Sunday, July 12, 2020

iTunes Store: Top 25 Books in Biographies & Memoirs 2020-07-12

Mary L. Trump - Too Much and Never Enough artwork Too Much and Never Enough
How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man
Mary L. Trump
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $17.99
Expected Publish Date: July 14, 2020
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

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. Mary Trump spent much of her childhood in her grandparents’ large, imposing house in the heart of Queens, New York, where Donald and his four siblings grew up. She describes a nightmare of traumas, destructive relationships, and a tragic combination of neglect and abuse. She explains how specific events and general family patterns created the damaged man who currently occupies the Oval Office, including the strange and harmful relationship between Fred Trump and his two oldest sons, Fred Jr. and Donald. A firsthand witness to countless holiday meals and interactions, Mary brings an incisive wit and unexpected humor to sometimes grim, often confounding family events. She recounts in unsparing detail everything from her uncle Donald’s place in the family spotlight and Ivana’s penchant for regifting to her grandmother’s frequent injuries and illnesses and the appalling way Donald, Fred Trump’s favorite son, dismissed and derided him when he began to succumb to Alzheimer’s. Numerous pundits, armchair psychologists, and journalists have sought to parse Donald J. Trump’s lethal flaws. Mary L. Trump has the education, insight, and intimate familiarity needed to reveal what makes Donald, and the rest of her clan, tick. She alone can recount this fascinating, unnerving saga, not just because of her insider’s perspective but also because she is the only Trump willing to tell the truth about one of the world’s most powerful and dysfunctional families.



Glennon Doyle - Untamed artwork Untamed
Glennon Doyle
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $16.99
Publish Date: March 10, 2020
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

#1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • “Packed with incredible insight about what it means to be a woman today.”—Reese Witherspoon (Reese’s Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick) In her most revealing and powerful memoir yet, the activist, speaker, bestselling author, and “patron saint of female empowerment” ( People ) explores the joy and peace we discover when we stop striving to meet others’ expectations and start trusting the voice deep within us. “ Untamed will liberate women—emotionally, spiritually, and physically.  It is phenomenal. ”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of City of Girls and  Eat Pray Love This is how you find yourself. There is a voice of longing inside each woman. We strive so mightily to be good: good partners, daughters, mothers, employees, and friends. We hope all this striving will make us feel alive. Instead, it leaves us feeling weary, stuck, overwhelmed, and underwhelmed. We look at our lives and wonder:  Wasn’t it all supposed to be more beautiful than this?  We quickly silence that question, telling ourselves to be grateful, hiding our discontent—even from ourselves. For many years, Glennon Doyle denied her own discontent. Then, while speaking at a conference, she looked at a woman across the room and fell instantly in love. Three words flooded her mind:  There She Is . At first, Glennon assumed these words came to her from on high. But she soon realized they had come to her from within. This was her own voice—the one she had buried beneath decades of numbing addictions, cultural conditioning, and institutional allegiances. This was the voice of the girl she had been before the world told her who to be. Glennon decided to quit abandoning herself and to instead abandon the world’s expectations of her. She quit being good so she could be free. She quit pleasing and started living. Soulful and uproarious, forceful and tender,  Untamed  is both an intimate memoir and a galvanizing wake-up call. It is the story of how one woman learned that a responsible mother is not one who slowly dies for her children, but one who shows them how to fully live. It is the story of navigating divorce, forming a new blended family, and discovering that the brokenness or wholeness of a family depends not on its structure but on each member’s ability to bring her full self to the table. And it is the story of how each of us can begin to trust ourselves enough to set boundaries, make peace with our bodies, honor our anger and heartbreak, and unleash our truest, wildest instincts so that we become women who can finally look at ourselves and say: There She Is . Untamed  shows us how to be brave. As Glennon insists:  The braver we are, the luckier we get.



Damon Young - What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker artwork What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker
A Memoir in Essays
Damon Young
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $3.99
Publish Date: March 26, 2019
Publisher: Ecco
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay An NPR Best Book of the Year A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the Year From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as “How should I react here, as a professional black person?” and “Will this white person’s potato salad kill me?” are forever relevant. What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young’s efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him. It’s a condition that’s sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the “being straight” thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to “Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies.”   And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white. From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.



