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Girls Who Rocked the World: Heroines from Joan of Arc to Mother Teresa
by Amelie Welden Michelle Roehm Mccann David Hahn"Young women looking for inspiration will surely find it" (Booklist) in these profiles of forty-six movers and shakers who made their mark before they turned twenty.This fun and inspiring collection of influential stories provides forty-six illustrated examples of strong, independent female role models, all of whom first impacted the world as teenagers or younger. Originally published in two volumes over a decade ago, this fully updated and expanded edition of Girls Who Rocked the World spans a variety of achievements, interests, and backgrounds, from Harriet Tubman and Coco Chanel to S.E. Hinton and Maya Lin--each with her own incredible story of how she created life-changing opportunities for herself and the world. Personal aspirations from today's young women are interspersed throughout the book, which also includes profiles of teenagers who are rocking the world right now--girls like Winter Vinecki, the creator of the nonprofit organization Team Winter, and Jazmin Whitley, the youngest designer to show at L.A. Fashion Week. It's never too soon to start making a difference, and these exhilarating examples of girl power in action make for ideal motivation.
Girls Who Looked Under Rocks: The Lives of Six Pioneering Naturalists
by Jeannine AtkinsThe six women portrayed in this book--Maria Merian (b. 1647), Anna Comstock (b. 1854), Frances Hamerstrom (b. 1907), Rachel Carson (b. 1907), Miriam Rothschild (b. 1908) and Jane Goodall (b. 1934)--all grew up to become award-winning scientists, writers and artists, as comfortable with a pen as with a magnifying glass. They all started out as girls who didn't run from spiders or snakes, but crouched down to take a closer look. Often they were discouraged from getting dirty, much less pursuing careers in science. But they all became enthusiastic teachers, energetic writers, and passionate scientists--frequently the only women in their field. Their stories remind us to look and to look harder and then to look again. Under rotten logs or in puddles, there are amazing things to see.
Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys
by Tom Dolby Melissa de la Cruz Armistead MaupinA literary celebration of one of the most important relationships in a straight girl's life--her gay best friend<P> This collection of original essays goes beyond the banter to get to the essence of an intimate relationship like no other. With a foreword by Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin, Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys brings together pieces by National Book Award winner Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon), novelist Gigi Levangie Grazer (The Starter Wife), Barneys New York creative director Simon Doonan (Nasty), and many others from all walks of life. In addition to stories of gays and gals bonding over brunch, these essays chronicle love and lust, infatuation and heartbreak, growing up and coming out, and family and children. With genuine warmth, this definitive anthology proves that more durable than diamonds, straight women and gay men are each other's true best friends.
Girls Who Green the World: Thirty-Four Rebel Women Out to Save Our Planet
by Diana KappPart biography, part guidebook to the contemporary environmental movement, this book is the perfect gift for future and current activists and changemakers! Girls Who Green the World features the inspiring stories of 34 revolutionaries fighting for our future! An inspired collection of profiles, featuring environmental changemakers, social entrepreneurs, visionaries and activists. Journalist Diana Kapp has crisscrossed this country writing for and about empowered girls, girls who expect to be leaders, founders and inventors. This book takes it a step further. It says to girls: while you&’re striving to be CEOs and world leaders, consider solving the biggest challenge of our lifetime, too—because you can do both at the same time, and here are 34 women doing just that.
Girls Who Code: Learn to Code and Change the World (Girls Who Code #1)
by Reshma Saujani<P>Part how-to, part girl-empowerment, and all fun, from the leader of the movement championed by Sheryl Sandberg, Malala Yousafzai, and John Legend. <P>Since 2012, the organization Girls Who Code has taught computing skills to and inspired over 40,000 girls across America. Now its founder, Reshma Saujani, wants to inspire you to be a girl who codes! <P>Bursting with dynamic artwork, down-to-earth explanations of coding principles, and real-life stories of girls and women working at places like Pixar and NASA, this graphically animated book shows what a huge role computer science plays in our lives and how much fun it can be. <P>No matter your interest—sports, the arts, baking, student government, social justice—coding can help you do what you love and make your dreams come true. Whether you’re a girl who’s never coded before, a girl who codes, or a parent raising one, this entertaining book, printed in bold two-color and featuring art on every page, will have you itching to create your own apps, games, and robots to make the world a better place. <P><b>A New York Times Bestseller</b>
Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women
by Melissa Sweet Catherine ThimmeshThis updated edition of the bestselling Girls Think of Everything, by Sibert-winner Catherine Thimmesh and Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet, retains all the integrity of the original but includes expanded coverage of inventions (and inventors) to better reflect our diverse and technological world. In kitchens and living rooms, in garages and labs and basements, even in converted chicken coops, women and girls have invented ingenious innovations that have made our lives simpler and better. What inspired these girls, and just how did they turn their ideas into realities? <p><p> Retaining reader-tested favorite inventions, this updated edition of the best-selling Girls Think of Everything features seven new chapters that better represent our diverse and increasingly technological world, offering readers stories about inventions that are full of hope and vitality—empowering them to think big, especially in the face of adversity.
Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions By Women (Into Reading, Trade Book #1)
by Catherine Thimmesh Melissa SweetNIMAC-sourced textbook <P><P>In kitchens and living rooms, in garages and labs and basements, even in converted chicken coops, women and girls have invented ingenious innovations that have made our lives simpler and better. What inspired these girls, and just how did they turn their ideas into realities? Retaining reader-tested favorite inventions, this updated edition of the best-selling Girls Think of Everything features seven new chapters that better represent our diverse and increasingly technological world, offering readers stories about inventions that are full of hope and vitality—empowering them to think big, especially in the face of adversity.
A Girl's Story
by Annie ErnauxAnother masterpiece of remembering from Annie Ernaux, the Man Booker International Prize–shortlisted author of The Years. In A Girl&’s Story, Annie Ernaux revisits the season fifty years earlier when she found herself overpowered by another&’s will and desire. In the summer of 1958, eighteen-year-old Ernaux submits her will to a man&’s, and then he moves on, leaving her without a &“master,&” bereft. Now, fifty years later, she realizes she can obliterate the intervening years and return to consider this young woman that she wanted to forget completely. And to discover that here, submerged in shame, humiliation, and betrayal, but also in self-discovery and self-reliance, lies the origin of her writing life.
Girls Solve Everything: Stories of Women Entrepreneurs Building a Better World
by Catherine ThimmeshBrave women from diverse backgrounds make the world a better place through their businesses in this inspiring companion to the best-selling Girls Think of Everything by Sibert-winner Catherine Thimmesh and Caldecott Honor winner Melissa Sweet. For fans of Women Who Dared and Women in Science. Women all over the globe are asking questions that affect lives and creating businesses that answer them. Like, can we keep premature babies warm when they're born far from the hospital? Or, can the elderly stay in their homes and eat a balanced diet? Women are taking on and solving these issues with their ingenuity and business acumen. How did they get their ideas? Where does the funding for their projects come from? And how have some of these businesses touched YOUR life? Girls Solve Everything answers these questions, inspiring today's kids to learn from entrepreneurs and take on some of the world's biggest problems, one solution at a time.
Girls Only
by Alex Witchel"What I learned from my father was the boys' lesson of dealing in the world -- trust no one and win the first time. What I learned from my mother was the girls' lesson -- trust no one and win the first time, but just in case you don't, come home, eat something, talk about it, have a drink, cry a little, then go back out there and try again. "Armed with these family tenets, Alex Witchel goes soul-searching and shopping with the ever-present help of her mother, Barbara, the "human Swiss Army knife who can do it all," and her sister, Phoebe, Alex's perpetual rival and best friend. These three form a family within a family, and with a passionate unity they offer each other sharp, witty, and (occasionally exasperating) insights on everything from men, pedicures, and careers to sibling rivalry, the challenges of step parenting, and the pains of aging and loss. Insightful, poignant, and hilarious by turns,Girls Only is a memoir that celebrates the one thing that remains "for women only". . . mother/daughter/sister love.
