Family Biography

This memoir is soaked in the sunshine of Corfu, where Gerald Durrell lived as a boy, surrounded by his eccentric family - as well as puppies, toads, scorpions, geckoes, ladybugs, glowworms, octopuses, bats, and butterflies.

Eve Haas is the daughter of a German Jewish family that took refuge in London after Hitler came to power. Following a terrifying air raid in the blitz, her father revealed the family secret - that her great-great grandmother Emilie was married to a Prussian prince. He then showed her the treasured leather-bound notebook inscribed to Emilie by the prince.

Having founded the bank that became the most powerful in Europe in the 15th century, the Medici gained massive political power in Florence, raising the city to a peak of cultural achievement and becoming its hereditary dukes. Mary Hollingsworth argues that the idea that the Medici were enlightened rulers of the Renaissance is a fiction that has now acquired the status of historical fact. In truth, the Medici were as devious and immoral as the Borgias - tyrants loathed in the city they illegally made their own.

At six-foot-four-inches and 375 pounds, Jack Garcia looked the part of a mobster, and he played his part so perfectly that his Mafia bosses never suspected he was an undercover agent for the FBI. "Big Jack Falcone," as he was known inside La Cosa Nostra, learned all the inside dirt about the Gambino organized crime syndicate and its illegal activities---from extortion and loan-sharking to assault and murder.

On January 14, 2018, a 17-year-old girl climbed out of the window of her Perris, California home and dialed 911 with shaking fingers. Struggling to stay calm, she told the operator that she and her 12 siblings - ranging in age from two to 29 - were being abused by their parents. When the dispatcher asked for her address, the girl hesitated. "I've never been out," she stammered.

Over seven generations, Jessica Goudeau’s family members were church elders, preachers, Sunday school teachers and potluck organizers. Her great-grandfather helped establish a Christian university in Abilene, Texas, which she attended along with her grandparents, parents, siblings, and cousins. Her family's legacy—a word she heard often growing up—was rooted in faithfulness, righteousness, and the hard work that built the great state of Texas.

Empress Alexandra Romanov – the last empress of Russia, wife of Tsar Nicholas II, and now a saint of the Russian Orthodox Church – chose Countess Sophie Buxhoeveden, one of her ladies-in-waiting, to be her authorized biographer, opening up to her about her closest relationships and giving her access to copies of her private correspondence. Additionally, as a lady-in-waiting, Countess Buxhoeveden attended on the Empress for much of the reign of Tsar Nicholas II, only leaving her side when the Imperial Family was removed to Tobolsk after the Tsar’s abdication in 1917. Thereafter, she ...

Selected in 2005 by the army to be the first airborne reconnaissance squadron, 5th Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, better known as 5-73 CAV, was formed from 3rd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. The members of the squadron were hand-selected by the squadron command team, Lieutenant Colonel Poppas and Command Sergeant Major Edgar. With just more than 400 paratroopers, they were half the size of a full-strength battalion and the smallest unit in the Panther Brigade.

When Deb Moerke and her husband decided to become foster parents, they never imagined how their lives would change. And never did they imagine their worst nightmare coming true: Their five-year-old foster daughter, Hannah, murdered at the hands of her birth mom, Karen. The Moerkes were overwhelmed with horror and grief. And just when they didn’t think they could bear any more, Deb received a phone call from Karen in prison. Facing a life sentence for Hannah’s murder, she was pregnant. And Karen had an incredible request: Would Deb take her unborn baby and love it as her own?

Thirteen-year-old Catherine Cabot Hall put ink to the first unblemished page of her diary on October 17, 1830, the day after her father returned from Boston with the diary tucked conspicuously under his arm. Catherine's mother had died of fever four years before, and now Catherine performed the duties of housewife and mother, living contentedly with her father and younger sister, Matty, on their New Hampshire farm. In spite of the daily hardships, Catherine had much to be thankful for, especially for Cassie, her dearest friend.

Twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has brains, friends, and a bright future. Then Mao Zedong launches China’s infamous Cultural Revolution. Soon school is suspended and students are getting caught up in the fervor of Mao’s extreme politics. When Ji-li’s family is accused of capitalist crimes, all of her beautiful dreams burst like soap bubbles. Because Ji-li’s grandfather was a landlord, her family is harassed and humiliated. Their home is searched, and they live in constant fear. Nonetheless, Ji-li remains loyal to her beloved Chairman Mao....

In this deeply moving and myth-shattering work, Ann Fessler brings out into the open for the first time the astonishing untold history of the million and a half women who surrendered children for adoption due to enormous family and social pressure in the decades before Roe v. Wade.

Ever since a childhood visit to Washington, DC, Cassidy Hutchinson aspired to serve her country in government. Raised in a working-class family with a military background, she was the first in her immediate family to graduate from college. Despite having no ties to Washington, Hutchinson landed a vital position at the center of the Trump White House.

Detective Michael Palermo built his career on his unique ability to inhabit two worlds at once: the world of law enforcement and the underworld of New York’s crime family organizations. Palermo participated in over 2,000 arrests while maintaining close relationships with the kingpins of organized crime - ties that allowed him to stay one step ahead of the rest of the New York City Police Department. This true crime drama takes you inside the police force at its most corrupt.

Freeman Dyson is a world-renowned astrophysicist who dreams of exploring the heavens and has designed a spaceship to take him there. His son, George, a brilliant high-school dropout, lives in a tree house and is designing a giant kayak to explore the icy coastal wilderness of the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.

In 1989, as US news outlets declared an end to Operation Just Cause, Craig Morgan was part of an elite group of military operatives jumping into the jungle along the Panamanian border on a covert operation. Fans know the country music star from his hit songs and acclaimed albums, but there’s a lot more to him—a soldier who worked with the CIA in Panama, an undercover agent who fought sex traffickers in Thailand, and a dedicated family man who lives the values he sings.

In August of 1969, during two bloody evenings of paranoid, psychedelic savagery, Charles Manson and his dystopic communal family helped to wreck the dreams of the Love Generation. At least nine people were murdered, among them Sharon Tate, the young, beautiful, pregnant, actress and wife of Roman Polanski.

In this revelatory, authoritative portrait of Donald J. Trump and the toxic family that made him, Mary L. Trump, a trained clinical psychologist and Donald’s only niece, shines a bright light on the dark history of their family in order to explain how her uncle became the man who now threatens the world’s health, economic security, and social fabric.

In 1914 collisions between motor cars and horse-drawn carriages are an everyday occurrence on the streets of Paterson, New Jersey. But when an out-of-control driver smashes into a buggy driven by Constance, Norma, and Fleurette Kopp, their lives change forever. Constance, the oldest, demands payment for the damages but quickly realizes that she is dealing with a madman.

Karen Fine always knew that she wanted to be a vet and wasn't going to let anything stop her: not her allergy to cats, and not the fact that in the '80s veterinary medicine was still a mostly male profession. Inspired by her grandfather, a compassionate doctor who paid house calls to all his (human) patients, Dr. Fine persevered, and brought her Oupa's principles into her own practice, which emphasizes the need to understand her patients’ stories to provide the best possible care.