Women

A never-before-told story of Virginia Hall, the American spy who changed the course of World War II, from the author of Clementine....

As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium....

From the best-selling author of The Radium Girls comes another dark and dramatic but ultimately uplifting tale of a forgotten woman whose inspirational journey sparked lasting change for women’s rights and exposed injustices that still resonate today....

In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, bestselling author of The Five, Hallie Rubenhold, gives voice to those who were never properly heard—the women.

The phenomenal true story of the Black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space....

Bestselling author Lisa Rogak brings to vivid life the incredible untold story of four women who spun the web of deception that helped win World War II.

Journalist Elise Loehnen explores the ancient rules women unwittingly follow in order to be considered “good,” revealing how the Seven Deadly Sins still control and distort our lives and illuminating a path toward a more balanced, spiritually complete way to live....

From the author of In the Shadow of the Empress comes the chronicle of two of the most influential and glamorous women in nineteenth-century Europe—Elisabeth, empress of Austria, and Eugénie, empress of France—and their efforts to rule amid the scandal, intrigue, tragedy, and violence of their era.

Covering thousands of years, six continents, and just about every mathematical discipline, The Secret Lives of Numbers is an immensely compelling narrative history.

Every Tudor Queen had ladies-in-waiting. They were her confidantes and her chaperones. Only the Queen's ladies had the right to enter her most private chambers, spending hours helping her to get dressed and undressed, caring for her clothes and jewels, listening to her secrets.

A glittering portrait of the golden age of American department stores and of three visionary women who led them, from the award-winning author of The Plaza.

Created in the aftermath of World War II, the Central Intelligence Agency relied on women even as it attempted to channel their talents and keep them down....

Acclaimed journalist, podcaster, and true-crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson tells the true story of the scandalous murder investigation that became the inspiration for both Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and the first true-crime book published in America.

In Lethal Tides, Catherine Musemeche weaves together science, biography, and military history in the compelling story of an unsung woman who had a dramatic effect on the U.S. Navy’s success against Japan in WWII, creating an intelligence-gathering juggernaut based on the new science of oceanography....

Women were there. For centuries, discussions of early Christianity have focused on male leaders in the church. But there is ample evidence right in the New Testament that women were actively involved in ministry, at the frontier of the gospel mission, and as respected leaders....

This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra - women who ruled with real power - and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today....

Clear-eyed, impassioned, and ultimately hopeful, We Refuse offers a fundamental corrective to the historical record, a love letter to Black resilience, and a path toward liberation.

Sisters in Science tells the extraordinary true story of four women pioneers in physics during World War II and their daring escape out of Nazi Germany.

The imprisonment and execution of Queen Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII's second wife, in 1536 was unprecedented in English history and never before has there been a book devoted entirely to her fall.

At the height of World War II, LOOK Magazine profiled a small American community for a series of articles portraying it as the wholesome, patriotic model of life on the home front.

A vivid, deeply researched work of history that explores the life of an unconventional woman during the first half of the 19th century in Edo - the city that would become Tokyo - and a portrait of a great city on the brink of a momentous encounter with the West....

How Victorian male doctors used false science to argue that women were unfit for anything but motherhood—and the brilliant doctor who defied them.

The stories of four courageous women - a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow - who were spies....

Hatshepsut's failure to produce a male heir was ultimately the twist of fate that paved the way for her improbable rule as a cross-dressing king....

The incredible and inspiring story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the World War II female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo.

Nova Reid, author of The Good Ally, delves into the untold stories of extraordinary, unsung Black women who created and shaped pivotal moments in world history, British culture and society. Through powerful storytelling, personal insights and new research, Nova delves into the lives of pioneers, journalists and rule-breakers who made vital contributions to civil rights, yet have been mythologised, are unknown or erased from history.

Betty MacDonald was a 28-year-old reporter from Hawaii. Zuzka Lauwers grew up in a tiny Czechoslovakian village and knew five languages by the time she was 21. Jane Smith-Hutton was the wife of a naval attaché living in Tokyo. Marlene Dietrich, the German-American actress and singer, was of course one of the biggest stars of the 20th century. These four women, each fascinating in her own right, together contributed to one of the most covert and successful military campaigns in WWII.

On February 1, 1910, the vivacious, diamond-adorned music hall performer Belle Elmore suddenly vanished from her home, causing alarm among her friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild. Their demands for an investigation would lead to the unearthing of a gruesome secret and trigger a fevered international manhunt for Belle’s husband, medical fraudster Dr. Hawley Harvey Crippen.

It’s a safe bet that most of the secretaries on the TV series Mad Men would have attended the Katharine Gibbs School in New York City. The iconic institution was in its heyday in the 1950 and '60s synonymous with supplying secretaries—always properly attired in heels, ladylike hats, and white gloves—to male executives. In Expect Great Things! Vanda Krefft turns the notion of a “Gibbs girl” on its head, showing us that while the school was getting women who could type 90 words per minute into the C-suite, its more subversive mission was to get them out of the secretarial pool.

Transcendentalism remains the most important literary and philosophical movement to have originated in the United States. Most accounts of it trace its emergence to a group of intellectuals dissatisfied with their religious, literary, and social culture. Yet there is a forgotten history of transcendentalism that features women who were central to the development of the movement. Bright Circle is intended to reorient our understanding of transcendentalism. It recounts the lives of Mary Moody Emerson, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, Lydia Jackson Emerson, and Margaret Fuller.