"Diamonds aren't always a girl's best friend. Pregnant out of wedlock, sixteen-year-old Annie Moore is sent to live at a convent for fallen women. When the nuns take her baby, Annie escapes, determined to find a way to be reunited with her daughter. But few rights or opportunities are available to a woman in the 1860s, and after failing to find a respectable job, she resorts to prostitution in order to survive. As a highly sought-after demi-mondaine, Annie--now Bessie--garners many expensive gifts from her admirers and eventually meets and marries the son of a wealthy jeweler, a traveling salesman with a gambling problem. With her marriage, she believes her dream of returning to proper society has finally come true. She's proven wrong when she suffers the ultimate betrayal at the hands of the man she thought her salvation. But Bessie doesn't let her story end there. Inspired by a true story and set against the backdrop of the burgeoning women's rights movement, The Lives of Diamond Bessie is a haunting tale of betrayal and redemption that explores whether seeking revenge is worth the price you might pay."--Page 4 of cover

"In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer's life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers--a cover for her spying work--Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served--the US, France, and Britain"--

"A teenage girl living in 1960s China becomes Mao Zedong's protégée and lover--and a poster child for the Cultural Revolution--in this provocative, poignant novel from the bestselling author of A River of Stars On the eve of China's Cultural Revolution and her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman's opulent residence-a forbidden city unto itself-that she learns that the girls' job is to dance with the Party elites. Ambitious and whip-smart, Mei makes a beeline toward the Chairman. Mei gradually separates from the other recruits to become the Chairman's confidante-and paramour. As he fends off political rivals, Mei faces down schemers from the dance troupe who will stop at nothing to take her place, as well as the Chairman's imperious wife, who has schemes of her own. When the Chairman finally gives Mei a political mission, she seizes it with fervor, but the brutality of this latest stage of the revolution makes her begin to doubt all the certainties she has held so dear. Forbidden City is an epic yet intimate portrayal of one of the world's most powerful and least understood leaders during the most turbulent period of modern Chinese history. Mei's harrowing journey toward truth and disillusionment raises questions about power, manipulation, and belief, as seen through the eyes of a passionate teenage girl"--

Growing up as the daughter of Mexican immigrants in Chicago in the nineties, Erika SÌ€nchez was a self-described pariah, misfit, and disappointment--a foul-mouthed, melancholic rabble-rouser who painted her nails black but also loved comedy, often laughing so hard with her friends that she had to leave her school classroom. Twenty-five years later, she's now an award-winning novelist, poet, and essayist, but she's still got an irrepressible laugh, an acerbic wit, and singular powers of perception about the world around her. In these essays, SÌ€nchez writes about everything from sex to white feminism to debilitating depression, revealing an interior life rich with ideas, self-awareness, and perception. Raunchy, insightful, unapologetic, and brutally honest, Crying in the Bathroom is SÌ€nchez at her best--a book that will make you feel that post-confessional high that comes from talking for hours with your best friend.

"Gather around, children of Chu Dien, and be brave. For even to listen to the story of the Trung Sisters is, in these troubled times, a dangerous act. In 40 CE, in the Au Lac region of ancient Vietnam, two daughters of a Vietnamese Lord fill their days training, studying, and trying to stay true to Vietnamese traditions. While Trung Trac is disciplined and wise, always excelling in her duty, Trung Nhi is fierce and free spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers. But these sisters' lives-and the lives of their people-are shadowed by the oppressive rule of the Han Chinese. They are forced to adopt Confucian teachings, secure marriages, and pay ever-increasing taxes. As the peoples' frustration boils over, the country comes ever closer to the edge of war. When Trung Trac and Trung Nhi's father is executed, their world comes crashing down around them. With no men to save them against the Han's encroaching regime, they must rise and unite the women of Vietnam into an army. Solidifying their status as champions of women and Vietnam, they usher in a period of freedom and independence for their people. Vivid, lyrical, and filled with adventure, Bronze Drum is a true story of standing up for one's people, culture, and country that has been passed down through generations of Vietnamese families through oral tradition. Phong Nguyen's breathtaking novel takes these real women out of legends and celebrates their loves, losses, and resilience in this inspirational story of women's strength and power even in the face of the greatest obstacles"--

