A Special Place for Women

A Special Place for Women
Author: Laura Hankin
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 369
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1984806289

As seen on Good Morning America and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert “One of the smartest, sharpest, and funniest books I’ve read in years... Some books are meant to be devoured—this one does the devouring.”—Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of People We Meet on Vacation One of Summer 2021's Most Anticipated Novels Good Morning America, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Real Simple, theSkimm, E! Online, Oprah Daily, The New York Post, Woman's Day, Parade, Bustle, Yahoo!, The Stripe, Popsugar, Medium, Lithub, Book Riot, The Nerd Daily, and more! It’s a club like no other. Only the most important women receive an invitation. But one daring young reporter is about to infiltrate this female-run secret society, whose bewitching members are caught up in a dark and treacherous business. From the author of Happy and You Know It. For years, rumors have swirled about an exclusive, women-only social club where the elite tastemakers of NYC meet. People in the know whisper all sorts of claims: Membership dues cost $1,000 a month. Last time Rihanna was in town, she stopped by and got her aura read. The women even handpicked the city's first female mayor. But no one knows for sure. That is, until journalist Jillian Beckley decides she's going to break into the club. With her career in freefall, Jillian needs a juicy scoop, and she has a personal interest in bringing these women down. But the deeper she gets into this new world—where billionaire "girlbosses" mingle with occult-obsessed Bohemians—the more Jillian learns that bad things happen to those who dare to question the club's motives or giggle at its outlandish rituals. The select group of women who populate the club may be far more powerful than she ever imagined. And far more dangerous too.

The Women's House of Detention

The Women's House of Detention
Author: Hugh Ryan
Publisher: Bold Type Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2023-05-09
Genre:
ISBN: 9781645036654

This singular history of a prison, and the queer women and trans people held there, is a window into the policing of queerness and radical politics in the twentieth century. The Women's House of Detention, a landmark that ushered in the modern era of women's imprisonment, is now largely forgotten. But when it stood in New York City's Greenwich Village, from 1929 to 1974, it was a nexus for the tens of thousands of women, transgender men, and gender-nonconforming people who inhabited its crowded cells. Some of these inmates--Angela Davis, Andrea Dworkin, Afeni Shakur--were famous, but the vast majority were incarcerated for the crimes of being poor and improperly feminine. Today, approximately 40 percent of the people in women's prisons identify as queer; in earlier decades, that percentage was almost certainly higher. Historian Hugh Ryan explores the roots of this crisis and reconstructs the little-known lives of incarcerated New Yorkers, making a uniquely queer case for prison abolition--and demonstrating that by queering the Village, the House of D helped defined queerness for the rest of America. From the lesbian communities forged through the Women's House of Detention to the turbulent prison riots that presaged Stonewall, this is the story of one building and much more: the people it caged, the neighborhood it changed, and the resistance it inspired.

Legendary

Legendary
Author: Deborah Willis
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2013
Genre: African American gays
ISBN: 9780822355823

Legendary features Gerard H. Gaskin's radiant color and black-and-white photographs of house balls, underground pageants where gay and transgender men and women, mostly African American and Latino, come together to see and be seen.

The Palace Papers

The Palace Papers
Author: Tina Brown
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 537
Release: 2022-04-26
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593138104

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The “addictively readable” (The Washington Post) inside story of the British royal family’s battle to overcome the dramas of the Diana years—only to confront new, twenty-first-century crises “Frothy and forthright, a kind of Keeping Up with the Windsors with sprinkles of Keats.”—The New York Times (Notable Book of the Year) ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, Elle, Town & Country “Never again” became Queen Elizabeth II’s mantra shortly after Princess Diana’s tragic death. More specif­ically, there could never be “another Diana”—a mem­ber of the family whose global popularity upstaged, outshone, and posed an existential threat to the Brit­ish monarchy. Picking up where Tina Brown’s masterful The Diana Chronicles left off, The Palace Papers reveals how the royal family reinvented itself after the trau­matic years when Diana’s blazing celebrity ripped through the House of Windsor like a comet. Brown takes readers on a tour de force journey through the scandals, love affairs, power plays, and betrayals that have buffeted the monarchy over the last twenty-five years. We see the Queen’s stoic re­solve after the passing of Princess Margaret, the Queen Mother, and Prince Philip, her partner for seven decades, and how she triumphs in her Jubilee years even as family troubles rage around her. Brown explores Prince Charles’s determination to make Camilla Parker Bowles his wife, the tension between William and Harry on “different paths,” the ascend­ance of Kate Middleton, the downfall of Prince An­drew, and Harry and Meghan’s stunning decision to step back as senior royals. Despite the fragile monar­chy’s best efforts, “never again” seems fast approaching. Tina Brown has been observing and chronicling the British monarchy for three decades, and her sweeping account is full of powerful revelations, newly reported details, and searing insight gleaned from remarkable access to royal insiders. Stylish, witty, and erudite, The Palace Papers will irrevoca­bly change how the world perceives and under­stands the royal family.

