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Running Man: A Memoir
By Charlie Engle. 2016
A compulsively readable, remarkably candid memoir from world class ultra-marathon runner Charlie Engle chronicling his globe-spanning races, his record-breaking run…
across the Sahara Desert, and how running helped him overcome drug addiction...and an unjust stint in federal prison.After a decade-long addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, Charlie Engle hit bottom with a near-fatal six-day binge that ended in a hail of bullets. As Engle got sober, he turned to running, which became his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He began with marathons, and when marathons weren't far enough, he began to take on ultramarathons, races that went for thirty-five, fifty, and sometimes hundreds of miles, traveling to some of the most unforgiving places on earth to race. The Matt Damon-produced documentary, Running the Sahara, followed Engle as he lead a team on a harrowing, record breaking 4,500-mile run across the Sahara Desert, which helped raise millions of dollars for charity. Charlie's growing notoriety led to an investigation and a subsequent unjust conviction for mortgage fraud. Engle would spend sixteen months in federal prison in Beckley, West Virginia. While in jail, he pounded the small prison track, running endlessly in circles. Soon his fellow inmates were joining him, struggling to keep their spirits up in dehumanizing circumstances. In Running Man, Charlie Engle tells the gripping, surprising, funny, emotional, and inspiring story of his life, detailing his setbacks and struggles--from coping with addiction to serving time in prison--and how he blazed a path to freedom by putting one foot in front of the other. This is a propulsive, raw, and triumphant story about finding the threshold of human endurance, and transcending it.Just Jen: thriving through multiple sclerosis
By Jen Powley. 2017
Jen Powley was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at fifteen. By thirty-five, she had lost the use of her arms and…
legs. This memoir tells the story of Powley's life at the time of her diagnosis, and the infinite, irrevocable ways it has changed since. Winner of the 2018 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award (Non-Fiction). 2017.The Kids Are All Right
By Diana Welch, Liz Welch, Dan Welch, Amanda Welch. 2009
"Perfect is boring."Well, 1983 certainly wasn't boring for the Welch family. Somehow, between their handsome father's mysterious death, their glamorous…
soap-opera-star mother's cancer diagnosis, and a phalanx of lawyers intent on bankruptcy proceedings, the four Welch siblings managed to handle each new heartbreaking misfortune in the same way they dealt with the unexpected arrival of the forgotten-about Chilean exchange student-together.All that changed with the death of their mother. While nineteen-year-old Amanda was legally on her own, the three younger siblings-Liz, sixteen; Dan, fourteen; and Diana, eight-were each dispatched to a different set of family friends. Quick-witted and sharp-tongued, Amanda headed for college in New York City and immersed herself in an '80s world of alternative music and drugs. Liz, living with the couple for whom she babysat, followed in Amanda's footsteps until high school graduation when she took a job in Norway as a nanny. Mischievous, rebellious Dan, bounced from guardian to boarding school and back again, getting deeper into trouble and drugs. And Diana, the red-haired baby of the family, was given a new life and identity and told to forget her past. But Diana's siblings refused to forget her-or let her go.Told in the alternating voices of the four siblings, their poignant, harrowing story of unbreakable bonds unfolds with ferocious emotion. Despite the Welch children's wrenching loss and subsequent separation, they retained the resilience and humor that both their mother and father endowed them with-growing up as lost souls, taking disastrous turns along the way, but eventually coming out right side up. The kids are not only all right; they're back together.From the Hardcover edition.'Til the Fat Girl Sings
By Sharon Wheatley. 2006
Whale. Heifer. Fatty. These are the names Sharon Wheatley heard every day during middle school. By high school she topped…
