New Biographies Memoirs

Reclaiming Parkland details the failed attempt of Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman - cofounder of the production company Playtone - to make Vincent Bugliosi’s mammoth book about the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History, into a miniseries. It exposes the questionable origins of Reclaiming History in a dubious mock trial for cable television, in which Bugliosi played the role of an attorney prosecuting Lee Harvey Oswald for murder, and how this formed the basis for the epic tome.

Lawrence Weschler sets Oliver Sacks' brilliant table talk and extravagant personality in vivid relief, casting himself as a beanpole Sancho to Sacks' capacious Quixote. We see Sacks rowing and ranting and caring deeply; composing the essays that would form The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; recalling his turbulent drug-fueled younger days; helping his patients and exhausting his friends; and waging intellectual war against a medical and scientific establishment that failed to address his greatest concern: the spontaneous specificity of the individual human soul.

In his classic book Devil’s Bargain, Joshua Green chronicled how the forces of economic populism on the right, led by the likes of Steve Bannon, turned Donald Trump into their flawed but powerful vessel. In The Rebels, he gives an epic account of the long struggle that has played out in parallel on the left, told through an intimate reckoning with the careers of the three political figures who have led the charge most prominently.

Best-selling and beloved author Frances Mayes discovers the hidden pleasures of Italy in a sumptuous travel narrative that crisscrosses the country, with inventive new recipes celebrating Italian cuisine.

This is the truly remarkable life story of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and later was arrested for obtaining goods by false pretences. With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary tale of Australia's greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.

In this gripping tale of a modern-day outlaw, Shane Dankoski meticulously recounts his time as a high-ranking member of the United Nations gang of British Columbia in the early 2000s. Under constant threat from other gangs, including the Wolfpack and Hells Angels, Shane spent a decade evading the law and building his drug empire. Shane seemed destined for gang life. He grew up in a violent home on a small block in a neighbourhood of Surrey where a nation-spanning gang war woudl later take root.

The long agony of the “sick man of Europe”, an expression used by the tsar of Russia to depict the falling Ottoman Empire, could almost blind people to its incredible power and history. Preserving its mixed heritage - coming from both its geographic position, rising above the ashes of the Byzantine Empire, and the tradition inherited from the Muslim conquests - the Ottoman Empire lasted more than six centuries.

With brutal honesty and his trademark take-no-prisoners humor, Tracy tells the story of his rise to fame, with all its highs and its many lows - from the very public battles with alcohol and diabetes that threatened both his career and his life to the private and poignant end of his 20-year marriage. In his singularly warped and brilliant way, he muses on family, love, sex, race, politics, ambition, and what it takes to bring the funny.

From an early age, Margaret Fuller provoked and dazzled New England’s intellectual elite. Her famous Conversations changed women’s sense of how they could think and live; her editorship of the Transcendentalist literary journal the Dial shaped American Romanticism. Now, Megan Marshall, whose acclaimed The Peabody Sisters "discovered" three fascinating women, has done it again: No biography of Fuller has made her ideas so alive or her life so moving.

Created by the founder of Breathing Space Creative Literary Studio, acclaimed writer and editor Chelene Knight, Let It Go draws on personal experience and the advice of leaders from various Black communities to share hard-won tools for joy-discovery—tools such as how to say no with love; how to call back activities that feel good; how to reshape communication with those closest to you; how to revise language; and most of all, how to learn to let go in order to redefine what we think joy is.

By 2050, $50 trillion will change hands in North America in the largest generational wealth transfer ever. It will remake the world and be the biggest money-making opportunity in history. "Business as usual", founded on exploitation and environmental ruin, is over. Climate catastrophe, reactionary politics, and widening inequity have put the world on edge. Meanwhile innovations are shifting the economic ground, and an entire generation is pounding the table for real change.

In a dim clearing off a county road in Kentucky sits a sagging outdoor stage buried in moss and dead leaves. It used to be the centerpiece of carnival-like Sunday afternoons where local guitarists, fiddlers and mandolin players hammered out old mountain ballads and legends from the dawn of country music performed their classic hits. Most of the musicians who showed up have long since passed, but Nashville stars Ricky Skaggs and Marty Stuart survive. Highways and Heartaches takes listeners on the rural circuit Skaggs and Stuart traveled.

When businessman Thomas Peterson is killed outside a football ground in the Highlands, there are several witnesses. Yet the hunt for the killer is proving as futile as the search for a motive. Possible connections to Russian money and an eerie retirement home are soon thrown into the mix. To further complicate things, DI Westphall's MI6 past is coming back to haunt him. Guilt stalks his dreams, but could there be a message in these nightmares? Westphall is in danger of losing his head just when he needs it the most. He must find answers, and fast, before the murderer strikes again.

This book delves into the life and mysteries surrounding Rajneesh, later known as Osho, exploring questions that have long intrigued followers and critics alike. Why did he go to America, and who was the woman who followed him like a shadow? How did he encounter his past-life mother and lover in this life? Why did he declare himself "Bhagwan," only to renounce the title later?

So rapid has this national transformation been that it has taken place within the lifetimes of these remarkable young sportsmen. Colombia Es Pasión! How a New Generation of Cyclists Changed a Nation explores the lives and dreams of each of Colombia's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption - of the emergence of the indigenous to global sporting glory.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition, with boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, and an attempt to find a deeper sense of plac - and a slower pace - in a small New England town. This is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers - holding on, letting go.

This audiobook is a story of recovery and self-discovery with ups and downs, struggles, and successes. The journey starts with an introduction that sets the context for a series of chapters describing the physical and emotional aspects of the recovery.

A unique burden was inherited by the children of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his celebrated siblings, Senators Robert and Ted Kennedy. Raised in a world of enormous privilege against the backdrop of American history, this third generation of Kennedys often veered between towering accomplishment and devastating defeat. In his revelatory new audiobook, acclaimed Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli draws back the curtain on the next generation of America’s most famous family.

In her former career as an English professor, Theresa Brown had been shielded from the harsh reality of death. That all changed the day she decided to become an oncology nurse. In Critical Care, Theresa writes powerfully and honestly about her first year on the hospital floor. With great compassion and a disarming sense of humor, she shares the trials and triumphs of her patients and comes to realize that caring for a patient means much more than simply treating a disease.

Part biography, part cultural history, The Creation of Anne Boleyn is a fascinating reconstruction of Anne’s life and an illuminating look at her afterlife in the popular imagination. Why is Anne so compelling? Why has she inspired such extreme reactions? What did she really look like? Was she the flaxen-haired martyr of Romantic paintings or the raven-haired seductress of twenty-first-century portrayals? (Answer: Neither.) And perhaps the most provocative questions concern Anne’s death more than her life.