Found

Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir

Jillian Lauren · 254 pages

"'A punk rock Scheherazade' (Margaret Cho) shares the zigzagging path that took her from harem member to PTA member. In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in in her bestselling memoir, SOME GIRLS. In her thirties, Jillian's most radical act was learning the steadying

Red Dust Road: An Autobiographical Journey

Jackie Kay · 288 pages

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realises that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents - her Highland mother and Nigerian father - the journey that Jackie Kay undertakes in Red Dust Road is full of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina

Michaela DePrince, Elaine DePrince · 252 pages

The memoir of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her live in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American Family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States. Born in war-torn Sierra Leone and adopted at age four by an American family who fostered her love of dancing, Michaela became the youngest principal dancer with the Dance Theatre

Bastards

Mary Anna King · 248 pages

"'A stirring, vividly told story of a young woman's quest to find the family she lost...an impressive debut'-Peter Balakian; Born into poverty in southern New Jersey and raised in a commune of single mothers, Mary Anna King watched her mother give away one of her newborn sisters every year to another family. All told, there were seven children: Mary, her older brother, and five phantom sisters. Th

Conquering Chaos

Catelynn Lowell, Tyler Baltierra · 150 pages

"How did two troublemaking kids from the trailer park make it through the storm of family dysfunction, teen pregnancy, and adoption without letting go of each other? What gave them the strength to conquer the chaos of their lives and go on to become people their children could be proud of? And what really happened when the [16 and pregnant and Teen mom] cameras weren't there?"--Amazon.com. Lowell

Yes, Chef

Marcus Samuelsson · 327 pages

"It begins with a simple ritual: Every Saturday afternoon, a boy who loves to cook walks to his grandmother's house and helps her prepare a roast chicken for dinner. The grandmother is Swedish, a retired domestic. The boy is Ethiopian and adopted, and he will grow up to become the world-renowned chef Marcus Samuelsson. This book is his love letter to food and family in all its manifestations. Mar

Three Little Words: A Memoir

Ashley Rhodes-Courter · 320 pages

Ashley spent nine years in foster care after being taken away from her mother. She endured many caseworkers, moving from school to school and manipulative, humiliating and abusive treatment from one foster family. See how she survives and eventually thrives against the odds.

My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me: A Black Woman Discovers Her Family's Nazi Past

Jennifer Teege, Nikola Sellmair · 240 pages

In this powerful story of discovery, a black woman learns by chance the truth about her family's secret Nazi past. Jennifer Teege is 38, married, a mother of two, and ten years into a career in advertising when by chance she pulls a book from the library shelf. The book is about her own family, and its contents will profoundly change her life and lead her down a painful path of self-discovery. Jen

Courage to Soar: A Body in Motion, A Life in Balance

Simone Biles · 250 pages

In Courage to Soar, the official autobiography from US Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, Simone presents the story of how she overcame early childhood challenges to become the most decorated US female gymnast and the only female gymnast to ever win three consecutive World Championship titles.

Instant Mom

Nia Vardalos · 282 pages

Writer and star of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Nia Vardalos firmly believed she was supposed to be a mom, but Mother Nature and modern medicine stood in her way. So she made a choice that shocked friends, family, and even herself: with only fourteen hours' notice, she adopted a preschooler. This is Vardalos's hilarious and poignant true chronicle of trying to become a mother while fielding nosy "fre

The Baby Laundry for Unmarried Mothers

Angela Patrick · 275 pages

In 1963, Angela Brown was 19, enjoying her first job working in the City of London, when her life turned upside down. A brief fling with a charismatic charmer left her pregnant, unmarried and facing a stark future. Not yet 21, she was still under the governance of her parents, strict Catholics who insisted she have the baby in secret and then put it up for adoption. Forced to leave her job and her

Finding Family: My Search for Roots and the Secrets in My DNA

Richard Hill · 259 pages

Finding Family : My Search for Roots is Richard Hill's true and intensely personal story of an adoptee trying to reclaim the biological family denied him by sealed birth records.