the scales at 230 pounds. Sneaking into the garage late at night to scarf down frozen cupcakes from the freezer while her family slept, Sharon kept on eating--and kept on dreaming of Broadway. Discouraged at every turn by friends and family alike, "Little Miss Sunshine" stayed positive and kept her dream alive. Even when her own father told her, "Sexy sells, and fat isn't sexy," Sharon endured. Despite her weight, she got into the prestigious Cincinnati Conservatory of Music--where they told her she'd never land a leading role. They were all wrong. In this touching memoir, readers follow Sharon as she transforms herself from a tortured-on-the-inside, all-smiles-on-the-outside, obese teenager to the confident young woman who, against all odds, takes Broadway by storm. Rising above her greatest critics and detractors, Sharon achieves her lifelong dream. A story that is sure to touch teens and adults alike, 'Til the Fat Girl Sings is a compelling, honest story that shows readers good girls don't always finish last--and leading roles don't always go to the most popular girl in school.Map Drawn by A Spy
By Mark Fried, Guillermo Cabrera Infante. 2017
Found in an envelope in Guillermo Cabrera Infante's house after his death in 2005, Map Drawn by a Spy is…
the world-renowned writer's autobiographical account of the last four months he spent in his country. In 1965, following his mother's death, Infante returns to Cuba from Brussels, where he is employed as a cultural attaché at the Cuban embassy. When a few days later his permission to return to Europe is revoked, Infante begins a period of suspicion, uncertainty, and disillusion. Unable to leave the country, denied access to party officials, yet still receiving checks for his work in Belgium, Infante discovers the reality of Cuba under Fidel Castro: imprisonment of homosexuals, silencing of writers, the closing of libraries and newspapers, and the consolidation of power. Both lucid and sincere, Map Drawn by a Spy is a moving portrayal of a fractured society and a writer's struggles to come to terms with his national identity.The Diesel Brothers: A Truckin' Awesome Guide to Trucks and Life
By Heavy D, Diesel Dave. 2016
Feel like somebody hit the brakes on your Diesel Brothers cravings? Discover how you can keep the gas going with…
this rip-roaring ride behind the scenes of Discovery Channel's popular series Diesel Brothers.In the world of monster trucks, no one builds bigger and more extreme rides—and has more fun in the process—than Heavy D, Diesel Dave, and their crew at DieselSellerz. Their larger-than-life creations and awesome truck giveaways are legendary, but for those less fortunate who haven’t had the opportunity to experience a Bros’ souped-up truck, this thrill-ride of a book is the next best thing. Learn the epic and inspirational stories behind Heavy D and Diesel Dave’s business and personal lives, from the guys’ first meeting, to their early adventures building DieselSellerz, to their successful business venture with Redbeard, Muscle, and the rest of the fearless staff. In addition to learning about the Bros’ two-year Mormon missions, humble beginnings, and world travels, you’ll also get the unforgettable details of their hilarious, most well-known pranks, and the remarkable stories behind the personalities that have made Diesel Brothers one of the fastest growing and most popular reality TV shows. But wait—there’s more! The book is chock full of essential advice for anyone who’d like to get in on the action. Whether you’re a die-hard monster truck fan or just looking for inspiration to upgrade that piece of junk in your garage, Heavy D and his crew are here to show you how it’s done. You’ll learn how to find the best bargain in the junkyard, how to play hardball with tough-talking dealers, and how to turn that sad sack heap of parts into a badass diesel vehicle. What are you waiting for? Get out there and let diesel freedom ring!The Lion Has No Horns: Suffering the Slings and Arrows Pursuing the American Dream
By John Sesay, Erika Celeste. 2017
Young man sets out to immigrate to America from North Africa but encounters and overcomes corrupt government officials and ruthless…
criminals in Africa but eventually gets to America and falls into the hands of human traffickers. He finally succeeds in finding his way into the mainstream flow of society where he finds the freedom to develop his potential as a complete human being.Rabbit: The Autobiography of Ms. Pat
By Jeannine Amber, Patricia Williams. 2017
They called her Rabbit. Patricia Williams (aka Ms. Pat) was born and raised in Atlanta at the height of…
the crack epidemic. One of five children, Pat watched as her mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At twelve, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior. By thirteen, she was pregnant. By fifteen, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at sixteen, Pat was determined to make a better life for her children. But with no job skills and an eighth-grade education, her options were limited. She learned quickly that hustling and humor were the only tools she had to survive. Rabbit is an unflinching memoir of cinematic scope and unexpected humor. With wisdom and humor, Pat gives us a rare glimpse of what it’s really like to be a black mom in America.Dying: A Memoir
