Family Biography

Set in the suburbs of New York in the 1950s, Wait Till Next Year is Doris Kearns Goodwin's touching memoir of growing up in love with her family and baseball. She re-creates the postwar era, when the corner store was a place to share stories and neighborhoods were equally divided between Dodger, Giant, and Yankee fans.

Ken raised his three sons in a squeaky-clean suburb of Los Angeles. He envisioned fatherhood as coaching their sports teams, taking them to church (where he was the pastor), and visiting colleges one day. Instead, he got an education on the street names of opioids, fluency in rehab vernacular, and an insider’s view of the California prison system, when his middle son, Lucas, accidentally killed a man with his car while high on heroin.

When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip’s end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity. In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir, Catherine reconstructs her sense of self.

Justine had always been told that her mother came from royal blood. The proof could be found in her mother’s elegance, in the upper-crust London accent she had never shed - and in a cryptic letter hinting at her claim to a country estate. But beneath the polished veneer lay a fearsome, unpredictable temper that drove Justine from home the moment she was old enough to escape. Years later, when her mother sent her an envelope filled with secrets from a past that had never been spoken about, Justine buried it in the back of an old filing cabinet.

The daughter of a prominent Palestinian father and a sophisticated Lebanese mother, Najla Said grew up in New York City, confused and conflicted about her cultural background and identity. Said knew that her parents identified deeply with their homelands, but growing up in a Manhattan world that was defined largely by class and conformity, she felt unsure about who she was supposed to be, and was often in denial of the differences she sensed between her family and those around her.

From New York Times best-selling author Lars Anderson comes a revealing portrait of the first family of American sports. What the Kennedys are to politics, the Mannings are to football. Two generations have produced three NFL superstars: Archie Manning, the Ole Miss hero-turned-New Orleans Saint; his son Peyton, widely considered one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game; and Peyton's younger brother, Eli, who won two Super Bowl rings of his own.

Nav immigrated to Canada from India after experiencing many hardships—only to face a host of new challenges. Life as an immigrant was gruelling and grey . . . and then, a new basketball team came to town. As Nav cheered on the Toronto Raptors at game after game, as they lost, as they won, on the good days and the bad, he discovered inspiration and community in the greatest game on Earth, formed life-long bonds with many of the best players the sport has ever known, and solidified his own place in the Basketball Hall of Fame.

In 1964 Kathy McKeon was just 19 years old and newly arrived from Ireland when she was hired as the personal assistant to former first lady Jackie Kennedy. The next 13 years of her life were spent in Jackie's service, during which Kathy not only played a crucial role in raising young Caroline and John Jr. but also had a front-row seat to some of the 20th century's most significant events.

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado recreates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years before Gamal Abdel Nasser’s rise to power. With Nasser’s nationalization of Egyptian industry, her father, Leon, a boulevardier who conducted business in his white sharkskin suit, loses everything and departs with the family for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxtaposed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.

This memoir is the story of what McCain learned from his grandfather and father, and how their example enabled him to endure those hard years. It is a story of three imperfect men who faced adversity and emerged with their honor intact. Ultimately, Faith of My Fathers is a story of fathers and sons, what they give each other and what endures.

Holidays on Ice collects six of David Sedaris' most profound Christmas stories into one slender volume perfect for use as a last minute coaster or ice scraper. This drinking man's companion can be enjoyed by the warmth of a raging fire, the glow of a brilliantly decorated tree, or even in the back seat of a van or police car.

The best-selling and "perennially hilarious" mother-daughter team is back with a new collection of stories from their real lives, guaranteed to make you laugh out loud. Join Lisa and Francesca as they regret drunk shopping online, try smell dating, and explore the freedom of a hiatus from men - a guyatus. They offer a fresh and funny take on the triumphs and facepalm moments of modern life, showing that when it comes to navigating the crazy world we live in, you're always your own best lifeguard.

From the outside, Seana Smith lived an enviable life. An Oxford graduate, a successful career with the BBC and Sydney’s Channel 9, a bestselling author, happily married. But behind this perfect life she had a secret: Seana was a drinker, and alcohol was slowly taking away her life, destroying her health, her emotional well-being, her world. With engaging style and wit, Going Under reveals the true story behind Seana’s lifelong battle with drink. It lays bare a confusing childhood of Scottish sailing adventures and also brutal violence from her bullying, alcoholic father.

In his instant New York Times best-selling book Do You Mind If I Cancel?, Gary Janetti had us all in stitches as he recounted the pains and indignities of everyday life in the way only he can. Now, in Start Without Me, Janetti returns with a hilarious collection about how sometimes the things we most want to get done and over with are the ones that define us for a lifetime. Gary turns his acid tongue (and secretly beating heart) to the moments and times that have defined him, no matter how embarrassing or annoying they might be to admit.

Thomas's recording of this holiday classic is considered the first official audiobook. You'll hear the author's recollection of a holiday in the seaside town of his youth as well as some of his most celebrated poems, including "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

The highly acclaimed unexpurgated notes taken by James Pope-Hennessy for his official biography of Queen Mary, the present Queen's grandmother. Published in full for the first time and edited by much-admired royal biographer Hugo Vickers. When James Pope-Hennessy began his work on Queen Mary's official biography, it opened the door to meetings with royalty, court members and retainers around Europe. The series of candid observations, secrets and indiscretions contained in his notes were to be kept private for 50 years....

From an early age, Sara Kehaulani Goo was enchanted by her family’s land in Hawai‘i. The vast area on the rugged shores of Maui’s east side—given by King Kamehameha III in 1848—extends from mountain to sea, encompassing ninety acres of lush, undeveloped rainforest jungle along the rocky coastline and a massive sixteenth-century temple with a mysterious past. When a property tax bill arrives with a 500 percent increase, Sara and her family members are forced to make a decision about the property: fight to keep the land or sell to the next offshore millionaire.

"Have to keep that smile", said Booker Wright in the 1966 NBC documentary Mississippi: A Self-Portrait. At the time Wright was a waiter in a Whites-only restaurant and a local business owner who would become an unwitting icon of the civil rights movement. For he did the unthinkable: Before a national audience, he described what life was truly like for the Black people of Greenwood, Mississippi.

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times best seller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of Zadie. When the young teenage girl, thrown out of her home by her strict Muslim family, is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be. Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie, she is understandably suspicious of the family around her.

In Volume #3: Family Annihilators you’ll hear about criminals who were so evil that they killed their own family. See inside the mind of people so twisted that they convince themselves the only way out of their problems is to take the lives of everyone in the family. Listen and learn how detectives and forensic science identified, tracked down, and convicted these twisted offenders, most of whom you will have never heard about before.