Elizabeth Keckley

Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (February 1818 –May 1907) was a former slave turned successful seamstress who is most notably known as being Mary Todd Lincoln's personal modiste and confidante, and the author of her autobiography, Behind the Scenes Or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House. Mrs. Keckley utilized her intelligence, keen business acumen, and sewing and design skills to arrange and ultimately buy her freedom (and that of her son George as well), and later enjoyed regular business with the wives of the government elite as her base clientele.

After several years in St. Louis, she moved to Washington, D.C. in the spring of 1860, where she had the country's most elite women of the time requesting her services. Through shrew

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Harriet E. Wilson

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Jennifer Chiaverini

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Diane Wahn Shotton

Diane tells stories about ordinary people navigating extraordinary choices—strong women, complicated families, and the quiet heroism that history too often overlooks. Her work explores the grit and love of everyday sacrifice, the weight of generational legacy, and the emotional cost of injustice.

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Michael Edwin Q.

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Michelle Vernal

Michelle Vernal is a bestselling author of warm, witty, and uplifting Irish fiction. Born in England to parents from Liverpool – often called “Little Ireland” – she grew up on her mum’s tales of Iocal families, music, and humour. Later, she lived, worked, got engaged, and travelled extensively in Ireland, experiences that inspire her much-loved novels, including the hilarious Guesthouse on the Green series. Her stories, filled with heart, humour, and unforgettable characters, have earned her a loyal readership worldwide.

For updates on Michelle's latest book releases you can follow her here: https://www.amazon.com/author/michell...
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Harriet Ann Jacobs

Harriet Ann Jacobs, usually wrote under the name Harriet Jacobs but also used the pseudonym Linda Brent.

Harriet was born in Edenton, North Carolina to Daniel Jacobs and Delilah. Her father was a mulatto carpenter and slave owned by Dr. Andrew Knox. Her mother was a mulatto slave owned by John Horniblow, a tavern owner. Harriet inherited the status of both her parents as a slave by birth. She was raised by Delilah until the latter died around 1819. She then was raised by her mother's mistress, Margaret Horniblow, who taught her how to sew, read, and write.

In 1823, Margaret Horniblow died, and Harriet was willed to Horniblow's niece, Mary Matilda Norcom, whose father, Dr. James Norcom, became her new master. She and her brother John went to
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Linda Epstein

Linda Epstein lives in the Hudson Valley in upstate New York. She writes fiction for children, teens, and adults, and poetry for adults. Linda has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from The New School and is also a literary agent at Emerald City Literary Agency. Her debut middle grade novel, Repairing the World (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster), came out in 2022. Her debut adult novel, The Other March Sisters (Kensington, 2025), is in bookstores now. Her adult poetry chapbook, re: can only be purchased directly from the author. Find Linda online at lindaepsteinauthor.com and @lindaepsteinauthor on Instagram.
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Jacob Grimm

German philologist and folklorist Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm in 1822 formulated Grimm's Law, the basis for much of modern comparative linguistics. With his brother Wilhelm Karl Grimm (1786-1859), he collected Germanic folk tales and published them as Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812-1815).

Indo-European stop consonants, represented in Germanic, underwent the regular changes that Grimm's Law describes; this law essentially states that Indo-European p shifted to Germanic f, t shifted to th, and k shifted to h. Indo-European b shifted to Germanic p, d shifted to t, and g shifted to k. Indo-European bh shifted to Germanic b, dh shifted to d, and gh shifted to g.

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Betty White

Betty White was an American five-time Emmy Award-winning film and television actress with a career spanning sixty years. She also appeared in radio programs, movies, theater, commercials, and was also a talk show and game show host. White is perhaps best known for her roles in the sitcoms The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Golden Girls.
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Nancy Guthrie

Nancy Guthrie teaches the Bible at her home church, Cornerstone Presbyterian Church in Franklin, Tennessee, as well as at conferences around the country and internationally, including through her Biblical Theology Workshops for Women. She is the author of numerous books and the host of the Help Me Teach the Bible podcast at The Gospel Coalition. She and her husband host Respite Retreats for couples who have faced the death of child and are co-hosts of the GriefShare video series.
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Harriet E. Wilson

Traditionally considered the first female African-American novelist as well as the first African American of any gender to publish a novel on the North American continent. Her novel Our Nig was published in 1859 and rediscovered in 1982.

The daughter of Joshua Green, an African-American "hooper of barrels", and Margaret Ann (or Adams) Smith, a washerwoman of Irish ancestry. Her father died when she was very young, and her mother abandoned her at the farm of Nehemiah Hayward Jr., a well-to-do Milford farmer. As an orphan, Adams was made an indentured servant to the Hayward family, a customary way for society to arrange support at the time. In exchange for her labor, the child would receive room, board and training in life skills, or that was
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Patty Duke

Anna Marie "Patty" Duke was an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16 for the role of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, and later starring in her self-titled sitcom, The Patty Duke Show for three years. She progressed to more adult roles such as Neely O'Hara in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls . Duke was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982; afterwards she then devoted much of her time to advocating and educating the public on mental health issues. She was later elected president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1985 to 1988.Duke died on the morning of March 29, 2016, at the age of 69, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of sepsis fr
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James L. Swanson

James L. Swanson was an American author and historian famous for his New York Times best-seller Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln's Killer, focusing on the biography of John Wilkes Booth and his plot to kill Lincoln and other cabinet members. For this book he earned an Edgar Award. He was a Senior Fellow at the Heritage Foundation and appeared on C-SPAN on behalf of the Koch-affiliated libertarian CATO Institute think tank.
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Bob Woodward

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Robert "Bob" Upshur Woodward is an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post. While an investigative reporter for that newspaper, Woodward, working with fellow reporter Carl Bernstein, helped uncover the Watergate scandal that led to U.S. President Richard Nixon's resignation. Woodward has written 12 best-selling non-fiction books and has twice contributed reporting to efforts that collectively earned the Post and its National Reporting staff a Pulitzer Prize.
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Jennifer Chiaverini

Jennifer Chiaverini is the New York Times bestselling author of thirty-three novels, including acclaimed historical fiction and the beloved Elm Creek Quilts series. She has also written seven quilt pattern books inspired by her novels. A graduate of the University of Notre Dame and the University of Chicago, she lives with her husband and two sons in Madison, Wisconsin. About her historical fiction, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel writes, "In addition to simply being fascinating stories, these novels go a long way in capturing the texture of life for women, rich and poor, black and white, in those perilous years."
Buy books on Amazon
Jean Shepherd

Jean Parker "Shep" Shepherd Jr. was an American storyteller, humorist, radio and TV personality, writer, and actor. With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is known for the film A Christmas Story (1983), which he narrated and co-scripted on the basis of his own semi-autobiographical stories.
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Elizabeth von Arnim

Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H.G. Wells, then later married Earl Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became to friends and finally to family. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arni
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Patty Duke

Anna Marie "Patty" Duke was an American actress of stage, film, and television. First becoming famous as a child star, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at age 16 for the role of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, and later starring in her self-titled sitcom, The Patty Duke Show for three years. She progressed to more adult roles such as Neely O'Hara in the 1967 film Valley of the Dolls . Duke was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 1982; afterwards she then devoted much of her time to advocating and educating the public on mental health issues. She was later elected president of the Screen Actors Guild from 1985 to 1988.Duke died on the morning of March 29, 2016, at the age of 69, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, of sepsis fr
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