By Cory Taylor. 2016
"Bracing and beautiful . . . Every human should read it." —The New York Times A New York Times Book…
Review Editors' Choice At the age of sixty, Cory Taylor is dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. Her illness is no longer treatable: she now weighs less than her neighbor’s retriever. As her body weakens, she describes the experience—the vulnerability and strength, the courage and humility, the anger and acceptance—of knowing she will soon die. Written in the space of a few weeks, in a tremendous creative surge, this powerful and beautiful memoir is a clear-eyed account of what dying teaches: Taylor describes the tangle of her feelings, remembers the lives and deaths of her parents, and examines why she would like to be able to choose the circumstances of her death. Taylor’s last words offer a vocabulary for readers to speak about the most difficult thing any of us will face. And while Dying: A Memoir is a deeply affecting meditation on death, it is also a funny and wise tribute to life.Wild Things, Wild Places: Adventurous Tales of Wildlife and Conservation on Planet Earth
By Jane Alexander. 2016
A moving, inspiring, personal look at the vastly changing world of wildlife on planet earth as a result of human…
incursion, and the crucial work of animal and bird preservation across the globe being done by scientists, field biologists, zoologists, environmentalists, and conservationists. From a longtime, much-admired activist, impassioned wildlife proponent and conservationist, former chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, four time Academy Award nominee, and Tony Award and two-time Emmy Award-winning actress. In Wild Things, Wild Places, Jane Alexander movingly, with a clear eye and a knowing, keen grasp of the issues and on what is being done in conservation and the worlds of science to help the planet's most endangered species to stay alive and thrive, writes of her steady and fervent immersion into the worlds of wildlife conservation, of her coming to know the scientists throughout the world--to her, the prophets in the wilderness--who are steeped in this work, of her travels with them--and on her own--to the most remote and forbidding areas of the world as they try to save many species, including ourselves.From the Hardcover edition.Single, gay, Christian: a personal journey of faith and sexual identity
By Gregory Coles. 2017
Haunted Canada 6: more terrifying true stories (Haunted Canada Ser. #6)
By Joel A Sutherland. 2016
Get underneath the covers, because between these book covers are stories about a supernatural sea hag that haunts Dobbin’s Gardens…
marsh on Bell Island, Newfoundland and Labrador, a used book from a Barrie, Ontario book shop that conjures up a ghostly figure that accompanies the buyer home, and a haunted playground at St. Ignatius School in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Winner of the 2017 Silver Birch Non-Fiction Award. Grades 3-6. 2016.To Siri with love: a mother, her autistic son, and the kindness of machines
By Judith Newman. 2017
When Judith Newman shared the story of how Apple's electronic personal assistant, Siri, helped her son who has autism, Gus,…
in her New York Times Op-Ed column, she received widespread media attention and an outpouring of affection from readers around the world. Basking in the afterglow of media attention, Gus told anyone who would listen: "I'm a movie star." This book is a collection of funny, poignant, and uplifting stories about living with an extraordinary child who has helped a parent see and experience the world differently. 2017.The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl: Adventures in Life and Love in the Heart of Dixie
By Eve Adamson, Jaime Primak Sullivan. 2016
Jaime Primak Sullivan, outspoken star of Bravo TV's Jersey Belle, offers no-nonsense Southern-spun advice for navigating life and love with…
her signature charismatic Jersey charm in this winning fish-out-of-water tale.Jamie Primak Sullivan, a Jersey-bred, tough-as-nails PR maven--and unlikely transplant in an upscale suburb of Birmingham, Alabama--has spent her entire life crossing the line: whether she's pushing the boundaries of what proper Southern ladies consider to be "polite behavior" or literally traversing the Mason-Dixon line in the name of love. She isn't afraid to say what everyone is thinking when it comes to love, sex, friendship, and many other topics that are all-too-often sugar-coated in polite Southern company. But when a meet-cute scenario right out of a Nora Ephron movie upends her life, Jaime finds herself a reluctant "knish out of water," smack-dab in the Deep South starting a life with her new husband, the perfect Southern gentleman. In The Southern Education of a Jersey Girl, Jaime shares hard-learned lessons on Southern etiquette, deep-fried foods, college football, and matters of the heart while living in the heart of Dixie, with her quintessential ball-busting, bullsh*t free, and side-splitting Jersey twist.Street Freak