Girls of Tender Age: A Memoir
by Mary-Ann Tirone SmithIn Girls of Tender Age, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith fully articulates with great humor and tenderness the wild jubilance of an extended French-Italian family struggling to survive in a post-World War II housing project in Hartford, Connecticut. Smith seamlessly combines a memoir whose intimacy matches that of Angela's Ashes with the tale of a community plagued by a malevolent predator that holds the emotional and cultural resonance of The Lovely Bones.Smith's Hartford neighborhood is small-town America, where everyone’s door is unlocked and the school, church, library, drugstore, 5 & 10, grocery, and tavern are all within walking distance. Her family is peopled with memorable characters—her possibly psychic mother who's always on the verge of a nervous breakdown, her adoring father who makes sure she has something to eat in the morning beyond her usual gulp of Hershey’s syrup, her grandfather who teaches her to bash in the heads of the eels they catch on Long Island Sound, Uncle Guido who makes the annual bagna cauda, and the numerous aunts and cousins who parade through her life with love and food and endless stories of the old days. And then there’s her brother, Tyler.Smith's household was “different.” Little Mary-Ann couldn't have friends over because her older brother, Tyler, an autistic before anyone knew what that meant, was unable to bear noise of any kind. To him, the sound of crying, laughing, phones ringing, or toilets flushing was “a cloud of barbed needles” flying into his face. Subject to such an assault, he would substitute that pain with another: he'd try to chew his arm off. Tyler was Mary-Ann's real-life Boo Radley, albeit one whose bookshelves sagged under the weight of the World War II books he collected and read obsessively.Hanging over this rough-and-tumble American childhood is the sinister shadow of an approaching serial killer. The menacing Bob Malm lurks throughout this joyous and chaotic family portrait, and the havoc he unleashes when the paths of innocence and evil cross one early December evening in 1953 forever alters the landscape of Smith's childhood.Girls of Tender Age is one of those books that will forever change its readers because of its beauty and power and remarkable wit.
The Girls of Room 28: Friendship, Hope, and Survival in Theresienstadt
by Hannelore BrennerFrom 1942 to 1944, twelve thousand children passed through the Theresienstadt internment camp, near Prague, on their way to Auschwitz. Only a few hundred of them survived the war. InThe Girls of Room 28, ten of these children—mothers and grandmothers today in their seventies—tell us how they did it. The Jews deported to Theresienstadt from countries all over Europe were aware of the fate that awaited them, and they decided that it was the young people who had the best chance to survive. Keeping these adolescents alive, keeping them whole in body, mind, and spirit, became the priority. They were housed separately, in dormitory-like barracks, where they had a greater chance of staying healthy and better access to food, and where counselors (young men and women who had been teachers and youth workers) created a disciplined environment despite the surrounding horrors. The counselors also made available to the young people the talents of an amazing array of world-class artists, musicians, and playwrights–European Jews who were also on their way to Auschwitz. Under their instruction, the children produced art, poetry, and music, and they performed in theatrical productions, most notablyBrundibar, the legendary “children’s opera” that celebrates the triumph of good over evil. In the mid-1990s, German journalist Hannelore Brenner met ten of these child survivors—women in their late-seventies today, who reunite every year at a resort in the Czech Republic. Weaving her interviews with the women together with excerpts from diaries that were kept secretly during the war and samples of the art, music, and poetry created at Theresienstadt, Brenner gives us an unprecedented picture of daily life there, and of the extraordinary strength, sacrifice, and indomitable will that combined—in the girls and in their caretakers—to make survival possible.
Girls of Paper and Fire (Girls of Paper and Fire #1)
by Natasha NganThe mesmerising New York Times bestseller!Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It's the highest honour they could hope for . . . and the most demeaning. This year, there's a ninth.And instead of paper, she's made of fire.'A timely reminder that, in the right hands, the fantasy genre has things to say about injustice and abuse of power in the real world' GuardianLei is a member of the Paper caste, the lowest and most persecuted class of people in Ikhara. Ten years ago, her mother was snatched by the royal guards, and her fate remains unknown. Now, the guards are back and this time it's Lei they're after - the girl with the golden eyes, whose rumoured beauty has piqued the king's interest.Over weeks of training in the opulent but oppressive palace, Lei and eight other girls learn the skills and charm that befit a king's consort. There, Lei does the unthinkable - she falls in love. Her forbidden romance becomes enmeshed with an explosive plot that threatens her world's entire way of life. Lei, still the wide-eyed country girl at heart, must decide how far she's willing to go for justice and revenge.(P) 2018 Hachette Audio
The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
