Hillary Clinton is set to publish a new book about the women who have inspired her, from Mary Beard to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – “leaders with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done”.

After publishing her memoir about the 2016 presidential election campaign, What Happened, Clinton teamed up with her daughter Chelsea to write The Book of Gutsy Women, due out in October from Simon & Schuster. “If history shows one thing, it’s that the world needs gutsy women,” the Clintons say. “So in the moments when the long haul seems awfully long, we hope you will draw strength from these stories. We do.”

Historian Beard is cited for using “wit to open doors that were once closed”, while novelist Adichie is extolled for her writing on feminism. Also included are the teenage climate emergency activist Greta Thunberg, and the 17th-century nun and poet Juana Inés de la Cruz, whom they say scandalised readers with her outspoken view on women’s role in society.

“Each of these women has fought and won the kinds of victories that pave the way for progress for all of us,” said Clinton. “This book is a continuation of a conversation Chelsea and I have been having since she was a little girl, and we are excited to welcome others into that conversation.”

The pair will also highlight the stories of the civil war surgeon Mary Edwards Walker, who was arrested for wearing trousers; Shirley Chisholm, who ran for US president in 1972; television presenter Ellen DeGeneres; and Manal al-Sharif, who filmed herself driving a car in 2011 in defiance of Saudi Arabian laws. More than 100 women will feature in the book, as the Clintons set out to celebrate “the histories that all too often get overlooked or are left unwritten”.

The Clinton family have produced many books, with Chelsea having previously written She Persisted, a picture book about American women who changed the world. Clinton’s What Happened has sold almost 100,000 copies in the UK since it was published in 2017, with her previous memoirs Living History and Hard Choices bringing her total sales to more than 300,000 copies, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan.