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LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE DISOBEDIENT
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LADIES WHO STEPPED OUT OF LINE |
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"good girls go to heaven, bad girls go everywhere" -- Mae West
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by Edward Carey
A wry, macabre, unforgettable tale of an ambitious orphan in Revolutionary Paris, befriended by royalty and radicals, who transforms herself into the legendary Madame Tussaud
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by Wiley Cash
Ella May Wiggins, a young mother desperately trying to hold her family together with the paltry nine dollars a week she earns from the textile mill two miles away, makes up her mind to join the labor union--a decision that will have lasting consequences for her children, her friends, her town, and all that she loves.
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by Katherine J. Chen
1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, becoming an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries.
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by Elin Cullhed
A woman's life, erupting with brilliance and promise, is fissured by betrayal and the pressures of duty. What had once seemed a pastoral family idyll has become a trap, and she struggles between being the wife and mother she is bound to be and wanting to do and be so much more. The woman in question is Sylvia Plath in the final year of her life.
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by Emma Donoghue
This is the long-buried love story of Eliza Raine, an orphan heiress banished from India to England at age six, and Anne Lister, a brilliant, troublesome tomboy, who meet at the Manor School for young ladies in York in 1805 when they are both fourteen.
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by Daisy Goodwin
In the glittering and ruthlessly competitive world of opera, Maria Callas was known simply as la divina: the divine one. With her glorious voice, instinctive flair for the dramatic and striking beauty, she was the toast of the grandest opera houses in the world. But her fame was hard won: raised in Nazi-occupied Greece by a mother who mercilessly exploited her golden voice, she learned early in life to protect herself from those who would use her for their own ends.
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by Jane Green
From afar Talitha's life seemed perfect. In her twenties, and already a famous model and actress, she moved from London to a palace in Marrakesh, with her husband Paul Getty, the famous oil heir. There she presided over a swirling ex-pat scene filled with music, art, free love and a counterculture taking root across the world.
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by T. Greenwood
Camden, NJ, 1948. When 11 year-old Sally Horner steals a notebook from the local Woolworth's, she has no way of knowing that 52 year-old Frank LaSalle, fresh out of prison, is watching her, preparing to make his move.
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by Kristin Hannah
Raised on idyllic Coronado Island and sheltered by her conservative parents, Frances "Frankie" McGrath has always prided herself on doing the right thing, being a good girl. But in 1965 the world is changing, and she suddenly imagines a different choice for her life.
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by Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman
Harriet Tubman was a scout for the union army and led a successful raid up the Combahee River in South Carolina that freed 750 men, women, and children.
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by Vanessa Hua
On the eve of China's Cultural Revolutionand her sixteenth birthday, Mei dreams of becoming a model revolutionary. When the Communist Party recruits girls for a mysterious duty in the capital, she seizes the opportunity to escape her impoverished village. It is only when Mei arrives at the Chairman's opulent residence-a forbidden city unto itself-that she learns that the girls' job is to dance with the Party elites.
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by Julie Kibler
Built in 1903 on the dusty outskirts of Arlington, a remote dot between Dallas and Fort Worth's red-light districts, the progressive home bucks public opinion by offering faith, training, and rehabilitation to prostitutes, addicts, unwed mothers, and 'ruined' girls without forcibly separating mothers from children.
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by Lee Daniel Kravetz
Told through three unique interwoven narratives, this novel reimagines a chapter in the life of Sylvia Plath, telling the story behind the creation of her classic, semi-autobiographical novel The Bell jar.
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by Ariel Lawhon
A novel based on the real life story of socialite spy Nancy Wake, about the astonishing woman who killed a Nazi with her bare hands and went on to become one of the most decorated women in WWII.
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by Sarah Marsh
Ellen is deaf and for a time she was Alexander Graham Bell's student learning visible speech. During their lessons, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device that would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, on the cusp of wealth and renown, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent of the telephone, which is being challenged by rival inventors. But Ellen has a different story to tell.
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by Courtney Maum
It is 1937, and Europe is on the brink of war. Hitler is circulating a most-wanted list of "cultural degenerates"--artists, writers, and thinkers whose work is deemed antithetical to the new regime. To prevent the destruction of her favorite art (and artists), the impetuous American heiress and modern art collector Leonora Calaway begins chartering boats and planes for an elite group of surrealists to Costalegre, a mysterious resort in the Mexican jungle.
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by Angie Elita Newell
Cheyenne warrior Little Wolf fights to maintain her people's land and heritage as General Custer leads a devastating campaign against American Indians, killing anyone who refuses to relocate to the Red Cloud Agency in South Dakota. A century later, on that same reservation, Little Wolf's relation Nancy Swiftfox raises four boys with the help of her father-in-law, whild facing the economic and social ramifications of this violent legacy.
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by Gill Paul
Four extraordinary women form a bridge group that grows into a firm friendship. Dorothy Parker: renowned wit, member of the Algonquin Round Table, and more fragile than she seems. Jane Grant: first female reporter for the New York Times, and determined to launch a new magazine she calls The New Yorker. Winifred Lenihan: beautiful and talented Broadway actress, a casting-couch target. And Peggy Leech: magazine assistant by day, brilliant novelist by night.
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by Tara Karr Roberts
Evangeline Hussey's husband has been dead for a couple of years when two strangers show up at her Nantucket inn requesting a place to stay. One "wore the outfit of a sailor, yet when he clasped my hand in his, I felt the soft, unmarred skin of a boy from the city," Evangeline says. "He said I should call him Ishmael."
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by Maya Rodale
Nellie Bly has ambitions beyond writing for the ladies pages, but all the editors on Newspaper Row think women are too emotional, respectable and delicate to do the job. But then the New York World challenges her to an assignment she'd be mad toaccept and mad to refuse: go undercover as a patient at Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum for Women.
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Maybe this list isn't your jam. Check out the RPL Readers page for more lists. Or, if you'd prefer a hand-crafted, bespoke book suggestion list, try The Bookologist service. You need an RPL Library card to access. Don't have one? Find out how to get one here.
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