Women

Award-winning actor, creator of a myriad of memorable characters from Lady Whiteadder to Professor Sprout, Miriam Margolyes is a national treasure.... 

In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites listeners into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her - from her childhood to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work....

In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever....

Dolly Alderton survived her 20s (just about) and in Everything I Know About Love, she gives an unflinching account of the bad dates and squalid flat-shares, the heartaches and humiliations....

Sheila Hancock looked like she was managing old age. She had weathered and even thrived in widowhood, taking on acting roles that would have been demanding for a woman half her age. She had energy, friends, a devoted family, a lovely home. She could still remember her lines....

Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist....

Part inspiration, part memoir, Untamed explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet the expectations of the world and instead dare to listen to and trust in the voice deep inside us.... 

Raw, candid and hilarious, Ellie Taylor's My Child and Other Mistakes is the funny truth about motherhood and all its grisly delights....

In 16th-century Europe, two women came to hold all the power, against all the odds. They were Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici....

Danielle has a safe, happy childhood growing up in West London, but her bright future fades as she turns her back on school for gang life and crime....

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....

So, this is me. Lily Allen. I am a woman. I am a mother. I was a wife. I drink. I have taken drugs. I have loved and been let down. I am a success and a failure. I am a songwriter. I am a singer. I am all these things and more.

Receptionist Pam Beesly and accountant Angela Martin had very little in common when they toiled together at Scranton’s Dunder Mifflin Paper Company. But, in reality, the two bonded in their very first days on set and, over the nine seasons of the series’ run, built a friendship....

Bloomsbury presents Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, read by Lisa Taddeo, Tara Lynne Barr, Marin Ireland and Mena Suvari....

By the time Sara Davies left university, she was running a business with a half-million-pound turnover from her student bedroom. When she became the youngest of BBC 1's iconic Dragons, that turnover was £25 million. Today, she is one of Britain's biggest business names....

A funny and moving trip through memories, musings and the many delights on the Number 12 route, Between the Stops is also an inspiration to us all to get off our phones, look up and to talk to each other because, as Sandi says, 'Some of the greatest trips lie on our own doorstep'....

A sharp eye for detail and a wicked ear for the absurdities of life, Dawn French shows just how an RAF girl from the West Country dreaming of becoming a ballerina/bridesmaid/thief rose to become one of the best-loved comedy actresses of our time.

I can't rewrite history; all I can do is be honest and wear my heart on my sleeve....

Five devastating human stories and a dark and moving portrait of Victorian London - the untold lives of the women killed by Jack the Ripper....  

In Happily Imperfect, be moved to tears and laughter by joining Stacey in her journey so far, as she reveals how to stay positive despite the everyday pressure to be and look perfect....

Bryony Gordon is a respected journalist, a number one best-selling author and an award-winning mental health campaigner....

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way....

Women Don't Owe You Pretty is the ultimate audiobook for anyone who wants to challenge the out-dated narratives supplied to us by the patriarchy....

At the age of 30, Amy finds herself washed up back home on Orkney. Standing unstable on the island, she tries to come to terms with the addiction that has swallowed the last decade of her life....

In this beautiful, close-to-the bone account, Jennifer Grey takes listeners on a vivid tour of the experiences that have shaped her, from her childhood as the daughter of Broadway and film legend Joel Grey, to the surprise hit with Patrick Swayze that made her America’s sweetheart....

In 16th-century Europe, two women came to hold all the power, against all the odds. They were Elizabeth I and Catherine de Medici. One a Virgin Queen who ruled her kingdom alone, and the other a clandestine leader who used her children to shape the dynasties of Europe, much has been written about these iconic women. But nothing has been said of their complicated relationship: 30 years of friendship, competition and conflict that changed the face of Europe.

Self-Portrait reveals a life truly lived through art. In this intimate short smemoir, Celia Paul moves effortlessly through time in words and images, folding in her past and present selves. From her move to the Slade School of Fine Art at 16, through a profound and intense affair with the older and better-known artist Lucian Freud, to the practises of her present-day studio, she meticulously assembles the surprising, beautiful, haunting scenes of a life. Paul brings to her prose the same qualities that she brings to her art.

Rosie was always told her red hair was a curse, but she never believed it. She often dreamed what it would look like under a white veil with the man of her dreams by her side. However, her life takes a harrowing turn in 1944 when she is forced out of her home and sent to the most gruesome of places: Auschwitz. Upon arrival, Rosie’s head is shaved and along with the loss of her beautiful hair, she loses the life she once cherished. 

