Winner Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Dancing in the Narrows chronicles a mother and daughter’s multiyear journey through illness and trauma. At sixteen, Anna’s youngest daughter, Dana, is stricken with a mysterious and debilitating condition, eventually diagnosed as Lyme disease. Desperate to find a cure, the two women are thrust into the established medical world, then far beyond. Full of adventure, humor, and blind faith, Dancing in the Narrows is an inspiring story of self-discovery as a single mother fights to save the life of her child.
Nearly one hundred Labrador retrievers, many sick or dying, are discovered one hot summer day in a rural Colorado field.They’ve been abandoned by Dodie Cariaso, a college-educated woman from an upper middle-class Midwestern family.
What drove this tragedy? Former journalist and prosecutor Cary Unkelbach unfolds a riveting account of how Dodie’s early success as a talented potter devolves into unimaginable neglect. Along the way, Cary gives animal lovers everywhere insight into the pitfalls and responsibilities of dog ownership through uplifting tales of Max, a Labrador from Dodie’s kennel, who finds his forever home with the author’s family.
Heartbreak Kennel will shock you but will also give you a wealth of information for the canines in your life.
Award-winning columnist and author David Magee addresses his poignant story to all those who will benefit from better understanding substance misuse so that his hard-earned wisdom can save others from the fate of his late son, William.
The last time David Magee saw his son alive, William told him to write their family’s story in the hopes of helping others. Days later, David found William dead from an accidental drug overdose.
Now, in a memoir suggestive of Augusten Burroughs meets Glennon Doyle, award-winning columnist and author David Magee answers his son's wish with a compelling, heartbreaking, and impossible to put down book that speaks to every individual and family.
It's 1966, and young Heywood Gould, a Brooklyn boy with literary ambitions, has his dream job. He is a reporter at the ultra liberal (that's right liberal) New York Post, alongside young writers like Nora Ephron, Pete Hamill and Anthony Scaduto. New York is a newspaper town, six dailies trying to beat each other to the big story. He revels in the action and competition.
It's one of the most consequential moments in American history. Gould chases stories about the civil rights struggle, the anti-war movement, riots and rat infestation and World's Fair scandals. He covers everything from toy shows to murder trials. This is the best training for an apprentice writer.
Then he gets that fateful letter that begins, "Greetings." After five years of dodging, Uncle Sam has caught up with him. He's been caught in the Vietnam draft.
In this memoir, Dick Bishirjian tells of how his life has been enriched by the many noble persons he has met over the course of his professional life. That time coincides with the early years of the conservative “movement” in America. In such a world as ours, he argues, it is important to remember the great souls who ennoble us.
Many years ago, in 1902, as a result of the devastating eruption of Mt. Pelee on the island of Martinique, my great-grandmother fled her native land of Martinique and journeyed to Trinidad, where she subsequently was married, raised a family, and lived the rest of her life. In many heartfelt conversations, we often talked about the concept of home. We questioned where home was for the émigré and whether it was possible to experience home and homeland in different places. Was the notion of home confined only to one's place of birth, where memories of growing up and spiritual yearning to return were constant companions to daily living. My great-grandmother referred to these emotional longings as the "homing instinct."
A peculiar drama for the new generation, this memoir delves into topics few are willing to discuss, and Claire does so with the fortitude of a seasoned survivor.
Claire’s voice is clear and compelling as she tells of manic forays alone in the wilderness, on the highway, and within the four walls of her own home. Witness how this heroine pushes to regain her sanity and a solid grip on the world that threatens to slip from her grasp.
I Hear the Black Raven is a different kind of memoir... It is a story of poetic redemption. It is a harrowing epic of self-discovery. Claire's mental illness takes her on a journey that is full of mishaps and scenarios that we all can identify with. We are invited into her world, a world that she does not initially understand, but learns to accept.
Melanie Gibson was an independent woman with a good job, multiple college degrees, and a condo in the trendy part of town. She also had a few mental illnesses, a minor substance abuse problem, and rotten relationship skills. She was a high-functioning crazy who needed a good kick in the pants, literally and metaphorically.
