Family Memoir

His name was Kevin but his keepers called him Zoo Boy. He didn't talk. He hid under tables and surrounded himself with a cage of chairs. He hadn't been out of the building in the four years since he'd come in. He was afraid of water and wouldn't take a shower. He was afraid to be naked, to change his clothes. He was nearly 16. Desperate to see change in the boy, the staff of Kevin's adolescent treatment center hired Hayden. As Hayden read to him and encouraged him to read, crawling down into his cage of chairs with him, Kevin talked.

Moments of Glad Grace is a moving and witty memoir of aging, familial love, and the hunt for roots and belonging. The story begins as a trip from Canada to Ireland in search of genealogical data and documents. Being 80 and in the early stages of Parkinson’s Disease, Joe invites his daughter Alison to come along as his research assistant, which might have worked very well had she any interest - any at all - in genealogy.

From the creator of the blog Renegade Mothering, Janelle Hanchett's forthright, darkly funny, and ultimately empowering memoir chronicling her tumultuous journey from young motherhood to abysmal addiction and a recovery she never imagined possible. Pregnant at 21 by a man she'd known three months, Janelle Hanchett embraced motherhood with the determined optimism of the recklessly self-confident. After giving birth, she found herself bored, directionless, and seeking relief in wine, which she justified as sophisticated and going well with chicken.

For all the roads we choose to travel, and even those we don't, Fred Rogers has an observation, a story, some insights to share. Whether you're facing graduation, a new job, a new baby, marriage, any change in your life, expected or not, the wisdom that Mister Rogers offers can contribute mightily to the grace with which you handle the change. It all comes down to knowing we're valuable, and that we're worthy of that value. As Fred would say, "You don't have to be anything more than who you are right now."

Mom loved adages, quotes, slogans. There were always little reminders pasted on the kitchen wall. For example, the word THINK. I found THINK thumbtacked on a bulletin board in her darkroom. I saw it Scotch-taped on a pencil box she’d collaged. I even found a pamphlet titled THINK on her bedside table. Mom liked to THINK.

Discover a story of healing and personal transformation. Marlena’s childhood was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor for people with leprosy and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed to both be accepted in Paraguay and escape to somewhere new. In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena’s journey as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included.

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 the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times best seller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of Zadie. When the young teenage girl, thrown out of her home by her strict Muslim family, is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be. Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie, she is understandably suspicious of the family around her.

Fishing was Mark Hume’s passion since he was a young boy, a lifeline through a childhood marked by his family’s frequent moves. When he became a father, he knew he wanted to pass on his love of water, fishing, and the natural world to his daughters. Most of all, he wanted to give them hope for their future. As soon as they were old enough, Mark taught his girls how to read the water and see the patterns in nature. He discovered that fly fishing and fatherhood require many of the same skills: patience, flexibility, and the knowledge of when to reel in and when to let go.

From her beginnings as an early blogger, Ree Drummond has become a household name with a passionate following of devoted fans. On her blog, in her magazine, and on her cooking show, Ree shares recipes, tales of her adventures in the country, and stories of everyday life with her four children and cowboy/rancher husband.

Ralph was a brilliant, poor Jew from the East End. Edith, also Jewish from a bourgeois family in Central Europe, was a gifted pianist. They met as students in Paris in 1937 and were separated by the war. Their intimate, emotional, and sometimes humorous correspondence throughout the war led to marriage in 1945. Each bore scars. She, from escaping the Nazis, he from childhood tragedy. Overshadowing them both was a secret that burdened Ralph for most of his life.

In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his grandmother was persistent, and two years later, Huang's father built her a coffin. Over the next 15 years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma's burial.

Mothering under normal circumstances takes all you have to give. But what happens when your child is disabled, and sacrificing all you've got and more is the only hope for a decent future? Full of rage and resilience, duty and love, Ashley Bristowe delivers a mother's voice like no other we've heard.

As an associate of the Gambino family, Ferrante relied on his instincts to pull off some of the biggest heists in US history. By the age of 21, he had netted millions of dollars for his employers. His natural talent for management led Mafia bosses to rely on him. After being arrested and serving an eight-and-a-half-year prison sentence, Ferrante went straight. He realized that the Mob's most valuable business lessons would allow him to survive and thrive in the real world.

In the span of a generation, oil-rich Venezuela spiraled into a dire state of economic collapse. Reporter Paula Ramón experienced the crisis firsthand as her middle-class family saw their quality of life deteriorate. Public services no longer functioned. Money lost its value. Her mother couldn’t afford to buy food, which was increasingly scarce. The once-prosperous country fell into ruin. Like many others, Ramón’s family struggled to survive each day in their beloved city, Maracaibo—until, one by one, they each made the unbearable choice to leave the home they love.

Interweaving forgotten colonial history and long-buried indigenous traditions, Dafilmmaker Jill Damatac takes us through her time in America, cooking her way through Filipino recipes in her kitchen as she searches for a sense of self and renewed possibility. With emotional intelligence, clarity, and grace, Dirty Kitchen explores fractured memories to ask questions of identity, colonialism, immigration, belonging, and to find ways in which the ritual, tradition, and comfort of food, can answer them.

Growing up north of Toronto, R.H. Thomson’s imagination was captured by romantic notions of war. He spent his days playing with toy soldiers on the carpet of his grandmother’s house, recreating the Battle of Britain with model planes in his bedroom, or sitting at the local theatre watching World War II B movies—ones that offered a very clear perspective on who were the heroes and who the villains; which side were the victors and which the vanquished.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis is used to looking after children from difficult home situations, but she finds herself struggling when she agrees to take in Taylor and her younger brother, Reece, for a short while. Taylor tries desperately not to fit in, to be the tough young teen that she has had to become, making it clear that she cares about nothing and no one, while Reece is just desperate for someone to love him.

A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall.

One woman's journey through unbearable loss. A true story.