Biographies & Memoirs

This is a self help-book like no other. Because you are not helping yourself, James Acaster is helping you. When James quit all forms of social media in 2019 he felt like he'd been born anew, but he was worried he'd suffer withdrawal and get lured back online to compete in a never ending popularity contest with only one possible winner (f--king Zuckerberg). He knew that in order to stay clean he'd have to replace everything social media used to give him with three-dimensional real-life activities.

As the “Seeing Eye Girl” for her blind, artistic, and mentally ill mother, Beverly Armento was intimately connected with and responsible for her, even though her mother physically and emotionally abused her. Beverly’s mother regained her sight and went on to enjoy a moment of fame as an artist, but these positive turns did nothing to stop her disintegration into delusions. In this memoir, Beverly shares the coping strategies she invented to get herself through the trials of her young life, and the ways in which school and church served as refuges over the course of her journey.

Joe Biden has been a well-known political figure for decades. This book aims to serve as a biography-to-date of Joe Biden, detailing both his life and career up to this point in time. Inside this book, you will learn about Joe’s upbringing, his childhood, education, career, political beliefs, and more. Ultimately, the goal of this book is to provide an unbiased look at the POTUS, void of any political agenda so that the listener may better understand who the President is, and what the future of the United States might look like under his leadership.

The Last Jewish Gangster: The Middle Years starts in 1968 with Hardy sentenced to 12 years in the world’s most dangerous prison in Mexico after taking the rap for his mother’s counterfeiting scheme, hoping to have finally earned her respect. Once he’s released from prison, Hardy returns to Brooklyn and tries to go straight, but drifts back into a world of crime. He gets Sammy “the Bull” Gravano to join his crew to pull major heists like kidnapping drug lords for million-dollar ransoms and robbing cop bag men. To evade the law, he goes to Europe and ends up in Israel.

Brett Polar is an intoxicating roller-coaster ride that will leave you as much elated as devastated. It is engaging, empowering, educational, and ultimately gives hope to people living with bipolar disorder and other mental illnesses. Brett’s story involves a mental health sojourn that spans 20 years from 2000 to 2020. Prepare to ride alongside him as he goes through the bipolar motions of extreme highs, devastating lows, and all the semi-stable moments in between. His story is proof that an individual living with mental illness can not only survive but thrive!

Holly is a book about a mother and her daughter who was born with Down syndrome. It is a story of how love doesn’t always come on time and how the unexpected can make a person become more than one ever believed. Holly enters into life with heart disease and is a ticking time bomb. She evolves into a young and wise married woman who asks, “How do I be a good wife, Mom?”

At 17, Rachel Pope lost her dad to cancer, and eight years later, her eldest brother in a tragic car accident. Little did she know that her grief journey would come full circle with the death of her husband, at the same age and from the same cancer as her dad. Why do we have such a hard time talking about grief and what can we do, as a society, to cope better? As a grieving person, how do we make sense of our new life, post-loss, in a culture that expects us to "move on"? In this book, Rachel Pope dives into those important conversations through her own years of facing grief head-on.

Winner of the Eric Hoffer and Benjamin Franklin literary awards, this biography tells the story of Rama, Dr. Frederick P. Lenz, (1950-1998), an enlightened spiritual teacher who taught a brilliant, boundary-breaking form of American Buddhism to tens of thousands of people. This biography includes interviews and stories from over 100 students and colleagues, each with a different perspective. Rama did not just speak about enlightenment; he modeled it. Compassionate, controversial, wise, honest, prescient, reverent, irreverent, he was always teaching and still is.

Love Is Blind is the memoir of Ruth Vallis. Blind before the age of three, Ruth was the youngest pioneer of integration in the public school system in Canada, blazing a trail for many to follow. At every stage of her extraordinary life, Ruth defied the low expectations of others, and took on such challenges as biking from Ottawa to Toronto, completing a master’s of science degree online before technology accessibility was legislated, and more. Through it all there was her tender, tough-loving mother, Peach.

On April 2, 1855, Texas Ranger Nelson Lee was one of four survivors of a night attack by the Comanches. He escaped death by torture by fascinating his captors with an alarm watch, convincing them he alone had the spiritual powers to make the watch work. This classic tells the tale of Lee's captivity and daring escape.

Lara Feigel listens to birds outside her window—their circling, strident calls—and thinks of D. H. Lawrence. It is the spring of 2020 and, as the pandemic takes hold, she locks down in rural Oxfordshire with her partner, her two children, and that most explosive of writers. Proceeding month by month through the year, she sets out to start again with Lawrence: to find vital literary companionship; to use him as a guide to rural living and even, unexpectedly, to child-rearing; to find a way through his writing to excavate the modern world she feels he helped bring into being.

Sarah’s story is one for any parent; it is not just about the highs and lows of having a child with additional needs, but also simply as a mum of three. She talks candidly about coming to terms with the decision to move Oscar to a SEN (Special Educational Needs) school, another big milestone in Oscar’s young life. Whilst Sarah may have found herself on a different path to the one she’d imagined for herself, it has not been a bad one. There is sadness, certainly; and there have been struggles along the way; but there has been so much laughter and happiness, too.

Brad Hunter has spent over thirty years writing about some of America's most horrific crimes. In this new book, he enters the mind of John Wayne Gacy, the real-life 'Killer Clown', often said to be the inspiration for Stephen King's evil Pennywise in It. Drawing on his many years' experience investigating and interviewing perpetrators of terrible crimes, Hunter seeks to understand what drove Gacy to unleash a reign of terror in suburban Chicago.

Jonathan Rogers follows the roots of Flannery O’Connor’s fervent Catholicism and traces the outlines of a life marked by illness and suffering, but ultimately defined by an irrepressible joy. In her stories, and in her life story, Flannery O’Connor extends a hand in the dark, warning and reassuring us of the terrible speed of mercy. 

Follow Paul Oakenfold—world-renowned DJ and dance music pioneer—as he tells his incredible story of a phenomenal career at the beating heart of dance. Paul's journey takes him from a musical baptism in 1980s New York and underground club nights in London to running a seminal dance record label and a legendary trip to Ibiza that introduced him to trance and changed the face of dance music forever.