History has seen many women make their mark by defying the limits set against them, stepping out of the boxes they had been put in and forging their own path.She Who Dares is a collection of pen portraits of ten extraordinary women who dared to defy the norm: Mariga Guinness, Enid Lindeman, Sylvia Ashley, Joan Wyndham, Venetia Montagu, Irene Curzon, Sylvia Brooke, Sydney Redesdale, Hazel Lavery and Jean Massereene. They were often witnesses to or participants in key events in the last 100 years, including abdications, the rise of fascism and two world wars. Their lives were dramatic and vibrant, usually involving tangled webs of relationships, heartbreak and scandal. From influencing politics to being accused of witchcraft, from glamorous society beauties to nonconformist tom-boys, each of these women deserves to be described as trailblazing.

Before Diana Mitford's disgrace as a social pariah, she was a celebrated member of the Bright Young Things, moving at the centre of 1920s and '30s London high society. She was a muse to many: Helleu painted her, James Lees-Milne worshipped her, Evelyn Waugh dedicated a book to her and Winston Churchill nicknamed her 'Dina-mite'. As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley turned her head. Unpublished letters, diaries and archives bring an unknown Diana to life, creating a portrait of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but the discourse of her life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale. This groundbreaking biography reveals the woman behind the myth.

The plot could have been inspired by Evelyn Waugh's Vile Bodies, but unlike Waugh's novel - which parodies the era of the 'Bright Young Things' - The Mistress of Mayfair is a real-life story of scandal, greed, corruption and promiscuity at the heart of 1920s and '30s high society, focusing on the wily, wilful socialite Doris Delevingne and her doomed relationship with the gossip columnist Valentine Browne, Viscount Castlerosse. Marrying each other in pursuit of the finer things in life, their unlikely union was tempestuous from the off, rocked by affairs (with a whole host of society figures, including Cecil Beaton, Diana Mitford and Winston Churchill, to name but a few) on both sides, and eventually degenerated into one of London's bitterest, and most talked about, divorce battles. In The Mistress of Mayfair, Lyndsy Spence follows the rise and fall of their relationship, exploring their decadent society lives in revelatory detail and offering new insight into some of the mid-twentieth century's most prominent figures.

Maria Callas (1923-77) was the greatest opera diva of all time. Despite a career that remains unmatched by any prima donna, much of her life was overshadowed by her fiery relationship with Aristotle Onassis, who broke her heart when he left her for Jacqueline Kennedy, and her legendary tantrums on and off the stage. However, little is known about the woman behind the diva. She was a girl brought up between New York and Greece, who was forced to sing by her emotionally abusive mother and who left her family behind in Greece for an international career. Feted by royalty and Hollywood stars, she fought sexism to rise to the top, but there was one thing she wanted but could not have - a happy private life. In Cast a Diva, bestselling author Lyndsy Spence draws on previously unseen documents to reveal the raw, tragic story of a true icon.

MARGARET, DUCHESS OF ARGYLL was an international celebrity in her youth, adored and observed by millions. But in 1963 the 11th Duke of Argyll shocked the country when he alleged that his adulterous wife had slept with over eighty men behind his back. As his evidence, he produced a set of sexually explicit Polaroid photographs and explosive love letters, helping to win his divorce and affecting Margaret's life forever. On the verge of financial destitution, she fell from grace and was abandoned by most of her friends prior to her death in a nursing home in Pimlico in 1993. In this meticulously researched biography Lyndsy Spence tells a tragic story of the life and downfall of this fascinatingly complex woman, and shows how she fell victim to a cruel husband, harsh social mores and an unforgiving class.