By Jared Dillian. 2011
When Jared Dillian joined Lehman Brothers in 2001, he fulfilled a life-long dream to make it on Wall Street--but he…
had no idea how close to the edge the job would take him. Like Michael Lewis's classic Liar's Poker, Jared Dillian's Street Freak takes readers behind the scenes of the legendary Lehman Brothers, exposing its outrageous and often hilarious corporate culture. In this ultracompetitive Ivy League world where men would flip over each other's ties to check out the labels (also known as the "Lehman Handshake"), Dillian was an outsider as an ex-military, working-class guy in a Men's Wearhouse suit. But he was scrappy and determined; in interviews he told potential managers that, "Nobody can work harder than me. Nobody is willing to put in the hours I will put in. I am insane." As it turned out, on Wall Street insanity is not an undesirable quality. Dillian rose from green associate, checking IDs at the entrance to the trading floor in the paranoid days following 9/11, to become an integral part of Lehman's culture in its final years as the firm's head Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) trader. More than $1 trillion in wealth passed through his hands, but at the cost of an untold number of smashed telephones and tape dispensers. Over time, the exhilarating and explosively stressful job took its toll on him. The extreme highs and lows of the trading floor masked and exacerbated the symptoms of Dillian's undiagnosed bipolar and obsessive compulsive disorders, leading to a downward spiral that eventually landed him in a psychiatric ward. Dillian put his life back together, returning to work healthier than ever before, but Lehman itself had seemingly gone mad, having made outrageous bets on commercial real estate, and was quickly headed for self-destruction. A raucous account of the final years of Lehman Brothers, from 9/11 at its World Financial Center offices through the firm's bankruptcy, including vivid portraits of trading-floor culture, the financial meltdown, and the company's ultimate collapse, Street Freak is a raw, visceral, and wholly original memoir of life inside the belly of the beast during the most tumultuous time in financial history. In his electrifying and fresh voice, Dillian takes readers on a wild ride through madness and back, both inside Lehman Brothers and himself.Autumn
By Karl Ove Knausgaard, Vanessa Baird. 2018
A love letter to his unborn daughter, Autumn is for every reader who thinks about what the world holds for…
their child, and is the first book in a surprising, deeply personal and humane quartet: The Seasons--the new project from the always fascinating, original, global literary superstar.28 August. Now, as I write this, you know nothing about anything, about what awaits you, the kind of world you will be born into. And I know nothing about you...I want to show you our world as it is now: the door, the floor, the water tap and the sink, the garden chair close to the wall beneath the kitchen window, the sun, the water, the trees. You will come to see it in your own way, you will experience things for yourself and live a life of your own, so of course it is primarily for my own sake that I am doing this: showing you the world, little one, makes my life worth living. Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove writes to his unborn daughter, showing her what to expect of the world she will soon come into. He writes one short piece per day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark, a riveting personal encyclopedia of everything from chewing gum and tin cans to the migration of birds and the stars. Through close observation of the objects and phenomena around him, Karl Ove shows us how vast, unknowable and wondrous the world is.The Shadow in the Garden: A Biographer's Tale
By James Atlas. 2017
The biographer—so often in the shadows, kibitzing, casting doubt, proving facts—comes to the stage in this funny, poignant, endearing tale…