Naya Rivera - Sorry Not Sorry artwork Sorry Not Sorry
Dreams, Mistakes, and Growing Up
Naya Rivera
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: September 13, 2016
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

Funny and deeply personal, Sorry Not Sorry recounts Glee star Naya Rivera's successes and missteps, urging young women to pursue their dreams and to refuse to let past mistakes define them. Navigating through youth and young adulthood isn't easy, and in Sorry Not Sorry , Naya Rivera shows us that we're not alone in the highs, lows, and in-betweens. Whether it's with love and dating, career and ambition, friends, or gossip, Naya inspires us to follow our own destiny and step over--or plod through--all the crap along the way. After her rise and fall from early childhood stardom, barely eking her way through high school, a brief stint as a Hooters waitress, going through thick and thin with her mom/manager, and resurrecting her acting career as Santana Lopez on Glee , Naya emerged from these experiences with some key life lessons: Sorry: -  All those times I scrawled "I HATE MY MOM" in my journal. So many moms and teenage daughters don't get along--we just have to realize it's nothing personal on either side. -  At-home highlights and DIY hair extensions. Some things are best left to the experts, and hair dye is one of them. -  Falling in love with the idea of a person, instead of the actual person. Not Sorry: -  That I don't always get along with everyone. Having people not like you is a risk you have to take to be real, and I'll take that over being fake any day. -  Laughing at the gossip instead of getting upset by it. -  Getting my financial disasters out of the way early--before I was married or had a family--so that the only credit score that I wrecked was my own. Even with a successful career and a family that she loves more than anything else, Naya says, "There's still a thirteen-year-old girl inside of me making detailed lists of how I can improve, who's never sure of my own self-worth." Sorry Not Sorry is for that thirteen-year-old in all of us.



Mary J. MacLeod - The Country Nurse Remembers artwork The Country Nurse Remembers
True Stories of a Troubled Childhood, War, and Becoming a Nurse (The Country Nurse Series, Book Three)
Mary J. MacLeod
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $1.99
Publish Date: February 11, 2020
Publisher: Arcade
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

From the Bestselling Author of Call the Nurse and Nurse, Come You Here! , the Moving Story of Her Young Life and Her Path to Independence through Training to Be a Nurse—"A Must-Read Suggestion for Fans of the BBC's Call the Midwife " ( Booklist) Mary MacLeod's mother died in childbirth when Mary was five, an event that marked for the child a "before time"—a lost joyful time—and after. She was shunted from one relative to another while her father coped with his grief. He married again only nine months later, perhaps to have a mother for his child, but her new mum, harsh and withholding of her love, quickly exerted complete control over her thoughts and deeds, with her father oblivious. Her name was changed to her stepmother's choice of "Julia." Yet the pale, thin, quiet little girl didn't know she was unhappy: things were just the way they were. Narrating from the perspective of the child she was but with the understanding and empathy of the nurse and mother she became, the author of Call the Nurse recounts the moving, intimate, indelible story of her young life, growing up in rural England near Bath, relishing the good times when her stepmother was friendly or she helped her father in the garden, experiencing the world war—air raids and blackouts, the war effort, evacuees, German prisoners—winning a scholarship, leaving home to train for three years as a nurse, and gradually finding her way as an independent woman.



Jesse Thistle - From the Ashes artwork From the Ashes
My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way
Jesse Thistle
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: August 06, 2019
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

*Winner, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize Nonfiction *Winner, Indigenous Voices Awards *Finalist, CBC Canada Reads *Finalist, High Plains Book Awards *A Globe and Mail Book of the Year *An Indigo Book of the Year *A CBC Best Canadian Nonfiction Book of the Year In this extraordinary and inspiring debut memoir, Jesse Thistle, once a high school dropout and now a rising Indigenous scholar, chronicles his life on the streets and how he overcame trauma and addiction to discover the truth about who he is. If I can just make it to the next minute...then I might have a chance to live; I might have a chance to be something more than just a struggling crackhead. From the Ashes is a remarkable memoir about hope and resilience, and a revelatory look into the life of a Métis-Cree man who refused to give up. Abandoned by his parents as a toddler, Jesse Thistle briefly found himself in the foster-care system with his two brothers, cut off from all they had known. Eventually the children landed in the home of their paternal grandparents, whose tough-love attitudes quickly resulted in conflicts. Throughout it all, the ghost of Jesse’s drug-addicted father haunted the halls of the house and the memories of every family member. Struggling with all that had happened, Jesse succumbed to a self-destructive cycle of drug and alcohol addiction and petty crime, spending more than a decade on and off the streets, often homeless. Finally, he realized he would die unless he turned his life around. In this heartwarming and heart-wrenching memoir, Jesse Thistle writes honestly and fearlessly about his painful past, the abuse he endured, and how he uncovered the truth about his parents. Through sheer perseverance and education—and newfound love—he found his way back into the circle of his Indigenous culture and family. An eloquent exploration of the impact of prejudice and racism, From the Ashes is, in the end, about how love and support can help us find happiness despite the odds.



