Books like Tempestuous petticoat by Clare Leighton

Sandra Cisneros’ celebrated coming‑of‑age tale follows Esperanza Cordero as she grows up in Chicago’s Mexican-American community, exploring identity through poetic vignettes.

A heart-wrenching coming-of-age story of poverty and resilience in 1930s Brooklyn.

The Penderwicks follows four sisters, their two rabbit companions, and a curious new boy as they navigate adventures and family bonds during a summer vacation in Massachusetts.

The Signature of All Things traces a family from modest English beginnings to wealth in the South American quinine trade, through the life of brilliant botanist Alma Whittaker as she explores evolution, love, and the clash of science and art across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Monsieur Perdu, a literary apothecary aboard a Seine barge, prescribes novels to heal broken hearts. When his own love remains a mystery, he journeys south of France to find closure and prove stories can mend souls.

In the 1950s, a plain secretary discovers a hidden side of New York’s Barbizon Hotel for Women, while a modern journalist unravels the dark secrets of its past, forcing both women to confront truths that change their lives.

"Witty, courageous and unconventional, Mary Wollstonecraft was one of the most controversial figures of her day. She published 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman'; travelled to revolutionary France and lived through the Terror and the destruction of the incipient French feminist movement; produced an illegitimate daughter; and married William Godwin before dying in childbed at the age of thirty-eight. Often embattled and bitterly disappointed, she never gave up her radical ideas or her belief that courage and honesty would triumph over convention."--Back cover.

Contains primary source material.

When reclusive novelist Vida Winter’s health wanes, she tasks biographer Margaret Lea with revealing the truth of her life, though Margaret must sift through Winter’s penchant for exaggeration to arrive at facts.

A biographical collection celebrating twelve pioneering New Mexico women— from Harvey Girls and railroad waitresses to educators, artisans, and artists—whose lives shaped the region’s culture and frontier spirit.

Harriet Martineau’s autobiography offers a detailed, sensitive chronicle of a 19th‑century English woman whose work spanned sociology, economics, and social reform.

Lyndall Gordon defends Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759‑1797, founder of modern feminism, by painting her vibrant portrait and correcting her historical reputation.

Richard Holmes's award‑winning first volume of his Coleridge biography offers a richly illuminated portrait of the Romantic poet and philosopher, exploring his literary genius, personal complexities, and influence on 19th‑century English literature.

Linda Lear’s biography reveals the extraordinary life of Beatrix Potter, celebrated artist, illustrator, author, businesswoman, scientist, and Lakeland landowner.

Isobel Grundy is the first to examine in detail Lady Mary's family situation and social relationships, or to situate Montagu's writing life in relation to both tradition and innovation, to enlightenment circles and political agendas, and to the emerging tradition of women's writing, in which she herself was a key figure. Grundy highlights Lady Mary's adolescent longing for literary fame, her growing understanding of the pressures of class and gender imperatives on such upstart desires, her conflicted negotiations with manuscript culture and the new world of print, the punitive responses of society, the deep dissonance at every stage of her life between her actual circumstances and the constructed self of her letters and other writings. She also situates Montagu's work in the context of her exceptionally wide reading in both men's and women's texts, and her own theorizing of her social world.