Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women

Nothing Daunted: The Unexpected Education of Two Society Girls in the West

Dorothy Wickenden · 286 pages

In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, close friends from childhood and graduates of Smith College, left home in Auburn, New York for the wilds of northwestern Colorado. Bored by their society luncheons, charity work, and the effete young men who courted them, they learned that two teaching jobs were available in a remote mountaintop schoolhouse and applied -- shocking the

A Soldier's Secret: The Incredible True Story of Sarah Edmonds, Civil War Hero

Marissa Moss · 400 pages

Nineteen-year-old Sarah masquerades as a man during the Civil War, serving as a nurse on the battlefield and a spy for the Union Army, escaping from the Confederates, and falling in love with one of her fellow soldiers. Based on the life of Sarah Emma Edmonds.

Wedlock

Wendy Moore · 386 pages

With the death of her fabulously wealthy coal magnate father when she was just eleven, Mary Eleanor Bowes became the richest heiress in Britain. An ancestor of Queen Elizabeth II, Mary grew to be a highly educated young woman, winning acclaim as a playwright and botanist. Courted by a bevy of eager suitors, at eighteen she married the handsome but aloof ninth Earl of Strathmore in a celebrated, if

First Women: The Grace and Power of America's Modern First Ladies

Kate Andersen Brower · 398 pages

Brower draws on a wide array of untapped, candid sources to tell the stories of the ten remarkable women who have defined the role of First Lady of the United States since 1960. From Jackie Kennedy to Michelle Obama, she offers new insights into this privileged group, and shares stories exploring everything from the first ladies political crusades to their rivalries with Washington figures; from t

The Woman Who Heard the Sun and Other True Stories Overlooked by History

Amisha Padnani and The New York Times

Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin

Jill Lepore · 464 pages

A revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin's youngest sister and a wholly different account of the founding of the United States.

The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de Medici

Elizabeth Lev · 352 pages

A strategist to match Machiavelli; a warrior who stood toe to toe with the Borgias; a wife whose three marriages would end in bloodshed and heartbreak; and a mother determined to maintain her family’s honor, Caterina Riario Sforza de’ Medici was a true Renaissance celebrity, beloved and vilified in equal measure. In this dazzling biography, Elizabeth Lev illuminates her extraordinary life and acco

Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Paula J. Giddings · 824 pages

Traces the life and legacy of the nineteenth-century activist and pioneer, documenting her birth into slavery, her career as a journalist and a pioneer for civil rights and suffrage, and her determination to counter lynching.

Four Queens: The Provençal Sisters Who Ruled Europe

Nancy Goldstone · 352 pages

Four accomplished sisters who rose from near obscurity to become the most powerful women in EuropeSet against the backdrop of the turbulent thirteenth century, a time of chivalry and crusades, poetry, knights, and monarchs comes the story of the four beautiful daughters of the count of Provence whose brilliant marriages made them the queens of France, England, Germany, and Sicily.From a cultured c

The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience

Kirstin Downey · 477 pages

Frances Perkins is no longer a household name, yet she was one of the most influential women of the twentieth century. Frances Perkins was named Secretary of Labor by Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. As the first female cabinet secretary, at the height of the Great Depression, she spearheaded the fight to improve the lives of America's working people while juggling her own family responsibilities. Perk

Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision

Barbara Ransby · 501 pages

Bad Girls: Sirens, Jezebels, Murderesses, Thieves and Other Female Villains

Jane Yolen, Heidi E.Y. Stemple · 172 pages

The Scarlet Sisters: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in the Gilded Age

Myra MacPherson · 401 pages

Describes the adventures of two sisters who tried to overcome the male-dominated social norms of the late nineteenth century and achieved a remarkable list of firsts, including the first woman-run brokerage house and the first woman to run for president.

Elizabeth I: A Feminist Perspective (Berg Women's Series)

Susan Bassnett · 152 pages

Princesses Behaving Badly: Real Stories from History—without the Fairy-Tale Endings

Linda Rodriguez McRobbie · 303 pages

Offers information on historical princesses whose lives were devoid of fairy-tale magic, including the stories of Nazi spy Princess Stephanie von Hohenlohe, mass murderess Princess Olga of Kiev, and warrior mom Princess Rani Lakshmibai.

Abigail Adams

Woody Holton

IN THIS VIVID NEW BIOGRAPHY OF ABIGAIL ADAMS, the most illustrious woman of Americas founding era, prize-winning historian Woody Holton offers a sweeping reinterpretation of Adams’s life story and of women’s roles in the creation of the republic. Using previously overlooked documents from a host of archives, Abigail Adams shows that the wife of the second president of the United States was far

American Jezebel: The Uncommon Life of Anne Hutchinson, the Woman Who Defied the Puritans

Eve LaPlante · 312 pages

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Jung Chang · 544 pages

"Jung Chang vividly evokes China's sights, sounds, and smells to create what must be one of the grimmest, yet most perceptive accounts of growing up middle-class in the maelstrom that has swept China since the 1920s." - Back cover.

The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt

Kara Cooney · 309 pages

Hatshepsut—the daughter of a general who usurped Egypt's throne and a mother with ties to the previous dynasty—was born into a privileged position in the royal household, and she was expected to bear the sons who would legitimize the reign of her father’s family. Her 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.

Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia

Janet Wallach · 419 pages

Reared in the comfortable and privileged world of the "eminent Victorians," Gertrude Bell turned her back on convention and sought adventure in Arab lands. Traveling numerous times through the Syrian Desert and, at risk to her life, through the great Arabian desert of the Nejd - the last European to do so before the eruption of World War I - she wrote of her travels in widely acclaimed books. T

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

Brad Ricca · 436 pages

Presents the true story of the first female U.S. District Attorney and traveling detective who found missing eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger when the entire NYPD had given up. "In 1917, on the day before Valentine's Day, eighteen-year-old Ruth Cruger disappeared. When the police gave up, a mysterious woman in black vowed to find her. Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells the true story of Grace Humiston, the

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, from Missiles to the Moon to Mars

Nathalia Holt · 427 pages

"The riveting true story of the women who launched America into space. In the 1940s and 50s, when the newly minted Jet Propulsion Laboratory needed quick-thinking mathematicians to calculate velocities and plot trajectories, they didn’t turn to male graduates. Rather, they recruited an elite group of young women who, with only pencil, paper, and mathematical prowess, transformed rocket design,

Ashley's War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon · 314 pages

Presents the story of First Lieutenant Ashley White and a groundbreaking team of female American warriors who served alongside Special Operations soldiers on the battle field in Afghanistan.

The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism

Megan Marshall · 602 pages