Trevor Noah - Born a Crime artwork Born a Crime
Stories from a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: November 15, 2016
Publisher: Doubleday Canada
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime New York Times bestseller about one man’s coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed.   Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa’s tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle.             Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man’s relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother—his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life.             The eighteen personal essays collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother’s unconventional, unconditional love.



Ron Chernow - Alexander Hamilton artwork Alexander Hamilton
Ron Chernow
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $14.99
Publish Date: April 26, 2004
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

The #1  New York Times  bestseller, and  the inspiration for the hit Broadway musical  Hamilton ! Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Chernow presents a landmark biography of Alexander Hamilton, the Founding Father who galvanized, inspired, scandalized, and shaped the newborn nation. "Grand-scale biography at its best—thorough, insightful, consistently fair, and superbly written...A genuinely great book." —David McCullough “A robust full-length portrait, in my view the best ever written, of the most brilliant, charismatic and dangerous founder of them all." - Joseph Ellis Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow’s biography gives Hamilton his due and sets the record straight, deftly illustrating that the political and economic greatness of today’s America is the result of Hamilton’s countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. “To repudiate his legacy,” Chernow writes, “is, in many ways, to repudiate the modern world.” Chernow here recounts Hamilton’s turbulent life: an illegitimate, largely self-taught orphan from the Caribbean, he came out of nowhere to take America by storm, rising to become George Washington’s aide-de-camp in the Continental Army, coauthoring The Federalist Papers, founding the Bank of New York, leading the Federalist Party, and becoming the first Treasury Secretary of the United States.Historians have long told the story of America’s birth as the triumph of Jefferson’s democratic ideals over the aristocratic intentions of Hamilton. Chernow presents an entirely different man, whose legendary ambitions were motivated not merely by self-interest but by passionate patriotism and a stubborn will to build the foundations of American prosperity and power. His is a Hamilton far more human than we’ve encountered before—from his shame about his birth to his fiery aspirations, from his intimate relationships with childhood friends to his titanic feuds with Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Monroe, and Burr, and from his highly public affair with Maria Reynolds to his loving marriage to his loyal wife Eliza. And never before has there been a more vivid account of Hamilton’s famous and mysterious death in a duel with Aaron Burr in July of 1804. Chernow’s biography is not just a portrait of Hamilton, but the story of America’s birth seen through its most central figure. At a critical time to look back to our roots,  Alexander Hamilton  will remind readers of the purpose of our institutions and our heritage as Americans.



David Goggins - Can't Hurt Me artwork Can't Hurt Me
Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds
David Goggins
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: November 15, 2018
Publisher: Lioncrest Publishing
Seller: DIY Media Group DBA BookBaby

For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare - poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes. The only man in history to complete elite training as a Navy SEAL, Army Ranger, and Air Force Tactical Air Controller, he went on to set records in numerous endurance events, inspiring Outside magazine to name him The Fittest (Real) Man in America. In Can't Hurt Me, he shares his astonishing life story and reveals that most of us tap into only 40% of our capabilities. Goggins calls this The 40% Rule, and his story illuminates a path that anyone can follow to push past pain, demolish fear, and reach their full potential.