Choosing to SEE

Mary Beth Chapman · 292 pages

From the beginning, Mary Beth Chapman's life was not how she planned. All she wanted was a calm, peaceful life of stability and control. Instead, God gave her an award-winning singer/songwriter husband, crazy schedules, and a houseful of creatively rambunctious children. And then, she experienced the tragedy she never could have imagined. In Choosing to See, Mary Beth unveils her struggle to allow

Mommie Dearest

Christina Crawford · 294 pages

Mommie Dearest (1981) Based on the book about Joan Crawford, one of the great Hollywood actresses of our time, written by her adopted daughter Christina Crawford. Joan decides to adopt children of her own to fill a void in her life. Yet, her problems with alcohol, men, and the pressures of show business get in the way of her personal life, turning her into a mentally abusive wreck seen through

I Beat the Odds: From Homelessness, to The Blind Side, and Beyond

Michael Oher · 261 pages

250 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm1130L Lexile

Hitler's Forgotten Children: My Life Inside The Lebensborn

Ingrid Von Oelhafen, Tim Tate · 275 pages

"Created by Heinrich Himmler, the Lebensborn program abducted as many as half a million children from across Europe. Through a process called Germanization, they were to become the next generation of the Aryan master race in the second phase of the Final Solution. In the summer of 1942, parents across Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia were required to submit their children to medical checks designed to ass

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Jeanette Winterson · 240 pages

Memories of the author about her difficult childhood as the adopted daughter of an English mother with strong religious convictions, and her subsequent search for her biological mother.

Kisses from Katie: A Story of Relentless Love and Redemption

Katie J. Davis, Beth Clark · 264 pages

What would cause an eighteen-year-old old senior class president and homecoming queen from Nashville, Tennessee, to disobey and disappoint her parents by forgoing college, break her little brother’s heart, lose all but a handful of her friends (because the rest of them think she has gone off the deep end), and break up with the love of her life, all so she could move to Uganda, where she knew only

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home

Kim Sunee · 400 pages

Already hailed as "brave, emotional, and gorgeously written" by Frances Mayes and "like a piece of dark chocolate--bittersweet, satisfying, and finished all too soon" by Laura Fraser, author of An Italian Affair, this is a unique memoir about the search for identity through love, hunger, and food.Jim Harrison says, "TRAIL OF CRUMBS reminds me of what heavily costumed and concealed waifs we all are

A Long Way Home

Saroo Brierley · 280 pages

If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother

Julia Sweeney · 246 pages

While Julia Sweeney is known as a talented comedienne and writer/performer of her one-woman shows, she is also a talented essayist--and the past few years have provided her with some rich material. Julia adopted a Chinese girl named Mulan and then, a few years later, married and moved from Los Angeles to Chicago. She writes about deciding to adopt her child, strollers, nannies, knitting, being ado

The Lost Boy

Dave Pelzer · 272 pages

Imagine a young boy who has never had a home. His only possessions are the old torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. His only world is isolation and fear. Although this young boy has been rescued from his alcoholic mother, the real hurt is just beginning-he has no place to call *home*. This is the first paragraph on the back of the book. While I feel it sums up the book pretty well, I think some

No Biking in the House Without a Helmet

Melissa Fay Greene · 361 pages

With four children of their own, Atlanta journalist Greene and her husband, a criminal defense attorney, gradually adopted five more--one from Bulgaria and four from Ethiopia--to create a roiling, largehearted family unit.

Blue Nights

Joan Didion · 188 pages

In this memoir, the author shares her observations about her daughter as well as her own thoughts and fears about having children and growing old, in a personal account that discusses her daughter's wedding and her feelings of failure as a parent. It opens on July 26, 2010, as Didion thinks back to Quintana's wedding in New York seven years before. Today would be her wedding anniversary. This fact