New Biographies Memoirs

In August 2004, Governor Jim McGreevey of New Jersey made history when he stepped before microphones, declared, "My truth is that I am a gay American", and resigned his office. The story made international headlines, but what led to that moment was a human and political drama more complex and fascinating than anyone has yet revealed.

Piper Kerman lebt glücklich mit ihrem Verlobten in Manhattan, als ihr eine Jugendsünde zum Verhängnis wird. Das Gericht verurteilt sie zu einer 15-monatigen Haftstrafe. Über die Zeit im Frauengefängnis, über Schikanen, bösartige Attacken, aber auch über Freundschaften und vor allem ihre toughen und warmherzigen Mitgefangenen schreibt sie ohne Selbstmitleid, humorvoll und sehr unterhaltsam.

The hilarious tale of the UK Independence Party's journey from rags to riches and back again from a front-line activist. Paul Oakley had five minutes of fame at a Young Conservative conference when he ripped up a copy of the Maastricht Treaty at the end of his speech attacking John Major's European policy. He stood for the Tories in the 2005 general election but failed to lie convincingly enough to be added to the A-list of candidates when David Cameron became party leader. So in 2011 he renounced his Tory membership in a fit of pique and joined UKIP.

وبينما يكافح العالم اليوم لمواجهة روسيا الأكثر جرأة، فإن أهمية فهم فلاديمير بوتين الهائلة والطموحة لم تكن أكبر من أي وقت مضى... فمن ناحية، ساعدت الإصلاحات المحلية الكثيرة التي قام بها بوتين - من التخفيضات الضريبية إلى توسيع حقوق الملكية - على إعادة تشكيل إمكانات الملايين من الروس الذين كانت تجربتهم الديمقراطية الوحيدة هي الجريمة والفقر وعدم الاستقرار بعد سقوط الاتحاد السوفييتي.

For over a century, the Ned Kelly legend has grown and grown. He's become Australia's Robin Hood, and leader of a colonial Irish resistance. How much of the legend is true? This is the real story of the hunt for the Kelly Gang over two long years. As gripping as any police procedural, it is an account of poorly trained officers unfamiliar with the terrain, in pursuit of the most dangerous men in the state. By recounting the story from the perspective of the law, David Dufty gets to the heart of the story and finds answers to many unresolved questions.

Shocking real-life stories of murderous women who used rat poison to rid themselves of husbands and other inconvenient family members. After World War II, Sydney experienced a crime wave that was chillingly calculated. Discontent mixed with despair, greed with callous disregard. Women who had lost their wartime freedoms headed back into the kitchen with sinister intent and the household poison thallium, normally used to kill rats, was repurposed to kill husbands and other inconvenient family members.

From the Pulitzer-winning author of the New York Times bestseller The Nazis Next Door, a deeply reported exploration of the violent resurgence of hatred and white supremacy through the lens of Orange County, California—“ground zero” for racial extremism—and the story of one brutal murder there that revealed the deep roots of violent bigotry as a bellwether for the country.

This thought-provoking book examines gang history in the region encompassing West Texas, Southern New Mexico, and Northern Chihuahua, Mexico. Known as the El Paso-Juárez borderland region, the area contains more than three million people spanning 130 miles from east to west. Mike Tapia examines this region by exploring a century of historical developments through a criminological lens and by studying the diverse subcultures on both sides of the law.

A story of love, war, and life as a Jewish immigrant in the squalid factories and lively dance halls of New York’s Garment District in the 1930s, My Mother’s Wars is the memoir Lillian Faderman's mother was never able to write. The daughter delves into her mother's past to tell the story of a Latvian girl who left her village for America with dreams of a life on the stage and encountered the realities of her new world: the battles she was forced to fight as a woman, an immigrant worker, and a Jew with family left behind in Hitler’s deadly path.

How would you feel if your own mother stole your child? What would you do? Could you ever forgive her? Reflection is a powerful tool. From Luton, England to Adelaide, Australia, I've covered a lot of distance, geographically and emotionally. I'm no one special. My life is an ordinary one that became extraordinary. Everyone has their story to tell. This is mine.