Leah Lax - Uncovered artwork Uncovered
How I Left Hasidic Life and Finally Came Home
Leah Lax
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $0.99
Publish Date: August 28, 2015
Publisher: She Writes Press
Seller: Ingram DV LLC

Uncovered is the only memoir to tell of a gay woman leaving the hasidic fold. Told in understated, crystalline prose, Leah Lax begins her story as a young teen leaving her secular home to become a hasidic Jew, then plumbs the nuances of her arranged marriage, fundamentalist faith, and hasidic motherhood as, all the while, creative, sexual, and spiritual longings tremble beneath the surface.



Mike Majlak & Riley J. Ford - The Fifth Vital artwork The Fifth Vital
Mike Majlak & Riley J. Ford
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: May 05, 2020
Publisher: Claudel Publishing, Inc.
Seller: Draft2Digital, LLC

Mike Majlak was a seventeen-year-old from a loving, middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting OxyContin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends. Unable to escape the noose of addiction, he eventually lost the trust and support of everyone who had ever loved him. Alone, with nothing but drugs to keep him company, darkness closed in, and the light inside him—the last flicker of hope—began to dim. His dreams, potential, and future were all being devoured by a relentless addiction too powerful to fight. Despair filled him as he realized he wasn't going to survive. Somehow, he did… HE NOT ONLY SURVIVED, HE THRIVED. Now he's a social media personality with millions of followers, and an entrepreneur, marketer, podcaster, YouTuber, and author who hopes to use his voice to shine a light for those whose own lights have grown dim. This is his story.



Tracy Tutor - Fear Is Just a Four-Letter Word artwork Fear Is Just a Four-Letter Word
How to Develop the Unstoppable Confidence to Own Any Room
Tracy Tutor
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $16.99
Expected Publish Date: July 14, 2020
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

From the first female real estate broker on Million Dollar Listing LA , a no-nonsense guide to analyzing big egos, deflecting power plays, and taking control of any room. Behind Tracy Tutor's on-screen persona is an uncanny knack for projecting confidence in the most intimidating of circumstances. The breezy, tough-talking, utterly inimitable businesswoman has rivaled her male co-stars to land increasingly high-profile deals in the world of LA real estate. Now, Tracy is leveraging her years of experience to write the go-to manual for any woman struggling to convince people she's in charge. If you get thrown off course by narcissistic personalities or freaked out by high-stakes situations, don't assume you're weak. When fear is running the show, you get wrapped up in your head and start missing important cues. Yes, the people you're dealing with seem scary, but they're more predictable than you think. Once you understand them, it's easy to push the right levers of influence to get what you want. Through candid, hilarious stories of her rise through a world of misogyny and cutthroat business dealings (text message screen shots from creeps included!), Tracy offers a crash course in the psychology of power dynamics and social signaling. You'll learn:    •   What five things you should always find out about someone before you meet them    •   How to choose the perfect outfit for an important meeting, even when dressing on a budget    •   When and how to use humor strategically to lighten the mood and command authority This book is a must-read for any ambitious woman who wants to win her next business confrontation before she even walks into the room.



Maya Angelou - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings artwork I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $8.99
Publish Date: January 12, 1970
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.   Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.   Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.   “ I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin



Michelle Obama - Becoming artwork Becoming
Michelle Obama
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $17.99
Publish Date: November 13, 2018
Publisher: Crown
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States   #1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • WATCH THE NETFLIX ORIGINAL DOCUMENTARY • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America—the first African American to serve in that role—she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.   In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it—in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations—and whose story inspires us to do the same.



Tarah Wheeler - Women in Tech artwork Women in Tech
Take Your Career to the Next Level with Practical Advice and Inspiring Stories
Tarah Wheeler
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: March 29, 2016
Publisher: Sasquatch Books
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