In early 2013, as a last desperate means to save her sanity, Melanie turned to a nearly forgotten childhood activity: the Korean martial art of taekwondo. As if the universe were listening, she discovered her West Texas childhood taekwondo instructors’ Grandmaster operated a taekwondo school a few miles from her home in Fort Worth, Texas—and she decided to start her training over as a white belt.
PARIS, 1976: Twenty-year-old American student Julie Scolnik had just arrived in the City of Light to study the flute when, from across a sea of faces in the chorus of the Orchestre de Paris, she is drawn to Luc, a striking (married) French lawyer in the bass section. This moving tale of an ebullient young American and a reserved Frenchman will transport readers to the cafés, streets, and concert halls of Paris in the late seventies, and, spanning three decades, evolves from deep romance to sudden heartbreak, and finally to a lifelong quest for answers to release hidden, immutable grief.
Against a magical backdrop of Paris and classical music, Paris Blue is a true fairy-tale memoir (with a dark underbelly) about the tenacious grip of first love.
Fast-paced travel adventures and setbacks sprinkled with humor and reflection.
Seeking adventure beyond watching corn grow in his hometown, life changes dramatically for Robert Goluba days after graduating from high school. He attends Army basic training, a state university, and crosses the Atlantic to live with a family in Germany. A family Robert has never met that speaks a language he barely understands.
It doesn’t begin well. He offends the French in Paris, Germans in Cologne, and a grumpy train conductor in Austria. Undeterred, Robert recruits new travel buddies for more international travel.
When Laura Whitfield was fourteen, her extraordinary brother, Lawrence, was killed in a mountain climbing accident. That night she had an epiphany: Life is short. Dream big, even if it means taking risks. So, after graduating from high school, she set out on her own, prepared to do just that.
Laura spent her first summer after high school on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, a magical few months filled with friendships, boys, and beer. There she met a handsome DJ who everyone called “Steve the Dream,” and risked her heart. When September came, Steve moved to New York City to become a model —prompting Laura to start thinking about modeling, too. After just one semester of college, still seeking to fill the void left by her brother’s death, she dropped out and moved to New York to become a cover girl. But while juggling the demands of life in the big city—waiting tables, failed relationships, and the cutthroat world of modeling—she lost her way.
Captain Ed (Edwin D. Armbruster) lived a fascinating life as he flew thousands of hours over the jungles of Panama and the Carribean in single engine planes. Over seven hundred students called him their instructor as he piloted them from Atlantic to Pacific over and along the Panama Canal, through Panama, Central and South America. Beginning with the halcyon days of Canal Zone life and navigating more troubled times as the drug wars escalated, adventure calls on every page.
Zen (and Rage)is Marcia Formica’s first, and perhaps forever only book. It’s a humorous and sometimes harrowing account of surviving and even thriving through a decade-long home renovation project co-produced with her husband. This is the story of the monumental project they undertook to morph their adorable little colonial reproduction home into an energy-efficient, sustainability-minded house over twice the size in just over three times the original timeframe—with almost no lasting loss of sanity.
Strike Hard and Expect No Mercy is the story of boots on the ground in Iraq, as seen through the eyes of a tank platoon leader. Baqubah, on the eve of the Surge, and Sadr City, during the spring uprising of 2008, saw some of the darkest hours of the war. A tough dragon, the M1A2 Abrams tank and its crews were often called to crack the toughest nuts on the battlefield, and victory, even survival, was not guaranteed. It is a gritty and visceral dive into the combat experience, flavored with the anguish of loss, the exhilaration of victories, the frustrations of defeats, and the humor required to survive. Along the way, the story shares rarely told insights into the duties and expectations of an Army junior officer.
The ancient legend of Pandora’s Box has become an idiom meaning “starting or opening up something that will cause many unforeseen problems.” This definition applies even today to the world of my real estate memoir, PANDORA’S LOCKBOX. When we agents open a lockbox for the key to show a house, we never know what could be coming out.
