Family Biography

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

Domenica Ruta grew up in a working-class, unforgiving Italian town north of Boston where in the seventeenth century women were hanged as witches. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious figure in this hardscrabble place, was a drug addict and sometime dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches, whose highbrow taste was at odds with her base appetites.

In this inspiring series of letters to his grandchildren, David Suzuki offers grandfatherly advice mixed with stories from his own remarkable life and explores what makes life meaningful. He challenges his grandchildren - and us - to do everything at full tilt. He explains why sports, fishing, feminism, and failure are important; why it is dangerous to deny our biological nature; and why First Nations must lead a revolution.

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family - that his father's mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw's first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.

Celebrated for both his novels and memoirs, Don J. Snyder is also the recipient of a James Michener Fellowship. A story of love and dedication, Walking with Jack chronicles Snyder’s dream to caddie for his son Jack's pro golf tour debut. At nearly 60, Snyder left Maine for Scotland - the birthplace of golf - where he learned the game and earned his spot as a full-time caddie. His journey would finally coincide with Jack’s own struggles in one of the PGA’s toughest qualifying events.

Dodie Osteen, mother of Joel Osteen, gives listeners a personal account of her extraordinary life and shares what she has learned about love, faith, and family. As the wife of 44 years to the late Pastor John Osteen, founder of Lakewood Church, Dodie Osteen stood as a wife, mother, and first lady of the church, even when life felt anything but steady. Today, she continues to stand by her son, Pastor Joel Osteen, and the rest of their family as they lead Lakewood. In this revealing memoir, Dodie shares that her path, though glorious, has not always been easy.

In this harrowing and intimate memoir, Harriet Alida Lye explores how, at just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called Natural Killer, named "the rarest and worst malignancy". The average survival time of patients with this diagnosis is 58 days. There are no known survivors. There were no known survivors. Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment would likely make conception impossible. To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life.

A Very Fine House is an intimate memoir of a mother's Norman Rockwell family turned upside down by her daughter's descent into meth addiction and crime. Bright and beautiful, Annie is an unlikely candidate for meth. Living fast and hard on the streets of Bend, Oregon, she commits crimes against herself, the community, and her own family.

Heather Christle has just lost a dear friend to suicide and now must reckon with her own depression and the birth of her first child. As she faces her grief and impending parenthood, she decides to research the act of crying: what it is and why people do it, even if they rarely talk about it. Along the way, she discovers an artist who designed a frozen tear-shooting gun and a moth that feeds on the tears of other animals. She researches tear-collecting devices (lachrymatories) and explores the role white women’s tears play in racist violence.

In Home Ice, with equal parts humour and anguish, Angie Abdou charts a full season of life as an Atom-level hockey mom, from summer hockey camp to the end-of-season tournament. Her revealing stories and careful research on issues such as cost, gender bias, concussion, and family pressures offer a compellingly honest and complex insider’s view of parenting today’s young athlete in a competitive and high-pressure culture.

Psychologist and expert witness Dr. Sharon Lamb evaluates parents, particularly in high-stakes cases concerning the termination of parental rights. The conclusions she reaches can mean that some children are returned home from foster homes. Others are freed for adoption. Well-trained, Lamb generally can decide what's in the best interests of the child. But when her son's struggle with opioid addiction comes to light, she starts to doubt her right to make judgments about other mothers.

When Billy Reilly vanished, his parents embarked on a desperate search for answers. Was their son’s disappearance connected to his mysterious work for the FBI, or was it a personal quest gone wrong? Only when Wall Street Journal reporter Brett Forrest embarks on his own investigation does a picture emerge: of the FBI's exploitation of US citizens through a secretive intelligence program, a young man's lust for adventure within the world's conflicts, and the costs of a rising clash between Moscow and Washington.

From one of the country’s most recognizable journalists: How becoming a grandmother transforms a woman’s life. After four decades as a reporter, Lesley Stahl’s most vivid and transformative experience of her life was not covering the White House, interviewing heads of state, or researching stories at 60 Minutes. It was becoming a grandmother. She was hit with a jolt of joy so intense and unexpected, she wanted to “investigate” it - as though it were a news flash.

From his earliest public appearances as a mischievous redheaded toddler, Prince Harry has captured the hearts of royal enthusiasts around the world. In Harry, Britain's leading expert on the young royals offers an in-depth look at the wayward prince turned national treasure.

In 1986, 26-year-old Ruth is visiting a friend at the hospital when she notices that the door to one of the hospital rooms is painted red. She witnesses nurses drawing straws to see who will tend to the patient inside, all of them reluctant to enter the room. Out of impulse, Ruth herself enters the quarantined space and immediately begins to care for the young man who cries for his mother in the last moments of his life. Before she can even process what she’s done, word spreads in the community that Ruth is the only person willing to help these young men afflicted by AIDS.

Clint Edwards’ back hurts. And after ill-advised piggyback rides, carrying his 8-year-old through a 5K and failed trampoline tricks, he’s accepted that this pain is just part of being a dad. Creator of the parenting blog No Idea What I’m Doing, Clint shares the misfortunes, triumphs and hilarity of daily life as a family of five in the midst of a pandemic.

Brian Johnson is a man who went looking for gold and found so much more-a soulmate for life, the child he had always dreamed of, and the joy of working alongside people who loved him. Brian Johnson lived his life in unexpected ways, choosing adventure over the predictable day-to-day. Working side-by-side with his brother, Loren, he struck gold repeatedly in the wilderness of Alaska and the Yukon as a modern-day goldminer for more than forty years.

Our Flag Was Still There details the improbable two-hundred-year journey of the original Star-Spangled Banner—from Fort McHenry in 1814, when Francis Scott Key first saw it, to the Smithsonian—and the enduring family who defended, kept, hid, and ultimately donated the most famous flag in American history. Tom McMillan tells a story as no one has before. Digging deep into the archives of Fort McHenry and the Smithsonian, McMillan follows the flag on an often-perilous journey through three centuries.

Jan Wong knows food is better when shared, so when she set out to write a book about home cooking in France, Italy, and China, she asked her 22-year-old son, Sam, to join her. While he wasn’t keen on spending excessive time with his mom, he dreamed of becoming a chef. Ultimately, it was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. On their journey, Jan and Sam live and cook with locals, seeing first-hand how globalization is changing food, families, and cultures.

David and Tamela Mann have been married for 30 years, but the singers, actors, and entrepreneurs are just as, if not more than, happily in love as they were in the early days of their relationship. In their new audiobook, the couple will relate the story of their first encounters as teenagers, the importance of communication, and how they’ve been able to keep that spark burning through all these years.