Urban Memoirs

Leaving behind a nightmarish college experience, Nicole and her friend, Eric, escape their home of Bangor, Maine to start a new life in Boston. Fragile and scared, Nicole desperately seeks a new beginning to help erase her past. But there is something besides freedom waiting for her in the shadows—a drug that will make every day a nightmare. Heroin. With one taste, the love that once flowed through Nicole's veins turns into cravings. Tracks mark the passing of time, and heroin's grip gets tighter. It holds her hand through deaths and prostitution, but her addiction keeps her in the darkness.

During a two year span, from 1969 to 1971, the world of rock-and-roll was devastated by the loss of four of its biggest talents - Brian Jones (founder of the Rolling Stones), Jim Morrison (founder and lead singer of the Doors), Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. They were all 27 years old when they died, and thus, the myth of the 27 Club was born.

Modern Shanghai: a global city in the midst of a renaissance, where dreamers arrive each day to partake in a mad torrent of capital, ideas, and opportunity. Marketplace's Rob Schmitz is one of them. He immerses himself in his neighborhood, forging deep relationships with ordinary people who see in the city's sleek skyline a brighter future, and a chance to rewrite their destinies.

In this heartfelt memoir by the Masterpiece Theatre host, Pulitzer Prize winner, and groundbreaking New York Times columnist, Russell Baker traces his youth in the mountains of rural Virginia. When Baker was only five, his father died. His mother, strong-willed and matriarchal, never looked back. After all, she had three children to raise. These were Depression years, and Mrs. Baker moved her fledgling family to Baltimore. Baker's mother was determined her children would succeed, and we know her regimen worked for Russell.

In the fugue of deep meditation, Jaya Devi tumbles outdoors into a muggy south Florida dawn. Sliding on a pair of orange flip-flops, she cuts across a dirt path skirting the ashram lawn. She glances down as a fat black snake slithers up her bare leg, wrapping itself tight. Astonished, she pauses, exemplifying the yogi’s art of non-reaction, breathing and assessing. Here, we enter into the wild wisdom-experience of a modern yogi who uses each moment as fuel for personal transformation.

Yuzuku was the youngest child of the infamous Kobayashi clan, the Empress Regent's personal attack dogs. When her father betrays the Empress and puts the entire country at stake for a civil war, Yuzuki sacrifices herself to save the Empress. She had thought that death would be the end of her story, but much to her surprise, she awakens from death in a new world. She finds that there is so much more to life in death, and when her new life is threatened by enemies of her past, she must trust in everything she's never known, and discover what it means to have something to protect.

A large part of Goines' 39 years of life was spent being a successful pimp, a heif, an operator of corn liquor houses, an armed robber, and a small-time dope dealer. He lived the life of the streets, and out of that experience he created Prince, the anti-hero of Black Gangster. It's the story of the shocking underworld of Black organized crime and the fledgling Black "godfather" who goes from teenager ganglord to powerful Detroit mobster. Like the gangsters of the 1920s, he begins with bootlegging and branches out into every known crime.

Like Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun and Alexander Masters’ Stuart, this is a tour de force of narrative reportage - an intimate portrait of an invisible man. Mohammed Ashraf studied biology in college, and after college he learned how to repair television sets, cut suit lengths, and slice chicken. He has lived in Mumbai, Calcutta, Hyderabad, Surat, and Patna, but this evening he is stoned on a street in Sadar Bazaar, in North Delhi. The morning shall bring hangovers, whiskey breakfasts, and possibly answers to the lingering questions that haunt Ashraf.

They are icons of the literary world whose soaring works have been discussed and analyzed in countless classrooms, homes, and pubs. Yet for most listeners, the living, breathing human beings behind the classics have remained unknown - until now. In this utterly captivating audiobook, Dr. Elliot Engel, a leading authority on the lives of great authors, illuminates the fascinating and flawed members of literature's elite. In lieu of stuffy biographical sketches, Engel provides fascinating anecdotes.

When Sam graduated from Yale in 1995, he watched a classmate make inroads as a head-office guy in professional baseball, another become a day-trading millionaire, and another develop connections at the Playboy Mansion. Struggling to make ends meet, he shrugged his shoulders at their success and raised a tall one to them. It wasn't until April 2000 that Sam got his wake-up call. He weighed 340 lbs. He was flat broke. And the IRS had caught up with him. In a desperate attempt to save himself, Sam decided to limit himself to a budget of $8 a week and 800 calories a day. He called it "The Urban Hermit Plan."

This is the story of an unforgivable con man. Vulnerable families were his prey. His promise was an impossible dream and a lie. Peter Candlewood understood the system. That’s how he could commute prison sentences and reunite hopeless families with incarcerated loved ones. For a price. Except there was no Candlewood. No hope. Just a lowly Texas con artist who bet on the desperate - and won. And he wasn’t working alone. The multimillion-dollar deception cost the betrayed more than their savings.

Get ready to embark on a truly enchanting odyssey, where stories of wonder and amazement will captivate your imagination. Journey through realms beyond the mundane, where psychic abilities and healing practices are commonplace, and the divine whispers its secrets. This spiritual adventure will empower your soul to soar, with the collective expedition illuminating the path.In her deeply personal and revealing account, Sufani shares her journey of self-healing and experiences in aiding others.

One of reggae's most extraordinary stories, the life of Peter Tosh came to an end when he was brutally murdered in 1987. Now revered second only to Bob Marley among reggae audiences worldwide, Tosh was awarded the Order of Merit as Jamaica celebrated 50 years of independence.

From comedian to president to freedom fighter, this is the story of Volodymyr Zelensky, the man who stood up to Vladimir Putin and forever changed the world. The authors of Zelensky chronicle his rise, discuss the changing attitudes toward him by Ukrainians there and abroad, and include some of his most stirring speeches.

A year in the life of New York City’s premier beekeeper, who chronicles his adventures and the quirky personalities he encounters while spreading his infinite knowledge of and passion for the remarkable honey bee “Coté’s charming and poignant essay collection delivers the...

Includes an audiobook exclusive interview of Cody Alan with Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles! Read by the author. We live in a world of noise where everyone is so quick to speak. When we slow down and give someone our full attention, we offer them a safe place to be fully heard and accepted...

The world knows him as Johnny DayWalker, the vampire whose willingness to challenge the status quo fundamentally changed the dynamic between our two species worldwide. But if you ask him, he’s just a guy who fell in love with a human. Interview with the Vampire meets Warm Bodies in this memoir of an isolated vampire who longed for a different kind of life. His story urges us not to take for granted the things that make us human, and to appreciate the beauty in our mortality.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

This book is a memoir of my experience as an urban educator. The setting is in my Spanish classroom. The book is that it gives the listener a framework, common language, and a guide from whence to operate. This book is an instructional manual and handbook for collegiate student-teachers, rookie teachers, veteran teachers, and administrators alike. I

Baseball in the 1920s is most known for Babe Ruth and the New York Yankees, but there was another great Yankee player in that era whose compelling story remains untold. Urban Shocker was a fiercely competitive and colorful pitcher, a spitballer. In the Yankees’ storied 1927 season, Shocker finished with a record of 18-6 even while his fastball and physical skills were deserting him. Hardly anyone knew Shocker was suffering from an incurable heart disease that left him able to sleep only while sitting up and that would take his life in less than a year.