by Denise KiernanThe New York Times bestseller, now available in paperback—an incredible true story of the top-secret World War II town of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the young women brought there unknowingly to help build the atomic bomb.“The best kind of nonfiction: marvelously reported, fluidly written, and a remarkable story...As meticulous and brilliant as it is compulsively readable.” —Karen Abbott, author of Sin in the Second CityAt the height of World War II, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, was home to 75,000 residents, and consumed more electricity than New York City, yet it was shrouded in such secrecy that it did not appear on any map. Thousands of civilians, many of them young women from small towns across the U.S., were recruited to this secret city, enticed by the promise of solid wages and war-ending work. What were they actually doing there? Very few knew. The purpose of this mysterious government project was kept a secret from the outside world and from the majority of the residents themselves. Some wondered why, despite the constant work and round-the-clock activity in this makeshift town, did no tangible product of any kind ever seem to leave its guarded gates? The women who kept this town running would find out at the end of the war, when Oak Ridge’s secret was revealed and changed the world forever.Drawing from the voices and experiences of the women who lived and worked in Oak Ridge, The Girls of Atomic City rescues a remarkable, forgotten chapter of World War II from obscurity. Denise Kiernan captures the spirit of the times through these women: their pluck, their desire to contribute, and their enduring courage. “A phenomenal story,” and Publishers Weekly called it an “intimate and revealing glimpse into one of the most important scientific developments in history.”“Kiernan has amassed a deep reservoir of intimate details of what life was like for women living in the secret city...Rosie, it turns out, did much more than drive rivets.” —The Washington Post
Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes From the Forces
by Kelly S. ThompsonThis inspiring, compelling debut memoir chronicles the experiences of a female captain serving in the Canadian Armed Forces, and her journey to make space for herself in a traditionally masculine world.At eighteen years old, Kelly Thompson enlisted in the Canadian Armed Forces. Despite growing up in a military family -- she would, in fact, be a fourth-generation soldier -- she couldn't shake the feeling that she didn't belong. From the moment she arrives for basic training at a Quebec military base, a young woman more interested in writing than weaponry, she quickly realizes that her conception of what being a soldier means, forged from a desire to serve her country after the 9/11 attacks, isn't entirely accurate. A career as a female officer will involve navigating a masculinized culture and coming to grips with her burgeoning feminism. In this compulsively readable memoir, Thompson writes with wit and honesty about her own development as a woman and a soldier, unsparingly highlighting truths about her time in the military. In sharply crafted prose, she chronicles the frequent sexism and misogyny she encounters both in training and later in the workplace, and explores her own feelings of pride and loyalty to the Forces, and a family legacy of PTSD, all while searching for an artistic identity in a career that demands conformity. When she sustains a career-altering injury, Thompson fearlessly re-examines her identity as a soldier. Girls Need Not Apply is a refreshingly honest story of conviction, determination, and empowerment, and a bit of a love story, too.
Girls Like Us: Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month and New York Times bestseller
by Cristina AlgerWhat happens when your father is the prime suspect in a murder case?FBI Agent Nell Flynn is about to work the most personal case of her life.Back home for the first time in a decade, Nell is getting ready to close the family estate after her father's death.But there's one piece of unfinished business. Her father, a homicide detective, was investigating the murders of two young women. Now his partner has asked for Nell's help.Nell soon realises that her father should be the prime suspect, and that his friends on the force are covering for him.With no idea who she can trust, Nell also starts to question events that took place when she was a child. Could it be that the answers she so desperately needs are buried deep within her own memory?(P) 2019 Penguin Random House Audio
Girls Like Us
by Rachel Lloyd"Powerfully raw, deeply moving, and utterly authentic. Rachel Lloyd has turned a personal atrocity into triumph and is nothing less than a true hero.... Never again will you look at young girls on the street as one of 'those' women—you will only see little girls that are girls just like us." —Demi Moore, actress and activist With the power and verity of First They Killed My Father and A Long Way Gone, Rachel Lloyd’s riveting survivor story is the true tale of her hard-won escape from the commercial sex industry and her bold founding of GEMS, New York City’s Girls Education and Mentoring Service, to help countless other young girls escape "the life." Lloyd’s unflinchingly honest memoir is a powerful and unforgettable story of inhuman abuse, enduring hope, and the promise of redemption.
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon and the Journey of a Generation
by Sheila WellerBiographies of 3 top female singers of the 1960s.
Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon--And the Journey of a Generation
by Sheila WellerA groundbreaking and irresistible biography of three of America's most important musical artists -- Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon -- charts their lives as women at a magical moment in time. Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and Carly Simon remain among the most enduring and important women in popular music. Each woman is distinct. Carole King is the product of outer-borough, middle-class New York City; Joni Mitchell is a granddaughter of Canadian farmers; and Carly Simon is a child of the Manhattan intellectual upper crust. They collectively represent, in their lives and their songs, a great swath of American girls who came of age in the late 1960s. Their stories trace the arc of the now mythic sixties generation -- female version -- but in a bracingly specific and deeply recalled way, far from cliché. The history of the women of that generation has never been written -- until now, through their resonant lives and emblematic songs. Filled with the voices of many dozens of these women's intimates, who are speaking in these pages for the first time, this alternating biography reads like a novel -- except it's all true, and the heroines are famous and beloved. Sheila Weller captures the character of each woman and gives a balanced portrayal enriched by a wealth of new information. Girls Like Us is an epic treatment of midcentury women who dared to break tradition and become what none had been before them -- confessors in song, rock superstars, and adventurers of heart and soul.
A Girl's Life Online
by Katherine TarboxKatherine Tarbox was thirteen when she met twenty-three-year-old "Mark" in an online chat room. A top student and nationally ranked swimmer attending an elite school in an affluent Connecticut town, Katie was also a lonely and self-conscious eighth-grader who craved the attention her workaholic parents couldn't give her. "Mark" seemed to understand her; he told her she was smart and wonderful. When they set a date to finally meet while Katie was in Texas for a swim competition, she walked into a hotel room and discovered who-and what-her cyber soul mate really was. In A Girl's Life Online, Tarbox, now eighteen, tells her story-an eye-opening tale of one teenager's descent into the seductive world of the Internet. Tarbox's harrowing experience with her online boyfriend would affect her life for years to come and result in her becoming the first "unnamed minor" to test a federal law enacted to protect kids from online sexual predators. In an age when a new generation is growing up online, Tarbox's memoir is a cautionary tale for the Internet Age.
A Girl's Life Online
by Katherine TarboxKatherine Tarbox was thirteen when she met twenty-three-year-old "Mark" in an online chat room. A top student and nationally ranked swimmer attending an elite school in an affluent Connecticut town, Katie was also a lonely and self-conscious eighth-grader who craved the attention her workaholic parents couldn't give her. "Mark" seemed to understand her; he told her she was smart and wonderful. When they set a date to finally meet while Katie was in Texas for a swim competition, she walked into a hotel room and discovered who-and what-her cyber soul mate really was. In A Girl's Life Online, Tarbox, now eighteen, tells her story-an eye-opening tale of one teenager's descent into the seductive world of the Internet. Tarbox's harrowing experience with her online boyfriend would affect her life for years to come and result in her becoming the first "unnamed minor" to test a federal law enacted to protect kids from online sexual predators. In an age when a new generation is growing up online, Tarbox's memoir is a cautionary tale for the Internet Age. .
The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How One Girl Fought to Save Herself, Her Sister and Thousands of Girls Worldwide
by Nice Leng'eteAn inspirational story of one girl who changed the minds of her elders, reformed traditions from the inside, and is creating a better future for girls and women throughout AfricaBorn in a remote village in Kenya, Nice Leng'ete saw the young girls she grew up with receive the cut, the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. Every girl got the cut, and once you did, you'd be married off to a man triple your age. You might be his second or third wife. You'd have children in your teens.This is exactly what happened to Nice's sister. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast in Masai culture. Yet Nice managed to avoid it and stay in school. It was not an easy time. She was shunned. At the age of 21, Nice moved to Nairobi to work for Amref Health Africa, an organization spearheading the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation. Though she was still considered an outcast in her village - even an entapai (someone who brought shame to her family) - young girls began to look up to Nice. They saw the life they could have, not the one chosen for them.Eventually, thanks to a combination of incredible instincts, excellent training and leading by example, Nice Leng'ete developed a platform for convincing women across Africa to forego the cut. First, she won over her village elders. It spread from there. Kenya outlawed the cut in 2011, and the Masai people abandoned it in 2014.To date, Nice and Amref Health Africa have collaborated to help more than 16,000 girls avoid FGM in Kenya and Tanzania.