The Firsts

The Firsts
Author: Jennifer Steinhauer
Publisher: Hachette UK
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2020-03-10
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1643750216

“An intimately told story, with detailed and thought-provoking portraits.” —The New York Times Book Review “The Firsts stands out as one of the most important and best reported books written during the extraordinary political chapter in which we are living.” —Nicolle Wallace, author and anchor, Deadline: White House on MSNBC NOW WITH UPDATED EPILOGUE In the November 2018 midterms, the greatest number of women in history were elected to Congress. It was a group diverse in background, age, experience, and ideology. From Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “the Squad” to a group with national security backgrounds calling themselves “the Badasses,” from the first two Native American women to the first two Muslim women, all were swept into office on a wave of grassroots support. Here, New York Times reporter Jennifer Steinhauer chronicles these women’s first year in Congress, following their shift from trailblazing campaigns to the daily work of governance. In committee rooms, offices, visits back home with their constituents, and conversations in the halls of the Capitol, she probes the question: Will Washington, with its hidebound traditions and overpriced housing and petty power struggles, change the changemakers? Or will this Congress, which looks a little more like today’s America, truly be the start of something new? Vivid and smart, The Firsts delivers fresh details, inside access, historical perspective, and expert analysis as these women—inspiring, controversial, talented, and rebellious—do something surprising: make Congress essential again.

A Room of Her Own

A Room of Her Own
Author: Robyn Lea
Publisher: National Geographic Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2021-06-08
Genre: Architecture
ISBN: 1760761745

Meet the creative women who are living life on their own terms, and the unique living spaces they have designed and inhabit in this lavishly produced volume. Creative practitioners, philosophers, and rebels, the women chronicled in this volume refuse to compartmentalize or neglect any of their talents or interests. Instead, their lives are a canvas for their artistry. We see it in their homes and studios, on their tables, and in their wardrobes. Equal parts biography and interior design study, A Room of Her Own features twenty extraordinary women and takes us on a private tour across the world into their personal and professional domains. Among them are painters, sculptors, writers, chefs, designers, jewelers, curators, makers, and directors. While each woman has navigated a unique path, they are united in their refusal to play by the rules of others. Taking in the likes of the grand, sweeping halls of a castle in the Austrian countryside, a convent-like property in Mexico, and a cozy home on the banks of the Hudson, this book celebrates the homes, philosophies, design aesthetics, and practices of these inspiring multihyphenates.

The Residence

The Residence
Author: Kate Andersen Brower
Publisher: HarperCollins
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2016-03-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0062476017

#1 New York Times Bestseller “A revealing look at life inside the White House. . . it’s Downton Abbey for the White House staff.”— The Today Show A remarkable history with elements of both In the President’s Secret Service and The Butler, The Residence offers an intimate account of the service staff of the White House, from the Kennedys to the Obamas. America’s First Families are unknowable in many ways. No one has insight into their true character like the people who serve their meals and make their beds every day. In her runaway bestseller, former White House correspondent Kate Andersen Brower pulls back the curtain on the world’s most famous address. Full of stories and details by turns dramatic, humorous, and heartwarming, The Residence reveals daily life in the White House as it is really lived through the voices of the maids, butlers, cooks, florists, doormen, engineers, and others who tend to the needs of the President and First Family. These dedicated professionals maintain the six-floor mansion’s 132 rooms, 35 bathrooms, 28 fireplaces, three elevators, and eight staircases, and prepare everything from hors d’oeuvres for intimate gatherings to meals served at elaborate state dinners. Over the course of the day, they gather in the lower level’s basement kitchen to share stories, trade secrets, forge lifelong friendships, and sometimes even fall in love. Combining incredible first-person anecdotes from extensive interviews with scores of White House staff members—many speaking for the first time—with archival research, Kate Andersen Brower tells their story. She reveals the intimacy between the First Family and the people who serve them, as well as tension that has shaken the staff over the decades. From the housekeeper and engineer who fell in love while serving President Reagan to Jackie Kennedy’s private moment of grief with a beloved staffer after her husband’s assassination to the tumultuous days surrounding President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment battle, The Residence is full of surprising and moving details that illuminate day-to-day life at the White House.