Against the winds of war, with the Wehrmacht marching down the Champs-Élysées, Coco Chanel finds herself residing alongside the Reich's High Command in the Hotel Ritz. Surrounded by the enemy, she wages a private war of her own to wrestle full control of her perfume company from the hands of her Jewish business partner, Pierre Wertheimer. With anti-Semitism on the rise, he has escaped to the United States with the confidential formula for Chanel No. 5. As Paris sinks under the iron fist of German rule, Chanel will do anything to survive. She will even agree to collaborate with the Nazis in order to protect her darkest secrets. To what lengths will she go to keep her stormy past from haunting her future? -- adapted from jacket

"They were three Black girls. Dawn, tall and studious; her sister, Kim, younger by three years and headstrong as they come; and Dawn's best friend, Debra, already prom-queen pretty by third grade. These third-generation daughters of the Great Migration come of age in 1970s Chicago, in the warm glow of the recent civil rights movement. Then they arrive at the precipice of adolescence, a fraught rite of passage for all girls, when the dangers of the world suddenly crash into view. There is a small margin of error--especially for brown girls--and the choices Dawn, Debra, and Kim make will have lasting consequences, some of them devastating. Dawn struggles to understand the shocking turns that consume her sister and her best friend, all the while asking herself a simple but profound question: Why? Three girls from Bronzeville is a piercing memoir that chronicles Dawn's attempt to find ansswers. It's at once a celebration of sisterhood and friendship and a tour de force about the complex interplay of race, class, and opportunity." --

"Gabe Montesanti grew up queer in a working-class, conservative Catholic family in the Midwest, where she was taught to prioritize strength and impenetrability over vulnerability and honesty. In this emotionally, physically, and spiritually abusive environment, she developed a severe eating disorder, never learned to trust herself, and lived in constant fear. As she enters graduate school, she vows to put the trauma of her past behind her and to learn to fully inhabit her body. She joins Arch Rival Roller Derby in St. Louis, one of the top-rated teams in the country, and instantly falls in love with the roughness, intensity, and roller derby's open embrace of people who are literally and figuratively scarred. Gabe soon finds community, safety, and a sense of belonging, reveling in the queer-friendly environment, the tattoos, glitter, and campiness. She chooses the derby name Joan of Spark, modeling herself after the fierce and independent Joan of Arc, to signify all the ways she's left behind the baggage of her childhood. But when Gabe suffers a catastrophic injury, her unresolved trauma catches up to her. In the aftermath of her accident, it becomes impossible to ignore how the physicality of roller derby mirrors the emotional violence of her upbringing. Gabe's arduous physical recovery is matched only by the painful process of beginning to heal her emotional wounds. Forced to reckon with her past, she must decide if she can be Joan of Spark off the track, too--skating into a bolder, truer future"--

"An historical and imaginative tour-de-force, WAKE brings to light for the first time the existence of enslaved black women warriors, whose stories can be traced by carefully scrutinizing historical records; and where the historical record goes silent, WAKE reconstructs the likely past of two female rebels, Adono and Alele, on the slave ship The Unity. WAKE is a graphic novel that offers invaluable insight into the struggle to survive whole as a black woman in today's America; it is a historiography that illuminates both the challenges and the necessity of uncovering the true stories of slavery; and it is an overdue reckoning with slavery in New York City where two of these armed revolts took place. It is, also, a transformative and transporting work of imaginative fiction, bringing to three-dimensional life Adono and Alele and their pasts as women warriors. In so doing, WAKE illustrates the humanity of the enslaved, the reality of their lived experiences, and the complexity of the history that has been, till now, so thoroughly erased"--

