New Biographies Memoirs

For 20 years Daniel Paquette's murder in New Hampshire went unsolved. It remained a secret between two high school friends until Eric Windhurst's arrest in 2005. What was revealed was a crime born of adolescent passion between Eric and Daniel's stepdaughter, Melanie - redefining the meaning of loyalty, justice, and revenge.

Nicolas Nabokov, a Russian-born composer and cultural diplomat, befriended many of the 20th century’s greatest musicians and artists. With delightful anecdotes and personal reflections, his memoir is a truly unique historical document that enriches our understanding of the Cold War’s impact on culture.

Mr. New Orleans tells the incredible story of Frenchy Brouillette, a redneck Cajun teenager who stole his big brother's motorcycle and embarked on a 60-year vacation to New Orleans, where he became a legendary gangster and the underworld political fixer for his cousin, Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. Written by Crescent City native Matthew Randazzo V, the wickedly funny Mr. New Orleans is the first book to ever break the code of secrecy of the New Orleans Mafia Family, the oldest and most mysterious criminal secret society in America.

Congressman John Lewis was a paragon of the civil rights movement and political leadership for decades. A hero we won’t soon forget, Lewis was a beacon of hope and a model of humility whose invocation to “good trouble” continues to inspire millions across our nation. In his last months on earth, even while battling cancer, he dedicated time to share his memories, beliefs, and advice—exclusively immortalized in these chapters—as a message to the generations to come.

At the age of sixty-eight, with children well-launched and husband long-exed and recently retired from a demanding career, Cathrin Bradbury realized she needed a map—several in fact, some physical, some of the mind and heart—to guide her through the coming milestones and all of the inevitable "comes with age" stuff.

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.

Journalist Sarah Dingle was 27 when she learned that her identity was a lie. Over dinner one night, her mother casually mentioned Sarah had been conceived using a sperm donor. The man who’d raised her wasn’t her father; in fact, she had no idea who her father was. Or who she really was. As the shock receded, Sarah began to investigate her own existence. Thus began a 10-year journey - digging through hospital files, chasing leads and taking a DNA test - that finally led to her biological origins.

Known for deep dives into true crime, extremist ideologies and fringe subcultures, journalist Leah Sottile turns her investigative eye toward American New Age culture. Today, tarot cards, astrology and crystals are everywhere — from Instagram and TikTok, sold at upscale boutiques and pricey wellness retreats. Sottile investigates how the recent surge of interest in New Age ideas speaks to a culture that is woven into the very fabric of America, and how self-professed gurus like Love Has Won's Mother God and the mysterious channeler Ramtha have built devout followings because of it.

1916: Norma Wallace, age 15, arrived in New Orleans. Sexy and shrewd, she quickly went from streetwalker to madam and by 1920 had opened what became a legendary house of prostitution. There she entertained a steady stream of governors, gangsters, and movie stars until she was arrested at last in 1962. Shortly before she died in 1974, she tape-recorded her memories. With those tapes and original research, Christine Wiltz chronicles Norma's rise and fall with the social history of New Orleans.

"Candy Jones" was the stage name of Jessica Wilcox who became famous as a model and "pinup girl" in the early 1940s. Her story seems too bizarre to be true. One of America's most famous models, brainwashed by the CIA? Yes, it is another example of truth being stranger than fiction. The story begins with Candy's wedding to Long John Nebel, New York's most successful radio talk-show host. During the wedding, and regularly thereafter, Candy's personality would seem to shift. She would suddenly change from her affable, self-effacing self to a brusque, aggressive "stranger".

When Helena Andrews heard this declaration on Saturday Night Live, her first reaction was How daaare you? But after a commercial break and some thought, she decided to poke at the stereotype that says "successful" and "bitch" are synonyms. Unafraid and frank, she comes to realize that being a bitch is sometimes the best way to be—except, of course, when it's not.

When Rachel Bertsche first moves to Chicago, she’s thrilled to finally share a zip code, let alone an apartment, with her boyfriend. But shortly after getting married, Bertsche realizes that her new life is missing one thing: friends. Sure, she has plenty of BFFs—in New York and San Francisco and Boston and Washington, D.C. Still, in her adopted hometown, there’s no one to call at the last minute for girl talk over brunch or a reality-TV marathon over a bottle of wine. Taking matters into her own hands, Bertsche develops a plan....

Charles Bowden writes, “this book is not about how the world ends but how a new world is being born.” Murder City explores this new world, focusing on the idea that Mexico is collapsing into a permanent culture of violence. Bowden focuses on Ciudad Juarez, which lies just across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Infamously known as the place where women disappear, last year alone 1,607 people were murdered, a number that is set to accelerate in 2009.

“When I become mayor, we become mayor.” Ras Baraka’s famous words speak to exactly who he is as a leader - a fiercely loyal member of his community. In this innovative and ground-breaking Audible Original, hear how Baraka - the mayor of Newark, New Jersey - grew from spoken-word artist to school principal to successful politician.

Winner of the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for History. In this magisterial biography, T. J. Stiles paints a portrait of Custer both deeply personal and sweeping in scope, proving how much of Custer’s legacy has been ignored. He demolishes Custer’s historical caricature, revealing a volatile, contradictory, intense person - capable yet insecure, intelligent yet bigoted, passionate yet self-destructive, a romantic individualist at odds with the institution of the military (he was court-martialed twice in six years).

Neil Wagner is one of the greatest bowlers ever to play test cricket for New Zealand. His unique style and passion for the game made him a Black Caps' fan favourite and earned him praise from every corner of the cricket-playing world. In this revealing memoir, he tells his story for the first time in his own words. From his humble beginnings in working-class Pretoria, to his move to New Zealand to chase his lifelong dream and his emergence as an integral part of the most successful period in Black Caps' history, Wagner opens up about his triumphs on the field and personal challenges off it.

They looked like a slightly mischievous version of the all-American couple: a handsome army veteran and his gorgeous artist girlfriend. Zackery Bowen, after completing his tour of Iraq, came home to New Orleans, and in two weeks before Hurricane Katrina, he met Addie Hall. Their improvised, hard-partying endurance during and after the storm inspired news outlets around the world to feature the couple as the personification of the indomitable spirit of New Orleans. But beneath the surface, trouble was brewing.

Colditz Castle was Nazi Germany’s infamous "escape-proof" wartime prison, where hundreds of the most determined and resourceful Allied prisoners were sent. Despite having more guards than inmates, Australian Lieutenant Jack Champ and other prisoners tirelessly carried out their campaign to escape from the massive floodlit stronghold, by any means necessary.

One of art's purest challenges is to translate a human being into words. The New Yorker magazine has met this challenge more often and more successfully than any other modern American journal. Starting with its light fantastic evocations of the glamorous and the idiosyncratic in the '20s and continuing to the present, with complex pictures of such contemporaries as Marlon Brando and Richard Pryor, The New Yorker's Profiles have presented readers with a vast and brilliant portrait gallery.

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.