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Isabel Allende, author of The Soul of a Woman

As a child, Isabel Allende watched her mother, abandoned by her husband, provide for her three small children without “resources or voice.” She became a fierce and defiant little girl, determined to fight for the life her mother couldn’t have. As a young woman coming of age in the late 1960s, she rode the second wave of feminism. Among a tribe of like-minded female journalists, Allende for the first time felt comfortable in her own skin, as they wrote “with a knife between our teeth” about women’s issues. She has seen what the movement has accomplished in the course of her lifetime. And over the course of three passionate marriages, she has learned how to grow as a woman while having a partner, when to step away, and the rewards of embracing one’s sexuality.

Week of March 2, 2026

Paperback releases for the week of March 2nd include THE QUEENS OF CRIME by Marie Benedict, a thrilling story of the five greatest female writers of the Golden Age of Mystery and their bid to solve a real-life murder; THE MAID'S SECRET, an intriguing and heartwarming novel from Nita Prose in which a daring art heist on the eve of Molly Gray’s wedding reveals long-buried secrets; THE SOUL OF A WOMAN, Isabel Allende's passionate and inspiring meditation on what it means to be a woman; Patti Callahan Henry's THE STORY SHE LEFT BEHIND, the sweeping story of a legendary book, a lost mother, and a daughter’s search for them both; and TRAVELING, in which celebrated NPR music critic Ann Powers explores the life and career of Joni Mitchell in a lyrical style as fascinating and ethereal as the songs of the artist herself.