The stage for PANDORA’S LOCKBOX is the 1980s and the early 90s when real estate regulation was in its infancy. Elaborate perks (like office parties, gifts, money, vacations, event tickets, fur coats, limo rides, free ads, wining and dining) were given to top agents as a bribe for their business. With current regulations, they no longer exist as they did then. Which is probably a good thing. We were all exhausted from working, playing, and partying non-stop.
From shootouts and robberies to riding in cars with pimps and prostitutes, Frederick Reynolds' early manhood experiences in Detroit, Michigan in the 1960s foretold a future on the wrong side of the prison bars. Frederick grew up a creative and sensitive child but found himself lured down the same path as many Black youth in that era. No one would have guessed he would have a future as a cop in one of the most dangerous cities in America in the 1980s---Compton, California. From recruit to detective, Frederick experienced a successful career marked by commendations and awards. The traumatic and highly demanding nature of the work, however, took its toll on both his family and personal life---something Frederick was able to conquer but only after years of distress and regret.
On the early morning of August 16, 2006, Osama bin Laden was arrested in Brooklyn by the New York FBI Terrorism Task Force.
They were acting on a tip called in by Barbara Janik.
Janik tells her story:
Chasing bin Laden takes readers along with Janik on an emotional journey through the hidden world of lay investigations, which is charged with high-stakes puzzle solving, Arabic message boards, and anxiety-provoking collaborations with the FBI.
A Pulitzer prize-winning journalist backs her up!
In The Killing of Osama bin Laden, Seymour Hersh states that “bin Laden was a prisoner of the ISI [Pakistani intelligence] at the Abbottabad compound since 2006…”
Refreshing, Timeless Lessons for Those Who Care to Lead
In the international bestselling book Learning to Lead, Leading to Learn, leadership coach Katie Anderson and Toyota leader Isao Yoshino bring you a remarkable book about what it means to learn, to lead, and to care. Created through years of collaboration, this book offers their shared reflections on leadership and learning, providing readers an inspirational experience that defies generational and cultural divides.
“The only secret to Toyota is its attitude towards learning.” -- Isao Yoshino
With a career that spanned nearly four decades at Toyota Motor Corporation, Isao Yoshino’s stories help us understand how Toyota intentionally developed the culture of excellence for which it is renowned today, and how one person learned to lead so that he could lead to learn. Katie Anderson weaves together these heartwarming stories of personal discovery, and offers her own unique perspective on them, with the intention of helping you learn to lead and lead to learn.
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Farm Girl is a memoir of urgent grace that crosses boundaries of genre and time. In her second year of college, Megan finds herself bonded to a lover spiraling into addiction and two thousand miles away from her heart’s home—a stretch of forty certified-organic acres along the banks of the Connecticut River separating Vermont and New Hampshire. In the crucible of a rainy Portland winter, Megan is forced to decide whether to embrace her future as a farm girl or to continue growing into the woman everyone hopes she’ll become. Farm Girl is about two love affairs that force a decision: the love between two people and the love between Megan and the landscape. With innovative prose and lush description, Farm Girl raises the earth up as a character and asks questions about the work we choose to sustain us—how careful attention and devotion to the earth transcends human tragedy.
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Only once in a lifetime does a war so brutal erupt. A war that becomes an official genocide, causes millions to run from their homes, compels the slaughtering of thousands in the most horrific of ways, and inspires terrorist attacks to transpire across the world.
That is the chilling legacy of the ISIS onslaught, and Only Cry for the Living takes a profoundly personal, unprecedented dive into one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world.
Journalist Hollie S. McKay offers a raw, on-the-ground journey chronicling the rise of ISIS in Iraq exposing the group's vast impact and how and why it sought to wage terror on civilians in a desperate attempt to create an antiquated caliphate.
The book, constructed chronologically through memos, captures the historical impact of ISIS across Iraq and Syria, as seen through the eyes of sex slave survivors, internally displaced people, persecuted minorities, humanitarian workers, religious leaders, military commanders, and even the terrorists themselves.
