Celebrate Women's History Month with Books!
Women's History Month is fantastic when you are in college, but the rest the time it's like, whohoo, but how to celebrate?
I had a fantastic idea, choose one book that has a focus on women's history! Fiction or Nonfiction!
I had a fantastic idea, choose one book that has a focus on women's history! Fiction or Nonfiction!
And here are my recommendations! This list is based on my personal favorite Women's History reads. It spans a wide range of cultures and histories, but I want to keep adding to it it so ...
Post your recommendations on my Facebook page or Twitter and I'll add them to my list! Scroll to the bottom to see reader recommendations!

Also check out my interview with Mindy McGinnis!
Grace Mae is already familiar with madness when family
secrets and the bulge in her belly send her to an insane asylum—but it is in
the darkness that she finds a new lease on life. When a visiting doctor
interested in criminal psychology recognizes Grace's brilliant mind beneath her
rage, he recruits her as his assistant. Continuing to operate under the cloak
of madness at crime scenes allows her to gather clues from bystanders who
believe her less than human. Now comfortable in an ethical asylum, Grace finds
friends—and hope. But gruesome nights bring Grace and the doctor into the
circle of a killer who will bring her shaky sanity and the demons in her past
dangerously close to the surface.
The Secret Life of Anna Blanc by Jennifer Kincheloe
It's 1907 Los Angeles. Mischievous socialite Anna Blanc
is the kind of young woman who devours purloined crime novels—but must disguise
them behind covers of more lady-like books. She could match wits with Sherlock
Holmes, but in her world women are not allowed to hunt criminals.
Determined to break free of the era's rigid social roles,
Anna buys off the chaperone assigned by her domineering father and, using an
alias, takes a job as a police matron with the Los Angeles Police Department.
There she discovers a string of brothel murders, which the cops are unwilling
to investigate. Seizing her one chance to solve a crime, she takes on the
investigation herself.
If the police find out, she'll get fired; if her father
finds out, he'll disown her; and if her fiancé finds out, he'll cancel the
wedding and stop pouring money into her father's collapsing bank. Midway into
her investigation, the police chief's son, Joe Singer, learns her true
identity. And shortly thereafter she learns about blackmail.
Anna must choose—either hunt the villain and risk losing
her father, fiancé, and wealth, or abandon her dream and leave the killer on
the loose.
Purchase the book at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, Penguin
Random House, Kobo, Tattered Cover, and
wherever books are sold.

For Fans of Downton Abbey!
From the Gilded Age until 1914, more than 100 American
heiresses invaded Britannia and swapped dollars for titles--just like Cora
Crawley, Countess of Grantham, the first of the Downton Abbey characters Julian
Fellowes was inspired to create after reading To Marry An English Lord. Filled
with vivid personalities, gossipy anecdotes, grand houses, and a wealth of
period details--plus photographs, illustrations, quotes, and the finer points
of Victorian and Edwardian etiquette--To Marry An English Lord is social history
at its liveliest and most accessible.
Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Brilliant and talented, young Joan rebels against
medieval social strictures forbidding women to learn. When her brother is
brutally killed during a Viking attack, Joan takes up his cloak–and his
identity–and enters the monastery of Fulda. As Brother John Anglicus, Joan
distinguishes herself as a great scholar and healer. Eventually, she is drawn
to Rome, where she becomes enmeshed in a dangerous web of love, passion, and
politics. Triumphing over appalling odds, she finally attains the highest
office in Christendom–wielding a power greater than any woman before or since.
But such power always comes at a price . . .
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The House of the Spirits brings to life the triumphs and
tragedies of three generations of the Trueba family. The patriarch Esteban is a
volatile, proud man whose voracious pursuit of political power is tempered only
by his love for his delicate wife, Clara, a woman with a mystical connection to
the spirit world. When their daughter Blanca embarks on a forbidden love affair
in defiance of her implacable father, the result is an unexpected gift to
Esteban: his adored granddaughter Alba, a beautiful and strong-willed child who
will lead her family and her country into a revolutionary future.
One of the most important novels of the twentieth
century, The House of the Spirits is an enthralling epic that spans decades and
lives, weaving the personal and the political into a universal story of love,
magic, and fate.
The House of Closed Doors by Jane Steen

