Family Biography

Tananarive Due, best-selling author and American Book Award winner, and her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, guide listeners through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Told in alternating chapters, their story is a triumphant memoir of their experiences with everyday people fighting for equality as members of grassroots organizations in the South. Filled with drama, heartache and rousing successes, Freedom in the Family will inspire and enlighten with its riveting account of one of America’s most progressive times.

The megatalented creator of Grey's Anatomy and Scandal and executive producer of How to Get Away with Murder chronicles how saying yes for one year changed her life - and how it can change yours, too.

One of five children, Pat watched as her alcoholic mother struggled to get by on charity, cons, and petty crimes. At age seven, Pat was taught to roll drunks for money. At 12, she was targeted for sex by a man eight years her senior; by 13, she was pregnant. By 15, Pat was a mother of two. Alone at 16, 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.

Based on hundreds of interviews with friends, family, and lovers over a thirty-year period—as well as previously unreleased material from the JFK Library—Kennedy historian J. Randy Taraborrelli paints an unforgettable new portrait of a woman whose flaws and contradictions only serve to make her even more iconic. “I have three lives,” Jackie told a former lover, “public, private and secret.” In this revealing biography, listeners will become intimately familiar with all three.

At the tender age of twelve, Jaleel White auditioned for the role of Steve Urkel, the socially inept genius, who was in love with his next-door neighbor, Laura. Though Steve Urkel was intended to be in only one episode, Jaleel’s indelible performance catapulted Urkel into the pantheon of American pop culture. But success can cost as much as it pays. After nine years on the popular sitcom Family Matters, Jaleel is twenty-one, a UCLA undergrad, and adjusting to a world and industry that sees him as the nasally nerd in high water pants, suspenders, and coke bottle glasses.

“Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash talking woman was not to be found.” So began Andy Corren's unforgettable obituary for his mother, Renay Mandel Corren, in her hometown paper The Fayetteville Observer, a tribute that went on to touch the hearts of millions around the globe. In his brief telling of the life and legend that was Renay, Andy captured only a slice of his loving and fabulously unconventional mother.

From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past. When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire.

A Sometimes Paradise is a moving personal journey into the rugged beauty and hardscrabble challenges of Wyoming ranch life that shaped Mark Miller as a boy and then as a young man. Against the backdrop of deadly ice storms and punishing droughts in a harsh, unforgiving environment, Mark shares stories of adventures, misadventures, and invaluable lessons he learned along the way. As he adapted to the rugged Wyoming terrain, he forged an unbreakable connection with the land and animals—and discovered the true power of family and friendship.

When Kristina Kuzmič started to see signs that her otherwise sunny, resilient teenage son was struggling, she was sure a few simple fixes could right the ship. But over the following months, the issues her family faced became more nuanced, complicated, and pervasive than she could've predicted—and what began as a clear to do list spiraled into an emotionally fraught and seemingly endless push and pull between signs of progress and overwhelming fear.

What do you do when, just before Thanksgiving at your mother's, your 14-year-old son asks you to iron the dress he recently purchased and plans to wear? Listeners learn the answer and much more in this wonderfully frank, loving, and practical account of parenting a transgender teen. Hassouri chronicles what amounts to a dual transition: as her child transitions from male to female, she navigates through anger, denial, and grief to eventual acceptance. Despite her experience advising other parents in her work as a pediatrician, she was blindsided by her child's gender identity.

Brooke Shields never had what anyone would consider an ordinary life. She was raised by her Newark-tough single mom, Teri, a woman who loved the world of show business and was often a media sensation all by herself. Brooke's iconic modeling career began by chance when she was only 11 months old, and Teri's skills as both Brooke's mother and her manager were formidable. But in private she was troubled and drank heavily.

The secret behind France's astonishingly well-behaved children is here. When American journalist Pamela Druckerman has a baby in Paris, she doesn't aspire to become a "French parent". French parenting isn't a known thing, like French fashion or French cheese. Even French parents themselves insist they aren't doing anything special. But French children are far better behaved and more in command of themselves than American kids....

At nine, Sean Connery saved him from drowning. At thirteen, desperate to hook up with Janis Joplin, he attended his aunt Joan Didion and uncle John Gregory Dunne’s legendary LA launch party for Tom Wolfe’s The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. At sixteen, he got kicked out of boarding school, ending his institutional education for good.

With a terminal diagnosis her life will never be the same again. Against the odds, will she make the right decisions? From the outside Beryl has everything, a happy marriage, a loving family and loyal friends. That is until her doctor tells her she only has 52 weeks left to live. Making a decision to treat her limited time as an adventure, she decides to free herself and enjoy as many new experiences as she can fit in. Some adventures can be small; meeting new people and making a difference to their lives, while others can be huge life affirming events. It’s all about how you tackle them ...

Frail Children of Dust is a heartfelt, true story of faith, courage, and survival during one of the darkest times in human history—World War II. Based on the real-life experiences of Charles Wilson, a young Christian pastor drafted into the U.S. Army, this powerful memoir captures the struggles of maintaining hope, love, and belief in the midst of unimaginable hardship. From basic training in the American heartland to the battle-scarred towns of Europe, Wilson’s journey reveals the internal battles faced by soldiers: the clash between duty and personal conviction, and the enduring ...

For nearly four decades, David Sedaris has faithfully kept a diary in which he records his thoughts and observations on the odd and funny events he witnesses. Anyone who has attended a live Sedaris event knows that his diary readings are often among the most joyful parts of the evening. But never before have they been available in print. Now, in Theft by Finding, Sedaris brings us his favorite entries. From deeply poignant to laugh-out-loud funny, these selections reveal with new intimacy a man longtime fans only think they know.

On March 15th, 1987 police in Anchorage, Alaska arrived at a horrific scene of carnage. In a modest downtown apartment, they found Nancy Newman's brutally beaten corpse sprawled across her bed. In other rooms were the bodies of her eight-year-old daughter, Melissa, and her three-year-old, Angie, whose throat was slit from ear to ear. Both Nancy and Melissa had been sexually assaulted.

This is the never-before-told true story of the Gotti family, as told by John Gotti's daughter, Victoria. Brutally honest and packed with explosive revelations, this powerful memoir chronicles an American family saga like no other.

For fifty years, the 1972 murders of Bryce and Virginia Durham and their teenage son Bobby on a bitter winter's night in Boone, North Carolina were unsolved, but in 2022, the Watauga County Sheriff's Office announced that their killers had finally been identified. Based on information from Georgia, four men associated with the Dixie Mafia (including the infamous Billy Sunday Birt, whose notoriety was explored by the popular "In The Red Clay" podcast) were proclaimed with certainty to be the guilty parties who strangled the Durhams and placed them headfirst into a water-filled bathtub.

In Raising Trump, Ivana Trump reflects on her extraordinary life and the raising of her three children - Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka - and recounts the lessons she taught her children as they were growing up. As her former husband takes his place as the 45th president of the United States, his children have also been thrust into the media spotlight - but it is Ivana who raised them and proudly instilled in them what she believes to be the most important life lessons: loyalty, honesty, integrity, and drive.