The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones

She writes also about an affair and the explosion of her marriage, while managing the legal and marital hijinks of her eighty-nine-year-old dad. The upbeat conclusion: it does get better. From an “imaginatively twisted and fearless” writer Los Angeles Times, a hilarious memoir of middle age. In a voice that is wry, disarming, and totally candid, Sandra Tsing Loh tells the moving and laugh-out-loud tale of her roller coaster through "the change.

This is not your grandmother's menopause story. Loh chronicles utterly relatable, weathering hormonal changes, everyday perils: raising preteen daughters, and the ups and downs of a career and a relationship.


The Spark: A Mother's Story of Nurturing, Genius, and Autism

Relying on the insights she developed at the daycare center she runs out of the garage in her home, Kristine resolved to follow Jacob’s “spark”—his passionate interests. Jake barnett’s story contains wisdom for every parent. Newsday   “this eloquent memoir about an extraordinary boy and a resilient and remarkable mother will be of interest to every parent and/or educator hoping to nurture a child’s authentic ‘spark.

Publishers weekly   “Compelling. The results were beyond anything anyone could have imagined. Kristine barnett’s son jacob has an IQ higher than Einstein’s, a photographic memory, and he taught himself calculus in two weeks. At nine he started working on an original theory in astrophysics that experts believe may someday put him in line for a Nobel Prize, and at age twelve he became a paid researcher in quantum physics.

But through hard work and determination on behalf of Jake and his two younger brothers, as well as an undying faith in their community, and family, friends, Kristine and Michael prevailed. The barnetts were not wealthy people, and in addition to financial hardship, Kristine herself faced serious health issues.

.


Epilogue: A Memoir

. After losing his mother and only brother, twenty-four-year-old Boast finds himself absolutely alone when his father dies of alcoholism. In short, it’s fully alive. Phillip lopatefor will Boast, what looked like the end turned out to be a new beginning. Riveting, and courageously told” maggie Shipstead, soulful, Epilogue is the stunning account of a young man’s journey through grief in search of a new, unexpected love.

. Numbly settling the matters of his father’s estate, Boast stumbles upon documents revealing a closely guarded secret his father had meant to keep: he’d had another family entirely, a wife and two sons. Setting out to find his half-brothers, Boast struggles to reconcile their family history with his own and to begin a chapter of his life he never imagined.

Winner, the rome prize“This remarkable memoir is written with extraordinary care, intelligence, and honesty.


Being Flynn Movie Tie-in Edition Movie Tie-in Editions

Being flynn previously published as another Bullshit Night in Suck City tells the story of the trajectory that led Nick and his father onto the streets, into that shelter, and finally to each other. This "stunningly beautiful memoir" San Francisco Chronicle is now a major motion picture starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano.

Nick flynn met his father when he was working as a caseworker in a homeless shelter in Boston. As a teenager he'd received letters from this stranger father, a self-proclaimed poet and con man doing time in federal prison for bank robbery.


The Rabbi's Daughter: A Memoir

But reva, was a wild child and she rebelled, a granddaughter of the head of the Rabbinic Council of Israel and daughter of a highly respected London rabbi, spiralling into a whirlwind of sex and drugs by the time she reached adolescence. As a young woman, however, reva had a startling mystical epiphany that led her to a women’s yeshivah in Israel, and eventually to marriage to the devoutly religious Torah scholar who she thought would take her to ever greater heights of spirituality.

For those of any faith who have grappled with their own spiritual longings, and for anyone fascinated by traditional religion and its role in modern society, Reva Mann’s chronicle of a journey toward redemption is an unforgettable read. Ricocheting between extremes of rebellion and piety, she is on a difficult but life-changing journey to inner truth.

The journey began with an unhappy childhood in a family where religion set the tone and deviations from it were not allowed. But can the path to spiritual fulfillment ever be compatible with the ecstasies of the flesh or with the everyday joys of intimacy and pleasure to which she is also strongly drawn? With unflinching candor, Reva shares her struggle to carve out a life that encompasses all the impulses at war within herself.

An eye-opening glimpse into the world of the ultra-orthodox and their elaborately coded rituals for eating, faith, as well as a deeply personal rumination on identity, bathing, and lovemaking, and self-acceptance, sleeping, this is at its heart a universal story. In this honest, and compulsively readable memoir, daring, Reva Mann paints a portrait of herself as a young woman on the edge—of either revelation or self-destruction.

.


White Dresses: A Memoir of Love and Secrets, Mothers and Daughters

Anne promises but fails to clean up for mary’s high school graduation party, where Mary is being honored as her school’s valedictorian, causing her perfectionist daughter’s fear and shame to grow in tandem with the heaps upon heaps of junk. From the dress worn by mary’s mother when she became a nun and married Jesus, to graduation dresses and christening gowns, to the wedding gown she donned years later, to the special nightshirts she gifted Mary after the birth of her children, these white dresses embodied hope and new beginnings.