At the tender age of twenty, Jenn faces a pivotal moment when her boyfriend, Morey, proposes marriage after only a few weeks of dating. Her intuition urges her to say no, but she’s spent the entirety of her teenage years caregiving for family; she yearns for adventure, and she thinks relocating to California with Morey will give her the freedom she craves. So she says yes—only to find herself back in the caregiver role after he becomes disabled a few years into their marriage. But it’s Morey’s volatile personality that ultimately leads Jenn to make a brave decision: it’s time to leave.

On August 25, 1895, Ernest Alfred Hall was born into a pioneering Australian family that lived on a 313-acre property called "Cloverdale" near the hamlet of Beech Forest, south of the Otway Ranges, some 200 kilometres south west of Melbourne, Victoria. As a child, it seemed he would be destined for the life of a farmer in a country that was just realising its independence through Federation, yet his path was to be diverted by the cataclysmic events that befell Europe and the British Empire.

Go behind the scenes of broadcasting in New York! It's a fascinating look at the big personalities and even bigger egos who delivered the news each night. Here Now the News comes alive with exciting stories about Jim Jensen and Rolland Smith, Roger Grimsby and Bill Beutel, and Chuck Scarborough and Sue Simmons. Learn about the anchors who commanded respect and ratings during the 1970s and 1980s. It's the time that the "anchorman" would pave the way for other females and Black journalists to join the desk, as viewers would finally get to see diversity.

Growing up in Seale, Alabama as a Black Queer kid, then attending the Rhode Island School of Design as an undergraduate, Jon Key hungered to see himself in the fields of Art and Design. But in lectures, critiques, and in the books he read, he struggled to see and learn about people who intersected with his identity or who GOT him. So he started asking himself questions: What did it mean to be a graphic designer with his point of view? What did it mean to be a Black graphic designer?

The eighteenth-century hanging of a schoolteacher for concealing the birth of a child out of wedlock has appeared in local legend over the last few centuries, but the full account of Ruth's story has never been told. Drawing on over two years of investigative research, author Carolyn Marvin brings to light the dramatic details of Ruth's life and the cruel injustice of colonial Portsmouth's moral code. As Marvin uncovers the real flesh-and-blood woman who suffered the ultimate punishment, her listeners come to understand Ruth as an individual and a woman of her time.

Martin Luther King Jr. was the most inspiring civil rights leader in American history. He was a scholar and a very gifted orator, but, before all else, he was a pastor, a theologian, a martyr, a Christian. Spirit-Led Prophet uniquely tells his compelling story from the perspective of his faith. In the midst of a tumultous public life, King prayed for guidance and depended upon God’s spirit to lead him.

In December 1932, as the Depression tightened its grip, the body of a woman was found in Queens Park, Sydney. It was a popular park. There were houses in plain view. Yet this woman had been violently murdered without anyone noticing. Other equally brutal and shocking murders of women in public places were to follow. Australia's first serial killer was at large.

David Limbaugh has examined Jesus Christ's life, his divinity, and the prophecies that preceded him in the Old Testament. Now, the best-selling author picks up after the Gospels in a captivating study of Jesus Christ's legacy in the early church and the work of Saint Paul.

The ultimate collection of Australia's craziest cons and mad schemes from a master storyteller. Australia is the birthplace and setting of some of the wildest, craziest and least-likely-to-succeed cons and rorts in history. From the cleverest double-crosses to the most unlikely and maddest schemes, master storyteller Jim Haynes reminds us that we've never been shy of pulling a trick or two.

On 7 February 2009, Roger Wood was the police officer in charge of Kinglake, at the epicentre of the worst ever bushfire disaster in Australia's history, Black Saturday. As the firestorm engulfed the community, he risked his life again and again to try to save people. When he phoned home to warn his wife what was coming, she screamed that the fire had already hit their property. Then the line went dead.