Childhood Memoir

Reeves gives us her authentic account of growing up around the Montana town of Jardine which, today, is a virtual ghost town. Her stories are sometimes funny, as when she tells about a runt pig miraculously waxing fat after eating the crankcase oil from of a Model T Ford. Sometimes they're shocking, like "the worst day" in her life when her brother blew off his hand hammering a dynamite cap. Another brother almost died from eating carbide powder cookies he made. This kid had an unusual childhood, growing up by a dying silver mining town bordering Yellowstone Park.

Until he was 17, Brett Preiss lived in the dusty outback of Australia, where he was one of four siblings in a dysfunctional family. He learned how to survive under the most bizarre and extraordinary circumstances. In this book, he shares the trials and tribulations of his youth through anecdotes that will leave you in tears of joy or sorrow. Travel back to the ’60s and ’70s and watch Brett transform from a sperm to adolescence.

When Constance was 13, her mother simply moved out, leaving her daughter to fend for herself. There was no gas, no electricity, and no food. But somehow Constance found the courage to survive her terrible start in life. This is her heartrending, and ultimately triumphant, story.

"No big deal"...for 15 years, these words kept Torey Ivanic from telling her parents, friends, and boyfriends about her interactions with the gymnastics coach who utterly confused her young mind, body, and soul - who had, she eventually came to understand, sexually violated her. In this memoir, Torey transparently and brilliantly shows how the abuse started, the collateral damage it created in her young life, her realization that it was a big deal, and her journey of healing and justice.

Jonathan Starr is not your traditional do-gooder, and in 2009, when he decided to found Abaarso, a secondary school in Somaliland, the choice seemed crazy to even his closest friends. Why, they wondered, would he turn down a life of relative luxury to relocate to an armed compound in a breakaway region of the world's number one failed state? To achieve his mission, Starr would have to overcome profound cultural differences, broken promises, and threats to his safety and that of his staff.

In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Masonic Home Mighty Mites - a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least 30 pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing - not even a football - yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams.

Resisting the deadening silence of his family home in the elegant yet stiflingly safe neighborhood of Gramercy Park, nine-year-old Roger imagines himself a private eye in pursuit of criminals. With the dreamlike mystery of the city before him, he sets off alone, out into the streets of Manhattan, thrilling to a life of unsolved cases. Six decades later, Rosenblatt finds himself again patrolling the territory of his youth: The writing class he teaches has just wrapped up, releasing him into the winter night and the very neighborhood in which he grew up.

Fans of Augusten Burroughs and Jo Ann Beard will enjoy this kaleidoscopic, universal memoir in which Elissa Altman explores the tradition, religion, family expectations, and the forbidden that were the fixed points in her Queens, New York, childhood. Spanning from 1940s wartime Brooklyn to 1970s Queens to present-day rural New England, Treyf captures the collision of youthful cravings and grown-up identities. It is a vivid tale of what it means to come to yourself both in spite and in honor to your past.

Buried beneath the weight of insecurities and a hunger for acceptance, one woman's life becomes an electrifying tale of love, betrayal, and redemption. In a world where deceit and desire collide, she is thrust into a labyrinth of lies and chaos that transforms her into the very monster she has always feared. From Forbidden desires to shattered vows, Black Sheep, White Lies an unflinching exploration of resilience, takes you on a heart-stopping journey of power plays and toxic love.

Vinnie Curto was born in East Boston, Massachusetts, on July 10, 1955. His father Jimmy Curto was a raving, sick, alcoholic homosexual. Vinnie’s father and his drunken friends sexually abused young Vinnie, frequently raping him and performing other deviant sexual acts on him, while his mother Loretta stood by and let it happen.

When Norbert Elliot graduated from his New Orleans Catholic grammar school in 1966, he was determined to claw himself free from his family and the place they called home. Interlacing the history of one of America’s iconic cities with his childhood memories, Elliot explores two hundred and fifty years of intentional cruelty and promised charity. With a focus on disposable lives, his memoir calls into question traditional views of family and home and asks us to imagine the freedom of lives lived on the delicate line between what can, and cannot, be.

In this memoir of a lost America, Hal Borland tells the story of his family's migration to eastern Colorado as homesteaders at the turn of the twentieth century. On an unsettled and unwelcoming prairie landscape, the Borlands build a house, plant crops, and eke out a meager existence. While life is difficult—and self-reliance is necessary with no neighbors for miles—the experience brings the family close and binds them closer to the terrible and beautiful natural patterns that govern their lives.

First published in 1967, Stop-Time was immediately recognized as a masterpiece of modern American autobiography, a brilliant portrayal of one boy’s passage from childhood to adolescence and beyond. Here is Frank Conroy’s wry, sad, beautiful tale of life on the road; of odd jobs and lost friendships, brutal schools and first loves; of a father’s early death and a son’s exhilarating escape into manhood.

Read by the author, Sid Owen. From star of Channel 4's Banged Up, Sid Owen, From Rags to Ricky is the story of a troubled kid heading towards a life of crime – saved by acting, and the role of a lifetime on EastEnders. Sid Owen is best known for playing the hapless but loveable EastEnders...

Nestled within the deep Alabama forest lies a community built on ancient Indian burial ground and almost completely hidden away from the world if not for the winding main road which leads to it from the highway. Within this community rests scenic streets, quaint suburban homes, happy families...and ghostly legends that will chill your bones. Here lies a collection of some of the scariest Southern ghost stories.

W. Nikola-Lisa explores new terrain - his childhood experiences growing up in south Texas during the early 1960s. Unlike his previous books, this is not a book for young children as the author explores the darker elements growing up in a harsh environment. Although the work feels like a memoir, it sounds like a novel with the author's spare, unrelenting narrative a perfect accompaniment to the time, place, and underlying familial issues.

Babita Sharma was raised in a corner shop in Reading and over the counter watched a changing world, from the clientele to the products to the politics of the day. Along with the skills to mop a floor perfectly and stack a shelf, she gained a unique insight into a changing world - and an institution that, despite the creep of supermarkets, online shopping and delivery, has found a way to evolve and survive. The Corner Shop is the remarkable human story of these little institutions that have changed the course of our history.

They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But in this raw and powerful memoir, when Phil’s seemingly perfect life begins to unravel, he realizes there are secrets locked in his subconscious that, like a huge elephant surfacing beneath him, insist on forging their own path. After his unconventional brother, Holly, dies in a boating accident in San Francisco Bay, Phil is haunted by flashbacks and disturbing dreams, hinting at a buried trauma. As the memories claw their way to the surface, Phil's world starts to crumble.

An old man, realizing cherished memories of the past are quickly fading, decides to run away in search of his youth. This creative memoir is about “going home again”, reliving early-life experiences, and re-establishing childhood friendships. He and old friends, the “boys in the band”, recall early tales of youth from their world during the late ’40s and early 1950s.

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn't have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.