“Jam packed with insights from women in the field,” this is an invaluable career guide for the aspiring or experienced female tech professional ( Forbes ) As the CEO of a startup, Tarah Wheeler is all too familiar with the challenges female tech professionals face on a daily basis. That’s why she’s teamed up with other high-achieving women within the field—from entrepreneurs and analysts to elite hackers and gamers—to provide a roadmap for women looking to jump-start, or further develop, their tech career. In an effort to dismantle the unconscious social bias against women in the industry, Wheeler interviews professionals like Brianna Wu (founder, Giant Spacekat), Angie Chang (founder, Women 2.0), Keren Elazari (TED speaker and cybersecurity expert), Katie Cunningham (Python educator and developer), and Miah Johnson (senior systems administrator) about the obstacles they have overcome to do what they love. Their inspiring personal stories are interspersed with tech-focused career advice. Readers will learn: · The secrets of salary negotiation · The best format for tech resumes · How to ace a tech interview · The perks of both contracting (W-9) and salaried full-time work · The secrets of mentorship · How to start your own company · And much more BONUS CONTENT: Perfect for its audience of hackers and coders, Women in Tech also contains puzzles and codes throughout—created by Mike Selinker (Lone Shark Games), Gabby Weidling (Lone Shark Games), and cryptographer Ryan “LostboY” Clarke—that are love letters to women in the industry. A distinguished anonymous contributor created the Python code for the cover of the book, which references the mother of computer science, Ada Lovelace. Run the code to see what it does!



Paul Kalanithi - When Breath Becomes Air artwork When Breath Becomes Air
Paul Kalanithi
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $14.99
Publish Date: January 12, 2016
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

#1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • T his inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question  What makes a life worth living? NAMED ONE OF PASTE ’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY   The New York Times Book Review • People • NPR • The Washington Post • Slate • Harper’s Bazaar • Time Out New York • Publishers Weekly • BookPage Finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction and the Books for a Better Life Award in Inspirational Memoir At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve medical student “possessed,” as he wrote, “by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life” into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality. What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. “I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything,” he wrote. “Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: ‘I can’t go on. I’ll go on.’” When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.



Mitch Albom - Tuesdays with Morrie artwork Tuesdays with Morrie
An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson, 20th Anniversary Edition
Mitch Albom
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: August 18, 1997
Publisher: Crown
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

A special 20th anniversary edition of the beloved international bestseller that changed millions of lives Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn't you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger? Mitch Albom had that second chance. He reconnected with Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final "class:" lessons in how to live. Tuesdays with Morrie  is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie's lasting gift with the world.



Cathy Glass - I Miss Mummy artwork I Miss Mummy
The true story of a frightened young girl who is desperate to go home
Cathy Glass
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $9.99
Publish Date: July 08, 2010
Publisher: Harper Element
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

Cathy Glass, the no.1 bestselling author of Damaged, tells the story of the Alice, a young and vulnerable girl who is desperate to return home to her mother. Alice, aged four, is snatched by her mother the day she is due to arrive at Cathy's house. Drug-dependent and mentally ill, but desperate to keep hold of her daughter, Alice's mother snatches her from her parents' house and disappears. Cathy spends three anxious days worrying about her whereabouts before Alice is found safe, but traumatised. Alice is like a little doll, so young and vulnerable, and she immediately finds her place in the heart of Cathy's family. She talks openly about her mummy, who she dearly loves, and how happy she was living with her maternal grandparents before she was put into care. Alice has clearly been very well looked after and Cathy can't understand why she couldn't stay with her grandparents. It emerges that Alice's grandparents are considered too old (they are in their early sixties) and that the plan is that Alice will stay with Cathy for a month before moving to live with her father and his new wife. The grandparents are distraught – Alice has never known her father, and her grandparents claim he is a violent drug dealer. Desperate to help Alice find the happy home she deserves, Cathy's parenting skills are tested in many new ways. Finally questions are asked about Alice's father suitability, and his true colours begin to emerge. Reviews Reviews for ‘Damaged’: 'Cannot fail to move those who read it.' Adoption-net ‘Heartbreaking.' The Mirror ‘A truly harrowing read that made me cry.’ The Sun 'A true tale of hope.' OK! ‘Foster carers rarely get the praise they deserve, but Cathy Glass’s book should change all that’ First Magazine ‘A hugely touching and emotional true tale.’ Star Magazine About the author Cathy has been a foster carer for over 25 years, during which time she has looked after more than 100 children, of all ages and backgrounds. She has three teenage children of her own; one of whom was adopted after a long-term foster placement. The name Cathy Glass is a pseudonym. Cathy has written 15 books, including bestselling memoirs Cut, Hidden and Mummy Told Me Not To Tell.