"In 1918, a fearless twenty-two-year old arrives in bohemian San Francisco from the Northeast, determined to make her own way as an independent woman. Renaming herself Dorothea Lange she is soon the celebrated owner of the city's most prestigious and stylish portrait studio and wife of the talented but volatile painter, Maynard Dixon. By the early 1930s, as America's economy collapses, her marriage founders and Dorothea must find ways to support her two young sons single-handedly. Determined to expose the horrific conditions of the nation's poor, she takes to the road with her camera, creating images that inspire, reform, and define the era. And when the United States enters World War II, Dorothea chooses to confront another injustice--the incarceration of thousands of innocent Japanese Americans. At a time when women were supposed to keep the home fires burning, Dorothea Lange, creator of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century, dares to be different. But her choices came at a steep price ..."--

"Written when she was just twenty-eight, Lorraine Hansberry's landmark A Raisin in the Sun is listed by the National Theatre as one of the hundred most significant works of the twentieth century. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play performed on Broadway, and the first Black and youngest American playwright to win a New York Critics' Circle Award. Charles J. Shields's authoritative biography of one of the twentieth century's most admired playwrights examines the parts of Lorraine Hansberry's life that have escaped public knowledge: the influence of her upper-class background, her fight for peace and nuclear disarmament, the reason why she embraced Communism during the Cold War, and her dependence on her white husband-her best friend, critic, and promoter. Many of the identity issues about class, sexuality, and race that she struggled with are relevant and urgent today. This dramatic telling of a passionate life-a very American life through self-reinvention-uses previously unpublished interviews with close friends in politics and theater, privately held correspondence, and deep research to reconcile old mysteries and raise new questions about a life not fully described until now"--

In West Africa, Abdaraya Toya was one of the legendary minos-- women called "Dahomeyan Amazons" by the Europeans. She was a specially chosen female warrior consecrated to the King of Dahomey. Betrayed by an enemy, kidnapped, and sold into slavery, Toya wound up in the French colony of Saint Domingue, where she became a healer and an authority figure among the enslaved. A free woman of color, Marie-Claire Bonheur was raised in an air of privilege and security because of her wealthy white grandfather. Falling in love with Jean-Jacques Dessalines, an enslaved man, was never the plan. Despite a marriage of convenience to a Frenchman, she and Dessalines had several children. When war breaks out on Saint Domingue, pitting the French, Spanish, and enslaved people against one another in turn, Marie-Claire and Toya both play pivotal roles in the revolution that will eventually lead to full independence for Haiti and its people. -- adapted from jacket

As war approaches, Grand Duchess Olga Romanov trades her gown for a nursing habit, but when troubling rumors about her parents trickle in from the Front and the controversy over Rasputin grows into a fiery protest, a call for revolution threatens to end three hundred years of Romanov rule.

"Trip. My parents started using that word about a year ago--'one day, you'll take a trip to be with us. Like an adventure.' Javier's adventure is a three-thousand-mile journey from his small town in El Salvador, through Guatemala and Mexico, and across the U.S. border. He will leave behind his beloved aunt and grandparents to reunite with a mother who left four years ago and a father he barely remembers. Traveling alone except for a group of strangers and a "coyote" hired to lead them to safety, Javier's trip is supposed to last two short weeks. At nine years old, all Javier can imagine is rushing into his parents' arms, snuggling in bed between them, and living under the same roof again. He cannot foresee the perilous boat trips, relentless desert treks, pointed guns, arrests and deceptions that await him; nor can he know that those two weeks will expand into two life-altering months alongside a group of strangers who will come to encircle him like an unexpected family. A memoir as gripping as it is moving, Solito not only provides an immediate and intimate account of a treacherous and near-impossible journey, but also the miraculous kindness and love delivered at the most unexpected moments. Solito is Javier's story, but it's also the story of millions of others who had no choice but to leave home." --author's website.

