Shine Bright: A Very Personal History of Black Women in Pop by Danyel Smith
A weave of biography, criticism, and memoir, this is the intimate history of Black women's music as the foundational story of American pop. It’s an overdue paean to musical masters whose true stories and genius have been hidden in plain sight – and the book this author – a music fan, and then an essayist, editor (Vibe, Billboard), and podcast host (Black Girl Songbook) – was born to write.

Agent Josephine: American Beauty, French Hero, British Spy by Damien Lewis
During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all "negroes and Jews." Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy. Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, the author uncovers the little-known history of the famous singer's life.

Hester: A Novel by Laurie Lico Albanese
Who is the real Hester Prynne? Enjoy a vivid reimagining of the woman who inspired Hester Prynne, the tragic heroine of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, and a journey into the enduring legacy of New England's witchcraft trials. In this sensuous and hypnotizing tale, a young immigrant woman grapples with our country's complicated past, and learns that America's ideas of freedom and liberty often fall short of their promise. Meticulously researched yet evocatively imagined, it is a timeless tale of art, ambition, and desire that examines the roots of female creative power and the men who try to shut it down.

Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf    
Described as "the single most moving and beautiful thing that Virginia Woolf ever wrote about her own life," this book is her only autobiographical writing, published years after her death. The collection of five pieces written for different audiences spanning almost four decades reveals the remarkable unity of her art, thought, and sensibility.

Mother Tongue: The Surprising History of Women’s Words by Jenni Nuttall
This is an enlightening linguistic journey through a thousand years of feminist language – and what we can learn from the vivid vocabulary that English once had for women's bodies, experiences and sexuality. Inspired by today's heated debates about words like womxn and menstruators – and by more personal conversations with her teenage daughter – the author describes the profound transformations of the English language. It’s a rich, provocative book for anyone who loves language and for feminists who want to look to the past in order to move forward.

The Lady from the Black Lagoon by Mallory O’Meara        
The 1954 motion picture Creature from the Black Lagoon featured a monster designed by a woman, Milicent Patrick. But Patrick's contribution was claimed by a jealous male colleague, her career was cut short, and she soon after disappeared from film history. Working in the horror film industry, the author set out to right the wrong and, in the process, discovered the full, fascinating story of an ambitious, artistic woman ahead of her time.

Monster, She Wrote: The Women Who Pioneered Horror and Speculative Fiction by Lisa Kröger & Melanie R. Anderson
Meet the women writers who defied convention to craft some of literature's strangest tales, from Frankenstein to The Haunting of Hill House and more. From Gothic ghost stories to psychological horror, to science fiction, women have been primary architects of speculative literature of all sorts. And their own life stories are as intriguing as their fiction. Part biography, part reader's guide, the engaging write-ups and detailed reading lists will introduce you to more than 100 authors and more than 200 of their mysterious and spooky novels, novellas, and stories.

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime & Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
One of the leading physicists of her generation, the author is also one of the fewer than 100 Black women to earn a PhD in physics. She shares her love for physics, from the Standard Model of Particle Physics and what lies beyond it, to the physics of melanin in skin, to the latest theories of dark matter – all with a new spin and rhythm informed by pop culture, hip hop, politics, and Star Trek. As she makes clear, what we know about the universe won't be complete until we learn to think beyond the limitations of white-dominated science.

Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval by Saidiya V. Hartman
The author examines the revolution of Black intimate life that unfolded in Philadelphia and New York at the beginning of the 20th century. Free love, common-law and transient marriages, serial partners, cohabitation outside of wedlock, queer relations, and single motherhood were among the sweeping changes that altered the character of everyday life and challenged traditional Victorian beliefs about courtship, love, and marriage. Hartman narrates the story of this radical social transformation against the grain of the prevailing century-old argument about the crisis of the Black family.

Our Women on the Ground: Essays by Arab Women Reporting from the Arab World edited by Zahra Hankir
Nineteen Arab women journalists speak out about what it's like to report on their changing homelands in this first-of-its-kind essay collection, with a foreword by CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. From sexual harassment on the streets of Cairo to the difficulty of traveling without a male relative in Yemen, their challenges are unique – as are their advantages, such as being able to speak candidly with other women at a Syrian medical clinic or with men on Whatsapp who will go on to become ISIS fighters, rebels, or pro-regime soldiers. Told here for the first time, their daring and heartfelt stories shatter stereotypes about the region's women and provide an urgently needed perspective on a part of the world that is frequently misunderstood.

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of The Gods of Tango, this is a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who, in the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, find one another as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family. In 1977 Uruguay, where the everyday rights of people are under attack, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression to be punished. And yet, five cantoras, women who "sing," somehow, miraculously, find one another. Over the next 35 years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio, their secret sanctuary, and Montevideo, the city they call home. Again and again, the women will be tested – by their families, lovers, society, and one another – as they fight to live authentic lives.
 

The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Inspired by true events, this gripping historical novel weaves a spellbinding tale of fear, transformation, courage and love in 16th century France. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer in Strasbourg, 1518, a lone woman dances for days in the city square without pause or rest, and when hundreds of other women join her, the men running the city hire musicians to play the Devil out of the mob. Outside the city, the quiet life of pregnant Lisbet, who lives with her husband and mother-in-law, is upended by the arrival of her sister-in-law who has been away for seven years, serving a penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name. It is a secret Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, Lisbet becomes caught in a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion. Like the women of Strasbourg, she too, is dancing to a dangerous tune . . .