New Memoirs

Old New Worlds intertwines the immigrant stories of the author and her great-great grandmother. Sarah Barker and her new husband sail from England in 1815 to minister to the indigenous Khoihoi in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. In the midst of conflict, illness, and natural disasters, Sarah bears 16 children. Two hundred years later, Judith leaves post-apartheid South Africa with her new American husband to immigrate to the United States. She is drawn to Sarah’s immigrant story in the context of her own experience, and she sets out to try and trace her.

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.

Brad Blanton is at ease in this first volume of his autobiography. Some NEW Kind of Trailer Trash tells the tale of Brad Blanton, including the most intimate details, demonstrating the inner security and self-deprecating humor which it would seem support his international reputation as a gestalt therapist, seminar leader, and writer published all over the world. He owns his life in all aspects and finds in his weirdness his salvation, demonstrating the radical honesty he's made famous and rooting his self-understanding, which is considerable, in his childhood.

The Sweet Potato Queens are back and bawdier than ever in Southern belle extraordinaire Jill Conner Browne’s ninth edition of the hysterical series. Having experienced pretty much ALL of the crappy parts of life, Browne feels it is her duty to render whatever assistance she can to her fellow sufferers - and she does so in her own inimitable fashion.

Her father taught her there are very few situations in life that we really and truly cannot change, and it is up to us to figure out how to either make fun OUT of them - or make fun OF them.

The work of Commander Valiant Thor and his Venusian associates was obviously of great importance in helping mankind through a difficult time. What we will ultimately do with the many concepts that Thor gifted Tesla, Keith, Cooper, Barker, and others is, of course, still up in the air. But, so far, so good.

On Zulema's fourth date with the man who is now her husband, they created a "Life List" of adventures they would share together, from skydiving to luxurious trips around the world, and as wine collectors, traveling the wine regions to meet their favorite producers. Wildly successful and in love, Zulema was living a fairy tale. But, two years into their marriage, the Life List took on a shocking urgency when she was diagnosed with sarcoma, an exceedingly rare and incurable form of cancer, along with a host of other complex and mysterious medical conditions.

In Alvin York, Douglas V. Mastriano sorts fact from myth in the first full-length biography of York in decades. He meticulously examines York's youth in the hills of east Tennessee, his service in the Great War, and his return to a quiet civilian life dedicated to charity. By reviewing artifacts recovered from the battlefield using military terrain analysis, forensic study, and research in both German and American archives, Mastriano reconstructs the events of October 8th and corroborates the recorded accounts.

In 1971, Newsweek heralded The Last Picture Show as "the most impressive work by a young American director since Citizen Kane." Indeed, few filmmakers rivaled Peter Bogdanovich's popularity over the next decade. Riding the success of What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973), Bogdanovich became a bona fide celebrity, making regular appearances in his own movie trailers, occasionally hosting late-night television shows, and publicly advocating for mentors John Ford and Howard Hawks.

Have you ever been told that you can’t do something, even if that something is your dream? Mohammed Yousuf’s Ascending Adversity will prove to you that you can.

Inoperable brain cancer was her diagnosis. Essentially, a death sentence for this 32-year-old wife and mom of two little boys. Everything she had known to be true was yanked from her, thrown up in the air, and scattered in all the wrong places. In the mess, she chose to rebuild and reorganize. When it was all over, she emerged better than before. Andy will draw you into her story as if you were there the whole time, walking through the storm and the bliss, the broken and the new.

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.

In this startling and original work, best-selling author Charles Higham (Howard Hughes: The Secret Life) addresses one of the greatest historical mysteries: Did John Wilkes Booth act alone on the night of Good Friday, 1865, or was he part of a wide conspiracy? Drawing from letters, diaries, previously unstudied records of official hearings, railway timetables, and obscure shipping manifests, Higham weaves a spellbinding account of intrigue.

Weaver and fiber artist Edith “Pen” Meyer knew her friend Sandy Merritt’s relationship with a married man was wrong. She had even urged Sandy to take out a restraining order against Kenneth Carpenter. Which was why her call to Sandy on February 23, 2005, seemed to come from out of the blue. During it, she told Sandy to drop the restraining order and get back together with Ken. Pen was never seen again. One man stood to gain from Pen’s disappearance: Ken Carpenter. But evidence was bleak: no blood, no DNA, no body. Until detectives found notes hidden....

In the wake of one of the most tumultuous conventions in Republican history, the party of Lincoln nominated in 1940 a prominent businessman and Wall Street attorney for president. Though Wendell Willkie would lose to FDR, David Levering Lewis reveals in this news-making reclamation that the story of this Hoosier-born corporate chairman's life is the story of an America that could have been. Popular for his down-home Midwestern charm and unaffected candor, Willkie possessed a supple intellect and a concealed disdain for political opportunism that, had he not died prematurely, would have revolutionized American politics with its advocacy of bipartisanship and social responsibility.

The Revolution of ’28 explores the career of New York governor and 1928 Democratic presidential nominee Alfred E. Smith. Robert Chiles peers into Smith’s work and uncovers a distinctive strain of American progressivism that resonated among urban, ethnic, working-class Americans in the early 20th century. The book charts the rise of that idiomatic progressivism during Smith’s early years as a state legislator through his time as governor of the Empire State in the 1920s, before proceeding to a revisionist narrative of the 1928 presidential campaign.

A hilarious tale of dogs, fogs, bogs and moving to Ireland. For many years, Nick and Lesley Albert had shared a dream of living far away from the stress of modern life, and when the opportunity arose, they jumped in with both feet. Almost overnight, they decided to move to beautiful County Clare, in the west of Ireland - a country they had never before visited. With little experience or money they set about renovating a derelict farmhouse and building a new life together.

Steve Austin isn't your average dog trainer. In this feel-good, yarn-laden memoir he shares amazing stories from a career of rescuing and training shelter dogs to become a crack force of K9s, culminating in his work for the Young Diggers program, which pairs specially trained dogs with returned Diggers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and more, with astonishing results.

On a warm spring evening in 1982, 37-year-old accountant Margaret Barbera left work in New York City and walked to the parking lot where she kept her BMW. Finding the lock on the driver’s side jammed, she went to the passenger’s side. A man leaned through the open window of a van parked in the next spot, pressed a silenced pistol to the back of Margaret’s head, and fired. She was dead before she hit the pavement. It was a professional hit, meticulously planned - but the killer didn’t expect three employees of the nearby CBS TV studios to stumble onto the scene of the crime.

In this powerful, passionate chronicle, Noah Adams, the beloved host of NPR's All Things Considered, takes us on a river journey through the heart of Appalachia - a journey shared by pioneers and preachers, white-water daredevils, bluegrass musicians, and an unforgettable cast of vivid historical characters.