not just with his disabilities but also with the loss of his dreams. Once a promising artist who gave up art for sports, Tim paints a sign for Donnette's shop, Making Waves. The raising of the sign causes ripples through the town.

Addie Andrews is living a life interrupted. Tragedy sent her fleeing from Chicago to the shelter of an unexpected inheritance - her beloved aunt's somewhat dilapidated home in Eunice, Arkansas, population very tiny. There she reconnects with some of her most cherished childhood memories. If only they didn't make her feel so much!

Sally grew up in a dilapidated house by the sea where men were forbidden, her childhood world filled with mystery and intrigue. Hippies trailed through the kitchen looking for God - their leader was Aunt Di, who ruled the house with charismatic force. When Sally’s baby brother vanished from his pram, she became suspicious of the activities going on around her. What happened to Baby David and the woman called Poor Sue? And where did all the people singing and wailing prayers in the front room suddenly go?

Utilizing her extensive knowledge and love of American history and the research skills she honed while acquiring a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Lynne Cheney set out to explore her own and her husband's family trees. After years of research, she uncovered two family histories that spanned almost three centuries and shared common themes of optimism, perseverance, and undaunted courage. Both families moved westwards in a growing nation, seeking lives of greater opportunity.