Parenting Memoir

In Cowgirl Power, advertising CEO and cowgirl Gay Gaddis shares insights and examples for women to lead like fearless, risk-taking cowgirls: enhance and exude confidence, developing personal power on all fronts. As the owner of one of the largest female-owned independent agencies in the U.S. and former chairman of C200, one of the country’s top women’s business organizations, Gay Gaddis knows a thing or two about empowerment. Gay’s secrets of success have roots in the spirited strength of real cowgirls who were fearless risk-takers in everything they did.

In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on antipsychotic meds.

American Sniper meets Make Your Bed in these life lessons from decorated United States service members and New York Times bestselling authors Robert O’Neill and Dakota Meyer—an in-depth, fearless, and ultimately redemptive account of what it takes to survive and thrive on battlefields from Afghanistan and Iraq to our daily lives, and how the perils of war help us hold onto our humanity.

When Bo Seo was 8 years old, he and his family migrated from Korea to Australia. At the time, he did not speak English, and, unsurprisingly, struggled at school. But, then, in fifth grade, something happened to change his life: he discovered competitive debate. Immediately, he was hooked. It turned out, perhaps counterintuitively, that debating was the perfect activity for someone shy and unsure of himself. It became a way for Bo not only to find his voice, but to excel socially and academically. And he’s not the only one.

Now a major motion picture directed by Stephen Frears ( The Queen, High Fidelity) and starring Judi Dench ( Skyfall, Notes on a Scandal) and Steve Coogan ( The Trip, Hamlet 2): the heartbreaking true story of an Irishwoman and the secret she kept for 50 years. When she became pregnant as a teenager in Ireland in 1952, Philomena Lee was sent to a convent to be looked after as a "fallen woman". Then the nuns took her baby from her and sold him, like thousands of others, to America for adoption. Fifty years later, Philomena decided to find him.

Eight true crime stories of murder and mayhem. In my first audiobook as a true crime author I've started with a few of the stories that have haunted me for some time. Some of these stories are unbelievable in their brutality while others are astounding in the stupidity of the killers. This collection of stories are from all around the globe and have no common thread between them other than that they are both thought provoking and disturbing. The stories included in this anthology are dark and creepy and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

When Cathy is told about Melody’s terrible childhood, she is sure she’s heard it all before. But it isn’t long before she feels there is more going on than she or the social services are aware of. Although Melody is angry at having to leave her mother, she also worries about her obsessively - far more than is usual. Amanda, Melody’s mother, is also angry and takes it out on Cathy at contact, which again is something Cathy has experienced before. When Amanda misses contact, it is assumed she has forgotten, but nothing could have been further from the truth.

As an award-winning stuntwoman, Kimberly Shannon Murphy was intimate with pain. For years, she propelled her body through dangerous spaces—medicating the trauma of her childhood sexual abuse with the adrenaline rush that came from pushing herself to the absolute limit. But as Kimberly learned, no matter how much you suppress your past, it always catches up with you.

Oskar's school teacher raises the alarm. Oskar's mother is abroad, and he has been left in the care of friends, but has been arriving in school hungry, unkempt and with bruises on his arms, legs and body. Experienced foster carer Cathy Glass is asked to look after him, but as the weeks pass, her concerns deepen. Oskar is far too quiet for a child of six and is clearly scared of something or someone.

Celina Caesar-Chavannes digs deep into her childhood and her life as a young Black woman entrepreneur and politician, and shows us that effective and humane leaders grow as much from their mistakes and vulnerabilities as from their strengths. Both memoir and leadership book, Can You Hear Me Now? is a funny, self-aware, poignant, confessional, and fierce look at how failing badly and screwing things up completely are truly more powerful lessons in how to conduct a life than extraordinary success.

Twentysomething Nora McInerny Purmort bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend and job to job. Then she met Aaron, a charismatic art director and her kindred spirit. They made mixtapes (and pancakes) into the wee hours of the morning. They finished each other's sentences. They just knew. When Aaron was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer, they refused to let it limit their love. They got engaged on Aaron's hospital bed and married after his first surgery. They had a baby when he was on chemo.

Losing a young daughter to murder is the worst nightmare that a mother could possibly imagine, but what if the killer was her son? Charity Lee was thrust into this unimaginable situation when her 13-year-old son, Paris, murdered her beloved four-year-old daughter, Ella. This book is a meditation on grief, loss, and forgiveness unlike any other. It's also an inspirational story of a true survivor. Well-written and haunting How Now, Butterfly? is a book that no listener will soon forget.

Kate Spencer lost her mom to cancer when she was 27. In The Dead Moms Club, she walks listeners through her experience of stumbling through grief and loss, and helps them to get through it, too. This isn't a weepy, sentimental story, but rather a frank, up-front look at what it means to go through gruesome grief and come out on the other side.

Heavily tattooed and foul-mouthed, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious-leader material - until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories, Nadia uses humorous narrative and poignant honesty to portray a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way.

It began as rumors. Whispers at dinner parties. Warnings about bad dates with a Canadian celebrity. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, superstar CBC broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi revealed his interest in "rough sex" in a long Facebook post, and a scandal of unprecedented scale descended on the radio host. What the public did not know was that months before Ghomeshi's emotional post, Canadaland podcaster Jesse Brown and Toronto Star journalist Kevin Donovan were quietly pursuing serious allegations against him.

In this volume, you’ll hear some stories that take place as recently as a few years ago, while others date back as far as the 1930s. There’s the story of a young Russian immigrant who came to the United States seeking the exciting lifestyle he’d seen on television, only to be stabbed, set on fire, and left to die in the desert by his own friends. There’s also the story of a brawny railway worker who couldn’t control his steroid-fueled rage. There’s one of a brawny railway worker who couldn’t control his steroid-fueled rage. And more.

The story fast forwards to 1996 when a suspicious death in the family leaves the fate of two young boys in the hands of Tom’s dysfunctional family. Tom, the quintessential lifetime bachelor, and geeky Don Draper is thrust headfirst back into the mayhem of his family’s hippie lifestyle.

From teaching consent to counteracting problematic messages from the media, well-meaning family, and the culture at large, we have big work to do when it comes to our boys. Informed by the author's work as a professor of journalism specializing in social justice movements and social media, as well as by conversations with psychologists, experts, and other parents and boys, this book follows one mother's journey to raise a feminist son as a single immigrant woman of color in America.

Laura Dern and Diane Ladd always had a close relationship, but the stakes were raised when Diane developed a sudden life-threatening illness. Diane’s doctor prescribed long walks to build back her lung capacity. The exertion was challenging, and Laura soon learned the best way to distract her mom was to get her talking and telling stories. Their conversations along the way began to break down the traditional barriers between mothers and daughters.

As the culture wars rage, and masculinity has been politicized from all sides, feminist writer and mother of three boys Ruth Whippman finds herself conflicted and scared. While the right pushes a dangerous vision of fantasy manhood, her feminist peers often dismiss boys as little more than entitled predators-in-waiting. Meanwhile her home life feels like a daily confrontation with the triumph of nature over nurture.