Nonfiction Memoir

Many have heard of NXIVM and its creator, Keith Raniere, the unassuming Albany man now prosecuted for ensnaring tens of thousands of people in the US, Mexico, Canada, and elsewhere to do his bidding and pay millions of dollars to participate in his self-improvement methodology. But where did Keith Raniere begin? Enter Toni Natalie, Keith's Patient Zero, the first one indoctrinated into Raniere's methodology and the first one to escape.

In 1941, with London burning in the Blitz, a group of hedonistic English nobles partied shamelessly in Kenya. Far removed from falling bombs, the wealthy elites of "Happy Valley" indulged in morphine, alcohol, and unrestricted sex, often with their friends' spouses. But the party turned sinister in the early hours of a January morning for Josslyn Hay, Lord Erroll, who had been enjoying the favors of the beautiful young wife of a middle-aged neighbor. Hay was found dead, a bullet in his brain.

Our village school was used for a military camp, and we ended up in a restaurant hall that our teachers used for our classroom. Our home was also full of German soldiers and Russian Cossacks who surrendered to the Germans on their way to Russia, running from communism. They cooked in our kitchen and offered us their food, because there was no room for us to cook our meals. So, mom and I decided to leave our home and move in with grandma... The year was 1945, and everybody felt the end was near... Instead of traveling two hours by train, it took us two days of hitchhiking to get to our ...

★ IT WAS THE BET OF A LIFETIME! ★ Overcome with patriotic fervour, New Zealander Justin Brown bets an Australian mate that the All Blacks will thrash the Wallabies in an up-coming rugby match. They don't. Forced to pay his debt, Justin has to busk his way around England until he earns enough money for his airfare home. THE DEAL If Justin's favourite team loses he must door-door-busk his way around the United Kingdom. If Justin's supposed best mate's favourite team loses he must streak at the Wimbledon Grand Final. THE OUTCOME Justin's teams loses. He is forced to go to the other side of...

Memoir. Originally published in 2011 by Grand Central Publishing "An indie movie in print." In this bestselling memoir, NYT bestselling author Anne Frasier (The Body Reader, Play Dead) shares the deeply moving and personal story of her years on an apple farm. The Orchard is the story of a street-smart city girl who must adapt to a new life on an apple farm after she falls in love with Adrian Curtis, the golden boy of a prominent local family whose lives and orchards seem to be cursed. Married after only three months, young Anne finds life with Adrian on the farm far more difficult and ...

More than three decades after his death, John Steinbeck remains one of the nation's most beloved authors. Yet few know of his career as a journalist who covered world events from the Great Depression to Vietnam. Now, this original collection offers a portrait of the artist as citizen, deeply engaged in the world around him. In addition to the complete text of Steinbeck's last published book, America and Americans, this volume brings together for the first time more than 50 of Steinbeck's finest essays and journalistic pieces.

In 1976, Di Rushing and her husband, Sam decided to open the first winery in Mississippi. Their business was thriving by 1990, with eight national award-winning wines, a beautiful vineyard, and a successful restaurant. But in March of 1990, a series of unforeseen events rocked the operation. After the Rushings discovered one of the tour guides, Ray Russell, selling drugs in the winery parking lot, they fired him. He responded with a terrorizing vengeance that persisted over the next nine months.

Known for his meaty seriocomic novels–expansive works that are simultaneously lowbrow and highbrow–Tom Robbins has also published over the years a number of short pieces, predominantly nonfiction. His travel articles, essays, and tributes to actors, musicians, sex kittens, and thinkers have appeared in publications ranging from Esquire to Harper’s, from Playboy to the New York Times, High Times, and Life.

In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs, or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the fuel of inflicted pain and fear.

Writing your memoir will take you on a magical journey to self-discovery. We've never known a memoir writer who didn't feel changed by writing their story. The magic is in the unveiling of the sweet moments, treasured memories, and unresolved mysteries of your life. It will change not only your relationships with others but your relationship with yourself, as well. Nothing could be more powerful than that. This book guides you through six steps of good memoir writing. Clear and concise, it offers tips garnered from the authors' many years of helping people write their stories. You'll see ...

On the cusp of forty, Angela Lam consults with a tarot reader for career advice and receives the following prediction: she will find a new job and, while there, she will meet a man who will heal her heart. Already married with children, Angela tells her husband who is unconcerned about what the cards reveal. But when the prediction threatens to manifest, will Angela’s family fall apart? This true story will inspire you to reexamine the definitions of midlife crisis and spiritual awakening as well as challenge the roles of fate and free will in your life. Longlisted for the 2022 Memoir ...

Minutes into this rollicking good story, the central figure, Lee Chagra, comes alive: "[Lee] washed his morning cocaine down with strong coffee and remembered the time he had met Sinatra, how genuine he appeared." Everything you'll need to know and remember about Chagra - the son of Syrian immigrants to Mexico and an attorney who spun the world of dope-running, border-crossing, high-living outlaws along the El Paso-Juarez border around his finger like the gaudy rings he favored - can be neatly summarized in that one sentence.

Follow along with “Captain Bob” Young as he crosses the USA from Santa Monica to Connecticut and back in his two seater airplane. He visits old and new friends while searching for himself and discovering the good in us all.

Chasing Slow models HGTV star Erin Loechner's journey to help you break out of the faster-better-stronger trap and make small changes to refresh your perspective, renew your priorities, and shift your focus to what matters most.

A brash, funny, and downright ballsy ode to the ups and downs of life in the air. Diary of a Pissed-Off Flight Attendant is an eye opening, behind the scenes, indiscreet account based on almost two decades of aviation industry experience. Combining a unique blend of hilarious customer antics with the secrets behind the enviable lives of flight attendants and pilots, Diary of a Pissed-Off Flight Attendant provides an all-access pass for frequent flyers and novice travelers alike. Growing up, author Sydney Pearl admired her Aunt Claire's seemingly glamorous career. Then, Sydney became a ...

In 1971 William Reeder was a senior captain on his second tour in Vietnam. He had flown armed, fixed-wing OV-1 Mohawks on secret missions deep into enemy territory in Laos, Cambodia, and North Vietnam, on his first tour. He returned as a helicopter pilot eager to experience a whole new perspective as a Cobra gunship pilot. Believing that Nixon's Vietnamization would soon end the war, Reeder was anxious to see combat action. To him, it appeared that the Americans had prevailed, beaten the Viet Cong, and were passing everything over to the South Vietnamese Army so Americans could leave.

Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were either runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many of them left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages-traumatic "middle passages"—only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and sexual exploitation. Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora—from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next-that is at once a search for one's roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.

For 700 years, Japan was ruled by military commanders who waged war against one another incessantly. Shogun tells the fascinating story of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the man who finally unified and brought lasting peace to the nation. He established a new central government which enabled his descendants to rule Japan for the next 260 years—a period in which Japanese culture as we know it today flourished.

At the age of sixteen, Ian Morgan Cron was told by his mother that his father, a motion picture executive, worked with the CIA in Europe. This astonishing revelation, coupled with his father's dark struggle with alcoholism, upended the world of a teenager struggling to become a man. Born into a family of privilege and power, Ian's life is populated with colorful people and stories as his father takes the family on a wild roller-coaster ride through wealth and poverty and back again.

In this Very Short Introduction Laura Marcus defines what we mean by "autobiography", and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, diaries, and essays. Analyzing the core themes in autobiographical writing, such as confession, conversion and testimony; romanticism and the journeying self; Marcus discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography.