biography & autobiography / personal memoirs

"Told with raw, rugged honesty, this heartrending memoir from journalist Sarah Tomlinson recounts her unconventional upbringing and coming-of-age as colored by her complicated relationship with her father. Sarah Tomlinson was born on January 29, 1976, in a farmhouse in Freedom, Maine. After two years of attempted family life in Boston, her father's gambling addiction and broken promises led her mother to pool her resources with five other families to buy 100 acres of land in Maine and reunite with her college boyfriend. Sarah would spend the majority of her childhood on "The Land" with infrequent, but coveted, visits from her father, who--as a hitchhiking, acid-dropping, wannabe mystic turned taxi driver--was nothing short of a rock star in her eyes. Propelled out of her bohemian upbringing to seek the big life she equated with her father, Sarah entered college at fifteen, where a school shooting further complicated her quest for a sense of safety. While establishing herself as a journalist and rock critic on both coasts, Sarah's father continued to swerve in and out of her life, building and re-breaking their relationship, and fracturing Sarah's confidence and sense of self. In this unforgettable memoir, Sarah conveys the dark comedy in her quest to repair the heart her father broke. Bittersweet, honest, and ultimately redemptive, Good Girl takes an insightful look into what happens when the people we love unconditionally are the people who disappoint us the most, and how time, introspection, and acceptance can help us heal"--.

"In this searing memoir, Iran-born author Rahimeh Andalibian tells the story of her family: their struggle to survive the 1979 revolution, their move to California, and their attempts to acculturate in the face of teenage rebellion, murder, addiction, and new traditions. Andalibian struggles to make sense of two brutal crimes: a rape, solved by her father, and a murder, of which her beloved oldest brother stands accused. She takes us first into her family's tranquil, jasmine-scented days of prosperity in their luxury hotel in Mashhad, Iran. Their life is ruptured by the 1979 revolution as they flee: first to the safety of a mansion in Tehran, next to a squalid one-room flat in London, and finally to California, where they suffer a different kind of revolution. Struggling to adjust to a new host culture, they soon discover that although they escaped Iran, they are not free from their own lies and hidden truths. As the family comes to grips with their new home, the strength of their bonds are tested by love, loyalty, compassion, hate, pain, loss--and the will to survive. Heartbreaking and intimately told, this is a universal story of healing, rebirth after tragedy, and hard-won redemption"--.

"From one of the most ferociously brilliant young voices in literary non-fiction: a debut of extraordinary force that interrogates a particular paradigm of American masculinity, capturing with discomforting intimacy and precision the landscape of the misfit. Kent Russell's essays take us to society's ragged edges, the junctures between savagery and civilization, where solitary, philosophical, troubled men yearn for a more heightened form of existence. We meet a self-immunizer in small-town Wisconsin who has conditioned his body to withstand the bites of the most venomous snakes; NHL enforcers who build their careers on violence and intimidation; a former mogul who has retreated to a crocodile-infested island off the Australian coast; the fans at a three-day music festival ominously called The Gathering; Amish baseball players who push the limits of their cultural restraints; and, perhaps most memorably, Russell's own oddball, inimitable forebears. I Am Sorry to Think I Have Raised a Timid Son, at once blistering and deeply personal, records Russell's quest to understand, through his journalistic subjects, his own appetites and urges, his childhood demons and persistent alienation, and, above all, his knotty, volatile, vital relationship with his father. Combining the fierce intellect and humane wit of John Jeremiah Sullivan and David Foster Wallace with a dark, unfettered sensibility all his own, Russell gives us a haunting and unforgettable portrait of America"--.

"Award-winning actress Drew Barrymore shares ... stories from her past and present told from the place of happiness she's achieved today. Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today. It is the first book Drew has written about her life since the age of 14."--Provided by publisher.

Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like a terrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. Furiously happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence." It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways.

Raj Koothrappali, a character on the popular show, The Bing Bang Theory, is charmingly played by Kunal Nayyar. Tracing his journey from a young boy in New Delhi, to the popular star of a TV show who is now wedded to a former Miss India, Kunal writes his tales of life in an irreverent, hilarious, and self-deprecating voice.

Thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Alexander is a psychotherapist, a spin instructor, a volunteer, and an athlete. She is also almost completely blind, with significantly deteriorated hearing. When Rebecca was twelve, her parents were told that she would be completely blind before she turned thirty. At eighteen, she fell through a window, shattering her body. In college, she found out that due to a rare genetic disorder-Usher Syndrome Type III-she was losing her hearing as well. Since then, she has earned two Master's degrees from Columbia University, ridden a six-hundred-mile bike race, hiked the Inca Trail, and established a thriving career-all while maintaining a vibrant social life. Rebecca makes the journey from a teenager who tried to hide her disabilities, to a woman who is able to face the world exactly as she is. Even though Rebecca inhabits a gradually darkening world, she refuses to let that stop her from living life with joy and enthusiasm.

In this witty and warm memoir of her family's life in rural Vermont, Shirley Jackson exposes a domestic side in cheerful contrast to her quietly terrifying fiction. With a novelist's gift for character, an unfailing maternal instinct, and her signature humor, Jackson turns everyday family experiences into brilliant adventures.

Reveals the intricate camaraderie and culinary choreography that takes place in a New York restaurant kitchen.