Women Memoirs

Smart, sassy, and unapologetically feminine, In Praise of Difficult Women is an ode to the bold and charismatic women of modern history. Karen Karbo spotlights the spirited rule breakers who charted their way with little regard for expectations: Amelia Earhart, Helen Gurley Brown, Edie Sedgwick, and Shonda Rhimes, among others. Their lives provide inspiration and instruction for the new age of feminism we have entered. Karbo distills these lessons with wit and humor, examining the universal themes that connect us to each of these mesmerizing personalities today.

Growing up in India, everyone called Zarna “so American” just for reading the newspaper, having deep thoughts, and talking back to anyone over the age of thirty. When Zarna’s dad tried to marry her off at age fourteen, Zarna fled the whole subcontinent for the glittering paradise of Akron, Ohio, where she got to become American for real. On Zarna’s very American quest to find herself and her calling, she threw herself whole-heartedly into roles like dog-bite lawyer, crazy perfectionist stay-at-home mom, Indian matchmaker, prize-winning screenwriter, and more.

Cher: The Memoir, Part One promises to be an engaging and exciting audiobook experience, befitting this incredible book. Read in part by Cher herself, the book is introduced, and each chapter launched, by the author. Rounding out each chapter as she continues the narrative is celebrated stage actor Stephanie J. Block. Stephanie starred on Broadway in The Cher Show for which she won a Tony Award, Drama Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award.

In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history. Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last.

In Episodes, lifelong best friends Kat and Mara take listeners on an unfiltered journey through friendship, mental illness, and survival. Kat, a successful professional, is preparing for marriage and motherhood. On her fourth round of IVF, it happened—a frantic call to Mara. Mara comes over to find Kat, her friend of 25 years—the one who'd always been levelheaded, hilarious, and over-the-top thoughtful—trying to jump through a window.

Before she was a trauma cleaner, Sandra Pankhurst was many things: husband and father, drag queen, gender reassignment patient, sex worker, small businesswoman, trophy wife... but as a little boy, raised in violence and excluded from the family home, she just wanted to belong. Now she believes her clients deserve no less. A man who bled quietly to death in his living room. Sarah Krasnostein has watched the extraordinary Sandra Pankhurst bring order and care to these, the living and the dead - and the book she has written is equally extraordinary.

In the best-selling tradition of Smashed and The Glass Castle, this raw, eye-opening memoir tells the powerful story of Elizabeth Garrison's fractured childhood, descent into teenage drug addiction, and struggle to overcome nearly insurmountable odds. Elizabeth invites the listener behind the closed doors of a picture-perfect Christian family to reveal a dark, hidden world of child abuse, domestic violence, and chilling family secrets all performed in the name of God under the tyrannical rule of her father.

Une enfant de la DPJ, voilà ce que je suis. Ces trois lettres me suivront toute ma vie. J'en suis marquée au fer rouge, comme du bétail. Tout a commencé par une mère monoparentale, toxicomane et violente, et un beau-père agresseur. Ensuite, ceux qui devaient me protéger m'ont fait passer d'une famille d'accueil à l'autre, aveugles à la négligence que je subissais. Séquestrée, j'ai grugé les barreaux de mon lit pour ne pas mourir de faim. Abandonnée, j'ai cherché à être aimée à n'importe quel prix. Mais qui veut s'occuper d'une fillette avec un bagage aussi lourd ?

« Ou bien t'es vieux, ou bien t'es mort. » À tous ceux et celles qui ont peur de vieillir. Puisqu'il nous faut vieillir, mieux vaut que ce soit dans la joie. Non, la vieillesse n'est pas un naufrage. Oui, il y a du plaisir après soixante-cinq ans. Oui, il y a des bobos, des inconvénients. Mais oui, il y a de l'amour.

Tara Westover was 17 the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches. In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father forbade hospitals, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse. Gashes and concussions, even burns from explosions, were all treated at home with herbalism. Then, lacking any formal education, Tara began to educate herself. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge.

"I was one of 28 children born to my dad and his three wives. Indoctrinated to believe that the outside world was evil, and that I resided among the righteous, I was destined to marry a man chosen for me by the Prophet. I would then live in harmony with my sister-wives, bear many children, and obey and serve my future husband in this life and throughout eternity. But my innocence didn't last long." Flora goes on from there to tell the dramatic true story of how she ultimately escaped and has been rescuing women and children from the FLDS.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a breakup, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered. Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times.

New York Times best-selling poet and multiplatinum singer-songwriter Jewel explores her unconventional upbringing and extraordinary life in an inspirational memoir that covers her childhood, rise to fame, marriage, and motherhood. She writes beautifully about growing up amid the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and childhood trauma, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.

The Kennedy wives saw history up close - and made history in some cases. They knew wealth and privilege, but we are bonded to them by losses that are our losses, too. The Kennedy women - fierce, intelligent, and very private - belong to us. Not because of their glamour but because of their grief and misfortunes. The Kennedy Wives takes an unflinching look at the women who married into the Kennedy family and their distinct roles.

From an early age, Amber van de Bunt knew she wasn't like the other girls in town. From childhood struggles with depression and eating disorders, her years as a topless dancer in Florida, and an eventual abortion and suicide attempt, to her rebirth in Los Angeles as a porn star named Karmen Karma, overcoming her relationship with her abusive mother, and her struggle to maintain a clean and sober lifestyle - van de Bunt's life has been a roller coaster. With humor, alacrity, and profound insight, she reveals her deepest, darkest secrets and pulls no punches - least of all with herself.

Rien n'aura empêché Nicole Juteau de tenter le tout pour le tout, pas plus un programme collégial où seuls les hommes étaient admis qu'une loi qui interdisait d'engager des policières. Grâce à sa ténacité et à sa témérité, elle est devenue, en 1975, en plein coeur de l'Année internationale de la femme, la première policière au Québec. . Première femme dans un monde d'hommes, elle a relevé une multitude de défis, dont celui d'être promue enquêteuse et agente double à l'escouade régionale alcool et moralité.

Snyder was eight years old when her mother died, and her distraught father thrust the family into an evangelical, cult-like existence halfway across the country. Furiously rebellious, she was expelled from school and home at age sixteen. Living out of her car and relying on strangers, Rachel found herself masquerading as an adult, talking her way into college, and eventually traveling the globe.

In a series of deeply moving and inspiring conversations, host Shereen Marisol Meraji connects with successful women from all walks of life to reveal how they manage their careers and every aspect of their lives. Based on the long-running column from The Cut and New York Magazine.

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it's that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope - the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman....

When Aline Griffith was born in Pearl River, New York, in 1923, one might have guessed from her exceptional beauty that a career as an actress or model might be in her future. Few would have imagined that twenty-one years later, she would find herself in Spain as a deep-cover OSS agent, infiltrating the highest levels of Spanish society, or that five years later still, she would marry a Spanish grandee and become one of the most watched, most admired, most fascinating women of international society. This is the story of Aline, Countess of Romanones, a story of courage, beauty and success that is far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller.