MARGIN CALL
Her new book of essays about writing is as original as her beloved novels.
Jessica Ferri is a writer living in Brooklyn. You can find her at jessicaferri.com.
NIHILIST NOVEMBER
Break out the oversize cardigans and organic chai, and get ready to indulge your inner autumnal sad girl, with these four delicious, melancholy tomes by brilliant women.
DIG, DIG, DIG
The Pulitzer-prize winning biographer of Robert Moses and LBJ (four volumes and counting) has a new book on writing and biography that begins and ends with a tireless work ethic.
DIRE STRAITS
Her correspondence after being ditched by Ted Hughes reveal a woman and mother agonizing about money and in anguish that Hughes had abandoned her as both wife and artist.
TRUE CRIME TRUTH
What does it say about us that so many movies, novels, and TV shows (looking at you Dateline) fixate on the subject of violence committed against women?
FORESIGHT
The English novelist and essayist argued that fascism begins in patriarchal repression, and that women must see themselves as a society of outsiders battling the status quo.
LANDMARK
He’s had his critics, but none of the naysayers can diminish Truman Capote’s towering achievement in his gripping account of a gruesome quadruple murder on the Kansas plains.
MYSTERY MAN
Look beyond just Shirley Jackson’s famously controversial short story and something evil is lurking in her collection.
Trailblazer
She was a pistol-packing linguist, cartographer, kingmaker—and soon, a Nicole Kidman subject. A Woman in Arabia provides a fresh look at the trailblazing Gertrude Bell, in her own words.
Globetrotter
Even if you hated spunk, you would have to love the adventurous, forthright journalist who called herself Nellie Bly.