Happy Women's History Month!

If you're in need of some book recommendations for Women's History Month (3/1-3/31), check out this list of fiction and non-fiction titles:

FICTION

1. The Davenports by Krystal Marquis: The Davenports are one of the few Black families of immense wealth and status in a changing United States, their fortune made through the entrepreneurship of William Davenport, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Davenport Carriage Company years ago. Now it's 1910, and the Davenports live surrounded by servants, crystal chandeliers, and endless parties, finding their way and finding love--even where they're not supposed to. There is Olivia, the beautiful elder Davenport daughter, ready to do her duty by getting married . . . until she meets the charismatic civil rights leader Washington DeWight and sparks fly. The younger daughter, Helen, is more interested in fixing cars than falling in love--unless it's with her sister's suitor. Amy-Rose, the childhood friend turned maid to the Davenport sisters, dreams of opening her own business--and marrying the one man she could never be with, Olivia and Helen's brother, John. But Olivia's best friend, Ruby, also has her sights set on John Davenport, though she can't seem to keep his interest . . . until family pressure has her scheming to win his heart, just as someone else wins hers.
2. Kill Her Twice by Stacey Lee: In 1932 Chinatown Los Angeles, sisters May, Gemma, and Peony Chow sell flowers as part of their family business. When they discover the body of movie star Lulu Wong, their hometown celebrity and May’s former friend, the siblings worry that justice will not be served and endeavor to honor Lulu’s legacy—and prevent the killer from striking again—by solving her murder. Led by ambitious, headstrong, mischievous Gemma, the trio push forward with their inquiry, though they’re met with resistance from the police, who underplay Lulu’s death and reject the plausibility of homicide, and political forces that want to paint Chinatown as a “mysterious and sinister” place full of “drunken and slovenly” people. While poking around town, the girls make discoveries hinting that the mystery goes deeper than they expected—and may involve people they know.
3. Song of a Blackbird by Maria Van Lieshout: In 1943 Amsterdam, Emma Bergsma's world changes when she witnesses Jewish families being forcibly deported to concentration camps. That pivotal moment lights a fire within her, and she decides to jointhe Dutch Resistance. Before long, Emma is drawn into a clandestine world of printing presses and counterfeiters, with thousands of lives on the line. In 2011 Amsterdam, teenage Annick's world has changed as well. A search for a bone marrow donor for her beloved oma leads to a shocking revelation: her grandmother was secretly adopted as a child. The only clues to finding their lost family are a series of art prints hanging on the wall--each signed by a mysterious "Emma B.""
4. A Suffragist's Guide to the Antarctic by Yi Shun Lai: Told in journal entries, this historical novel follows suffragist Clara Ketterling-Dunbar, one of 28 crew members of The Resolute marooned on ice 100 miles from the shore of Antarctica, as she demonstrates what women are truly capable of.
5. Wild Song by Candy Gourlay: In 1904, sixteen-year-old Luki travels from the US-controlled Philippines to the World's Fair in Saint Louis, Missouri, where she discovers a wider world, confronts dark secrets, and wrestles with difficult choices. 

NON-FICTION

1. Banned Book Club by Hyun Sook Kim: When Kim Hyun Sook started college in 1983 she was ready for her world to open up. After acing her exams and sort-of convincing her traditional mother that it was a good idea for a woman to go to college, she looked forward to soaking up the ideas of Western Literature far from the drudgery she was promised at her family's restaurant. But literature class would prove to be just the start of a massive turning point, still focused on reading but with life-or-death stakes she never could have imagined. This was during South Korea's Fifth Republic, a military regime that entrenched its power through censorship, torture, and the murder of protestors. In this charged political climate, with Molotov cocktails flying and fellow students disappearing for hours and returning with bruises, Hyun Sook sought refuge in the comfort of books. When the handsome young editor of the school newspaper invited her to his reading group, she expected to pop into the cafeteria to talk about Moby Dick, Hamlet, and The Scarlet Letter. Instead she found herself hiding in a basement as the youngest member of an underground banned book club. And as Hyun Sook soon discovered, in a totalitarian regime, the delights of discovering great works of illicit literature are quickly overshadowed by fear and violence as the walls close in.
2. Bloody Mary : a graphic biography of Mary Tudor by Kristina Gehrmann: A chronological telling of Mary's life as "told" by her spans her magnificent life, starting from her "first memory" at the age of two to becoming the first queen to inherit the throne of an England in disarray. Once rejected at birth, Mary was certain the cause of suffering was her subjects' rejection of the one true faith: Catholicism. Her zealous campaign to re-Catholicize England was unrelenting in its brutality, re-christening her, "Mary, the Bloody." ​ The Tudors famously used fine art to define their reign. Using expressive line work and lush watercolor, German graphic novelist fittingly teases the painterly allure of royalty as she reveals the stark loneliness of the crown. Gehrmann pulls from real quotes from historical documents and letters along with dramatizations of known historic events. These details immerse us in Mary I's epic life from her volatile childhood to her tragic demise, rendering a stunning portrait of a "bastard queen" losing her grip on power.
3. Heroines, rescuers, rabbis, spies : unsung women of the Holocaust by Sarah Silberstein Swartz: A look at nine ordinary women who took extraordinary measures to save lives during the Holocaust, including a British intelligence officer, a partisan photographer, a German rabbi, and a Polish nurse.
4. Smash the Patriarchy by Marta Breen: The patriarchy is falling. It's time to smash it. This graphic novel shows you how. Patriarchy means "the rule of the father" and describes a system where men are in control. At least since the time of Aristotle, loud-mouthed men have called women weak and inferior. In entertaining comic book form, Smash the Patriarchy shames the culprits and salutes more than 100 inspiring women-from Pharaoh Hatshepsut to Mary Wollstonecraft to Petra Herrera-who stood up to them. 
5. The Swans of Harlem: : five Black ballerinas, a legacy of sisterhood, and their reclamation of a groundbreaking history by Karen Valby: A full accounting of five incredibly talented Black ballerinas from the Dance Theater of Harlem illuminates their hard-fought, historic and overlooked contributions to the world of classical dance at a time when racism shut out Black dancers from major companies.