of how writers’ lives get documented. James Atlas, the celebrated chronicler of Saul Bellow and Delmore Schwartz, takes us back to his own childhood in suburban Chicago, where he fell in love with literature and, early on, found in himself the impulse to study writers’ lives. We meet Richard Ellmann, the great biographer of James Joyce and Atlas’s professor during a transformative year at Oxford. We get to know Atlas’s first subject, the “self-doomed” poet Delmore Schwartz. And we are introduced to a bygone cast of intellectuals such as Edmund Wilson and Dwight Macdonald (the “tall pines,” as Mary McCarthy once called them, cut down now, according to Atlas, by the “merciless pruning of mortality”) and, of course, the elusive Bellow, “a metaphysician of the ordinary.” Atlas revisits the lives and works of the classical biographers, the Renaissance writers of what were then called “lives,” Samuel Johnson and the obsessive Boswell, and the Victorian masters Mrs. Gaskell and Thomas Carlyle. And in what amounts to a pocket history of his own literary generation, Atlas celebrates the biographers who hoped to glimpse an image of them—“as fleeting as a familiar face swallowed up in a crowd.”(With black-and-white illustrations throughout)Self-Made Woman: A Memoir
By Denise Chanterelle Dubois. 2017
Denise Chanterelle DuBois's transformation into a woman wasn't easy. Born as a boy into a working-class Polish American Milwaukee family,…
she faced daunting hurdles: a domineering father, a gritty 1960s neighborhood with no understanding of gender nonconformity, trouble in school, and a childhood so haunted by deprivation that neckbone soup was a staple. Terrified of revealing her inner self, DuBois lurched through alcoholism, drug dealing and addiction, car crashes, dangerous sex, and prison time. Dennis barreled from Wisconsin to California, Oregon, Canada, Costa Rica, New York, Bangkok, and Hawaii on a joyless ride. Defying all expectations, DuBois didn't crash and burn. Embracing her identity as a woman, she remade herself. Writing with resolute honesty and humor, she confronts both her past and her present to tell an American story of self-discovery.Strange Beauty: A Portrait of My Son
By Eliza Factor. 2017
A unique and hopeful story of how one woman and her family were transformed by her child's multiple disabilities and…
inability to talk and how she, in turn, transformed a community.This intimate, no-holds barred memoir shares one family's experiences with a child who is both autistic and physically disabled. It is a story of infectious laughter, blood on the floor, intense physical conflict, and of two little girls growing up in the shadow of their charming and fitful brother. And it is the story of a mother and writer and the illuminating effect of imagining the world through the eyes of her beautiful, charismatic, and nonverbal son, Felix. Felix and his sisters inspire Eliza to start Extreme Kids, a community center that connects families with children with disabilities through the arts and play, and transform how she saw herself and the world. She writes of the joy this project brings her, as well as the disconnect of being lauded for helping others at the same time that she cannot help her own son.As Felix grows bigger and stronger, his assaults against himself grow more destructive. When his bruised limbs and face prompt Child Services to investigate the Factors for abuse, Eliza realizes how dangerous her home has become.Strange Beauty is a personal story, but it shines a light on the combustible conditions many families are living in at this moment. The United States offers parents whose children are prone to violence very little help. That Eliza's story ends happily, with Felix thriving at Crotched Mountain School, is due more to luck than policy. There are few such schools and many such children. When children are violent, we fail to account for the internal and external pressures that lead to violence. This is both cruel and counterproductive, for people with disabilities have much to teach us, if we will only listen.Big Love: The Power of Living with a Wide-Open Heart
By Scott Stabile. 2017
"I look to Scott for wisdom and leadership and he has delivered both with Big Love. This book opened my…
heart and mind and I'm forever grateful."—Glennon Doyle, author of #1 New York Times–bestseller Love Warrior What happens when you fully commit yourself to love? Endless good, insists Scott Stabile, who found that out by overcoming plenty of bad. His parents were murdered when he was fourteen. Nine years later, his brother died of a heroin overdose. Soon after that, Scott joined a cult that dominated his life for thirteen years before he summoned the courage to walk away. In Big Love, his insightful and refreshingly honest collection of personal essays, Scott relates these profound experiences as well as everyday struggles and triumphs in ways that are universally applicable, uplifting, and laugh-out-loud funny. Whether silencing shame, rebounding after failure, or moving forward despite fears, Scott shares hard-won insights that consistently return readers to love, both of themselves and others.