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
The peaceful farm life of a teenage girl in Germany is abruptly upended when WWII comes knocking at her family’s door. One month before her sixteenth birthday, Mildred “Mickchen” Schindler and her family are captured by Russian Soldiers. Having already survived life in Hitler’s Nazi Germany, they now face the terror of a new enemy—Stalin’s Red Army.
Driven from their home, Mildred and her family become refugees along with a sad, slow-moving caravan of other families who have suffered the same fate. Cleverly disguised by her mother, Mildred avoids being taken to a work camp until one morning when authorities arrive unexpectedly. Her father has already been taken by Russian soldiers, and now she is taken from her mother and brother.
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Desperate to find respite from her father's verbal abuse, his various affairs, and her step-mother's psychological torment, Gina spent hours doing Jane Fonda's workouts, smoked cigarettes instead of eating food, and became obsessed with her thinness... with the notion of fading away. She found solace in restlessness-drinking hallucinogenic mushroom tea and inhaling crushed pills and powders-perching herself on the periphery of danger again and again.
Gina soon glimpsed a better life for herself when her grandfather, a man who was a surrogate father to her, became terminally ill. She soon fell in love with John, a stranger who was utterly familiar, but who was addicted to heroin. She moved from New Hampshire to California, crossing the country in an attempt to alleviate her self-destructive tendencies, but found herself pulled back to New Hampshire, to John, a man with whom, despite his struggle, she could not deny the sense of home she felt.
What would it cost for a girl to run wildly and recklessly into womanhood, making instant, temporary homes?
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Born of illustrious New England stock, Rachel Field was a National Book Award–winning novelist, a Newbery Medal–winning children’s writer, a poet, playwright, and rising Hollywood success in the early twentieth century. Her light was abruptly extinguished at the age of forty-seven, when she died at the pinnacle of her personal happiness and professional acclaim.
Fifty years later, Robin Clifford Wood stepped onto the sagging floorboards of Rachel’s long-neglected home on the rugged shores of an island in Maine and began dredging up Rachel’s history. She was determined to answer the questions that filled the house’s every crevice: Who was this vibrant, talented artist whose very name entrances those who still remember her work? Why is that work—so richly remunerated and widely celebrated in her lifetime—so largely forgotten today? The journey into Rachel’s world took Wood further than she ever dreamed possible, unveiling a life fraught with challenge, and buried by tragedy, and yet incandescent with joy.
Finalist Autobiography/Memoirs 2021 Best Book Awards
Abandoned By Her Mother
Ronit was six years old when her mother left her and her four year old sister for India to follow a cult guru. Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, whose commune was responsible for the largest biological attack on U.S. soil, preached that children were hindrances and encouraged sterilizations among his followers. Luckily Ronit's father, who'd left the family the previous year, stepped up and brought the girls to live with him first in Newark, New Jersey, and later in Flushing, Queens. On the surface, his nurturing was the balm Ronit sought, but she soon paid a second emotional price, taking on the role of partner and confidant to him, and substitute mother to her sister. By the end of her childhood, Ronit would discover she had lost her mother and the close and trusting relationship she once had with her father. Though they have had a relationship now for years, she grappled with the toll her mother's leaving took, measuring her self-worth by her absence.
Mary Steinhauser is the only peace officer in the history of penal institutions in Canada to willingly offer up her life in the service of her country. It was during a 1975 prison escape attempt and 41-hour hostage-taking by three desperate inmates of the British Columbia Penitentiary in New Westminster, B.C. that Mary volunteered to be the principal hostage. For 41 hours, she was held as a human shield, protecting not only the inmates but the fourteen other hostages sequestered in a nearby vault. Her calmness, composure and bravery throughout the entire hostage-taking was noted by the negotiators and penitentiary staff alike. She was killed there. This is her story.
