Personal Memoirs

Ann Evans and her husband were thriving. Or, so Ann thought. They were members of a vibrant, progressive Christian congregation where her husband was minister and she was an engaged partner, helping facilitate workshops and selling his books.

Andrew Carnegie, à la fois, l’un des plus grands entrepreneurs de l’histoire et l’un des plus grands philanthropes, nous partage ici ses meilleures leçons de vie, dans tous de multiples domaines, à la fois personnels et sur le monde des affaires.

After surviving both the failed chicken farm - and marriage - immortalized in The Egg and I, Betty MacDonald returns to live with her mother and desperately searches to find a job to support her two young daughters. With the help of her older sister Mary, Anybody Can Do Anything recounts her failed, and often hilarious, attempts to find work during the Great Depression.

“A book about young men transformed by war, written by a veteran whose dazzling literary gifts gripped my attention from the first page to the last.” —The Wall Street Journal “Friedman’s sober and striking new memoir . . . [is] on a par with Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried --...

Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter’s growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn’t. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter.

From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman. She had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp, but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man....

When Robert Imbeault began writing this book, he did so with the intention of ending his life once the book was finished. Robert was in the midst of a five-year suicidal drug and alcohol binge that began after the sudden resurfacing of a buried memory from when he was eight-years-old. Robert turned to writing, determined to chronicle his life before and after the violent encounter that shattered his reality.

The first known autobiography by a Native American woman, Life Among the Paiutes is an eye-opening hybrid of history and memoir by a pioneering activist who witnessed firsthand the impact of the US’s westward expansion.

Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her.

Dr. Kerry McAvoy was juggling the life of an overly-committed mom, wife, and psychologist when the loss of her husband brought her world to a crashing halt. Then she meets Cesar, a charming, handsome, and ambitious man who sweeps her off her feet with the promise of new love.

Reuben, aged 38, was living in a home for adults with learning disabilities. He hadn’t established an independent life in the care system and was still struggling to accept that he had Down syndrome. Depressed and in a fog of antidepressants, he hadn’t spoken for over a year. The only way he expressed himself was by writing poems or drawing felt-tip scenes from his favorite musicals and films. Increasingly isolated, cut off from everyone and everything he loved, Reuben sent a text message: brother. do. you. love. me.

In a coming-of-age memoir about a woman who loved being a girl and what made her finally grow up, Kelly Corrigan brilliantly explores the "middle place" between childhood and adulthood and how one woman made the leap to the other side.

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.

After a nearly fatal bout of appendicitis, Hal Borland decided to leave the city behind and move with his wife to a farmhouse in rural Connecticut. Their new home on one hundred acres inspired Borland to return to nature. In this masterpiece of American nature writing, he describes such wonders as the peace of a sky full of stars, the breathless beauty of blossoming plants, the way rain swishes as it hits a river, and the invigorating renewal brought by the changing seasons. The delights of nature as Borland observes them seem boundless, and his sense of awe is contagious.

Christina O'Connor is the main prosecution witness from the Huddersfield Grooming scandal. In 2017, 11 men were convicted of a staggering 43 offences against her. In this memoir, Christina will describe how, from being a happy child with a loving family, she fell into the clutches of a grooming gang whose abuse of children earned them a total of 221 years in prison.

Love Fraud tells two parallel stories. The first is the outrageous true story of Donna’s marriage to James Alwyn Montgomery, originally of Sydney, Australia. Montgomery took a quarter million dollars from her, cheated with at least six women during a two-and-a-half-year relationship, had a child with one of them, and 10 days after Andersen left him, married the mother of the child. It was the second time he committed bigamy.

It’s never too late to start again—and these women prove it. This powerful collection of true stories celebrates women over 50 who chose reinvention. Whether starting businesses, embracing creativity, or taking courageous leaps into new lives, they rewrote the rules of what’s possible later in life. Or indeed midlife. You’ll meet women who changed direction not in spite of age, but because of it. They turned experience into strength. Loss into action. Longing into impact. Each story in It’s Not Too Late is a reminder: You are not invisible. You are not too late. And you are far from finished.

When Jonell McLain saw the diamond necklace in the store window, it aroused first desire, then a provocative question: Why are personal luxuries so plentiful, yet accessible to so few? What if we shared what we desired? A dozen phone calls and a leap of faith later, Jonell bought the necklace with 12 other women, with the goal of sharing it.

On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?

On the surface, Victoria Jackson is the American Dream personified: from a troubled childhood and unfinished high school education, she overcame immeasurable odds to create a cosmetics empire valued at more than half a billion dollars. Married to Bill Guthy - self-made principal of infomercial marketing giant Guthy-Renker - Victoria’s most treasured role is mother to three beautiful, beloved children, Evan, Ali, and Jackson. Suddenly, Victoria’s dream life is broken....