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Women's History Month 2026 |
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Ain't Nobody's Fool: The Life and Times of Dolly Parton
by Martha Ackmann
From her impoverished childhood in the Smoky Mountains to international stardom as a singer, songwriter, actress, businesswoman, and philanthropist, Dolly Parton has exceeded everyone's expectations--except her own. Ain't Nobody's Fool is a deep dive into the social, historical, and personal forces that made Dolly Parton one of the most beloved and unifying figures in public life and includes interviews with friends, family members, school mates, Nashville neighbors, members of her band, studio musicians, producers, and many others. It also features never before seen photographs and unearthed documents shedding light on her family's hardscrabble life.
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The Typewriter and the Guillotine: An American Journalist, a German Serial Killer, and Paris on the Eve of WWII
by Mark Braude
In 1925, the Indianapolis-born Janet Flanner took an assignment to write a regular 'Letter from Paris' for a lighthearted humor magazine called The New Yorker. Her employer, self-consciously apolitical, sought only breezy reports on French art and culture. But as she woke to the frightening signs of rising extremism, economic turmoil, and widespread discontent in Europe, Flanner ignored her editor's directives, reinventing herself, her assignment, and The New Yorker in the process. While working tirelessly to alert American readers to the dangers of the Third Reich, Flanner became gripped by the disturbing crimes of a man who embodied all of the darkness she was being forced to confront.
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Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
by Julia Ioffe
In 1990, seven-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly twenty years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow, only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up--doctors, engineers, scientists--had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values?
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Scream with Me: Horror Films and the Rise of American Feminism (1968-1980)
by Eleanor Johnson
In May of 2022, Columbia University's Dr. Eleanor Johnson watched along with her students as the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. At the same time, her class was studying the 1968 horror film Rosemary's Baby and Johnson had a sudden epiphany: horror cinema engages directly with the combustive politics of women's rights and offer a light through the darkness and an outlet to scream. With a voice as persuasive as it is insightful, Johnson reveals how classics like Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, and The Shining expose and critique issues of reproductive control, domestic violence, and patriarchal oppression.
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A Danger to the Minds of Young Girls: Margaret C. Anderson, Book Bans, and the Fight to Modernize Literature
by Adam Morgan
Already under fire for publishing the literary avant-garde into a world not ready for it, Margaret C. Anderson's cutting-edge magazine The Little Review was a bastion of progressive politics and boundary-pushing writing. But then it went too far. In 1921, Anderson found herself on trial and labeled a danger to the minds of young girls by a government seeking to shut her down. Guilty of having serialized James Joyce's masterpiece Ulysses in her magazine, Anderson was now not just a publisher but also a scapegoat for regressives seeking to impose their will on a world on the brink of modernization.
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With Her Own Hands: Women Weaving Their Stories
by Nicole Nehrig
With Her Own Hands examines the historical and cultural significance of textile arts as a form of expression and empowerment for women. Covering practices such as knitting, sewing, embroidery, and quilting, the book traces how women across different periods and societies have used textile work to communicate, create community, and preserve traditions. Drawing on examples from various cultures--including Quaker samplers, Quechua weaving, Miao "story cloths," and mid-twentieth-century postal art exchanges--Nehrig explores the social, artistic, and psychological dimensions of women's textile work.
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We the Women: The Hidden Heroes Who Shaped America
by Norah O'Donnell
Over a decades-long, distinguished career, award-winning journalist Norah O'Donnell has made it her mission to shed light on untold women's stories. Now, in honor of America's 250th birthday, O'Donnell focuses that passion on the American heroines who helped change the course of history. We the Women presents a fresh look at American history through the eyes of women, introducing us to inspiring patriots who demanded that the country live up to the promises made 250 years ago in the Declaration of Independence: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. Since the signing of that document, the pressing question from women has been: Why don't those unalienable rights apply to us?
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Hidden Portraits: Six Women Who Shaped Picasso's Life
by Sue Roe
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Private Lives of the Impressionists comes the first account of the women who loved Picasso--and who shaped his work far more than previously acknowledged.
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Daughter of Egypt
by Marie Benedict
In the 1920s, archeologist Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon of Highclere Castle made headlines around the world with the discovery of the treasure-filled tomb of the boy Pharaoh Tutankhamun. But behind it all stood Lady Evelyn Herbert--daughter of Lord Carnarvon--whose daring spirit and relentless curiosity made the momentous find possible. Nearly 3,000 years earlier, another woman defied the expectations of her time: Hatshepsut, Egypt's lost pharaoh.
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Wait for Me
by Amy Jo Burns
When young folk singer Elle Harlow reaches the height of her prowess in 1973, she has two wildly beloved albums to her name and a hidden history of impossible heartbreak. After she sets foot on the famed Grand Ole Opry stage, a far cry from the mountain that raised her, Elle gives the biggest performance of her life. Then, to the dismay of shocked fans, her producer, and the man who still loves her, she vanishes.
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The Wilderness
by Angela Flournoy
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood--overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences--swoops in and stays.
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The Women of Arlington Hall
by Jane Healey
1947: Adventurous Radcliffe graduate Cat Killeen cancels her wedding and upends a future that no longer suits her. At the behest of her professor and hungry for a challenge, Cat arrives in Virginia to work on a confidential military project. A student in cryptoanalysis, Cat is already ahead of the game--to assist in rooting out Soviet spies who have infiltrated the US. Joining the government girls of Arlington Hall, Cat gains the respect of her superiors and the friendship of her peers. Then, on a night out in DC, Cat runs into Jonathan Dardis, her arrogant and privileged Harvard rival and newly minted agent for the FBI. What Cat and Jonathan share is a competitive drive and an attraction that's becoming just as spirited. They're also united in the same critical goal for America.
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The Star from Calcutta
by Sujata Massey
A movie censor murdered, a leading lady vanished--the glamour, romance, and intrigue of the beginnings of Bollywood come to vivid life in the thrilling new installment of the Perveen Mistry historical mystery series.
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Skylark
by Paula McLain
1664. Alouette Voland is the daughter of a master dyer at the famed Gobelin Tapestry Works, who secretly dreams of escaping her circumstances and creating her own masterpiece. When her father is unjustly imprisoned, Alouette's efforts to save him lead to her own confinement in the notorious Salpãetriáere asylum, where thousands of women are held captive and cruelly treated. But within its grim walls, she discovers a small group of brave allies, and the possibility of a life bigger than she ever imagined.
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With Love from Harlem: A Novel of Hazel Scott
by Reshonda Tate
Set against the pulsing backdrop of twentieth-century Harlem and featuring icons like Billie Holiday, Langston Hughes, and James Baldwin, With Love from Harlem is a sweeping, emotionally charged romantic drama, rich with historical detail. ReShonda Tate delivers a powerful portrait of love, art, and the price of being unforgettable.
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Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution
by Amanda Vaill
Angelica and Elizabeth Schuyler, born to wealth and privilege in New York's Hudson Valley during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were raised to make good marriages and supervise substantial households. Instead they became embroiled in the turmoil of America's insurrection against Great Britain--and rebelled themselves, in ways as different as each was from the other, against the destiny mapped out for them.
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