An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Angela's Ashes

Frank McCourt · 384 pages

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish im

This Lovely Life

Vicki Forman · 263 pages

Vicki Forman gave birth to Evan and Ellie, weighing just a pound at birth, at twenty-three weeks' gestation. During the delivery she begged the doctors to "let her babies go"--She knew all too well that at twenty-three weeks they could very well die and, if they survived, they would face a high risk of permanent disabilities. However, California law demanded resuscitation. Her daughter died just f

Little Earthquakes

Jennifer Weiner · 417 pages

A chef, an event planner, and a basketball player's wife find their marriages and careers in Philadelphia challenged by new motherhood, difficult schedules, and infidelity.

The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Kim Edwards · 408 pages

Kim Edwards's stunning family drama evokes the spirit of Sue Miller and Alice Sebold, articulating every mother's silent fear: what would happen if you lost your child and she grew up without you? In 1964, when a blizzard forces Dr. David Henry to deliver his own twins, he immediately recognizes that one of them has Down Syndrome and makes a split-second decision that will haunt all their lives fo

Rosalie Lightning: A Graphic Memoir

Tom Hart · 261 pages

Rosalie Lightning is Eisner-nominated cartoonist Tom Hart's #1 New York Times bestselling touching and beautiful graphic memoir about the untimely death of his young daughter, Rosalie. His heart-breaking and emotional illustrations strike readers to the core, and take them along his family's journey through loss. Hart uses the graphic form to articulate his and his wife's on-going search for meani

Alligator Candy: A Memoir

David Kushner · 256 pages

The Grief of Others

Leah Hager Cohen · 386 pages

Managing their grief by pretending that everything is normal after the tragic loss of a newborn, John and Ricky find themselves confronting long-suppressed uncertainties about their relationship at the same time a terrible secret emerges about the pregnancy.

Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words

Michael Ausiello · 309 pages

Television industry journalist Michael Ausiello tells the story of his final year with his partner of thirteen years, Kit Cowan--diagnosed with a rare and very aggressive form of neuroendocrine cancer--while revisiting the many memories that preceded it, and describes how their undeniably powerful bond carried them through all manner of difficulties, with humor always front and center of the relat

The Most Beautiful: My Life with Prince

Mayte Garcia · 294 pages

A candid assessment of the iconic musician's personal and professional life by his first wife traces their long-distance courtship, marriage, and creative partnership as well as the challenges that compromised their romance.

The Paper House

Anna Spargo-Ryan · 304 pages

*And then I was pregnant, and we realised we had no space for a baby. We looked at all kinds of houses: big, new ones with columns and render; little cottages with beaten weatherboard; a yellow brick monstrosity with a paved yard where there should have been grass. But we were drawn to the rolling water. And our heart stayed behind when we left. Heather and Dave have found the perfect place to r

Signs of Life: A Memoir

Natalie Taylor · 306 pages

Twenty-four-year-old Natalie Taylor has led a charmed life. Surrounded by her large, close-knit family, she enjoys her meaningful job as a high school English teacher, cherishes being married to her college sweetheart and is ecstatic about their baby on the way. But her life suddenly changes.

The Meaning of Matthew: My Son's Murder in Laramie, and a World Transformed

Judy Shepard · 288 pages

My James: The Heartrending Story of James Bulger by His Father

Ralph Bulger, Rosie Dunn · 323 pages

On 12 February 1993, three year old James Bulger wandered away from his mum Denise in a shopping mall in Bootle. Grainy images from a security camera showed him trustingly holding the hand of ten year old Jon Venables as they walked away. Venables and Robert Thompson murdered James. In this book, James' father describes how his world fell apart.

Dance with the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss

David Bagby · 320 pages

On November 2001, the body of a young doctor named Andrew Bagby was discovered in Keystone State Park outside Latrobe, Pennsylvania, by a homeless man searching dumpsters for aluminum cans. The alleged murderer was his ex-girlfriend Shirley Turner---also a doctor. For parents Dave and Kate, the pain was unbearable. Little did they know, however, that the worst was far from over. Shirley Turner---k

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Dave Eggers · 426 pages

From Wikipedia: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius (ISBN 0-330-48455-9) is a memoir by Dave Eggers released in 2000. It chronicles his stewardship of younger brother Christopher "Toph" Eggers following the cancer-related deaths of his parents. The book was an enormous commercial and critical success, reaching number one on The New York Times bestseller list and being nominated as a final

Making Toast

Roger Rosenblatt · 166 pages

When his daughter, Amy, collapses and dies from an asymptomatic heart condition, Rosenblatt and his wife leave their home on Long Island to move in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. He peels back the layers on this most personal of losses to create a testament to familial love.

When Breath Becomes Air

Paul Kalanithi · 256 pages

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi’s transformation from a naïve me

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

I'll See You Again

Jackie Hance · 371 pages

In a powerful and intimate memoir, Jackie Hance shares her story of unbearable loss, darkest despair, and -- slowly, painfully, and miraculously -- her cautious return to hope and love after the death of her three young daughters in a traffic accident.

Goodbye, Dearest Holly: Ten Years On

Kevin Wells · 336 pages

Tuesdays with Morrie

Mitch Albom · 192 pages

Tuesdays with Morrie is a memoir by American author Mitch Albom about a series of visits Albom made to his former sociology professor Morrie Schwartz, as Schwartz gradually dies of ALS. The book topped the New York Times Non-Fiction Best-Sellers List for 23 combined weeks in 2000, and remained on the New York Times best-selling list for more than four years after. In 2006, Tuesdays with Morrie was

Carrie and Me: A Mother-Daughter Love Story

Carol Burnett · 224 pages

In this beautiful and poignant tribute to her late daughter, award-winning actress and "New York Times" bestselling author Carol Burnett presents a funny and moving memoir about mothering an extraordinary young woman through the struggles and triumphs of her life.

Rare Bird: A Memoir of Loss and Love

Anna Whiston-Donaldson · 232 pages

The author shares the story of the loss of her twelve-year-old son to a flash flood, and how she and her family made their way through profound grief toward peace with the help of the presence of God.

Notes Left Behind

Brooke Desserich, Keith Desserich · 272 pages

Elena Desserich dreamed of becoming a teacher. Although her time on this earth was far too short to fulfill her dream, she left behind an enlightening lesson plan on life. Wise beyond her years, Elena never stopped teaching those around her to appreciate the miracle of everyday living even as the innocent six-year-old battled a rare form of brain cancer.Through personal and candid journal entries