Jackie was an ordinary American woman whose life changed after a blind date with rugged Antarctic explorer Finn Ronne. After marrying, they began planning the 1946-1948 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition. Her participation was not welcomed by the expedition team of red-blooded males eager to prove themselves in the frozen, hostile environment of Antarctica.

When Betsey Stockton was a child, she was "given, as a slave" to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green's library. After being emancipated, she used that education to benefit other people of color, first in Hawai'i as a missionary, then Philadelphia, and, for the last three decades of her life, Princeton—a college town with a genteel veneer that never fully hid its racial hostility. 

Ella Baker, Alice B. Toklas, Hannah Arendt, Octavia Butler, Agnes Varda, Elizabeth David, Edna Lewis, Maya Angelou, Laurie Colwin: these smart, engaging, revolutionary, and creative twentieth-century women were all profoundly influenced by their own relationships to food, drink, and other elements of sustenance.

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction—above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea—that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.

Imagine being born into a world where everything about you—the shape of your nose, the look of your hair, the place of your birth—designates you as an undesirable, an inferior, a menace, no better than a cockroach, something to be driven away and ultimately exterminated. Imagine being thousands of miles away while your family and friends are brutally and methodically slaughtered. Imagine being entrusted by your parents with the mission of leaving everything you know and finding some way to survive, in the name of your family and your people. 

In 1895, a specialist straps five-year-old Katharine Hathaway, then suffering from spinal tuberculosis, to a board with halters and pulleys in a failed attempt to prevent her from becoming a “hunchback” like the “little locksmith” who does odd jobs at her family’s home. Forced to endure her confinement for ten years, Katharine remains immobile until age fifteen, only to find that none of it has prevented her from developing a deformity of her own. 

Cynthia's mother is dying. Often. Travelling between her home in Scotland and California, as she spends time at her mother's bedside. Cynthia recalls her youthful adventures: living in a squat, train-hopping, hitchhiking and all the other things she never told her mother.

Mental illness can get ugly even if you're considered pretty. This model, actress, social media maven, and mental health warrior has tried it all—amid a world of flashing lights, fame, sex, drugs, rock 'n' roll, Hugh Hefner, family drama, and debilitating mental illness. Follow Autumn down the rabbit hole of mental health struggles in Hollywood—and out the seldom-discussed "other side". Because when the all-consuming mental illness storm has settled; who will you be without constant dysfunction, and what new challenges will you face? 

Don’t Expect Me to Cry is a powerful story of the horrors Janet experienced at the hands of multiple abusers, including her father, and the courageous journey of healing that brought her to a life that is inspirational to other survivors. Janet’s resilience is evident as she tells her story in three parts, reflecting her thoughts and experiences at critical stages of her life. She explains how, from that place of despair, she learned that it is possible to heal from the dark shame and trauma and live a steadier and more content life. 

A fairy tale lived. A wise, humorous, poignant memoir that shows how fairy tales can be healing. The author changes her narrative of chronic pain by delving into the story of Rapunzel. Listener beware: This is no Disney-escape fairy-fluff. A marriage of personal and mythic storylines that reveals deep truths through mythic imagination and the perspective of fairy godmothers. A memoir filled with treasure that we can all claim, especially in hard times.

When Sutanya Dacres married her French boyfriend and moved to Paris at twenty-seven, she felt like she was living out her very own Nora Ephron romantic comedy. Jamaican-born and Bronx-raised, she had never dreamed she herself could be one of those American women in Paris she admired from afar via their blogs, until she met the man of her dreams one night in Manhattan. A couple of years later, she married her Frenchman and moved to Paris, embarking on her own "happily-ever-after." But when her marriage abruptly ended two years in, the fairy tale came crashing down around her.

Maud Gonne, the legendary woman known as the Irish Joan of Arc, left her mark on everyone she met. What motivated this extraordinary person? Kim Bendheim has long been fascinated by Maud Gonne’s perplexing character, and here gives us an intensely personal assessment of her thrilling life. The product of much original research, including interviews with Gonne’s equally vivid, unconventional descendants, The Fascination of What’s Difficult is a portrait of a powerful woman who, despite her considerable flaws, continues to inspire.