This biography of Mary's life and tragic death is narrated by Margaret, her younger sister. From Mary's early childhood in rural B.C., it charts the evolution of a young nurse from social worker to symbol for those dedicated to prison reform. Mary's experiences are fascinating reading for any adult interested in local history, law enforcement, mental health awareness, and criminal justice. Her work as a psychiatric nurse in hospitals and institutions across Canada led to her introduction to prison life, which sparked her fierce determination to improve the inmate experience, prisoner justice, and prison reform.
In spring 1942, eighteen-year-old Bill Gemmill was eager to serve his country. After a recruiter stamped his paperwork “Deferred,” Bill reluctantly agreed to pursue a college football scholarship. It was the crash of a ferried bomber behind his frat house that changed his life and spurred him on to war.
Following fourteen months of training, Bill’s vision of fighting from the air finally took shape as his bombardier insignia was pinned by the girl he had to leave behind. Within a month, he and his crew were on their way to Southern Italy.
After more than twenty successful missions, on 22 November 1944, disaster struck: Bill and his crew were hit badly. Unable to re-cross the Alps, the decision was made to abandon ship. Parachuting into the Yugoslavian countryside, Bill found himself alone. Would he find his way back to Italy or end up in the hands of German allies? Would he be reunited with his crew? Ultimately, would he survive?
A mixture of memoir and biography, Chasing the Ghost: Nobelist Fred Reines and the Neutrino tells a deeply human story that appeals both to scientists and non-scientists. Although the book relates to the important discovery of neutrinos, it is more intimately about Fred Reines than the technical details of neutrino physics. Narrated in a fashion to interest and excite the reader, the science presented here is accessible to a broad audience. Coursing through Reines' life, his various challenges and encounters, the book reveals constants of his persona. Reines displayed a sustained consistency as a respected leader, admired by students and colleagues as a fount of big ideas and ambition. A continuing source of inspiration and motivation to others, his most basic consistency was his passion for science. The quest for knowledge about the wondrous universe is a profoundly human endeavor. Fred Reines' life and his unremitting scientific curiosity are emblematic of that truth.
Ice & Oil is indeed a biography of an unlikely titan. Meet Dan Murphy, the man who shaped Los Angeles as the 19th century turned into the 20th century Murphy and his endeavors parallel the history of California. But, because he’s shunned renown his name is virtually unknown. Author Joseph Francis Ryan delves into the complex life of Dan Murphy, businessman-turned-tycoon: Mentored by Southern Pacific’s Charles Crocker, he built the town of Needles the transfer point for a second transcontinental railroad. His ingenuity made it possible to transport citrus across the country. He honored Mojave culture in and the Native American’s respect. He saved the day when Edward Doheny needed money for his oil company. His California Portland Cement Company provided cement for Los Angeles just as it was becoming a 20th century metropolis and for the construction of Boulder dam. “Another important piece of California history has emerged.”
A young woman's gripping account of faith, courage, and survival during and after World War II. Follow Marion Ghent as she endures the death of her father, Japanese attacks during World War II, hiding among the feared Moros on Mindanao Island, becoming a Japanese POW, escaping, and then hiding out in the mountains and rain forests just trying to survive the war. Learn the miraculous story of how she reconnects with her father's American family, then comes to the USA to live among the family and complete her education. See how her constant Faith, Courage, and Strength saw her through every trial, and how she clung to the knowledge that she was "NEVER FORSAKEN!"
Nobody’s Child: A Biography is an urban drama. It takes place in the Brooklyn, Queens & Harlem sections of New York City, from the beginning of the Second Great Migration to the present day. It is a family drama rooted in the life experiences of a mother, my mother Brenda. It’s about overcoming drug addiction, complicated black family dynamics, surviving domestic violence, and the healing of family trauma. It’s about choices parents make and how those choices affect their children and everyone else around them. And, It’s also about secrets kept and the far-reaching, dysfunctional affects those secrets have on families. Finally, it’s about LOVE. Love between mothers and daughters, mothers and sons, love between women, sisters and friends, husbands and wives and fathers and their daughters.One thing is certain… no life is perfect. This story is about imperfect lives, the ones lived by my family, mainly my mother – a most beautiful, God-fearing soul.
