Family Memoir

Autism shakes up your world. It has changed my life and I wasn't even the one diagnosed with it. My brother's name is Ethan Wolfgang, but we call him Deets. He is one of the greatest gifts my family has ever received. And one of the most challenging.

When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father’s tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window. Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn’t used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia.

In The Boy Who Played with Fusion, science journalist Tom Clynes narrates Taylor Wilson's extraordinary journey - from his Arkansas home, where his parents fully supported his intellectual passions; to a unique Reno, Nevada, public high school just for academic superstars; to the present, when now 19-year-old Wilson is winning international science competitions with devices designed to prevent terrorists from shipping radioactive material into the country.

We all know what is wrong with today’s schools - or do we? Tracy Kidder spent a year in a fifth grade class in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The teacher is excellent, but something else is very wrong. Kidder skillfully presents the problems and leaves the listener to ponder the solutions.

Delilah, the most listened-to woman on American radio, has distinguished herself as the “Queen of Sappy Love Songs” and America’s ultimate romance guru. But Delilah’s life off-air is all the more extraordinary - a life full of trials, forgiveness, faith, and adventure. In One Heart at a Time, Delilah’s heartfelt account of her own story reveals what shaped the voice that 9 million listeners know and love.

Gary Speed’s tragic death on November 27th, 2011, rocked the football world. Aged just 42, he was found hanged in the garage of his home. As a long-standing legend of the game and manager of Wales, he appeared to have everything to live for. Now, as he would have approached his 50th birthday, family and friends come together to speak honestly and emotionally about the man they knew and loved. Wife Louise opens her heart for the first time and talks in depth about her life with Gary and her own personal journey since his death.

Jeanne Darst was born the youngest of four daughters in an old, celebrated family long past its glory days. For the early part of her life, the family survived on the memory of past generations' grandeur, and the romantic belief that Darst's father would restore that greatness with his destined career as a novelist. Within a few years, however, it was abundantly clear to everyone but him that despite the many years enslaved to the writer's craft and lifestyle, he was never going to sell a book.

Kiyo's father arrived in California determined to plant his roots in the land of opportunity after leaving Japan. He, his wife, and their nine American-born children labored in the fields together, building a successful farm. Yet at the outbreak of World War II, Kiyo's family was ordered to Poston Internment Camp. This memoir tells the story of the family's struggle to endure in these harsh conditions and to rebuild their lives afterward in the face of lingering prejudice.

As long as she can remember, Leah has had the mysterious feeling that she's searching for a twin - that she belongs as one of an intimate pair. It begins with friends, dance partners, and her own reflection in the mirror as she studies ballet growing up; continues with physical and emotional attractions to girlfriends in college; and leads her, finally, to Eric, whom she moves across the country for and marries. But her steadfast, monogamous relationship leaves her with questions she can't answer about her sexuality and her identity, so she and her husband decide to try an open marriage.

What are you going to do for the rest of your life? For David Lawrence, Jr., a brilliant newspaper editor and publisher with a distinguished, three-decade-long journalism career who retired in 1999 at the age of 56, the answer in his words was to dedicate his life to a "[N]ewly energized purposefulness: that every child have a real chance to succeed."

Just Me and My Three Sons is a gutsy, wry, and smartly told tale of maternal devotion. Michele Weldon doesn't just cope when her husband abandons her and their three young sons, she does everything in her power - and then some - to assure that her three children thrive. She is a warrior mom in the best possible way - fiercely protective of her sons yet respectful of their growing independence, even when cancer threatens to upend the family's hard-won stability. Weldon beats the odds.

At age 28, Mira Ptacin discovered she was pregnant. Though it was unplanned, she soon embraced the pregnancy and became engaged to Andrew, the father. But five months later, an ultrasound revealed birth defects that would give the child no chance of survival outside the womb. Mira was given three options: terminate her pregnancy, induce early delivery, or wait and inevitably miscarry. Her story is woven together with the story of Mira's mother, who immigrated from Poland (also at the age of 28) and adopted a son, Julian.

Pidgeon Pagonis always felt like their life was a constant attempt to fit in with other girls—a feeling that was only exacerbated when puberty failed to hit. They never understood why…until they uncovered the secret that had haunted their childhood.

As she closes the door on her stunningly successful television show, Rosie O' Donnell opens her heart to share the amazing experience that changed her life forever. "An enormously powerful story," says Publishers Weekly, "about how forces strong enough to shatter one person can make another shine like a diamond."

From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, we have big work to do when it comes to our boys. Informed by the author's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother's journey to raise a feminist son as a single immigrant woman of color in America.

Shadow Daughter tackles a subject we rarely discuss as a culture: Family estrangements, especially those between parents and adult children. Estrangements - between parents and children, siblings, multiple generations - are surprisingly common, and even families that aren't officially estranged often have some experience of deep conflicts. Estrangement is an issue that touches most people, one way or another, one that's still shrouded in secrecy, stigma, and shame.

Author William G. Hyland Jr. pierces Jefferson's private family veil and reveals poignant little-known scenes of the relatives closest to Jefferson in his last years. Thomas Jefferson: Family Secrets is the first biography to uncover the dynamic relationship Jefferson had with his adult grandchildren. With a novelist’s skill and a scholar’s meticulous detail, Thomas Jefferson: Family Secrets explores new ground in Jefferson’s autumn years as a waning patriarch, enduring physical illness and family strife.

In the opening of this “unexpectedly uplifting...masterfully crafted memoir” (Shelf Awareness, starred review) Cindy, twenty years into recovery after a heroin addiction, grapples with how to tell her nine-year-old son about her past. She wants him to learn this history from her, not anyone else; but she worries about the effect this truth may have on him.

An inspiring and revealing essay about motherhood, self-acceptance, and overcoming the fears that hold you back by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Open Book.

Karen Gravano is the daughter of Sammy “the Bull” Gravano, once one of the mafia's most feared hit men. With 19 confessed murders, the former Gambino Crime Family underboss - and John Gotti’s right-hand man - is the highest ranking gangster ever to turn State’s evidence and testify against members of his high-profile crime family. But to Karen, Sammy Gravano was a sometimes elusive but always loving father figure. He was ever-present at the head of the dinner table.