In the Dream House

In the Dream House
Author: Carmen Maria Machado
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1644451026

A revolutionary memoir about domestic abuse by the award-winning author of Her Body and Other Parties In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado’s engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad, and a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing relationship with a charismatic but volatile woman, Machado struggles to make sense of how what happened to her shaped the person she was becoming. And it’s that struggle that gives the book its original structure: each chapter is driven by its own narrative trope—the haunted house, erotica, the bildungsroman—through which Machado holds the events up to the light and examines them from different angles. She looks back at her religious adolescence, unpacks the stereotype of lesbian relationships as safe and utopian, and widens the view with essayistic explorations of the history and reality of abuse in queer relationships. Machado’s dire narrative is leavened with her characteristic wit, playfulness, and openness to inquiry. She casts a critical eye over legal proceedings, fairy tales, Star Trek, and Disney villains, as well as iconic works of film and fiction. The result is a wrenching, riveting book that explodes our ideas about what a memoir can do and be.

The Hot House

The Hot House
Author: Pete Earley
Publisher: Bantam
Total Pages: 493
Release: 2011-11-09
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0307808319

A stunning account of life behind bars at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, where the nation’s hardest criminals do hard time. “A page-turner, as compelling and evocative as the finest novel. The best book on prison I’ve ever read.”—Jonathan Kellerman The most dreaded facility in the prison system because of its fierce population, Leavenworth is governed by ruthless clans competing for dominance. Among the “star” players in these pages: Carl Cletus Bowles, the sexual predator with a talent for murder; Dallas Scott, a gang member who has spent almost thirty of his forty-two years behind bars; indomitable Warden Robert Matthews, who put his shoulder against his prison’s grim reality; Thomas Silverstein, a sociopath confined in “no human contact” status since 1983; “tough cop” guard Eddie Geouge, the only officer in the penitentiary with the authority to sentence an inmate to “the Hole”; and William Post, a bank robber with a criminal record going back to when he was eight years old—and known as the “Catman” for his devoted care of the cats who live inside the prison walls. Pete Earley, celebrated reporter and author of Family of Spies, all but lived for nearly two years inside the primordial world of Leavenworth, where he conducted hundreds of interviews. Out of this unique, extraordinary access comes the riveting story of what life is actually like in the oldest maximum-security prison in the country. Praise for The Hot House “Reporting at its very finest.”—Los Angeles Times “The book is a large act of courage, its subject an important one, and . . . Earley does it justice.”—The Washington Post Book World “[A] riveting, fiercely unsentimental book . . . To [Earley’s] credit, he does not romanticize the keepers or the criminals. His cool and concise prose style serves him well. . . . This is a gutsy book.”—Chicago Tribune “Harrowing . . . an exceptional work of journalism.”—Detroit Free Press “If you’re going to read any book about prison, The Hot House is the one. . . . It is the most realistic, unbuffed account of prison anywhere in print.”—Kansas City Star “A superb piece of reporting.”—Tom Clancy

House of Leaves

House of Leaves
Author: Mark Z. Danielewski
Publisher: Pantheon
Total Pages: 738
Release: 2000-03-07
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0375420525

“A novelistic mosaic that simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious.” —The New York Times Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth -- musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies -- the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now this astonishing novel is made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices. The story remains unchanged, focusing on a young family that moves into a small home on Ash Tree Lane where they discover something is terribly wrong: their house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Of course, neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of that impossibility, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story -- of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.