Nell's stepfather Hiram sends Nell to live at the Poor
Farm of which he is a governor, to await the day when her baby can be
discreetly adopted. Nell is ready to go along with Hiram's plans until an
unused padded cell is opened and two small bodies fall out.
Nell is the only resident of the Poor Farm who is
convinced that the unwed mother and her baby were murdered, and the incident
prompts her to rethink her decision to abandon her own child to her fate. But
the revelations to which her questions lead make her realize that even if she
manages to escape the Poor Farm with her baby, she may have no safe place to
run to.
Snow Flower & the Secret Fan by Lisa See
In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a
girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old
same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow
Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a
poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to
communicate in secret, away from the influence of men.
As the years pass, Lily
and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs,
reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments.
Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged
marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two
find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a
misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear
apart.
The Glitter and the Gold a memoir by Consuelo Vanderbilt
Consuelo Vanderbilt was young, beautiful, and heir to a vast
fortune. She was also in love with an American suitor when her mother chose
instead for her to marry an English Duke. She sailed to England as the Duchess
of Marlborough in 1895 and took up residence in her new home―Blenheim Palace.
She was the real American heiress who lived long before Downton Abbey's Lady
Grantham arrived.
Mme. Balsan is an unsnobbish and amused observer of the
intricate hierarchy both upstairs and downstairs and a revealing witness to the
glittering balls, huge weekend parties, and major state occasions she attended
or hosted chronicling her encounters with every important figure of the
day―from Queen Victoria, Edward VII and Queen Alexandra to Tsar Nicholas and
the young Winston Churchill.
The Glitter and the Gold is a richly enjoyable memoir is
a revealing portrait of a golden age now being celebrated every week behind the
doors of Downton Abbey.
An American Heiress by Daisy Goodwin
Be careful what you wish for. Traveling abroad with her
mother at the turn of the twentieth century to seek a titled husband,
beautiful, vivacious Cora Cash, whose family mansion in Newport dwarfs the
Vanderbilts', suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, married to Ivo, the
most eligible bachelor in England. Nothing is quite as it seems, however: Ivo
is withdrawn and secretive, and the English social scene is full of traps and
betrayals. Money, Cora soon learns, cannot buy everything, as she must decide
what is truly worth the price in her life and her marriage.
Witty, moving, and brilliantly entertaining, Cora's story
marks the debut of a glorious storyteller who brings a fresh new spirit to the
world of Edith Wharton and Henry James.
The Help by Kathryn Stockett

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her
seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her
own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the
little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen’s best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps
the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody’s business, but she
can’t mind her tongue, so she’s lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a
position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her
new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these
women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put
them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that
define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
An Inconvenient Wife by Megan Chance
AN INCONVENIENT WIFE is a rich blend of suspense, social
history (America in the 1880s), and passion. Chance delivers a powerfully
written page-turner about a woman's struggle to escape the confines of her time,
class, and gender.
Stephanie's note: I was a little disappointing in the brief description of this book because it deals with the same themes as my own, hysteria. This book focuses on the hypnosis and vibration treatments women received as well as the often-times misdiagnosis of a woman who was simply unhappy as opposed to being mentally ill.

Based on the author's own experiences, 'The Yellow
Wallpaper' is the chilling tale of a woman driven to the brink of insanity by
the 'rest cure' prescribed after the birth of her child. Isolated in a
crumbling colonial mansion, in a room with bars on the windows, the tortuous
pattern of the yellow wallpaper winds its way into the recesses of her mind.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman was America's leading feminist
intellectual of the early twentieth century. In addition to her masterpiece
'The Yellow Wallpaper', this new edition includes a selection of her best short
fiction and extracts from her autobiography.
Girls Think of Everything Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women by Catherine Thimmesh

Features women inventors Ruth Wakefield, Mary Anderson,
Stephanie Kwolek, Bette Nesmith Graham, Patsy O. Sherman, Ann Moore, Grace
Murray Hopper, Margaret E. Knight, Jeanne Lee Crews, and Valerie L. Thomas, as
well as young inventors ten-year-old Becky Schroeder and eleven-year-old Alexia
Abernathy. Illustrated in vibrant collage by Caldecott Honor artist Melissa
Sweet.
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hofman
Over five years in the writing, The Dovekeepers is Alice
Hoffman’s most ambitious and mesmerizing novel, a tour de force of imagination
and research, set in ancient Israel.

The lives of these four complex and fiercely independent
women intersect in the desperate days of the siege. All are dovekeepers, and
all are also keeping secrets — about who they are, where they come from, who
fathered them, and who they love.
The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s
eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is
to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty
five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each
other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance,
estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd
goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her
characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother,
Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.
Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald
The Piper family is steeped in secrets, lies, and
unspoken truths. At the eye of the storm is one secret that threatens to shake
their lives -- even destroy them.
Set on stormy Cape Breton Island off Nova Scotia, Fall on
Your Knees is an internationally acclaimed multigenerational saga that
chronicles the lives of four unforgettable sisters. Theirs is a world filled
with driving ambition, inescapable family bonds, and forbidden love.
Compellingly written, by turns menacingly dark and
hilariously funny, this is an epic tale of five generations of sin, guilt, and
redemption.