The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How One Girl Fought to Save Herself, Her Sister and Thousands of Girls Worldwide
by Nice Leng'eteBy the Amref activist Nice Leng'ete, one of the TIME's 100 Most Influential People in 2018, an inspirational story of one girl who changed the minds of her elders, reformed traditions from the inside, and is creating a better future for girls and women throughout AfricaBorn in a remote village in Kenya, Nice Leng'ete saw the young girls she grew up with receive the cut, the rite of passage into female adulthood in Masai culture. Every girl got the cut, and once you did, you'd be married off to a man triple your age. You might be his second or third wife. You'd have children in your teens.This is exactly what happened to Nice's sister. To resist the cut meant becoming an outcast in Masai culture. Yet Nice managed to avoid it and stay in school. It was not an easy time. She was shunned. At the age of 21, Nice moved to Nairobi to work for Amref Health Africa, an organization spearheading the campaign against Female Genital Mutilation. Though she was still considered an outcast in her village - even an entapai (someone who brought shame to her family) - young girls began to look up to Nice. They saw the life they could have, not the one chosen for them.Eventually, thanks to a combination of incredible instincts, excellent training and leading by example, Nice Leng'ete developed a platform for convincing women across Africa to forego the cut. First, she won over her village elders. It spread from there. Kenya outlawed the cut in 2011, and the Masai people abandoned it in 2014.To date, Nice and Amref Health Africa have collaborated to help more than 16,000 girls avoid FGM in Kenya and Tanzania.(P) 2021 Headline Publishing Group Ltd
The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree: How I Fought to Save Myself, My Sister, and Thousands of Girls Worldwide
by Nice Leng'eteThe "incredibly powerful" (Kirkus Reviews) story of the human rights activist who changed the minds of her elders, reformed traditions from the inside, and is creating a better future for girls and women throughout Africa.Nice Leng`ete was raised in a Maasai village in Kenya. In 1998, when Nice was six, her parents fell sick and died, and Nice and her sister Soila were taken in by their father&’s brother, who had little interest in the girls beyond what their dowries might fetch. Fearing &“the cut&” (female genital mutilation, a painful and sometimes deadly ritualistic surgery), which was the fate of all Maasai women, Nice and Soila climbed a tree to hide.Nice hoped to find a way to avoid the cut forever, but Soila understood it would be impossible. But maybe if one of the sisters submitted, the other would be spared. After Soila chose to undergo the surgery, sacrificing herself to save Nice, their lives diverged. Soila married, dropped out of school, and had children–all in her teenage years–while Nice postponed receiving the cut, continued her education, and became the first in her family to attend college.Supported by Amref, Nice used visits home to set an example for what an uncut Maasai woman can achieve. Other women listened, and the elders finally saw the value of intact, educated girls as the way of the future. The village has since ended FGM entirely, and Nice continues the fight to end FGM throughout Africa, and the world.Nice&’s journey from &“heartbroken child and community outcast, to leader of the Maasai&” is an inspiration and a reminder that one person can change the world–and every girl is worth saving.
The Girls in the Picture: A Novel
by Melanie BenjaminFrom the New York Times bestselling author of The Swans of Fifth Avenue and The Aviator’s Wife, a fascinating novel of the friendship and creative partnership between two of Hollywood’s earliest female legends—screenwriter Frances Marion and superstar Mary Pickford It is 1914, and twenty-five-year-old Frances Marion has left her (second) husband and her Northern California home for the lure of Los Angeles, where she is determined to live independently as an artist. But the word on everyone’s lips these days is “flickers”—the silent moving pictures enthralling theatergoers. Turn any corner in this burgeoning town and you’ll find made-up actors running around, as a movie camera captures it all. In this fledgling industry, Frances finds her true calling: writing stories for this wondrous new medium. She also makes the acquaintance of actress Mary Pickford, whose signature golden curls and lively spirit have earned her the title “America’s Sweetheart.” The two ambitious young women hit it off instantly, their kinship fomented by their mutual fever to create, to move audiences to a frenzy, to start a revolution. But their ambitions are challenged by both the men around them and the limitations imposed on their gender—and their astronomical success could come at a price. As Mary, the world’s highest paid and most beloved actress, struggles to live her life under the spotlight, she also wonders if it is possible to find love, even with the dashing actor Douglas Fairbanks. Frances, too, longs to share her life with someone. As in any good Hollywood story, dramas will play out, personalities will clash, and even the deepest friendships might be shattered. With cameos from such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Louis B. Mayer, Rudolph Valentino, and Lillian Gish, The Girls in the Picture is, at its heart, a story of friendship and forgiveness. Melanie Benjamin perfectly captures the dawn of a glittering new era—its myths and icons, its possibilities and potential, and its seduction and heartbreak.