Radical Women of History (9/29/26)

Forget about history, this is herstory! Dive into these nonfiction reads celebrating radical women of the past!

AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN: The Extraordinary Life of Lillian Smith, the Southerner Who Defied Jim Crow America by Keri Leigh Merritt
9781250337931 | 9/29/26

Born in Florida to a religious family, Lillian Smith (1897-1966) was a Southern white woman living in the Jim Crow South who defied all stereotypes. After teaching school in China in the early 1920s, she moved to a small rural town in northeast Georgia. Along with her lover, Paula Snelling, Smith began running a socially progressive summer camp for girls in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Together the couple created and published a magazine devoted to creating a new vision of the former Confederacy that passionately championed equality and integration. They were the first white Southerners to publish Black writers, and Smith wrote articles instructing white Southerners to stop supporting the dictates of Jim Crow. Bravely calling for integration, Smith firmly believed racism damaged the lives of white Americans, too.

In 1944 she published a bestselling novel, STRANGE FRUIT, which became a national sensation and was banned in Boston and Detroit. She went on to publish six more books, both fiction and nonfiction, exploring topics ranging from racism and human suffering to sexual repression and Freudian psychoanalysis. Because of Smith’s provocative work, the FBI spied on her for decades, she received countless death threats, and her home was burned three times by angry racists, resulting in the loss of multiple works-in-progress.

Undaunted, she continued her ardent fight against segregation, maintaining friendships with some of the great leaders of her day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, W.E.B Dubois, Paul Robeson, and Pauli Murray. She continued to fight for both civil and human rights throughout the 1960s, helping nurture many of the activists in SNCC and CORE. Smith finally succumbed to a painful and long bout with breast cancer in 1966.

Drawing on previously unpublished archival research and with a modern appreciation of Smith’s complex identity, AN INCONVENIENT WOMAN is the definitive account of a woman who defied all expectations and dedicated her life to racial equality.

THE NUREMBEG WOMEN: The Untold Story of the Eight Women Who Brought the Nazis to Justice by Natalie Livingstone
9781250345189 | 11/3/26

In November 1945, the eyes of the world turned to Nuremberg. Humanity was seeking not only the truth about Nazi crimes but also a vision of what justice might look like in their aftermath. The trials are traditionally associated with a roll call of famous men, but they were only part of the story. Not only were there women involved in the trial in every role—as journalists, researchers, lawyers, interpreters, court reporters, witnesses, artists, and even defendants—but they were pivotal in the trial’s outcome.

THE NUREMBERG WOMEN tells the story of 8 women: a brilliant American lawyer, three pioneering journalists, two German, one British, an iconoclastic artist, a beautiful refugee aristocrat, a dauntless survivor of Auschwitz, and a young Russian translator.

From the major stories about justice, gender, and politics at a pivotal moment in the 20th century to the smaller, daily intimate tales of the women’s affairs and bar-room disputes, THE NUREMBERG WOMEN shows the most famous trial in a new light—making a brave new case for it having been a more diverse and democratic exercise than has often been recognized.

They reveal a Nuremberg that is intimate, human, and haphazard; one that was lower paid and less publicized. They demonstrate that the trial was remarkable not because it was perfect but because, against all odds, it happened. Thanks to these women and many others, justice was served.

THE EAST WING: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America’s First Ladies by Azadeh Moaveni
9781250390240 | 10/20/26

It could be said that every First Lady runs a court—a hub of political power within the White House, a place where enterprising aides vie for influence and patronage, a theatre of intrigue and counsel where great heights are uniquely possible, but so too is ruin. And the First Lady’s aides are at the center of it all.

Behind the scenes throughout history, East Wing staffers have boldly advanced civil rights legislation, defused tension with America’s enemies, brought more women into government, and backed abortion rights. Their relationships and problems, their management and cultivation of the media landscape and the Georgetown social scene, are at the heart of the forces that have shaped the institution of the East Wing.

In THE EAST WING, academic and journalist Azadeh Moaveni blends original reporting, including extensive interviews with key players from past East Wings, with expert research and analysis to take readers deep inside the fascinating and high stakes world of the First Lady’s office like never before.

Spanning the most defining decades of the twentieth century, from the New Deal era, to the myth-making Kennedys, to the turbulent, MAGA-influenced 2020s, THE EAST WING is the captivating true story of the First Lady’s staffers and their role in the executive branch of governance, as well as the evolution of female leadership in our country.

NOTORIOUS: Anne Boleyn and the Great Tudor Hoax by Hayley Nolan
9781250441157 | 12/1/26

This gripping new analysis tells of how Elizabeth Barton, a poverty-stricken housemaid-turned-nun, delayed Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn for seven infamous years. Wielding unimaginable influence over the biggest names in Tudor history—from the Pope to Catherine of Aragon and Cardinal Wolsey—Barton spearheaded the smear campaign against Anne Boleyn that would ruin her.

But was this young girl a victim of these Catholic power players, or the mastermind behind the Tudors’ Greatest Hoax?

Elizabeth Barton wasn’t born into power or privilege. A household servant, she shot to fame at the age of nineteen when a terrifying illness prompted apparent prophecies from God. But when the local clergy saw an opportunity to stop the King’s divorce from Catherine of Aragon, an almighty con began.

Suddenly this humble-maid-turned-national celebrity was commanding audiences with Henry VIII, threatening death and damnation if he married Anne Boleyn and urging the Pope not to give into Henry’s demands for divorce. And though her enemy, Anne Boleyn—another commoner raised to notoriety as she tried to launch England’s Reformation—would try to save her, the Tudor’s most dangerous power-players, Thomas Cromwell and Archbishop Cranmer, would soon work to bring Barton down.

NOTORIOUS is the story of Barton and Boleyn, two rivals at the center of the world’s most infamous divorce and how they changed history.

BOHEMIAMS ON THE BREADLINE: The Radical Women Artists of Roosevelt’s New Deal by Lauren Arrington
9781250286918 | 12/8/26

Like millions of Americans in the Great Depression, artists Alice Neel, Augusta Savage, Georgette Seabrooke, Lenore Thomas Straus, Elizabeth Olds, and Pablita Velarde embraced employment through President Roosevelt’s New Deal programs. The Federal Arts Project was one of the most unique social experiments in U.S. history: mass public funding of art meant for the public. Murals were painted, sculptures cast, and art classes were taught, as these talented artists gave back to the communities they lived in. They were also making radical art that challenged racism, inequality, and capitalism—despite pressure by bureaucrats to dictate the art produced. When the New Deal programs were dissolved at the end of the decade, much of that art was destroyed or forgotten. The surviving works were absorbed into the landscape of our everyday lives. Situated in housing projects, parks, and municipal buildings, this art is seldom understood as more than a cultural artifact. But these are labors of love by women artists who put themselves at risk during tumultuous times.

In vivid, eloquent prose backed up by archival research, BOHEMIAMS ON THE BREADLINE brings to life the intimate stories of these women—of tortured love affairs and fractured families, but also courageous activism and community mentorship, and above all their extraordinary art.