Memoir Relationship

Living in Oklahoma with her maternal grandfather, Mary gets a new name and a new life. But she's haunted by the past: by the baby girls she's sure will come looking for her someday, by the mother she left behind, by the father who left her. Mary is a college student when her sisters start to get back in touch. With each subsequent reunion, her family becomes closer to whole again.

Siri Lindley wanted to be a world champion triathlete . . . even though she didn't know how to swim. She wanted to love and be loved . . . even though her father shunned her because she was gay. She wanted to savor every day and enjoy the life she'd made with her wife, her career, and her passion for horses . . . even though in November 2019 she was diagnosed with a rare—and usually fatal—form of acute myeloid leukemia. Every time Siri has faced what seemed impossible, she found a way to not only survive the situation, but to thrive within it.

From the backyard hockey rink to the nail-biting suspense of draft days, Karl Subban shares tales of his family's unique hockey journey. Mixing personal stories with lessons he learned as a coach and principal - lessons about goal setting, perseverance, and accomplishment - How We Did It will allow other parents, teachers, coaches, and mentors to apply the same principles as they help the young people in their lives to identify, develop, and live their dreams.

Patti Davis, the daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, writes about losing her father to Alzheimer's disease, saying goodbye in stages, and watching the progression of a disease that steals what is most precious: a person's memory. Past and present come together in this illuminating portrait of grief, of a man, a disease, and a girl and her father.

"I'll never forget that night. It was like a romance novel, an old Broadway musical, and a John Wayne western rolled into one. Out for a quick drink with friends, I wasn't looking to meet anyone, let alone a tall, rugged cowboy who lived on a cattle ranch miles away from my cultured, corporate hometown. But before I knew it, I'd been struck with a lightning bolt... and I was completely powerless to stop it."

When Jennifer McGaha's grandmother was in her late eighties, Jennifer asked her what her favorite age so far had been. "Fifty-five," her grandmother answered. So, in her own fifty-fifth year, Jennifer began to take note. She jotted down her impressions of simple, everyday things that struck her as beautiful or humorous or intriguing and kept a list of all the accomplishments, large and small, that actually mattered to her. These observations became Jennifer's Joy Document, a radical act of reclaiming joy and an exercise in paying attention.

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.

You Should Fall for Someone Who Doesn’t You reflects on many facets of love and relationships: everything from the lows of longing for someone who doesn’t want you back to the highs of a relationship finally going right to the serene place in between when you realize you’ve finally healed a broken heart. Filled with insight, wit, truth, and compassion, these essays will take you on a journey that mirrors love itself.

Thrown together by a zealous English teacher's classroom-mailbox assignment, notorious scrapper, Adam "Kurl" Kurlansky, and Jonathan Hopkirk, a flamboyant Walt Whitman wannabe, have to write an old-fashioned letter to each other every week. Kurl is a senior, an ex-high school football player, held back a year, while Jo is a nerdy, out tenth grader with a penchant for vintage clothes and a deep love for poetry. But with homophobia, bullying, and familial abuse, Jonathan and Kurl must struggle to overcome their conflicts and hold onto their growing relationship.

Twentysomething Nora McInerny Purmort bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend and job to job. Then she met Aaron, a charismatic art director and her kindred spirit. They made mixtapes (and pancakes) into the wee hours of the morning. They finished each other's sentences. They just knew. When Aaron was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, they refused to let it limit their love. They got engaged on Aaron's hospital bed and married after his first surgery. They had a baby when he was on chemo.

Baseball Dads is a heartwarming collection of notable major-league players’ favorite baseball-related memories about how their relationships with their fathers shaped them, not only as players, but as the men they are today. From superstars like David Wright, Josh Hamilton, C. C. Sabathia, Adrian Gonzalez, Chipper Jones, and Kevin Youkilis, to journeyman big leaguers like Adam LaRoche, J. D. Drew, Shelley Duncan, Barry Zito, and Jeff Francoeur, this inspiring book reveals, through its 15 vivid profiles, the profound impact fathers can have.

In the 10 years since its electrifying debut, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love has become a worldwide phenomenon, empowering millions of readers to set out on paths they never thought possible, in search of their own best selves. Here, in this candid and captivating collection, nearly 50 of those readers - people as diverse in their experiences as they are in age and background - share their stories. The journeys they recount are transformative - sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking, but always deeply inspiring.

Fleeing intimate partner violence at age 20, Julie was stalked by her ex-partner for more than 10 years, rarely mentioning it to friends, let alone addressing it publicly. The contrast between her public career as a brave champion for women with her own private life of violence and fear meant a shaky and exhausting balancing act. Resilience Is Futile is a story of survival, courage, and ultimately, hope. But it is also a challenge to the ways we understand trauma and resilience. It is the story of one survivor who won’t give up and refuses to shut up.

The New York Times best-selling author and front man and rhythm guitarist of Kiss grants fans an all-access backstage pass to his personal life and shows them how to pursue a rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle of their own, offering hard-won advice from a music legend.

Decades before Perdita Felicien became a World Champion hurdler running the biggest race of her life at the 2004 Olympics, she carried more than a nation's hopes - she carried her mother Catherine's dreams. In 1974, Catherine is determined and tenacious, but she's also pregnant with her second child and just scraping by in St. Lucia. When she meets a wealthy white Canadian family vacationing on the island, she knows it's her chance.

As an enthusiastic participant in the Maker Movement, Mick Ebeling has found countless ways to create simple new do-it-yourself technologies. But Ebeling has always dreamed big and soon realized that by ignoring that little voice of doubt in his head, his hobby could have the potential to actually help people surmount seemingly impossible odds. From crafting prosthetics for a young Sudanese boy who lost his hands in a bombing to a machine that allowed a paralyzed artist to draw again, Ebeling soon saw that nothing is actually impossible.

Stephen Alter was raised by American missionary parents in the hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he and his wife Ameeta, now live. Their idyllic existence was brutally interrupted when four armed intruders invaded their house and viciously attacked them, leaving them for dead. The violent assault and the trauma of almost dying left him questioning assumptions he had lived by since childhood. For the first time, he encountered the face of evil and the terror of the unknown.

Deliberate Discomfort follows the journey of Jason Van Camp as a new Green Beret commander taking over a team of combat-hardened Special Forces veterans. This true story tells firsthand the intense, traumatic battles these warriors fought and won, sharing lessons learned from their incredible backgrounds. A cadre of scientists further break down each experience, translating them into digestible and relatable action items, allowing the listener to apply these lessons forged under fire to their own lives.

From the acclaimed musician comes a tender, surprising, and often uproarious memoir about his dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood. The only child of a hard-drinking father and a Holy Roller mother, Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast from an early age, whether knock-down-drag-outs at a local dive bar or fire-and-brimstone sermons at Pentecostal tent revivals. He was an expert at reading his father’s mercurial moods and gauging exactly when his mother was likely to erupt, and even before he learned to ride a bike, he was often forced to take matters into his own hands.

Born in the tough East End of Glasgow and married into one of the city's most notorious criminal families, Janey Godley's young life was far from ordinary. From the grim and far-from-swinging '60s, to the discos of the '70s, to the tidal wave of heroin addiction which engulfed Glasgow's East End during the '80s, Janey was witness to an extraordinary underworld - as well as religious sectarianism, abject poverty and a frightening family of in-laws. Throughout it all, her indomitable spirit - and her vivid sense of humour - kept her alive.