Memoir Relationship

In 2021, Kacie decided to leave her life as a pro dancer in New York City and move to Italy–and she never looked back. Okay, that isn't strictly true… In You Deserve Good Gelato, Kacie reflects on everything from travel fails and homesickness to the joy of culture shocks and the power of doing the s*** that scares you. Because life is too short not to.

The Close sisters are descended from very prominent and wealthy ancestors. When the Close sisters were very young, their parents joined a cult called the MRA, or Moral Rearmament. The family was suddenly uprooted to a cult school in Switzerland and, ultimately, to the Belgian Congo where their father became a surgeon in the war-ravaged republic, and ultimately the personal physician to President Mobutu.

One cold November night, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, fifteen-year-old Richard Jahnke Jr., ROTC leader and former Boy Scout, waited for his parents to return from celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the night they met. When his father got out of the car, the boy blasted him through the heart with a twelve-gauge pump-action shotgun. Richard's seventeen-year-old sister, Deborah, was sitting on the living room couch with a high-powered rifle - just in case her brother missed.

Self-deprecating and with an acerbic wit, TikTok star Clara Batten aka @rabatts is every middle-class mother trying to get through the day without another sh*t on the staircase or panic drive to McDonald’s. In Gin and Phonics, she talks candidly about the ups, downs and hilarious reality of trying to parent two small people and fulfil her lifelong dream of becoming an actress without losing her bl**dy mind.

Death was conspicuously absent during Rachel's medical training. Instead, her education focused entirely on learning to save lives, and was left wanting when it came to helping patients and their families face death. She came to specialize in palliative medicine because it is the one specialty in which the quality, not quantity of life truly matters. In the same year she started to work in a hospice, Rachel was forced to face tragedy in her own life when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Meghan Riordan Jarvis lived a charmed childhood with her large Irish-Catholic family: loving parents, a house full of siblings, a top-tier education, and summers on Cape Cod. And yet, loss was part of her story from the beginning. In therapy in her 20s after a break-up, Meghan discovered how the silence surrounding a childhood tragedy had laid the groundwork for a life spent trying to keep other people happy and avoiding any type of risk, including love. End of the Hour is for anyone who has experienced the unpredictable, lasting power of grief—and wondered how they’d ever get through it.

In "Bare," Raina O’Dell takes you on a journey that traverses many lifetimes all in one. She lays bare the realities of her life, from the highs of her success in business to the lows of divorce, illness, and bankruptcy. Yet, by moving through it all with fearless awareness, she discovers her truth, which she shares here with deep conviction: where we are today does not dictate where we’ll be tomorrow.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably the greatest figure of the 20th century. While FDR's official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women - particularly with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd - that most vividly bring to light the human being beneath this towering statesman.

Baseball Dads is a heartwarming collection of notable major-league players’ favorite baseball-related memories about how their relationships with their fathers shaped them, not only as players, but as the men they are today. From superstars like David Wright, Josh Hamilton, C. C. Sabathia, Adrian Gonzalez, Chipper Jones, and Kevin Youkilis, to journeyman big leaguers like Adam LaRoche, J. D. Drew, Shelley Duncan, Barry Zito, and Jeff Francoeur, this inspiring book reveals, through its 15 vivid profiles, the profound impact fathers can have.

An inspiring memoir, reminding us that whether life's lessons arrive through illness, trauma or any other unexpected upheaval, life really does love us. As a free-spirited, independent woman, Bronnie Ware was used to donning a variety of hats: singer, songwriter, author, speaker, traveller and adventurer. And as her soul would have it in her mid-40s, she felt the urge to add one more: mother.

In the best-selling tradition of The Presidents Club and Presidential Courage, White House history as told through the stories of the best friends and closest confidants of American presidents.

From her beginnings as an early blogger, Ree Drummond has become a household name with a passionate following of devoted fans. On her blog, in her magazine, and on her cooking show, Ree shares recipes, tales of her adventures in the country, and stories of everyday life with her four children and cowboy/rancher husband.

Growing up, Lisa Nikolidakis tried to make sense of her childhood, which was scarred by abuse, violence, and psychological terrors so extreme that her relationship with her father was cleaved beyond repair. Having finally been able to leave that relationship behind, surviving meant forgetting. For years, “I’m fine” was a lie Nikolidakis repeated. Then, on her twenty-seventh birthday, Nikolidakis’s father murdered his girlfriend and her daughter, and turned the gun on himself.

When her children left for college, Melissa Shultz was certain that she had prepared them well for their new lives - but her own life was a different matter entirely. Her house was empty, her purpose unclear. If her life was no longer dominated by the day-to-day demands of being "Mom", then who exactly was she? And how would she ever move forward?

At 13 years old, Stephen Mills is chosen for special attention by the director of his Jewish summer camp, a charismatic social worker. Stephen, whose father had died when he was four, places his trust in this authority figure, who then grooms and molests him for two years. The boy tells no one, but the aftershocks rip through his life: self-loathing, drugs, petty crime, and horrific nightmares, all made worse by the discovery that his abuser is moving from camp to camp, state to state, molesting countless other boys.

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an 1100-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe and built her back up again. At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. After her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she decided to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than an idea: vague, outlandish, and full of promise.

Jill Conner Browne, royal boss of Mississippi's own Sweet Potato Queens, introduced them to the world in the hilarious best seller The Sweet Potato Queen's Book of Love. Fortunately for us, that was not the final chapter in the Queens' saga. The Sweet Potato Queens still have plenty to say and valuable wisdom to impart about how they went from being Cute Girls to Fabulous Women.

When Sargent "Sarge" Shriver—founder of the Peace Corps and architect of President Johnson's War on Poverty—died in 2011 after a valiant fight with Alzheimer's, thousands of tributes poured in from friends and strangers worldwide. These tributes, which extolled the daily kindness and humanity of "a good man," moved his son Mark far more than those who lauded Sarge for his big-stage, headline-making accomplishments. After a lifetime searching for the path to his father's success in the public arena, Mark instead turns to a search for the secret of his father's joy.

The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress's Daughter is the ruthlessly honest account of what happened when, thirty years later, her birth parents came looking for her.

An honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson’s account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point.