Showing titles in Women

Father Greg Lockwood is unlike any Catholic priest you have ever met - a man who lounges in boxer shorts, who loves action movies, and whose constant jamming on the guitar reverberates "like a whole band dying in a plane crash in 1972". His daughter is an irreverent poet who long ago left the church's country. When an unexpected crisis leads her and her husband to move back into her parents' rectory, their two worlds collide.

Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was 'just' an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn't? As Lucy Worsley says, 'She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern'. Her life was 'modern' too: she went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why—despite all the evidence to the contrary—did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?

Kris Jenner executive produces and stars as matriarch on the hit reality show Keeping Up with the Kardashians on E!, now in its fifth smash season. Here, this ambitious businesswoman who has catapulted her family into the public consciousness reveals what it’s like living under the celebrity spotlight and touches on themes of love, loss, marriage, divorce, and motherhood.

Wendy Harmer has had an extraordinary life. From being born with a severe facial deformity, to performing as a stand-up comedian, a national television host and then going on to be the highest paid woman in the cut-throat world of Sydney FM radio ... her tale of overcoming adversity is told with her trademark frankness and celebrated wit.

Last Chance Texaco is the first-ever no-holds-barred account of the life of two-time Grammy Award-winner Rickie Lee Jones in her own words. It is a tale of desperate chances and impossible triumphs, an adventure story of a girl who beat the odds and grew up to become one of the most legendary artists of her time, turning adversity and hopelessness into timeless music.

Lee Miller, 1927 - New York: A classically beautiful young woman, she is discovered by Condé Nast. Lee Miller, 1929 - Paris: Protégé and lover of Man Ray, she invents with him the solarization technique of photography, develops into a brilliant Surrealist photographer, and plays the statue in Cocteau's film Blood of a Poet. Lee Miller, 1939-45 - Europe: Living at times with her future husband, the painter Roland Penrose, she becomes a US war correspondent and covers the siege of St Malo and the liberation of Paris.

Amani Haydar suffered the unimaginable when she lost her mother in a brutal act of domestic violence perpetrated by her father. Five months pregnant at the time, her own perception of how she wanted to mother (and how she had been mothered) was shaped by this devastating murder. After her mother's death, Amani began reassessing everything she knew of her parents' relationship. They had been unhappy for so long - should she have known that it would end like this?

This deeply personal and illuminating memoir about her 15-year struggle with heroin, Khar sheds profound light on the opioid crisis and gives a voice to the over two million people in America currently battling with this addiction. Growing up in LA, Erin Khar hid behind a picture-perfect childhood filled with excellent grades, a popular group of friends and horseback riding. After first experimenting with her grandmother’s expired painkillers, Khar started using heroin when she was thirteen.

Melissa Doyle (Sunrise, Sunday Night) recently turned 50 and found herself wanting some guidance on how to approach life’s second act. So she connects with women from different cultures to learn about how growing older can mean forging deeper connections (New Zealand), getting more power (Ghana), more opportunities (Finland) and sometimes more plastic surgery (South Korea). They discuss everything from menopause to sex, political representation to financial security. They find out how to Age Against the Machine.

It occurred to me that nothing bad ever happens here. Every human life is perfect in its own way. We cannot understand that, because it seems like there is so much suffering. But maybe every life is perfect for we need to know and learn and see and understand. Even when we don't understand, even when the suffering seems unfathomable, does some part of us understand? Could that really be true, I wondered?

Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement.

Before she became a celebrated teacher and lecturer, Gabrielle Bernstein was going down a dangerous path. For years, Bernstein struggled with eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, and constant self-doubt and self-loathing. That all changed when she discovered A Course in Miracles, which taught her that much of what she feared in life was not frightening at all and, in many cases, not even real. Now, Bernstein lives an empowered, healthy, and joyful life.

Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited audiences into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. With their frankness, humour and steel-sharp wit, these accounts of everyday happenings provide an intimate insight into the life of one of Australia’s greatest writers.

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....

A former child actress best known for her starring roles in Matilda and Mrs. Doubtfire, Mara Wilson has always felt a little young and out of place: as the only kid on a film set full of adults, the first daughter in a house full of boys, a Valley girl in New York and a neurotic in California, and a grown-up the world still remembers as a little girl.

At age fourteen, Laura Delano's parents took her to her first psychiatrist. At school, she was the model student, but at home Laura felt a rage that she unleashed on family, friends and herself. She was promptly diagnosed with bipolar disorder and started on a course of mood stabilizers and antidepressants. It was to mark the beginning of a painful and relentless journey. Weaving together Laura's medical records and doctors' notes with illuminating research on the drugs she was prescribed, Unshrunk is the powerful memoir of one woman's battle against the commercial psychiatric industry.

Dame Sue Black is an internationally renowned forensic anthropologist and human anatomist. She has lived her life eye to eye with the Grim Reaper, and she writes vividly about it in this book, which is part primer on the basics of identifying human remains, part frank memoir of a woman whose first paying job as a schoolgirl was to apprentice in a butcher shop, and part no-nonsense but deeply humane introduction to the reality of death in our lives. It is a treat for CSI junkies, murder mystery and thriller fans, and anyone seeking a clear-eyed guide to a subject that touches us all.

Years ago, an overachieving and harried young mother accidentally flushed her gold watch down the toilet. Time passed, but the image of the lost watch continued to haunt her, a symbol of an overcommitted life. Two decades later, propelled by a series of curious coincidences, she leaves behind her busy professional life, her cell phone, and her family to escape the tyranny of time and walk 500 miles across Northern Spain to Santiago de Compostela.

Brunhild was a Visigothic princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law, Fredegund, started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet - in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport - these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms for decades, changing the face of Europe. The two queens commanded armies, developed taxation policies, established infrastructure and negotiated with emperors and popes.

Fans fell in love with Eliza Hamilton - Alexander Hamilton’s devoted wife - in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s phenomenal musical Hamilton. But they don’t know her full story. A strong pioneer woman, a loving sister, a caring mother, and, in her later years, a generous philanthropist, Eliza had many sides - and this fascinating biography brings her multifaceted personality to vivid life.