Child Celebrity

Iconic bassist and co-founder of the immortal Red Hot Chili Peppers finally tells his fascinating life story, complete with all the dizzying highs and the gutter lows you'd expect from an LA street rat turned world-famous rock star.

Three complete stories in one collection! Includes The Celebrity Cat Caper, Hidden in the Haunted School, and The Election Day Dilemma.

Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother’s dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called “calorie restriction." She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, “Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn’t tint hers?” She was even showered by Mom until age sixteen while sharing her diaries, email, and all her income. In I’m Glad My Mom Died, Jennette recounts all this in unflinching detail.

Using the written word as her witness statement, Jessica Willis Fisher tells a lacerating story of finding her voice after two decades of silence and an unforgettable story of risk and faith.

As a woman used to traveling and living the high life in Bangkok, Leanne Shirtliffe recognized the constant fodder for humor while pregnant with twins in Asia's sin city. But in spite of deep-fried bug cuisine and nurses who cover newborn bassinets with plastic wrap, Shirtliffe manages to keep her babies alive for a year with help from a Coca-Cola deliveryman, several waitresses, and a bra factory. Then she and her husband return home to the isolation of North American suburbia.

From private feuds and on-set disasters to fanfare that swept the nation and the realities of child stardom, culture journalist Ashley Spencer offers the first unauthorized look at the heyday of TV’s House of Mouse, featuring hundreds of exclusive new interviews with former Disney executives, creatives, and talent to explore the highs, lows, and everything in between.

Bert Kreischer doesn't know how to say "no." If he did, he wouldn't have gotten himself mixed up with a group of Russian mobsters on a class trip to Moscow, earning him his nickname: "The Machine." He wouldn't have wrestled with a bear or swum with sharks on national television. He wouldn't have (possibly) smoked PCP with a star of Saturday Night Live. And he wouldn't have been named the Number One Partier in the Nation by Rolling Stone, inspired the movie National Lampoon's Van Wilder, or performed standup to sellout crowds across the country.

Film and television director Barry Sonnenfeld's outrageous and hilarious memoir traces his idiosyncratic upbringing in New York City, his breaking into film as a cinematographer with the Coen brothers, and his unexpected career as the director behind such huge film franchises as The Addams Family and Men in Black, and beloved work like Get Shorty, Pushing Daises, and A Series of Unfortunate Events.

This deeply personal memoir, cowritten by singer-songwriter, renowned mental health advocate, and recent Order of Canada recipient Séan McCann and wife Andrea Aragon, leaves no stone unturned. Detailing in powerful and lyrical prose a Newfoundland childhood indoctrinated in strict Catholic faith, the creation of the wildly successful Great Big Sea, and the battle with alcoholism that nearly cost them everything, McCann and Aragon offer listeners a story of reaching international fame and finding rock bottom.

In Raising Trump, Ivana Trump reflects on her extraordinary life and the raising of her three children - Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka - and recounts the lessons she taught her children as they were growing up.

Problem Child is the unbelievably true story of Terrell Carter, an American musician and actor who grew up in Buffalo, New York, in a dysfunctional family, each member crazier than the next. And the Problem Child is the only one in the story who may, or may not, actually have a problem. An emotional journey of trials and revelations, with a huge secret at its core, this story may force you to laugh - just to keep from crying.

Ramble Book is about parenthood, boarding-school trauma, arguing with your partner, bad parties, confrontations on trains, friendship, wanting to fit in, growing up in the '80s, dead dads, teenage sexual anxiety, failed artistic endeavours, being a David Bowie fan and how everything you read, watch and listen to as a child forms a part of the adult you become. It’s also an audiobook about the joys of going off topic and letting your mind wander. And it’s about a short, hairy, frequently confused man called Adam Buxton.

She lived at full throttle on stage, screen, and in real life, with highs that made history and lows that finally brought down the curtain at age 47. Judy Garland died over 30 years ago, but no biography has so completely captured her spirit - and demons - until now. From her tumultuous early years as a child performer to her tragic last days, Gerald Clarke reveals the authentic Judy in a biography rich in new detail and unprecedented revelations.

Critics, readers, and listeners loved Lisa Scottoline's first collection of true-life stories, which only encouraged her—now she's back with these all-new, exciting adventures. She's farther down the road now, and the scenery has changed—ex-husbands Thing One and Thing Two are in her rear-view mirror, daughter Francesca has moved into an apartment, and Lisa's finding the silver lining in her empty nest, which has lots more room for her shoes. And some things have stayed the same.

William Peter Blatty, the best-selling author and Oscar Award-winning screenwriter of The Exorcist, lived a charmed life among the elite stars of Hollywood. His son, Peter, born over a decade after The Exorcist, grew from an apple-cheeked boy into an "imposing young man with a quick, warm smile". But when Peter died very suddenly from a rare disorder, Blatty's world turned upside down.

Jamie Mustard was born into one of the most influential fringe movements in the 1970s: Scientology. Raised on a mythos of spaceships and made to believe that it was his life’s purpose to help save the world, he was determined to survive—not only unsurvivable neglect but also the impossible physical and psychological gauntlet of extreme poverty and illiteracy. Child X is a dark existential journey into a deepest hole of human existence and the road back.

Those three words saved Grammy Award-winning singer Michelle Williams’s life. After decades of sweeping her anxiety and depression under the rug - even during her years in the spotlight with Destiny’s Child - Michelle found herself planning her own funeral. Realizing that she needed immediate help and could no longer battle her anxiety and depression alone, she checked herself into a treatment facility. When she came home, she was energized and determined to check in on a regular basis with herself, God, and others.

For over half a century, Child has collaborated with the world’s most celebrated artists creating timeless classics, such as Bon Jovi’s “Livin' On A Prayer” and “You Give Love A Bad Name,” as well as Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca” and “The Cup Of Life,” amongst his vast catalog. But in his memoir, Child himself takes center stage to share his transformational story of a misfit outsider to cultural pacesetter.

Based on the true story of her mother, Mona Golabek describes the inspirational story of Lisa Jura's escape from Nazi-controlled Austria to England on the famed Kindertransport. Jewish musical prodigy Lisa Jura has a wonderful life in Vienna. But when the Nazis start closing in on the city, life changes irreversibly. Although he has three daughters, Lisa's father is only able to secure one berth on the Kindertransport. The family decides to send Lisa to London so that she may pursue her dreams of a career as a concert pianist.

On a hot August day in Paris, just over a century ago, a desperate guard burst into the office of the Director of the Louvre and shouted, La Joconde, c’est partie! The Mona Lisa, she’s gone! No one knew who was behind the heist. Was it an international gang of thieves? Was it an art-hungry American millionaire? Was it the young Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, who was about to remake the very art of painting?