Catalog Search Results
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A sapphic reimagining of Mary Shelley's youth, vividly exploring innocence, young love, gothic mystery and the roots of her literary masterpiece, Frankenstein. Switzerland, 1816. A volcanic eruption in Indonesia envelopes the whole of Europe in ash and cloud. Amid this "year without a summer," eighteen-year-old Mary Shelley and her lover Percy Bysshe Shelley arrive at Lake Geneva to visit Lord Byron and his companion John Polidori. Anguished by the...
Author
Language
English
Description
"Young, brazen, beautiful, and unapologetically brilliant, Margaret Fuller accepts an invitation from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated Sage of Concord, to meet his coterie of enlightened friends. There she becomes "the radiant genius and fiery heart" of the Transcendentalists, a role model to a young Louisa May Alcott, an inspiration for Nathaniel Hawthorne's Hester Prynne and the scandalous Scarlet Letter, a friend to Henry David Thoreau as he...
3) The princess
Author
Publisher
Berkley
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"Princess Diana was the most famous woman in the world, celebrated across the globe for her poise and glamour. But before stepping out of the royal carriage at St. Paul's she spent nineteen years as the shy, awkward Lady Diana Spencer. How did the aristocrat ugly duckling become a beautiful royal swan? Bestselling author Wendy Holden explores the astonishing backstory and young adulthood of the ultimate royal celebrity. Britain, 1961: A bouncing blond...
Author
Publisher
Doubleday
Pub. Date
[2024]
Language
English
Description
"A bold, feminist debut novel, reimagining Mary, Queen of Scots's darkest hour, when she was held hostage in a remote Scottish castle with a handful of loyal women while plotting a daring escape to reclaim her country and her freedom"--
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"New York City, 1911. Edith Wharton, almost equally famed for her novels and her sharp tongue, is bone-tired of Manhattan. Finding herself at a crossroads with both her marriage and her writing, she makes the decision to leave America, her publisher, and her loveless marriage. And then, dashing novelist David Graham Phillips - a writer with often notorious ideas about society and women's place in it - is shot to death outside the Princeton Club. Edith...
8) My men
Author
Publisher
Astra House
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"Based on the true story of Norwegian maid Belle Gunness, 19th-century America's most notorious serial killer with a body count of at least 14 men. My Men is a fictional account of one broken woman's descent into inescapable madness"--
9) Diva
Author
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Appears on these lists
Description
"New York Times bestselling author Daisy Goodwin returns with a story of the scandalous love affair between the most celebrated opera singer of all time and one of the richest men in the world. 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....
Author
Publisher
Bellevue Literary Press
Pub. Date
2024.
Language
English
Description
"Sweeping yet intimate, Flight of the Wild Swan tells the story of Florence Nightingale, a brilliant, trailblazing woman whose humanity has been obscured beneath the iconic weight of legend. From her adolescence, Nightingale was determined to fulfill her life's calling to serve the sick and suffering. Overcoming Victorian hierarchies, familial expectation, patriarchal resistance, and her own illness, she used her hard-won celebrity as a battlefield...
Author
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Formats
Description
"In one of his most accomplished, compelling novels yet, acclaimed New York Times bestseller Jeff Shaara accomplishes what only the finest historical fiction can do - he brings to life one of the most consequential figures in U.S. history - Theodore Roosevelt - peeling back the many-layered history of the man, and the country he personified. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, from the waning days of the rugged frontier...
Author
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
"A gripping historical mystery based on the real-life diary entries of Martha Ballard, an 18th-century midwife who found herself at the center of a murder trial"--
"Maine, 1789: When the Kennebec River freezes, entombing a man in the ice, Martha Ballard is summoned to examine the body and determine cause of death. As a midwife and healer, she is privy to much of what goes on behind closed doors in Hallowell. Her diary is a record of every birth and...
13) The maniac
Author
Publisher
Penguin Press
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"A story centered around one of the great geniuses of the modern age, the Hungarian polymath John von Neumann, tracing the uncanny circuit of his mind deep into our own time's most haunting dilemmas. A prodigy whose gifts terrified the people around him, John von Neumann transformed every field he touched, inventing game theory and the first programable computer, and pioneering AI, digital life, and cellular automata. Through a chorus of family members,...
Author
Publisher
Berkley
Pub. Date
2023.
Language
English
Description
"While men have long been credited with producing the first abstract paintings, the true creator was actually a woman - Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, who was inspired by her mystic visions. Acclaimed authors Sofia Lundberg, Alyson Richman, and M.J. Rose bring her story to life in this groundbreaking novel. Early 1900s: The world belongs to men, and the art world in Stockholm, Sweden, is no different, until Hilma af Klint brings together a mysterious...
Author
Publisher
KCP Fiction, an imprint of Kids Can Press
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"Often shocking, always compelling, Afua Cooper's novel is based on the life of Henry Bibb, an American slave who after repeated attempts escaped in 1841 to become an anti-slavery speaker, author and founder of a Black newspaper. Cooper takes painstakingly researched details about slavery and weaves an intimate story of Bibb's young life, which is overshadowed by inconceivable brutality."--
Author
Publisher
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
They could have been allies: two self-made millionaires who invented a global industry, in an era when wife and mother were supposed to be the highest goals for their sex. Elizabeth Arden and Helena Rubinstein each founded empires built on grit and determination...and yet they became locked in a feud spanning three continents, two world wars, and the Great Depression. Brought up in poverty, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden changed popular opinion, persuading...
Author
Publisher
Albert Whitman & Company
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
"Inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson's letters and life, this book imagines the author as a child with dreams of becoming a writer. As he and his father visit one of the many lighthouses along the Scottish coast that were built by their family, young Louis begins composing a story in his head--one with storms, shipwrecks, and pirates--that will one day be published as Treasure Island."--
Author
Publisher
William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
Adele Astaire was a glittering, glamorous star, dancing with her brother, Fred, endearing herself to audiences from New York to London. But although she is toasted by royalty and beloved by countless fans, Adele Astaire has dreams of a loving husband and a houseful of children. And when she meets Lord Charles Cavendish, her wishes may just come true, but at what cost? Ever since Violet Wood could walk she's wanted to dance on the London stage. Befriended...
Author
Publisher
Kids Can Press
Pub. Date
[2023]
Language
English
Description
Born by the edge of the great African desert, seven-year-old Penda Wane is learning to be a griot -- a praise-singer and poet. But when slave traders destroy her town, her long journey across the sea begings. Too weak to stand, she is left to die on the Boston wharf. When she is finally purchased, she is renamed Phillis, after the ship that carried her as cargo, and Wheatley because she is her mistress's property. Astonished at the speed at which...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A stunning portrait of an African princess raised in Queen Victoria's court and adapting to life in Victorian England -- based on the real-life story of a recently rediscovered historical figure, Sarah Forbes Bonetta. With a brilliant mind and a fierce will to survive, Sarah Forbes Bonetta, a kidnapped African princess, is rescued from enslavement at seven years old and presented to Queen Victoria as a "gift." To the Queen, the girl is an exotic...
Interlibrary Loan Request
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Des Moines Public Library can be requested from other libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? If the item was published recently, submit a purchase suggestion. Submit Request