Strong women in fiction and nonfiction
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Myra Breckinridge
by Gore Vidal
Myra's personality is altered by her sex change operation and Myron is transported back through time to the year 1948.
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The Gravedigger's Daughter
by Joyce Carol Oates
From one of the greatest literary forces of our time, an intensely realized and masterful epic of a young womans struggle for identity and survival …
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The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather
A story of a young woman's awakening as an artist and her struggle to escape the constraints of a small town in Colorado.
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Villette
by Charlotte Bronte
From the author of Jane Eyre, a strikingly modern story of a young woman starting over—with an introduction by Weike Wang, PEN/Hemingway Award–winning author of …
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Jennie Gerhardt
by Theodore Dreiser
Regarded as one of Dreiser's best novels, Jennie Gerhardt is here recaptured as it was originally written, restoring it to its complete, unexpurgated form.
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The Last of Her Kind
by Sigrid Nunez
Georgette George does not know what to make of her brilliant, idealistic roommate, Ann Drayton, and her obsessive disdain for the ruling class into which …
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A Proper Marriage
by Doris Lessing
Twenty-something Martha begins to realize that her marriage has been a terrible mistake.
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Chance
by Joseph Conrad
Chance was Conrad's first commercial success after nearly twenty years as a writer, and his first novel to have a happy ending. It tells the …
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Jane Eyre
by Charlotte Brontë
An orphan girl who accepts employment as a governess finds herself involved in a family secret and in love with her employer.
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Free Food for Millionaires
by Min Jin Lee
"Goodbye, Columbus meets the novels of Amy Tan in this American story of class, society and identity that marks the debut of a new voice …
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I'll Take You There
by Joyce Carol Oates
"Anellia" is a young student who, though gifted with a penetrating intelligence, is drastically inclined to obsession. Funny, mordant, and compulsive, she falls passionately in …
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Nobody Said Not to Go
by Ken Cuthbertson
Known as "Mickey" to her friends, Emily Hahn traveled across the country dressed as a boy in the 192Os; worked as a Harvey Girl in …
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Gellhorn
by Caroline Moorehead
A portrait of the preeminent female war correspondent describes her birth in turn-of-the-century St. Louis, her work in major cities throughout the world, her many …
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Vamps & Tramps
by Camille Paglia
The bestselling author of Sexual Personae and Sex, Art, and American Culture is back with a fiery new collection of essays on everything from art …
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Infidel
by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her life story. An advocate for free speech and women's rights, Hirsi Ali lives under armed protection because of her outspoken …
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Flapper
by Joshua Zeitz
Flapper is a dazzling look at the women who heralded a radical change in American culture and launched the first truly modern decade. The New …