Bill Buford - Heat artwork Heat
An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany
Bill Buford
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $14.99
Publish Date: May 30, 2006
Publisher: Appetite by Random House
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

The book that helped define a genre: Heat is a beloved culinary classic, an adventure in the kitchen and into Italian cuisine, by Bill Buford, author of Dirt .  Bill Buford was a highly acclaimed writer and editor at the  New Yorker  when he decided to leave for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, the revolutionary Italian restaurant in New York. Finally realizing a long-held desire to learn first-hand the experience of restaurant cooking, Buford soon finds himself drowning in improperly cubed carrots and scalding pasta water on his quest to learn the tricks of the trade. His love of Italian food then propels him further afield: to Italy, to discover the secrets of pasta-making and, finally, how to properly slaughter a pig. Throughout, Buford stunningly details the complex aspects of Italian cooking and its long history, creating an engrossing and visceral narrative stuffed with insight and humor. The result is a hilarious, self-deprecating, and fantasically entertaining journey into the heart of the Italian kitchen.



Christina Crawford - Mommie Dearest artwork Mommie Dearest
Christina Crawford
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: November 21, 2017
Publisher: Open Road Media
Seller: OpenRoad Integrated Media, LLC

The 40th anniversary edition of the “shocking” #1 New York Times bestseller with an exclusive new introduction by the author ( Los Angeles Times ).   When Christina Crawford’s harrowing chronicle of child abuse was first published in 1978, it brought global attention to the previously closeted subject. It also shed light on the guarded world of Hollywood and stripped away the façade of Christina’s relentless, alcoholic abuser: her adoptive mother, movie star Joan Crawford.   Christina was a young girl shown off to the world as a fortunate little princess. But at home, her lonely, controlling, even ruthless mother made her life a nightmare. A fierce battle of wills, their relationship could be characterized as an ultimately successful, for Christina, struggle for independence. She endured and survived, becoming the voice of so many other victims who suffered in silence, and giving them the courage to forge a productive life out of chaos.   This ebook edition features an exclusive new introduction by the author, plus rare photographs from her personal collection and one hundred pages of revealing material not found in the original manuscript.  



Kiese Laymon - Heavy artwork Heavy
An American Memoir
Kiese Laymon
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $2.99
Publish Date: October 16, 2018
Publisher: Scribner
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

*Named a Best Book of 2018 by the New York Times , Publishers Weekly, NPR, Broadly , Buzzfeed (Nonfiction), The Undefeated, Library Journal (Biography/Memoirs), The Washington Post (Nonfiction), Southern Living (Southern), Entertainment Weekly , and The New York Times Critics * In this powerful, provocative, and universally lauded memoir—winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal and finalist for the Kirkus Prize—genre-bending essayist and novelist Kiese Laymon “provocatively meditates on his trauma growing up as a black man, and in turn crafts an essential polemic against American moral rot” ( Entertainment Weekly ). In Heavy , Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about growing up a hard-headed black son to a complicated and brilliant black mother in Jackson, Mississippi. From his early experiences of sexual violence, to his suspension from college, to time in New York as a college professor, Laymon charts his complex relationship with his mother, grandmother, anorexia, obesity, sex, writing, and ultimately gambling. Heavy is a “gorgeous, gutting…generous” ( The New York Times ) memoir that combines personal stories with piercing intellect to reflect both on the strife of American society and on Laymon’s experiences with abuse. By attempting to name secrets and lies he and his mother spent a lifetime avoiding, he asks us to confront the terrifying possibility that few in this nation actually know how to responsibly love, and even fewer want to live under the weight of actually becoming free. “A book for people who appreciated Roxane Gay’s memoir Hunger ” ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ), Heavy is defiant yet vulnerable, an insightful, often comical exploration of weight, identity, art, friendship, and family through years of haunting implosions and long reverberations. “You won’t be able to put [this memoir] down…It is packed with reminders of how black dreams get skewed and deferred, yet are also pregnant with the possibility that a kind of redemption may lie in intimate grappling with black realities” ( The Atlantic ).