After her mother’s sudden death in 2010, Mary digs deep to understand the events that led to Anne’s unraveling. By the time mary is ten, their house is cluttered with broken appliances and stacks of unopened mail. Through the white dresses, pivotal events in their lives are celebrated, even as Mary tries in vain to save Anne from herself.

Unflinchingly honest, and compelling, insightful, White Dresses is a beautiful, powerful story—and a reminder of the unbreakable bonds between mothers and daughters.  . But lengthy periods of enforced fasting, isolation from her beloved students, and constant humiliation eventually drove her to flee the convent almost a decade later.

At twenty-one, anne entered a convent, committed to a life of prayer and helping others. It’s a persona at odds with her tortured childhood, where she watched her emotionally vulnerable mother fill their house with teetering piles of assorted “treasures. But one thing has always united mother and daughter—their love of white dresses.




Come Back, Como: Winning the Heart of a Reluctant Dog

Based on a beloved ten-part series in the san francisco Chronicle, Come Back, Como is Steven Winn’s tender and hilarious memoir of his uncommonly rich experience with a dog who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with him. With humor and pathos, the ordeals he and his dog endured together, Winn describes the exasperating but ultimately rewarding effects the pet had on his family, and the greatest lesson Como taught him: that loving a dog can somehow make us more human.

.


Making Toast: A Family Story

A painfully beautiful memoir…. Written with such restraint as to be both heartbreaking and instructive. E. Doctorow a revered, novelist, and emmy award winner, to name but a few journalist, and playwright, Peabody, many times honored George Polk, Roger Rosenblatt shares the unforgettable story of the tragedy that changed his life and his family.

A book that grew out of his popular december 2008 essay in The New Yorker, Making Toast is a moving account of unexpected loss and recovery in the powerful tradition of About Alice and The Year of Magical Thinking. Writer ann beattie offers high praise to the acclaimed author of Lapham Rising and Beet for a memoir that is, but so delicately, “written so forthrightly, that you feel you’re a part of this family.

”. L.


Weekends at Bellevue: Nine Years on the Night Shift at the Psych ER

For nine eventful years, Dr. In this absorbing memoir, the naked man barking like a dog in times square, tragically comic, the schizophrenic begging for an injection of club soda to quiet the voices in his head, and profoundly moving: the serial killer, Holland recounts stories from her vast case files that are alternately terrifying, the subway conductor who helplessly watched a young woman pushed into the path of his train.

Tells a mean story. New york daily news “the tension between Holland’s macho swagger and her shame at the harsh way she occasionally treats patients gives this memoir extra intrigue. Psychology today “A fascinating portrait. A gem of a memoir. Holland takes us for a ride through the psych ER that is at once wild and poignant, a ride that leaves deep tracks in even the healthiest of minds.

Katrina Firlik, M. D. Author of another day in the Frontal LobeJulie Holland thought she knew what crazy was. Then she came to Bellevue. Holland is a good storyteller with a dark wit. New york post “equal parts affecting, jaw-dropping, and engrossing.


Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America

In the end, what sticks with the reader is an exuberant immigrant embrace of America. San francisco chroniclein 1972, firoozeh dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, when she was seven, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father’s glowing memories of his graduate school years here.

. Above all, discovery, this is an unforgettable story of identity, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing—without an accent. Praise for funny in farsi   “Heartfelt and hilarious—in any language. Glamour   “A joyful success. Newsday   “what’s charming beyond the humor of this memoir is that it remains affectionate even in the weakest, most tenuous moments for the culture.

. Told with wry humor shorn of sentimentality. Like the movie my big fat Greek Wedding, this book describes with humor the intersection and overlapping of two cultures. The providence journal   “a humorous and introspective chronicle of a life filled with love—of family, country, and heritage. Jimmy carter   “Delightfully refreshing.

Milwaukee journal sentinel   “Funny in Farsi brings us closer to discovering what it means to be an American.


Family Album: A Novel

Its creation, however, became an obsession that involved Ingrid, the family au pair. In this haunting new novel, the act of forgetting is as strange and interesting as the power of remembering. The new york times book review look out for Penelope Lively’s new book, The Purple Swamp Hen and Other Stories.

All alison ever wanted was to provide her six children with a blissful childhood. Penelope lively is renowned for her signature combination of silken storytelling and nuanced human insights. As adults, roger, katie, sandra, gina, paul, and Clare return to their family home and as mysteries begin to unravel, each must confront how the consequences of long-held secrets have shaped their lives.

. In family album, lively masterfully peels back one family's perfect façade to reveal the unsettling truths.