Showing titles in Women

In Polish: A rascal with teenage beauty and the voice of Jan Himilsbach. She didn't really have to act. She appeared in the Polish cinema out of nowhere and became an instant phenomenon. At times, as told by her relatives in the book, she hurried as if she knew that everything wouldn't last very long, that she had to quickly start a relationship, start a family, and have kids in order to have time to enjoy all of that. It's the first biography of Anna Przybylska authorised by her family.

History has lied. Anne Boleyn has been sold to us as a dark figure, a scheming seductress who bewitched Henry VIII into divorcing his queen and his church in an unprecedented display of passion. Quite the tragic love story, right? Wrong. In this electrifying exposé, Hayley Nolan explores for the first time the full, uncensored evidence of Anne Boleyn’s life and relationship with Henry VIII, revealing the shocking suppression of a powerful woman.

Edna saw first-hand how poor healthcare, lack of education and ancient superstitions had devastating effects on Somaliland’s people, especially its women. When she suffered the trauma of FGM herself as a young girl at the bidding of her mother, Edna’s determination was set.

Looking out from Moon Cottage, Susan Hill records the sights and smells, the people, gardens, animals, births, festivals and deaths that mark the changing seasons in the small Oxfordshire community.

In the first-ever history of the world's female buccaneers, Pirate Women: the Princesses, Prostitutes, and Privateers Who Ruled the Seven Seas tells the story of women, both real and legendary, who through the ages sailed alongside - and sometimes in command of - their male counterparts. These women came from all walks of life but had one thing in common: a desire for freedom.

Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker win - the first by a Black woman - was a revolutionary moment both for British culture and for her. After three decades as a trailblazing writer, teacher and activist, she moved from the margins to centre stage, taking her place in the spotlight at last. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history. Manifesto is Bernardine Evaristo's intimate and inspirational no-holds-barred account of how she did it, refusing to let any barriers stand in her way.

In September 2006, Victoria Coren Mitchell won a million dollars on the European Poker Tour. In her long-awaited memoir, she tells the story of that victory, but also of a 20-year obsession with the game. It is a journey which has taken Coren from a secret culture of illegal cash games to the high-stakes glamour of Las Vegas and Monte Carlo, and brought with it friendship, laughter, and money, but also loneliness, heartbreak, and defeat. With disarming honesty, Coren lays all of this bare.

Whilst learning to fly, Amanda Harrison discovered a beautiful vintage Tiger Moth. After researching the amazing pioneers who flew this fragile aircraft, a spark was ignited, and Amanda dreamed of emulating their adventures. On May 11, 2019, she made that dream a reality, taking off from Biggin Hill with the aim of flying to Darwin, Australia in twenty days-just as her idol Amy Johnson had done in 1930.

Sandra Pankhurst founded her trauma cleaning business to help people whose emotional scars are written on their houses. From the forgotten flat of a drug addict to the infested home of a hoarder, Sandra enters properties and lives at the same time. But few of the people she looks after know anything of the complexity of Sandra's own life. Raised in an uncaring home, Sandra's miraculous gift for warmth and humour in the face of unspeakable personal tragedy mark her out as a one-off and make this biography unmissable.

A map of motherhood, Milk is at once a gentle and meditative story of one woman’s experience of new motherhood as well as a confronting and often painful examination of the experience of having children in contemporary Ireland. Alice Kinsella is a young mother, giving birth to her son in her mid-twenties, adrift in a new town and navigating her newly accompanied life. A powerful and yet delicate mix of the personal and political, Milk is an unflinching and unique memoir that looks at the experience of motherhood against the backdrop of a seemingly changed Ireland.

On the night of 3 October 1922, in the quiet suburb of Ilford, Edith Thompson and her husband, Percy, were walking home after an evening spent at a London theatre, when a man sprang out of the darkness and stabbed Percy to death. The assailant was Frederick Bywaters, a 20-year-old merchant seaman who had been Edith's lover. When the police learned of his relationship with Edith, she was arrested as his accomplice, despite protesting her innocence.

An inspiring story of a modern American icon, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller’s eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago’s largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago.

From the moment Lotte first met Ben, she knew they were meant to be together. And for a few years, their life was truly idyllic: flourishing careers, adored friends, and travel to every corner of the planet. But when Ben was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Lotte was catapulted into the uncharted landscape of cancer medicine, becoming his caregiver overnight. With the world around them in lockdown, they refused to give up the fight for his survival, travelling from London to Mexico in hope of a cure at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In her early twenties, drifting and directionless, Marina Gibson fled the city for the countryside, and picked up a fishing rod for the first time in years. She was returning to a childhood pursuit and a passion passed on by her mother. Fishing overtook Marina's life as she grew enraptured by the quiet magic of angling and the silent mysteries of the river. The complexity of fly fishing, the ritual of casting and the music of the waterways provided her refuge from a failing marriage, a source of serenity, and a connection to the tradition of female anglers stretching back generations.

Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and lovers over a thirty-year period—as well as previously unreleased material from the JFK Library—Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli paints an unforgettable new portrait of a woman whose flaws and contradictions only serve to make her even more iconic. “I have three lives,” Jackie told a former lover, “public, private and secret.” In this revealing biography, listeners will become intimately familiar with all three.

When 21-year-old Gwendoline Crockford signed up to join the Berkshire Constabulary in 1951, she had little idea of what she was getting herself into. Whether carrying a human skeleton out of the woods, finding a missing child, investigating thefts, or chasing an escaped zebra, every day brought fresh adventures. In this nostalgic, tender and honest account of post-war British society, we follow a bright, determined woman navigating a man's world, serving as many people as she can.

Melissa Joan Hart explained it all—from dating to bullies—in her groundbreaking role as Clarissa Darling on Clarissa Explains It All. She cast a spell on millions more television viewers as Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. Now, in Melissa Explains It All, Melissa tells the frank and funny behind-the-scenes stories from her extraordinary past and her refreshingly normal present.

Maria Compton was born and raised in a strict Christian sect. Encouraged to keep her distance from outsiders, she grew up in a world of Church meetings, banishments and with the fear that the end of the world - known as the Rapture - was nigh. When she was still in her late teens, she married a man she barely knew. To those around her she lived the perfect life; dutiful wife, loving mother, devout Christian woman. But underneath the surface, this life was far from perfect.

The revealing and inspiring memoir of a woman forced into polygamous marriage in FLDS Church and her brave struggle to protect others from the same fate. Rebecca Musser grew up in fear, concealing her family's polygamous lifestyle from the "dangerous" outside world. Covered head-to-toe in strict, modest clothing, she received a rigorous education at Alta Academy, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' school headed by Warren Jeffs.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.