1986, the heart of the Cold War. A young black woman working in an old boys' club, Marie Mitchell's FBI career has stalled out and her days are filled with monotonous paperwork. Given the opportunity to join a task force aimed at undermining Thomas Sankara, the charismatic revolutionary president of Burkina Faso whose Communist ideology has made him a target for American intervention, she says yes. In the year that follows Marie observes Sankara, seduces him-- and has a hand in the coup that will bring him down. But doing so will change everything she believes about what it means to be a spy, a lover, a sister, and a good American. --

"The tellers of Greek myths—historically men—have routinely sidelined the female characters. When they do take a larger role, women are often portrayed as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil—like Pandora, the woman of eternal scorn and damnation whose curiosity is tasked with causing all the world’s suffering and wickedness when she opened that forbidden box. But, as Natalie Haynes reveals, in ancient Greek myths there was no box. It was a jar . . . which is far more likely to tip over. In Pandora’s Jar, the broadcaster, writer, stand-up comedian, and passionate classicist turns the tables, putting the women of the Greek myths on an equal footing with the men. With wit, humor, and savvy, Haynes revolutionizes our understanding of epic poems, stories, and plays, resurrecting them from a woman’s perspective and tracing the origins of their mythic female characters. She looks at women such as Jocasta, Oedipus’ mother-turned-lover-and-wife (turned Freudian sticking point), at once the cleverest person in the story and yet often unnoticed. She considers Helen of Troy, whose marriage to Paris “caused” the Trojan war—a somewhat uneven response to her decision to leave her husband for another man. She demonstrates how the vilified Medea was like an ancient Beyonce—getting her revenge on the man who hurt and betrayed her, if by extreme measures. And she turns her eye to Medusa, the original monstered woman, whose stare turned men to stone, but who wasn’t always a monster, and had her hair turned to snakes as punishment for being raped. Pandora’s Jar brings nuance and care to the millennia-old myths and legends and asks the question: Why are we so quick to villainize these women in the first place—and so eager to accept the stories we’ve been told?"--

"Austria 1767: Maria Carolina Charlotte-ninth daughter and sixteenth child of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-knows her position as a Hapsburg archduchess will inevitably force her to leave her home, her family, and her beloved country. But not yet. The Hapsburg family is celebrating a great triumph: Charlotte's older sister, Josepha, has been promised to King Ferdinand IV of Naples, and will soon take her place as queen. Before Josepha can journey to her new home, however, tragedy strikes: after visiting the family crypt, Josepha contracts smallpox and dies. Shocked, Charlotte is forced to face an unthinkable new reality: she must now marry Ferdinand in her sister's stead. Bereft and alone, Charlotte finds that her new life in Naples is more complicated than she could ever have imagined. Ferdinand is weak and feckless, and a disastrous wedding night plunges her into despair. Her husband's regent, Tenucci, is a controlling and power-hungry man who has pushed the country to the brink of ruin. Overwhelmed, she asks her brother Leopold, now the Holy Roman Emperor, to send help-which he does in the form of John Acton, a handsome military man twenty years Charlotte's senior who is tasked to take over the Navy. Now, Charlotte must gather the strength to do what her mother did before her: take control of a country. In a time of political uprisings, royal executions, and the increasingly desperate crisis her favorite sister, Queen Marie Antoinette, is facing in France, how is a young monarch to keep hold of everything-and everyone-she loves? Find out in this sweeping, luxurious tale of family, court intrigue, and power"--

In 1822, a secret family moves into a secret cabin some thirty miles northeast of Baltimore, to farm, to hide, and to bear ten children over the course of the next sixteen years. Junius Booth--breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one--is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war. As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country's leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.

