Women Memoirs

Goldie Hawn's life is an ongoing tableau of stories, and she has a born knack for telling them. In this candid and insightful book, Goldie invites us to join her in a look back at the people, places, and events that have touched her. It is the spiritual journey of a heart in search of enlightenment.

"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." With these words, Elizabeth Barrett Browning has come down to us as a romantic heroine, a recluse controlled by a domineering father and often overshadowed by her husband, Robert Browning. But behind the melodrama lies a thoroughly modern figure whose extraordinary life is an electrifying study in self-invention.

At one time, Corrie ten Boom would have laughed at the idea that she had a story to tell. For the first 50 years of her life, nothing out of the ordinary ever happened to her. She was a spinster watchmaker living contentedly with her sister and their elderly father in the tiny house over their shop in Haarlem. Their uneventful days, as regulated as their own watches, revolved around their abiding love for one another. But with the Nazi invasion and occupation of Holland, everything changed....

My name is Betty. I have depression. I have passion. I have tits the size of printers. And also: I have a brain full of women. There’s Blanche VonF--kery, Ingrid St. Rash, and a host of others—some cowering in sweatpants, some howling plans for revolution, and one, oh God, and one . . . slowly vomiting up a crow? Worried for her. These women take turns at the wheel. That’s why I feel like a million selves. With a raised eyebrow and a soul-scalpel, I’d like to tell you how I got this way. Because maybe you feel this way too.

Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Heydrich, Hess, Bormann - names synonymous with power and influence in the Third Reich. Perhaps less familiar are Carin, Emmy, Magda, Margarete, Lina, Ilse, and Gerda. These are the women behind the infamous men - complex individuals with distinctive personalities who were captivated by Hitler and whose everyday lives were governed by Nazi ideology. Throughout the rise and fall of Nazism these women loved and lost, raised families, and quarreled with their husbands and each other, all the while jostling for position with the Fuhrer himself.

A best seller in its native Canada, Drunk Mom is a gripping, brutally honest memoir of motherhood in the shadow of alcoholism. Three years after giving up drinking, Jowita Bydlowska found herself throwing back a glass of champagne like it was ginger ale. It was a special occasion: a party celebrating the birth of her first child. It also marked Bydlowska's immediate, full-blown return to crippling alcoholism.

In her memoir, Mrs. Bush for the first time gives listeners a very private look at a life lived in the public eye for more than 25 years. She begins with a compelling portrait of her early years, including: growing up in Rye, New York, and meeting George Bush; life as a young bride and mother, moving far away from home to West Texas; and the almost unbearable pain of losing a child.

Her palace shimmered with onyx, garnets, and gold, but was richer still in political and sexual intrigue. Above all else, Cleopatra was a shrewd strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Though her life spanned fewer than forty years, it reshaped the contours of the ancient world. She was married twice, each time to a brother. She waged a brutal civil war against the first when both were teenagers. She poisoned the second. In a masterly return to the classical sources, Stacy Schiff here boldly separates fact from fiction to rescue the magnetic queen whose death ushered in a new world order.

Michelle Knight - now known as Lily Rose Lee - captured the world's attention in May 2013, when she and two fellow kidnapping victims were found and freed after being held for more than a decade by notorious Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro. But many people are still asking: What happened after her escape? How do you re-enter society after years of abuse and isolation? How do you get past the trauma and live a happy and joy filled life? How do you learn to trust again?

Set during the chaotic years of World War II, The General's Women tells the story of the conflicted relationship between General Dwight Eisenhower and Kay Summersby, his Irish driver/aide, and the impact of that relationship on Mamie Eisenhower and her life in Washington during the war. Told from three alternating points of view (Kay's, Ike's, and Mamie's), the novel charts the deepening of the relationship as Ike and Kay move from England to North Africa to England, France, and Germany before and after the Normandy landing.

From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best - or worst.

In this moving collection of thought-provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union tells astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her Black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents.

One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13, she was pregnant. By 15, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive.

Li Juan and her mother own a small convenience store in the Altai Mountains in Northwestern China, where she writes about her life among grasslands and snowy peaks. To her neighbors' surprise, Li decides to join a family of Kazakh herders as they take their 30 boisterous camels, 500 sheep, and over 100 cattle and horses to pasture for the winter.

No woman in the Gilded Age made as much money as Hetty Green. At the time of her death in 1916, she was worth at least 100 million dollars, equal to more than 2 billion dollars today. A strong believer in women being financially independent, she offered valuable lessons for the present times. Abandoned at birth by her neurotic mother, scorned by her misogynist father, Hetty set out as a child to prove her value. Following the simple rules of her wealthy Quaker father, she successfully invested her money and along the way proved to herself that she was wealthy and therefore worthy.

Over a quarter of a century after its first publication, the great and simple wisdom in this book continues to influence women's lives.

It's 1964, and 16-year-old Janice is struggling in a grim foster home in Cleveland when she falls suddenly, deeply in love...with The Beatles. They and their music stir in her an ecstatic new sense of freedom. With a friend, she hatches a bold plan to escape their dreary lives and run away to London to meet the Fab Four. On their own for the first time - in "Beatleland" - they explore a new city, a new culture, and a new life. But unbeknownst to them, the runaways have become international news - and a hunt is on.

In one of the most underestimated - and challenging - positions in the world, the first lady of the United States must be many things: an inspiring leader with a forward-thinking agenda of her own; a savvy politician, skilled at navigating the treacherous rapids of Washington; a wife and mother operating under constant scrutiny; and an able CEO responsible for the smooth operation of countless services and special events at the White House.

A True Story of Resilience Survival and Unbroken Spirit A Civilian Dutch Woman in Europe During World War II Treasures of Sadness is the story of Corrie's unbroken spirit. If you love historical fiction, don't miss reading this real life memoir and page-turner: Treasures of Sadness Treasures of Sadness is a real life account of a woman’s journey that began during World War II. Corrie grew up in an affluent neighborhood in Amersfoort, Holland in the 1940’s. From there she fell in love with a German soldier, rubbed elbows with royalty in Vienna, Austria and ended up in a coal mining town ...

The first Black female CEO of a Fortune 500 company looks back at her life and her career at Xerox, sharing unique insights on American business and corporate life, the workers she has always valued, racial and economic justice, how greed is threatening democracy, and the obstacles she’s conquered being Black and a woman.