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton

Reader Recommendations!!!
Author Kate Raphael recommended:
Marie Equi by Michael Helquist

Equi self-studied her way into a San Francisco medical
school and then obtained her license in Portland to become one of the first
practicing woman physicians in the Pacific Northwest. From Pendleton, Portland,
Seattle and beyond to Boston and San Francisco, she leveraged her professional
status to fight for woman suffrage, labor rights, and reproductive freedom. She
mounted soapboxes, fought with police, and spent a night in jail with birth control
advocate Margaret Sanger. Equi marched so often with unemployed men that the
media referred to them as her army. She battled for economic justice at every
turn and protested the U.S. entry into World War I, leading to a conviction for
sedition and a three-year sentence in San Quentin. Breaking boundaries in all
facets of life, she became the first well-known lesbian in Oregon, and her
same-sex affairs figured prominently in two cases taken to the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals.
Author Steve Masover recommended:
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
In The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert returns
to fiction, inserting her inimitable voice into an enthralling story of love,
adventure and discovery. Spanning much of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the novel follows the fortunes of the extraordinary Whittaker family
as led by the enterprising Henry Whittaker—a poor-born Englishman who makes a
great fortune in the South American quinine trade, eventually becoming the
richest man in Philadelphia. Born in 1800, Henry’s brilliant daughter, Alma
(who inherits both her father’s money and his mind), ultimately becomes a
botanist of considerable gifts herself. As Alma’s research takes her deeper
into the mysteries of evolution, she falls in love with a man named Ambrose
Pike who makes incomparable paintings of orchids and who draws her in the exact
opposite direction—into the realm of the spiritual, the divine, and the
magical. Alma is a clear-minded scientist; Ambrose a utopian artist—but what
unites this unlikely couple is a desperate need to understand the workings of
this world and the mechanisms behind all life.
Historian and teacher Rene Miller Paredes recommended:
Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong
Sappho's Leap is a journey back 2,600 years to inhabit
the mind of the greatest love poet the world has ever known. At the age of
fourteen, Sappho is seduced by the beautiful poet Alcaeus, plots with him to overthrow
the dictator of their island, and is caught and married off to a repellent
older man in hopes that matrimony will keep her out of trouble. Instead, it
starts her off on a series of amorous adventures with both men and women,
taking her from Delphi to Egypt, and even to the Land of the Amazons and the
shadowy realm of Hades.
Erica Jong―always our keenest-eyed chronicler of the
wonders and vagaries of sex and love―has found the perfect subject for a witty
and sensuous tale of a passionate woman ahead of her time. A generation of
readers who have been moved to laughter and recognition by Jong's heroines will
be enchanted anew by her re-creation of the immortal poet.
The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
A decade after the publication of this hugely popular
international bestseller, Picador releases the tenth anniversary edition of The
Red Tent.
Her name is Dinah. In the Bible, her life is only hinted
at in a brief and violent detour within the more familiar chapters of the Book
of Genesis that tell of her father, Jacob, and his twelve sons.
Told in Dinah's voice, Anita Diamant imagines the
traditions and turmoils of ancient womanhood--the world of the red tent. It
begins with the story of the mothers--Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah--the
four wives of Jacob. They love Dinah and give her gifts that sustain her
through childhood, a calling to midwifery, and a new home in a foreign land.
Dinah's story reaches out from a remarkable period of early history and creates
an intimate connection with the past.
Deeply affecting, The Red Tent combines rich storytelling
with a valuable achievement in modern fiction: a new view of biblical women's
lives.
When Broken Glass Floats: Growing Up Under the KhmerRouge by Chanrithy Him
Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life
under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as
a child."
In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass
floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975,
when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek
through the hell of the "killing fields." In a mesmerizing story, Him
vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and
technology, such as cars and electricity, no longer exists. Death becomes a
companion at the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, Chanrithy's
family remains loyal to one another despite the Khmer Rouge's demand of loyalty
only to itself. Moments of inexpressible sacrifice and love lead them to bring
what little food they have to the others, even at the risk of their own lives.
In 1979, "broken glass" finally sinks. From a family of twelve, only
five of the Him children survive. Sponsored by an uncle in Oregon, they begin
their new lives in a land that promises welcome to those starved for freedom.
15 black and white illustrations.