Lady Evelyn Herbert was the daughter of the Earl of Carnarvon, brought up in stunning Highclere Castle. Popular and pretty, she seemed destined for a prestigious marriage, but she had other ideas. Instead, she left behind the world of society balls and chaperones to travel to the Egyptian desert, where she hoped to become a lady archaeologist, working alongside her father and Howard Carter in the hunt for an undisturbed tomb. In November 1922, their dreams came true when they discovered the burial place of Tutankhamun, packed full of gold and unimaginable riches, and she was the first person to crawl inside for three thousand years. She called it the 'greatest moment' of her life, but soon afterwards everything changed, with a string of tragedies that left her world a darker, sadder place. Newspapers claimed it was 'the curse of Tutankhamun, ' but Howard Carter said no rational person would entertain such nonsense. Yet fifty years later, when an Egyptian academic came asking questions about what really happened in the tomb, it unleashed a new chain of events that seemed to threaten the happiness Eve had finally found.

"A luminous and inspiring portrait of a Black pioneer and artistic force—Eartha Kitt—and one of the most moving mother/daughter stories in Hollywood history. In this unique combination of memoir and cultural history, we come to know one of the greatest stars the world has ever seen—Eartha Kitt—as revealed by the person who knew her best: her daughter. Eartha, who was a mix of Black, Cherokee, and white, is viewed by the world as Black. Kitt, her biological daughter, is blonde and light skinned. This is the story of a young girl being raised by her mother, who happened to be one of the most famous celebrities in the world. For three decades, they traveled the world together as mother and daughter. Even after Kitt got married and started a family of her own, she and Eartha were never far from each other’s sides. Eartha had a very difficult childhood growing up in extreme poverty in South Carolina. She described herself as being “just a poor cotton picker from the South.” She did not have her own familial ties to lean on after being abandoned by her own mother as a toddler and having never known who her father was. She and Kitt were each other’s whole world. Eartha’s legacy is still felt today. Not only do we still listen to “Santa Baby” every Christmas, but many of today’s most influential artists consistently mention Eartha, paying tribute to her groundbreaking stances on social issues such as racial equality and women’s and LGBTQ rights. And she is still widely remembered for her definitive portrayal of Catwoman in the classic Batman television series, voicing the character Yzma in Disney’s The Emperor’s New Groove, and her many other movie and Broadway roles. In these pages, Kitt brings her mother to life so vividly, you will feel as if you'd met her. You’ll embrace her love of nature, exercise, simple food, and independence, along with her lessons on the importance of treating people kindly and always being true to yourself. Filled with love, life lessons, and poignant laughter, Eartha & Kitt captures the passion and energy of two remarkable women."--

"Based on the true story of the Cook sisters, who smuggled valuables out of 1930s Nazi Germany to finance a daring, secret operation to help Jews find hope for a new life in England. British sisters Ida and Louise Cook enjoy their quiet, unassuming lives in south London. Ida writes romance novels, and Louise works as a secretary. In the evenings, the sisters indulge in their shared love for opera, saving their money to buy records and attend performances throughout England and Europe, becoming well-known by both performers and fellow opera lovers. But when Hitler seizes power in 1933, he begins targeting and persecuting German Jews, passing laws that restrict their rights and their lives. The sisters continue their trips to the German opera houses, but soon, Jewish members of the opera community covertly approach the sisters, worried that they will be stripped of their wealth and forced to leave their homes and the country. Danger looms on the horizon, threatening to spill across all of Europe's borders. Ida and Louise vow to help, but how can two ordinary working-class women with limited means make a difference? Together with their beloved opera community, the sisters devise a plan to personally escort Jewish refugees from Germany to England. The success of the plan hinges on Ida and Louise's ability to smuggle contraband jewelry and furs beneath the watchful eyes of the SS soldiers guarding various checkpoints. But how many trips can they make before someone blows a whistle? Or before the final curtain falls on Germany's borders? The Opera Sisters is a riveting and inspiring novel of two unlikely heroines whose courage and compassion gave hope to many Jews desperate to escape Nazi persecution"--