memoir

From Don Coscarelli, the celebrated filmmaker behind many cherished cult classics comes a memoir that's both revealing autobiography and indie film crash course. Best known for his horror/sci-fi/fantasy films including Phantasm, The Beastmaster, Bubba Ho-tep and John Dies at the End, now he's taking you on a white-knuckle ride through the wild world of the independent filmmaker. Join Coscarelli as he sells his first feature film to Universal Pictures and gets his own office on the studio lot while still a teenager. Travel with him as he chaperones three out-of-control child actors as they barnstorm Japan, almost drowns actress Catherine Keener in her first film role, and turns a short story about Elvis Presley battling a four thousand year-old Egyptian mummy into a beloved cult classic film. True Indie is loaded with the filmmaker's behind-the-scenes stories, like setting his face on fire during the making of Phantasm, hearing Bruce Campbell's most important question before agreeing to star in Bubba Ho-tep, and crafting a horror thriller into a franchise phenomenon spanning four decades. Not just memoir, True Indie is also a crash course on the indie film world. Find out how Coscarelli managed to retain creative and financial control of his works in an industry ruled by power-hungry predators, and all without going insane or bankrupt. True Indie will prove indispensable for film fans, aspiring filmmakers, and anyone who loves an underdog success story.

Gianni Russo was a handsome 25-year-old mobster with no acting experience when he walked onto the set of The Godfather and entered Hollywood history. He played Carlo Rizzi, the husband of Connie Corleone, who set her brother Sonny?played by James Caan?up for a hit. Russo didn't have to act?he knew the mob inside and out: from his childhood in Little Italy, where Mafia legend Frank Costello took him under his wing, to acting as a messenger for New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello during the Kennedy assassination, to having to go on the lam after shooting and killing a member of the Colombian drug cartel in his Vegas club.

A memoir by a former British National Heath Service employee and single parent describes her battles with early onset Alzheimer's, the management techniques she has developed to maintain her independence, and her efforts to make sense of her shifting world.

A candid, thrilling memoir from one of the most recognizable, influential, and beloved cinematic personalities in the world. Everyone knows Jackie Chan. Whether it's from Rush Hour, Shanghai Noon, The Karate Kid, or Kung Fu Panda, Jackie is admired by generations of moviegoers for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, and mind-bending stunts. In 2016--after fifty-six years in the industry, over 200 films, and many broken bones--he received an honorary Academy Award for his lifetime achievement in film. But at 64 years-old, Jackie is just getting started. Now, in Never Grow Up, the global superstar reflects on his early life, including his childhood years at the China Drama Academy (in which he was enrolled at the age of six), his big breaks (and setbacks) in Hong Kong and Hollywood, his numerous brushes with death (both on and off film sets), and his life as a husband and father (which has been, admittedly and regrettably, imperfect). Jackie has never shied away from his mistakes. Since The Young Master in 1980, Jackie's films have ended with a bloopers reel in which he stumbles over his lines, misses his mark, or crashes to the ground in a stunt gone south. In Never Grow Up, Jackie applies the same spirit of openness to his life, proving time and time again why he's beloved the world over: he's honest, funny, kind, brave beyond reckoning and--after all this time--still young at heart.

A memoir of the author's life spent in the company of animals illuminates the universal experiences of loving, healing, and losing beloved pets, describing some of the remarkable cases that shaped her career.

The inspirational and true rags-to-riches story of how one young boy made it from the war-torn Congolese jungles to America and onto the silver screen, all the while facing extraordinary trials and twists of fate with an unwavering faith and unflagging spirit.

Cara Meredith grew up in a colorless world. From childhood, she didn't think issues of race had anything to do with her. A colorblind rhetoric had been stamped across her education, world view, and Christian theology. Then as an adult, Cara's life took on new, colorful hues. She realized that her generation, seeking to move beyond ancestral racism, had swung so far that they tried to act as if they didn't see race at all. But that picture neglected the unique cultural identity God gives each person. When Cara met and fell in love with the son of black icon, James Meredith, she began to listen to the stories and experiences of others in a new way, taking note of the cultures, sounds and shades of life already present around her. After she married and their little family grew to include two mixed-race sons, Cara knew she would never see the world through a colorless lens again. A writer and speaker in an interracial marriage and mixed-race family, Cara finds herself more and more in the middle of discussions about racial justice. In The Color of Life, she asks how do we navigate ongoing and desperately-needed conversations about race? How do we teach our children a theology of reconciliation and love? And what does it mean to live a life that makes space for seeing the imago Dei in everyone? Cara's illuminating memoir paints a beautiful path from white privilege toward racial healing, from ignorance toward seeing the image of God in everyone she meets.

Jodie Patterson is the mother of five children, including her ten-year-old transgender son Penelope, the catalyst for the author's reexamination of identity within her own dynamic household--and the wider world. This inspiring and highly personal debut memoir goes on to examine Jodie's extended families' African American experiences with racism and civil rights, and her own coming of age in New York City in the 1970s and 80s, and later on as a wife, mother, and activist. With a novelist's sense of artful structure and pacing, Jodie turns her lens on a range of subjects--from the women who raised her and provided strength and comfort, all the while going against cultural norms and gender expectations, to her own children, who acted as a vehicle for Jodie's own growth and ultimately her acceptance of her very diverse family. The result is an exquisite study in transformation, identity, courage, and love.

Pavlichenko was World War II's best-scoring sniper and had a varied wartime career that included trips to England and America. In June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, she left her university studies, ignored the offer of a position as a nurse, to become one of Soviet Russia's 2000 female snipers. Less than a year later she had 309 recorded kills, including 29 enemy sniper kills. She was withdrawn from active duty after being injured: she was also regarded as a key heroic figure for the war effort.

As soon as Adam Kay set foot on a hospital ward for the first time, he realised there's quite a lot they don't teach you at medical school ... His diaries from the NHS front line - scribbled in secret after long nights, endless days and missed weekends - are hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns. This Is Going to Hurt is everything you wanted to know about being a junior doctor, and more than a few things you really didn't. And yes, it may leave a scar.