Childhood Memoir

When Gail Gallant was five months old, she died. A year later, she was reborn. Or so her mother said. The crash occurred on a July night in 1955. The truck hit the Gallant family's car head-on; a few weeks later, newborn baby Gail died from her injuries. Mad with grief, her mother prayed feverishly for Gail's return, convinced that God would bring her child back to her. And when she gave birth within a year to a baby girl who looked identical to her lost child, she believed her prayers had been answered. She named that newborn baby Gail.

'I have just had one of those absolutely mad mornings when you go out to have a browse at tagines and end up coming home with a brand-new gas ring expander. I think I was probably as surprised as anybody. Sometimes life is just like that, isn't it?' Award-winning food writer Damien Trench takes you on a journey through his childhood and his early inspirations - culinary and otherwise - with occasional diversions to the present.

These are bittersweet and sometimes funny true Romany Gypsy stories from my childhood, from 1943 to 1959. These are true Romany Gypsy stories from my childhood as I remember them, with a little bit of the author’s artistic license to make them more enjoyable. If you are looking for stories that romanticize a Romany Gypsy life on the open road, then this audiobook is probably not for you. However, if you are interested in the true life of Romany Gypsy's, you may find this audiobook interesting.

When Jill Sitnick sat on her therapist’s couch trying to stop the panic attack that had lasted for months, she didn’t know she would eventually heal her deeply embedded childhood trauma with psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. In Rescuing Jill, Jill shows you why it took a year, and multiple journeys, to fully heal. By describing how MDMA let her view her father’s beatings and mother’s suicide attempts from her adult perspective, she gives you a front-row seat into how psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy healed her trauma and transformed her life.

The eldest daughter of the Times Square “King of Porn”, Romola Hodas recounts her chaotic childhood amid the turmoil of publicly growing up as the daughter of the man who almost single-handedly built New York City’s pornography and adult entertainment empire from the 1960s to the 1980s before his spectacular and public fall from grace.

In little more than 50 years the regard with which the Royal Family are held has changed out of all recognition. Their private lives are now the stuff of soap opera and it seems any one who comes into contact with them sells their story to the magazines or to the newspapers. The Little Princesses was published in 1950 to a furore we cannot imagine today. Crawfie was demonised by the press, and the Queen Mother, who had been a great friend and who had, Crawfie maintained, given her permission to write the account, never spoke to her again.

The inspiring stories of six people who changed history. Contents: Galileo who wanted to show that the earth went around the sun; René Descartes, the Frenchman who famously said 'I think, therefore I am.' ; Sir Isaac Newton who proved how gravity works; Carl Friedrich Gauss, 'the Prince of Mathematicians'; Charles Babbage who invented computers; Ada Lovelace who wrote the first computer program.

For Kim Woodburn, finding fame in her 60s in the smash-hit television series How Clean is Your House? with fellow dust-buster Aggie Mackenzie is like living a fairytale. Often, however, she has simply wished that she had never been born, for Kim has overcome horrific emotional and physical abuse, both at the hands of her alcoholic mother and her philandering, abusive father.

"No big deal"...for 15 years, these words kept Torey Ivanic from telling her parents, friends, and boyfriends about her interactions with the gymnastics coach who utterly confused her young mind, body, and soul - who had, she eventually came to understand, sexually violated her. In this memoir, Torey transparently and brilliantly shows how the abuse started, the collateral damage it created in her young life, her realization that it was a big deal, and her journey of healing and justice.

After a 30-year absence Agnes is returning to Australia, the country of her birth, at the request of her aging, narcissistic mother. Having undergone a long period of psychotherapy she now entertains a hope that burning questions will be answered, haunting mysteries solved, and buried memories encouraged into the light. Something has blighted her life since childhood. Something has cast a long shadow over her existence, affecting her ability to grasp at life fully, to develop sustained relationships and to appreciate her own sense of self-worth.

In this memoir of a lost America, Hal Borland tells the story of his family's migration to eastern Colorado as homesteaders at the turn of the twentieth century. On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives.

Nestled within the deep Alabama forest lies a community built on ancient Indian burial ground and almost completely hidden away from the world if not for the winding main road which leads to it from the highway. Within this community rests scenic streets, quaint suburban homes, happy families...and ghostly legends that will chill your bones. Here lies a collection of some of the scariest Southern ghost stories.

Recently hailed as "the greatest cabaret artist of [V's] generation" in The New Yorker, Mx. Justin Vivian Bond makes a brilliant literary debut with this staggeringly candid and hilarious novella-length memoir. With a recent diagnosis of attention deficit disorder, and news that V's first lover from childhood has been imprisoned for impersonating an undercover police officer, Bond recalls in vivid detail coming of age as a trans kid. Always haunted by the knowledge of being "different," Bond was further confused when the bully next door wanted to meet secretly. Their trysts went on for years, and made Bond acutely aware of sexual power and vulnerability. With inimitable style, Bond raises issues about LGBTQ adolescence, homophobia, parenting, and sexuality, while being utterly entertaining.

Opened on February 17, 1929, the Mississippi State Preventorium operated continuously until 1976. The Mississippi Preventorium, like similar hospitals throughout the country, was an institution for sickly, anemic, and underweight children. It was established on the grounds of the Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanitorium in the early years of the twentieth century when tuberculosis was a dreaded disease worldwide. The TB Sanitorium hospital housed those with tuberculosis, offering refuge for patients of all ages afflicted with the pernicious and contagious disease.

Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these four forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.

Jeden Sommer brachen wir mit dem VW-Bus auf von München, Neuperlach in Richtung Süden, ins Jugoskorsikalawienland oder irgendwo anders hin, wo es düstere Felsen, düsteres Meer und düstere Ortschaften mit düsteren Menschen gab. Was es dort nicht gab, war so etwas wie ein Klo oder eine Dusche. Denn meine Eltern waren nicht einfach nur Camper. Nein, sie waren überzeugte Wildcamper. Riesenspinnen auf dem Rücksitz, Schlangen in der Trinkwasserzisterne, gigantische Müllberge und sinkende Schlauchboote – es war alles dabei, was Camping in den 70ern so außergewöhnlich machte.

This is the true story of a unique man who lived among the Indians in the early 1800's, and who in his twenties learned to read and write this book. He was a favorite in Europe. He spent time with Thomas Jefferson, shortly thereafter Mr. Hunter was assassinated in Texas while attempting to establish a home for numerous Indian tribes.

W. Nikola-Lisa explores new terrain - his childhood experiences growing up in south Texas during the early 1960s. Unlike his previous books, this is not a book for young children as the author explores the darker elements growing up in a harsh environment. Although the work feels like a memoir, it sounds like a novel with the author's spare, unrelenting narrative a perfect accompaniment to the time, place, and underlying familial issues.

Fans of Augusten Burroughs and Jo Ann Beard will enjoy this kaleidoscopic, universal memoir in which Elissa Altman explores the tradition, religion, family expectations, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her Queens, New York, childhood. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1970s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities. It is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite and in honor to your past.

These are the exotic, funny and sometimes bittersweet family stories and photos of an overseas childhood told by the daughter of a State Department diplomat about her family's travels and experiences living overseas from 1957 to 1972. She and her six brothers spent their childhoods in South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, and Ethiopia. Through her stories, the listener can begin to appreciate the adaptability of children to other cultures and the fortitude and courage of parents trying to raise their children to be good citizens of the world as well as good Americans.