New Biographies Memoirs

Samuel de Champlain est le véritable père de la Nouvelle-France. Navigateur, cartographe, écrivain, ethnographe, il avait une vision : celle d’installer une colonie française sur les bords du Saint-Laurent. Il a toujours manifesté un grand respect pour les nations amérindiennes qu’il a côtoyées. Malgré tous les obstacles rencontrés sur sa route et les multiples voyages qu’il a dû effectuer entre la France et le Nouveau-Monde, il n’a jamais cédé, jamais fait de compromis.

More than 500 years ago, 16th-century Reformer John Calvin was born—a theologian whose teachings set the stage for reformation of the church around the world. The modern world is in continual need of his Christ-exalting doctrine and vision of the Christian life. In 20 essays by leading Reformed pastors and scholars, this primer explores Calvin’s life, teaching, and legacy for a new generation. This book is a clarion call to Christians everywhere to take seriously the ongoing need of theological reformation across the globe.

For over twenty-five years, actor Jassa Ahluwalia described himself as 'half Indian, half English'. His fluent Punjabi always prompted bewilderment, medical staff questioned the legitimacy of his name, and the world of casting taught him he wasn't 'the right kind of mixed-race'. Feeling caught between two worlds, it wasn't long before Jassa embarked on a call to action: we need to change how we think and talk about mixed identity.

Heidi Barr didn't believe in Jesus. No one in her Jewish family did, nor did they want to—especially not her father, who told her that Jesus Christ was the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on humankind. So when Heidi was in a terrible horseback riding accident and died at age sixteen, Jesus was the last person she expected to see. Yet she did. And then she returned to life. This is the incredible true story of Heidi's difficult family life, her sudden death, her unexpectedly loving encounter with Jesus, and her return to life on earth as a person completely and irrevocably changed.

Antoine Lavoisier reinvented chemistry, overthrowing the long-established principles of alchemy and inventing an entirely new terminology, one still in use by chemists. Madison Smartt Bell’s enthralling narrative comes across like a race to the finish line, as the very circumstances that enabled Lavoisier to secure his reputation as the father of modern chemistry—a considerable fortune and social connections with the likes of Benjamin Franklin—also caused his glory to be cut short by the French Revolution.

In this revelatory memoir, doctor Cynthia Li shares the truth other doctors don’t always understand and often won’t share if they do - that chronic illness is complicated, and that treatment is not just a matter of test results and prescriptions but requires a more comprehensive approach. By sharing her own struggle with a disabling autoimmune crisis, which forced her to question her own conventional medical training and embrace the integrative principles of functional medicine, Li reveals the insider knowledge sufferers need to truly begin healing - mind, body, and spirit.

Drawing on the diaries of one woman in 18th-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in 27 years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine.

Wallis Simpson is known as the woman at the center of the most scandalous love affair of the 20th century, but in this surprising new biography, best-selling author Anna Pasternak redeems a women wronged by history with new information revealed by those who were close to the couple - presenting Wallis as a convenient scapegoat to rid England of a king deemed unworthy to rule.

In this incisive, fast-paced history, New York Times best-selling author Arthur Herman brilliantly reveals how Lenin and Wilson rewrote the rules of modern geopolitics. Through the end of World War I, countries marched into war only to increase or protect their national interests. After World War I, countries began going to war over ideas. Together, Lenin and Wilson unleashed the disruptive ideologies that would sweep the world, from nationalism and globalism to Communism and terrorism, and that continue to shape our world today.

The Cure remain, 40 plus years into their career, one of the biggest rock bands in the world. Amidst the record-setting Shows of a Lost World Tour winding down, acclaimed music journalist Simon Price has crafted a first of its kind history of this band that will satisfy legion of fans eagerly awaiting The Cure’s new album. Curepedia is a career-spanning and in-depth biography of Robert Smith and company, chronicling their 40 plus year history with hundreds of entries organized in an A-to-Z fashion.

When faced with an empty nest, Kari decides to spread her wings. Giving up a job she loves, she sets off to walk across a whole country. A big one. A contemporary take on an ancient experience, Pilgrim is an entertaining and moving memoir of Kari’s 900-kilometer walk to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. In classic pilgrim fashion, she meets and befriends an array of companions along the way, from all walks of life, united by a common sincerity of purpose. Battling through sun and snow, mud and mountains, blisters and bedbugs, her real destination turns out to be "deep peace".

It's men like Jimmy Coonan and Mickey Featherstone who gave Hell's Kitchen its name. In the mid-1970s, these two longtime friends take the reins of New York's Irish mob, using brute force to give it hitherto unthinkable power. Jimmy, a charismatic sociopath, is the leader. Mickey, whose memories of Vietnam torture him daily, is his enforcer. Together they make brutality their trademark, butchering bodies or hurling them out the window.

Christopher Reeve has mastered the art of turning the impossible into the inevitable. In Nothing Is Impossible, Reeve shows that we are all capable of overcoming seemingly insurmountable hardships. Published on the eve of both his fiftieth birthday and the seventh anniversary of his spinal cord injury, Nothing Is Impossible reminds us that life is not to be taken for granted but to be lived fully with zeal, curiosity, and gratitude.

Just after her fortieth birthday, author Shauna Niequist found herself in a season of chaos, change, and loss unlike anything she'd ever faced. She discovered that many of the beliefs and practices that she usually turned to were no longer serving her.

In 2007, Russell Edwards, fuelled by fascination and determination, discovered a shawl – an unexpected key in the historical mystery of Jack the Ripper. With an intriguing blend of forensic investigation and historical research, the book explores the gripping evidence, a blood-stained shawl, connected to the universally infamous criminal, Jack the Ripper. Persistent and fearless, Edwards embarks on a captivating seven-year quest to authenticate the shawl and unearth its concealed truths. His search takes him deeper into the heart of one of history's most chilling real crime stories.

There have been many comments made and books written about Siya Kolisi, captain of the Springboks, and the first Black man to lead his country in more than 128 years of South African rugby. But now, for the very first time, Siya Kolisi shares his story in an extraordinarily intimate memoir, charting his journey from being born into the impoverished Zwide township, to leading his proud nation to an astonishing victory at the Rugby World Cup in 2019.

Computers have changed since 1981, when Tracy Kidder memorably recorded the drama, comedy, and excitement of one company's efforts to bring a new microcomputer to market. What has not changed is the feverish pace of the high-tech industry, the go-for-broke approach to business that has caused so many computer companies to win big (or go belly up), and the cult of pursuing mind-bending technological innovations.

A thrilling firsthand account by husband-and-wife ex-CIA operatives.

For years, the DeCavalcantes, the most powerful Mob family in Jersey, labored in the shadows of the more famous families in New York - the likes of the Gambinos and the Columbos. Dismissed by the big-city capos, the DeCavalcantes finally came into their own when they found their lives mirrored in the television hit, The Sopranos. Overnight it legitimized the made men of the Garden State. Now they were a familia to be reckoned with. Unfortunately with high profile came high risk.

The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.