When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in
Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and
fought for her right to an education.
On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she
almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range
while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive.
Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an
extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of
the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of
peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Published to unprecedented acclaim, The Color Purple
established Alice Walker as a major voice in modern fiction. This is the story
of two sisters—one a missionary in Africa and the other a child wife living in
the South—who sustain their loyalty to and trust in each other across time,
distance, and silence. Beautifully imagined and deeply compassionate, this
classic novel of American literature is rich with passion, pain, inspiration,
and an indomitable love of life.
“Intense emotional impact . . . Indelibly affecting . . .
Alice Walker is a lavishly gifted writer.” — New York Times Book Review

Staring unflinchingly into the abyss of slavery, this
spellbinding novel transforms history into a story as powerful as Exodus and as
intimate as a lullaby. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to
Ohio, but eighteen years later she is still not free. She has too many memories
of Sweet Home, the beautiful farm where so many hideous things happened. And
Sethe’s new home is haunted by the ghost of her baby, who died nameless and
whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved. Filled with bitter
poetry and suspense as taut as a rope, Beloved is a towering achievement.
by Laura Esquivel
Earthy, magical, and utterly charming, this tale of
family life in tum-of-the-century Mexico became a best-selling phenomenon with
its winning blend of poignant romance and bittersweet wit.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Little Women is a novel by American author Louisa May
Alcott (1832–1888), which was originally published in two volumes in 1868 and
1869. Alcott wrote the books rapidly over several months at the request of her
publisher. The novel follows the lives of four sisters—Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy
March—detailing their passage from childhood to womanhood, and is loosely based
on the author and her three sisters. Little Women was an immediate commercial
and critical success, and readers demanded to know more about the characters.
Alcott quickly completed a second volume, entitled Good Wives. It was also
successful. The two volumes were issued in 1880 in a single work entitled
Little Women. Alcott also wrote two sequels to her popular work, both of which
also featured the March sisters: Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886).
A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Suns is at once an incredible
chronicle of thirty years of Afghan history and a deeply moving story of
family, friendship, faith, and the salvation to be found in love.
Born a generation apart and with very different ideas
about love and family, Mariam and Laila are two women brought jarringly
together by war, by loss and by fate. As they endure the ever escalating
dangers around them-in their home as well as in the streets of Kabul-they come
to form a bond that makes them both sisters and mother-daughter to each other,
and that will ultimately alter the course not just of their own lives but of
the next generation. With heart-wrenching power and suspense, Hosseini shows
how a woman's love for her family can move her to shocking and heroic acts of
self-sacrifice, and that in the end it is love, or even the memory of love,
that is often the key to survival.
Constance: A Story of Early Plymouth by Patricia Clapp
"An absorbing historical romance."—Booklist
"Constance is an engaging, high-spirited heroine . .
. A fine historical novel written with verve and fresh imagination."—Horn
Book
Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's
Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction,
recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl
during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret. by Judy Blume
Margaret shares her secrets and her spirituality in this
iconic Judy Blume novel, beloved by millions, that now has a fresh new look.
Margaret Simon, almost twelve, likes long hair, tuna
fish, the smell of rain, and things that are pink. She’s just moved from New
York City to Farbook, New Jersey, and is anxious to fit in with her new
friends—Nancy, Gretchen, and Janie. When they form a secret club to talk about
private subjects like boys, bras, and getting their first periods, Margaret is
happy to belong.
But none of them can believe Margaret doesn’t have
religion, and that she isn’t going to the Y or the Jewish Community Center.
What they don’t know is Margaret has her own very special relationship with
God. She can talk to God about everything—family, friends, even Moose Freed,
her secret crush.
It started when she was served a soft drink laced with
LSD in a dangerous party game. Within months, she was hooked, trapped in a
downward spiral that took her from her comfortable home and loving family to
the mean streets of an unforgiving city. It was a journey that would rob her of
her innocence, her youth -- and ultimately her life.
For thirty-five years, the acclaimed, bestselling
first-person account of a teenage girl's harrowing decent into the nightmarish
world of drugs has left an indelible mark on generations of teen readers. As
powerful -- and as timely -- today as ever, Go Ask Alice remains the definitive
book on the horrors of addiction.
All the Nancy Drew Books by Carolyn Keene
Nancy Drew has been solving mysteries, and delighting
fans, for over 75 years. Now, for the first time, you can purchase all
sixty-four classic Nancy Drew titles in one complete set!
About Author Stephanie Carroll

My short story "Forget Me Not" was recently featured in Legacy: An Anthology and I am finishing up my next novel, which was inspired by the first death by electrocution.

When Emeline Evans sacrifices her dream of becoming a nurse and marries a man to provide for her destitute family, her life lacks purpose and her sorrow edges toward madness. Furniture twists and turns before her eyes, people stare out at her from empty rooms, and the house itself conspires against her. Her only solace comes from secretly nursing to the poor despite her new husband who prosecutes unlicensed practitioners.
"Forget Me Not" Featured in Legacy: An Anthology
Legacy: An Anthology features stories on the most human of questions . . . what will you leave behind? Stephanie Carroll’s short "Forget Me Not" combines magical realism and the historical setting of Colma, California, a city where the dead outnumber the living, and tells the story of a young woman who knows that in three days’ time, she will die.