Showing titles in Women

Virginal, chaste, humble, patiently waiting for rescue by brave knights and handsome princes: this idealized—and largely mythical—notion of the medieval noblewoman still lingers. Yet the reality was very different, as Kelcey Wilson-Lee shows in this vibrant account of the five daughters of Edward I, often known as Longshanks. The lives of these sisters—Eleanora, Joanna, Margaret, Mary, and Elizabeth—ran the gamut of experiences open to royal women in the Middle Ages.

Award-winning songwriter Linda Thompson breaks her silence, sharing the extraordinary story of her life, career, and epic romances with two of the most celebrated yet enigmatic modern American superstars - Elvis Presley and Bruce Jenner.

From an early age, Amber van de Bunt knew she wasn't like the other girls in town. From childhood struggles with depression and eating disorders, her years as a topless dancer in Florida, and an eventual abortion and suicide attempt, to her rebirth in Los Angeles as a porn star named Karmen Karma, overcoming her relationship with her abusive mother, and her struggle to maintain a clean and sober lifestyle - van de Bunt's life has been a roller coaster. With humor, alacrity, and profound insight, she reveals her deepest, darkest secrets and pulls no punches - least of all with herself.

More than 20 years after her death, Princess Diana remains a mystery. Was she "'the people's princess', who electrified the world with her beauty and humanitarian missions? Or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy? The Diana Chronicles parts the curtains on Diana's troubled time in the mysterious world of the Windsors, as she breaks out of her royal cage into celebrity culture, where she found her own power and used it to devastating effect.

When Pamela Churchill Harriman died in 1997, the obituaries that followed were scathing - and often downright sexist. Written off as a social climber, her glamorous social life and infamous erotic adventures overshadowed her true legacy. Much of what she did behind the scenes to shape the twentieth century, on both sides of the Atlantic, remained invisible. That is, until now: with a wealth of fresh research, Sonia Purnell unveils for the first time the full, spectacular story of how Harriman left an indelible mark on the world today.

The inspiring memoir of one of football's greatest players - Steph Houghton - in which she recounts the highs and lows of making it to the top of her game as England Captain, star of the London Olympics, and Man City stalwart, via Sunderland, Leeds and Arsenal. With 121 caps for the Lionesses, Steph has been at the heart of the women's football revolution, inspiring girls and young women around the world but in her own understated way.

In The Light We Carry, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world. She considers the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama believes that we can all lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux.

Strictly Come Dancing professional and breast cancer and Crohn's awareness advocate Amy Dowden shares her journey from growing up in the Welsh Valleys to dancing on the glittering stage of prime-time television. Through her debilitating illness as a teen and her recent chemotherapy treatment for stage 3 breast cancer, Amy's is a story of an unbreakable spirit with an irrepressible joy for life and dance; she is living proof that our darkest times do not define us.

Growing up, Jenny Pentland’s life was a literal sitcom. Many of the storylines for her mother’s smash hit series, Roseanne, were drawn from Pentland’s early family life in working-class Denver. But that was only the beginning of the drama. Roseanne Barr’s success as a comedian catapulted the family from the Rockies to star-studded Hollywood—with its toxic culture of money, celebrity, and prying tabloids that was destabilizing for a child in grade school.

A book about intense physical and personal experience, narrating how Victoria Whitworth began swimming in the cold waters of Orkney as a means of escaping a failing marriage. This is a memoir of intense physical and personal experience, exploring how swimming with seals, gulls and orcas in the cold waters off Orkney provided Victoria Whitworth with an escape from a series of life crises and helped her to deal with intolerable loss.

For almost two decades before her or execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner. From her chambers, she wrote countless letters, many encrypted using complex ciphers to prevent her communications from being intercepted. In this way, she used language to exert her will and her influence, even while incarcerated. More than 400 years after Mary's death, the discovery of further encoded letters has led to renewed interest in the breadth of her encrypted correspondence in captivity.

As one-fifth of the iconic Spice Girls and judge on X Factor and America's Got Talent, Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, has been an international star since the age of 19. And yet there are sides of Mel that no one has ever seen, or really known. Brutally Honest is an exposé of the struggles and acute pain that lay behind the glamour and success. With deep personal insight, remarkable frankness and Melanie’s trademark Yorkshire humour, this audiobook removes the mask of fame and reveals the mother, wife and daughter behind the Spice Girl everyone thinks they know.

From teenage fumblings in the back of a car in Wagga Wagga (teen pregnancy capital of Australia), to performing with Aunty Donna and her own sell-out comedy shows, comedian Michelle Brasier invites you into the highs (seeing Jason Momoa drinking a Guinness next a classic car in SoHo) and the lows (getting dumped ¾ of the way through Pirates of the Caribbean). It's an examination of the tiny things and the big things—how much it hurts to be a woman and a person, and how funny it is to try and get into shapewear and how funerals are silly. It's self help for those of us who hate self help.

Sarah Forsyth has spent most of her life in fear. After overcoming the hurt and heartbreak of a horrific childhood, Sarah managed to build a new life for herself as a nursery nurse. Then, one day, she spotted a newspaper advert for a job in a crèche in Amsterdam. Excited by the prospect of a fresh start abroad, she eagerly signed up. But within minutes of stepping off the plane in Amsterdam her life began to fall apart.... There was no crèche and no job. That night, at just 19 years of age, her life - her real life, her life as Sarah Forsyth - ended.

Revealing a startlingly accomplished voice, Evanna uses her book to delve into the very heart of a woman's relationship with her own body. Unwilling to let the darkness of her eating disorder eclipse her dreams, but afraid to fully release the certainty and safety of self-destruction, Evanna explores the pivotal moments and choices in her life that led her down the path of creativity and dreaming and away from the empty pursuit of perfection, and reaches towards acceptance of the wild, sensual and unpredictable reality of womanhood.

From best-selling author Amanda Owen come more tales of life at Ravenseat, the remote Yorkshire hill farm she shares with husband Clive, eight children and 1,000 sheep. In A Year in the Life of the Yorkshire Shepherdess she describes the age-old cycles of a farming year and the constant challenges the family faces, from being cut off in winter to tending their flock on some of Yorkshire's highest, bleakest moors - land so inaccessible that in places it can be reached only on foot.

Joanna Lumley is one of Britain's undisputed national treasures. A single mum, iconic actress, voiceover artist and author, best known for her roles in ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS and THE NEW AVENGERS, she is a former model and Bond girl, a human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign, and is now considered a 'national treasure' of Nepal as well as the UK.

One of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime comes from the diary of a 13-year-old Jewish girl, Anne Frank. Edited by her father Otto H. Frank and German novelist Mirjam Pressler, this is a true story to be rediscovered by each new generation.

Blake Butler and Molly Brodak instantly connected, fell in love, married, and built a life together. Both writers with deep roots in contemporary American literature, their union was an iconic joining of forces between two major and beloved talents. Nearly three years into their marriage, grappling with mental illness and a lifetime of trauma, Molly took her own life. In the days and weeks after Molly’s death, Blake discovered shocking secrets she had held back from the world, fundamentally altering his view of their relationship and who she was.

Debutante of the year. Able politician. Femme fatale. Just some of the many labels attached to the irrepressible, controversial Raine Spencer: Countess, socialite and stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales. But who was the real Raine? What was hidden behind the immaculately manicured public façade and her overwhelmingly negative tabloid image? From her childhood days as daughter of romantic novelist powerhouse, Barbara Cartland, to Westminster councillor and wife of Earl Spencer, Three Times a Countess recounts Raine's compelling and glamorous life.