Tara Westover - Educated artwork Educated
Tara Westover
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $11.99
Publish Date: February 20, 2018
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Seller: Harper Collins Canada Limited

For readers of The Glass Castle and Wild, a stunning new memoir about family, loss and the struggle for a better future #1 International Bestseller Tara Westover was seventeen when she first set foot in a classroom. Instead of traditional lessons, she grew up learning how to stew herbs into medicine, scavenging in the family scrap yard and helping her family prepare for the apocalypse. She had no birth certificate and no medical records and had never been enrolled in school. Westover’s mother proved a marvel at concocting folk remedies for many ailments. As Tara developed her own coping mechanisms, little by little, she started to realize that what her family was offering didn’t have to be her only education. Her first day of university was her first day in school—ever—and she would eventually win an esteemed fellowship from Cambridge and graduate with a PhD in intellectual history and political thought.



Jonathan Franklin - 438 Days artwork 438 Days
An Extraordinary True Story of Survival at Sea
Jonathan Franklin
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $12.99
Publish Date: November 17, 2015
Publisher: Atria Books
Seller: Simon & Schuster Canada

Declared “the best survival book in a decade” by Outside Magazine , 438 Days is the true story of the man who survived fourteen months in a small boat drifting seven thousand miles across the Pacific Ocean. On November 17, 2012, two men left the coast of Mexico for a weekend fishing trip in the open Pacific. That night, a violent storm ambushed them as they were fishing eighty miles offshore. As gale force winds and ten-foot waves pummeled their small, open boat from all sides and nearly capsized them, captain Salvador Alvarenga and his crewmate cut away a two-mile-long fishing line and began a desperate dash through crashing waves as they sought the safety of port. Fourteen months later, on January 30, 2014, Alvarenga, now a hairy, wild-bearded and half-mad castaway, washed ashore on a nearly deserted island on the far side of the Pacific. He could barely speak and was unable to walk. He claimed to have drifted from Mexico, a journey of some seven thousand miles. A “gripping saga,” ( Daily Mail ), 438 Days is the first-ever account of one of the most amazing survival stories in modern times. Based on dozens of hours of exclusive interviews with Alvarenga, his colleagues, search-and-rescue officials, the remote islanders who found him, and the medical team that saved his life, 438 Days is not only “an intense, immensely absorbing read” ( Booklist ) but an unforgettable study of the resilience, will, ingenuity and determination required for one man to survive more than a year lost and adrift at sea.



Tiffany Jenkins - High Achiever artwork High Achiever
The Incredible True Story of One Addict's Double Life
Tiffany Jenkins
Genre: Biographies & Memoirs
Price: $13.99
Publish Date: June 18, 2019
Publisher: Potter/Ten Speed/Harmony/Rodale
Seller: Penguin Random House Canada

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An up-close portrait of the mind of an addict and a life unraveled by narcotics—a memoir of captivating urgency and surprising humor that puts a human face on the opioid crisis.   “Raw, brutal, and shocking. Move over,  Orange Is the New Black. ”—Amy Dresner, author of  My Fair Junkie When word got out   that Tiffany Jenkins was withdrawing from opiates on the floor of a jail cell, people in her town were shocked. Not because of the twenty felonies she’d committed, or the nature of her crimes, or even that she’d been captain of the high school cheerleading squad just a few years earlier, but because her boyfriend was a Deputy Sherriff, and his friends—their friends—were the ones who’d arrested her.   A raw and twisty page-turning memoir that reads like fiction,  High Achiever  spans Tiffany’s life as an active opioid addict, her 120 days in a Florida jail where every officer despised what she’d done to their brother in blue, and her eventual recovery. With heart-racing urgency and unflinching honesty, Jenkins takes you inside the grips of addiction and the desperate decisions it breeds. She is a born storyteller who lived an incredible story, from blackmail by an ex-boyfriend to a soul-shattering deal with a drug dealer, and her telling brims with suspense and unexpected wit. But the true surprise is her path to recovery. Tiffany breaks through the stigma and silence to offer hope and inspiration to anyone battling the disease—whether it’s a loved one or themselves.



Elie Wiesel & Marion Wiesel - Night artwork Night
Elie Wiesel & Marion Wiesel
Genre: Religious
Price: $10.99
Publish Date: February 07, 2012
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Seller: Macmillan

A New Translation From The French By Marion Wiesel Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication to ensuring that the world never forgets man's capacity for inhumanity to man. Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors, everyday perversions, and rampant sadism at Auschwitz and Buchenwald; it also eloquently addresses many of the philosophical as well as personal questions implicit in any serious consideration of what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.