Childhood Memoir

In Hiding from the School Bus: Breaking Free from Control Fear, Isolation and a Childhood Without Education, Calvin Bagley courageously chronicles his journey through isolation, fear and religious contradiction. This powerful memoir reveals how navigating PTSD, dealing with childhood trauma, and reexamining core beliefs can form the foundation for genuine transformation, resilience, and healing.

In this extraordinary memoir, a scientist who became blind at a young age shares how he navigates the world around him, and how his contributions led to cutting‑edge work in accessibility—packed with humor, adventure, and insights on life and disability. At the age of four, Joshua Miele was...

Orlandito "Dito" Montiel grew up wild in the streets of Astoria, Queens, pulling pranks for Greek and Italian gangsters and confessing at the church of the Immaculate Conception, gobbling hits of purple mescaline and Old English, sneaking into Times Square whore houses, and at times getting near much graver trouble. Entering adulthood in the 80s, he escapes into the underground and punk cultures of Manhattan.

Nowhere Like This Place is a coming-of-age memoir set against the backdrop of the weirdness of an enclave with more PhDs per capita than anywhere else on Earth. It’s steeped in thinly-veiled sexism and the searing angst of an artsy child trapped in a terrarium full of white-bread nuclear scientists and their nuclear families. Everything happens, and nothing happens, and it all works out in the end. Maybe.

Set against a backdrop of East End London, Georgia experienced a childhood few of us could imagine. Though brought up in a loving family, she watched her family break apart through deceit and her mother descend into heroin addiction. Escaping into what she felt was a loving sanctuary, Georgia ended up trapped in a violent relationship with a man who would beat and abuse her. After having her three children by him, she knew she had to escape to finally find safety. Now Georgia is sharing her story of survival to help others and prove there is hope even after trauma and heartache.

Madhur (meaning sweet as honey) Jaffrey grew up in a large family compound by the Yamuna River in Delhi where her grandfather often presided over dinners with forty or more members of his extended family savoring together the wonderfully flavorful dishes that were forever imprinted on Madhur's palate.

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight meets Mean Girls in this funny, insightful fish-out-of-water memoir about a young girl coming of age half in a "baboon camp" in Botswana, half in a ritzy Philadelphia suburb. Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana...

Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy.

This program includes a bonus conversation between the author and editor. An all new recording of Out of Egypt, André Aciman's acclaimed memoir, narrated by Edoardo Ballerini! From the New York Times bestselling author of Call Me By Your Name, Out of Egypt is a richly colored memoir chronicling...

A New York Times bestselling and award-winning author presents a complex story about his coming-of-age journey as a Black boy, from the societal roots of trauma to finding joy. "If I had two wishes, it would be that D. Watkins spend an entire book writing through the terrifying wonder of Black...

This program is read by the author. From New York Times bestselling author, and Family Guy writer Gary Janetti comes Start Without Me, a collection of hilarious, laugh out loud, true life stories about the small moments that add up to a big life. Gary Janetti is bothered. By a lot of things. And...

This compelling memoir takes listeners through the eyes of a child surviving World War II in Nazi-occupied Poland. As a nine-year-old, the author witnessed his father being herded into a truck - never to be seen again. He, his mother, and sister fled to Warsaw to live in disguise as Catholics under the noses of the Nazi SS, constantly fearful of discovery and persecution. A sobering reminder of the personal toll of the Holocaust on Jews during World War II, this book is a harrowing portrait of one child’s loss of innocence.

Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these four forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.

A shocking and hopeful account of one woman's extraordinary courage to face her past and embrace truth in order to help others find hope and healing In The Relentless Courage of a Scared Child, Tana Amen shares her incredible story of transformation—of growing up in poverty, a bullied...

In his first memoir, Josh Widdicombe tells the story of a strange rural childhood, the kind of childhood he only realised was weird when he left home and started telling people about it. From only having four people in his year at school, to living in a family home where they didn't just not bother to lock the front door, they didn't even have a key. Using a different television show of the time as its starting point for each chapter, Watching Neighbours Twice a Day... is part-childhood memoir, part-comic history of '90s television and culture.

"A brilliant and brilliantly different" (Kiese Laymon), wrenching and redemptive coming-of-age memoir about the difficulty of growing up in a hazardous home and the glory of finding salvation in geek culture. Stranded within an ever-shifting family’s desperate but volatile attempts to love...

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.

Maya Angelou, one of the best-loved authors of our time, shares the wisdom of a remarkable life in this best-selling spiritual classic. This is Maya Angelou talking from the heart, down to earth and real, but also inspiring. This is a book to be treasured, a book about being in all ways a woman, about living well, about the power of the word, and about the power of spirituality to move and shape your life. Passionate, lively, and lyrical, Maya Angelou’s latest unforgettable work offers a gem of truth in every minute.

Adopted at six months old by Dubliners Sean and Helen Gallagher, PJ spent much of his childhood knocking back Lucozade with the local alcoholics in his parents' northside pub. But the chaos that reigned for his first ten years was nothing compared to what happened when - having lost the pub - Helen took in psychiatric patients from the local hospital to give them 'care in the community'. Now it was a household of ten - PJ, his sister, his parents and six lost souls. Worst. Idea. Ever. Madhouse is PJ's riotous life story.

Carla Funk grew up in a place of logging trucks and God, pellet guns and parables. Every Sunday, she sat with her mother and brother in the same pew at the Mennonite church while her dad stayed home with his cigarettes and a fridge full of whiskey. In these tender, humorous stories, Funk stitches together the wondrous and the mundane: making snow angels and carrying sacks of potatoes, tossing pig bladders like footballs, and vying for the Christmas pageant spotlight.