Showing titles in Women

It's 1956, and the Berkshire Constabulary has never had a woman detective before. That is, until bright and ambitious WPC Gwen Crockford passes out of Hendon Detective Training School with flying colours... After five years serving as one of Britain's first policewomen, Gwen Crockford becomes one of its first female detectives. Swapping crime prevention for detection, she must soon become comfortable with attending murder scenes and post-mortems, investigating sex crimes and going undercover.

In September 1921, four young men and Ada Blackjack, a diminutive 25-year-old Eskimo woman, ventured deep into the Arctic in a secret attempt to colonize desolate Wrangel Island for Great Britain. Two years later, Ada Blackjack emerged as the sole survivor of this ambitious polar expedition. This young, unskilled woman - who had headed to the Arctic in search of money and a husband - conquered the seemingly unconquerable north and survived all alone after her male companions had perished.

Known to millions mainly as the author of the "The Lottery", Shirley Jackson has been curiously absent from the mainstream American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense and psychological horror, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America more deeply than anyone. Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author of The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

In The Girl With the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy shares stories about her family, her relationships, her career, good - and bad - sex, recounting the experiences that have shaped who she is today: from the riches to rags story of her childhood to her teenage quest for popularity (and boys) to becoming one of the most sought-after comedians on the planet and an outspoken advocate for women's rights.

In The Paper Garden, celebrated poet Molly Peacock explores the remarkable life of 18th-century British gentlewoman-turned-artist Mary Delany. In the 1770s, at the age of 72, the twice-widowed and nearly broke Delany turned her interest in botany into beautiful paper “mosaick” flowers still revered today.

Sue Cleaver shares her experiences and life stories, reflects on how they made her feel and what she learned, and offers advice and tips for others who find themselves in similar situations. Are you a chronic overthinker, do you have anxiety, or suffer from self-doubt? Sue has been there, done that, and is still learning from it. Training as a therapist was only the start of her journey of self-discovery and at sixty she feels more empowered to live life to the full than ever before.

Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married, and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was.

Widely known in the criminal underworld as the 'Black Widow', Linda Calvey spent the first half of her life running with the UK's top gangsters, robbing banks and rubbing shoulders with the Kray twins. That is, until, in 1990, her lover Robbie Cook was murdered at point-blank, and she found herself falsely convicted. Linda was sent away for decades, and would go on to become Britain's longest-serving female prisoner. This is her story of life inside, and how she learnt to survive the many years she spent behind bars.

Drawing on letters and diaries, some of which have never been published before, this book will reveal Jane Austen's bond with a family servant, the amateur playwright Anne Sharp, how Charlotte Brontë was inspired by the daring feminist Mary Taylor, the transatlantic relationship between George Eliot and the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and the underlying erotic charge that lit the friendship of Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield - a pair too often dismissed as bitter foes.

A searing memoir about growing up in a fiercely loving, abusive rabbinical family in which the author's father, the charismatic head of a splinter Orthodox religious community, demands unswerving loyalty—and a commitment to guarding terrible secrets. Sara Sherbill was raised by a father who was both a representative of God and a broken man harboring an intricate set of secrets. Her riveting story explores what happens when a daughter is tasked with keeping those secrets, and the cost of keeping them. It asks: How do we live with suffering? What does it mean to heal?

Debutante of the year. Able politician. Femme fatale. Just some of the many labels attached to the irrepressible, controversial Raine Spencer: Countess, socialite and stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales. But who was the real Raine? What was hidden behind the immaculately manicured public façade and her overwhelmingly negative tabloid image? From her childhood days as daughter of romantic novelist powerhouse, Barbara Cartland, to Westminster councillor and wife of Earl Spencer, Three Times a Countess recounts Raine's compelling and glamorous life.

A tell-all memoir by the star of MTV's The Hills and E4's Made in Chelsea. Stephanie Pratt is the consummate reality star. Since 2007 her life has been lived almost as much on the small screen as off it and constantly analysed in gossip columns. In Made in Reality, Stephanie gives an exclusive insight into the trials and tribulations of life on reality TV, taking us behind the scenes of The Hills, Made in Chelsea and even the Big Brother house.

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an 1100-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe and built her back up again. At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. After her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than an idea: vague, outlandish, and full of promise.

Henrietta Maria is the most reviled consort to have worn the crown of Britain's Three Kingdoms. Condemned as that 'Popish brat of France', a 'notorious whore' and traitor, she remains in popular memory the wife who wore the breeches and turned her husband Catholic—so causing a civil war—and a cruel and bigoted mother. Leanda de Lisle's White King was hailed as 'the definitive modern biography about Charles I' (Observer). Here she considers Henrietta Maria's point of view, unpicking the myths to reveal a very different queen.

Miss Bangkok is a vivid, powerful and moving memoir of a life spent in prostitution in Thailand. Poor and uneducated, Bua Boonmee escaped an abusive marriage only to end up in the go-go bars of Patpong. There, in the notorious red-light district of Bangkok, she succumbed to prostitution in an effort to support her family.

When you've come out the other side of the bizarre, twisted world of the Playboy mansion, where do you land? If you're Holly Madison...there's no place like Las Vegas. After making the sudden decision to reclaim her life, Holly broke free from the sheltered, deceptive confines of the mansion (which meant exiting a hit television show) and was determined to start her life over...from scratch. Without the security of a job or a relationship, she set out to reinvent herself on no one's terms but her own.

In 1990, Sinéad O’Connor’s video for “Nothing Compares 2 U” turned her into a superstar. Two years later, an appearance on Saturday Night Live turned her into a scandal. For many people—including, for years, the author—what they knew of O’Connor stopped there. Allyson McCabe believes it’s time to reassess our old judgments about Sinéad O’Connor and to expose the machinery that built her up and knocked her down.

The daughter of one of New York's most influential families, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed some of the most remarkable decades in modern history, as America transitioned from the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the Depression to World War II and the Cold War. A champion of the downtrodden, Eleanor drew on her experience and used her role as First Lady to help those in need.

Who is Ruth McBride Jordan? A self-declared "light-skinned" woman evasive about her ethnicity, yet steadfast in her love for her 12 Black children. James McBride, journalist, musician, and son, explores his mother's past, as well as his own upbringing and heritage, in a poignant and powerful debut, The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother.

When her husband passed away after a long, trying illness, Annie Dodds was forced to sell almost everything to settle his estate. Homeless, with little money, she wondered if it might be time to pursue a decades-old dream of living a quiet, self-sufficient life alone, off-grid. One day, when her son told her he knew of an old house on 50 acres, she knew it was time.