Personal Memoirs

Maya Shanbhag Lang grew up idolizing her brilliant mother, an accomplished physician who immigrated to the United States from India and completed her residency all while raising her children and keeping a traditional Indian home. Maya’s mother had always been a source of support - until Maya became a mother herself. Then the parent who had once been so capable and attentive became suddenly and inexplicably unavailable.

In this harrowing and intimate memoir, Harriet Alida Lye explores how, at just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called Natural Killer, named "the rarest and worst malignancy". The average survival time of patients with this diagnosis is 58 days. There are no known survivors. There were no known survivors. Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment would likely make conception impossible. To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life.

Merging memoir, anecdotes, and masterclasses on guitar, songwriting, and the artist's mindset, Lay It on the Line offers insight and perspective into the many roles Rik Emmett took on. "It" was always a parboiling, psychological gumbo: and this book attempts to finally share the recipe.

The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian civil war, also known as the Biafran War, of 1967-1970. The conflict was infamous for its savage impact on the Biafran people, Chinua Achebe's people, many of whom were starved to death after the Nigerian government blockaded their borders. Immediately after, Achebe took refuge in an academic post in the United States, and for more than 40 years he has maintained a considered silence on the events of those terrible years. Now, decades in the making, comes a towering reckoning with one of modern Africa's most fateful events.

There are millions of homeless children in America today and in A Place Called Home, award-winning child welfare advocate David Ambroz writes about growing up homeless in New York for eleven years and his subsequent years in foster care, offering a window into what so many kids living in poverty experience every day.

When Kate Swenson’s son Cooper was diagnosed with severe, nonverbal autism, her world stopped. She had always dreamed of having the perfect family life. She hadn’t signed up for life as a mother raising a child with a disability.

The Marshalls were the model family of Tom’s River, New Jersey, living the American dream and seemingly in possession of all that money could buy. Rob Marshall, a successful insurance broker, was the big breadwinner, king of the country-club set. Maria Marshall was his stunningly beautiful wife and the perfect mom to their three great kids.Then one night, while the couple drove home from Atlantic City, Rob, his head bloodied, reported Maria had been brutally slain. Sympathy poured in - until disquieting facts began to surface....

Aged nine Joss came home from school to discover her father's suicide. She's never got over it. This is the true story of Joss, 13, who is angry and out of control. At the age of nine, Joss finds her father's dead body. He has committed suicide. Then more recently her mother remarries, and Joss bitterly resents her stepfather, who abuses her mentally and physically.

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.

In the Black traces B. Denham Jolly's personal and professional struggle for a place in a country where Black Canadians have faced systematic discrimination. He arrived from Jamaica to attend university in the mid-1950s and worked as a high school teacher before going into the nursing and retirement-home business. Though he was ultimately successful in his business ventures, Jolly faced both overt and covert discrimination, which led him into social activism.

Where does a moderately popular internet star who never leaves her house look for potential suitors? Online. Tinder, Bumble, Match.com, OkCupid - I tried them all. My 31-year-old self clicked and swiped her little heart out, leading to more dates than I could count, and more disappointment than I was prepared for. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you know all too well the perils of modern dating.

Dr. Kerry McAvoy was juggling the life of an overly-committed mom, wife, and psychologist when the loss of her husband brought her world to a crashing halt. Then she meets Cesar, a charming, handsome, and ambitious man who sweeps her off her feet with the promise of new love.

For seventy years, Queen Elizabeth ruled over an institution and a family. During her lifetime she was constant in her desire to provide a steady presence and to be a trustworthy steward of the British people and the Commonwealth. But times change. Recent years have brought grief and turmoil to the House of Windsor. In The New Royals, journalist Katie Nicholl provides a nuanced look at Elizabeth’s remarkable and unrivalled reign, with new stories from Palace courtiers and aides, documentarians, and family members.

Back in January 1995 in Los Angeles, California, a Singaporean pornstar named Annabel Chong took cultural rebellion to an extreme, on terms that had never been negotiated before. She was filmed having sex with a long receiving line of men, servicing them 251 times over a ten-hour period to set a new world record: The World’s Biggest Gangbang.

For fifty years, Barbara McLean has tended a flock of Border Leicester sheep on her small Ontario farm, Lambsquarters. In Shepherd's Sight she shares the crises, pleasures, and challenges of farm life over the course of a year. Now in her seventies, McLean faces a new problem: how much longer she can continue with the physically taxing work that is her central source of meaning and satisfaction.

In Flying in the Face of Fear: Lessons on Leading with Courage, former fighter pilot and retired Air Force Colonel Kim Campbell delivers an inspiring and practical discussion of leadership and decision-making. In the book, you'll follow the author's journey through the principles that got her through her twenty-four-year career in the high-stakes and high-risk world of aerial combat.

In July 1950, Avi Shlaim, only five, and his family were forced into exile, fleeing their beloved Iraq to the new state of Israel. Today the once flourishing Jewish community of Iraq, at one time numbering over 130,000 and tracing its history back 2,600 years, has all but vanished.

Eva Hagberg Fisher spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always temporarily. Then, at age 30, an undiscovered mass in her brain ruptured. So did her life. A brain surgery marked only the beginning of a long journey, and when her illness hit a critical stage, it forced her to finally admit the long suppressed truth: she was vulnerable, she needed help, and she longed to grow. She needed true friendship for the first time.

In Let's Take the Long Way Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell offers a powerful and moving memoir about her coming-of-age in mid-life and her extraordinary friendship with Caroline Knapp, the author of Drinking: A Love Story. Though they are more different than alike, these two fiercely private, independent women quickly relax into a friendship more profound than either of them expected. They grow increasingly inseparable until, in 2003, Caroline is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.

His grandfather’s lynching in the deep South, the murders of his two older brothers, and his verbally harsh and absent father all worked together to form Jason Wilson’s childhood. But it was his decision to acknowledge his emotions and yield to God’s call on his life that made Wilson the man and leader he is today. As the founder of one of the country’s most esteemed youth organizations, Wilson explains the dangers men face in our culture’s definition of “masculinity” and gives listeners hope that healing is possible.