Chanel Bonfire

The Liars' Club

Mary Karr · 320 pages

The Texas refinery town of Leechfield, perched on the swampy rim of the Gulf, is famous for mosquitoes and the manufacture of Agent Orange - a place where the only bookstores are religious ones and the restaurants serve only fried food. A handful of the Leechfield oil workers gather regularly at the American Legion Bar to drink salted beer and spin long, improbable tales. They're the Liars' Club.

The Glass Castle

Jeannette Walls · 296 pages

A story about the early life of Jeannette Walls. The memoir is an exposing work about her early life and growing up on the run and often homeless. It presents a different perspective of life from all over the United States and the struggle a girl had to find normalcy as she grew into an adult.

Her Last Death

Susanna Sonnenberg · 288 pages

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

J.D. Vance · 272 pages

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, this book is a probing look at the struggles of America's white working class through the author's own story of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town. Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of poor, white Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for over fo

Coming Clean

Kimberly Rae Miller · 272 pages

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.

Prozac Nation

Elizabeth Wurtzel · 336 pages

Full of promise is how anyone would have described Elizabeth Wurtzel at age ten, a bright-eyed little girl who painted, wrote stories, and excelled in every way. By twelve she was cutting her legs in the girls' bathroom and listening to scratchy recordings of the Velvet Underground. College was marked by a series of breakdowns, suicide attempts, and hospitalizations before she was finally given P

Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir

Laura M. Flynn

When Laura Flynn was a little girl, her beautiful, dynamic mother, Sally, was the center of her imagination. It wasn’t long, however, before Sally’s fun-loving side slowly and methodically became absorbed by madness. As Laura’s parents divorced and her father struggled to gain custody, Sally’s symptoms bloomed in earnest while Laura and her sisters united in flights of fancy of the sort their moth

Running with Scissors

Augusten Burroughs · 320 pages

"Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her psychiatrist, a dead ringer for Santa and a lunatic in the bargain. Suddenly, at age twelve, Augusten Burroughs found himself living in a dilapidated Victorian in perfect squalor. The doctor's bizarre family, a few patients, and a pedophile living in the backyard

A Paper Life

Tatum O'Neal · 285 pages

Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir

Terry Helwig

"Forced by her mother's instability to care for her five siblings, Helwig crafts a moving story of a mother she loved and struggled to understand"--

With or Without You

Domenica Ruta · 210 pages

The author grew up in Danvers, Massachusetts, a working-class, unforgiving town north of Boston where in the 17th century women were hanged as witches, in a trash-filled house on a dead-end road surrounded by a river and a salt marsh. Her mother, Kathi, a notorious local figure, was a drug addict and sometimes dealer whose life swung between welfare and riches. And yet she managed, despite the cha

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

A Child Called "It"

Dave Pelzer · 184 pages

This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longe

My Secret Sister

Helen Edwards, Jenny Lee Smith · 464 pages

Somebody's Daughter

Ashley C. Ford · 264 pages

Ugly

Constance Briscoe · 320 pages

Constance's mother systematically abused her daughter, both physically and emotionally, throughout her childhood. Regularly beaten and starved, the girl was so desperate she took herself off to Social Services and tried to get taken into care. When that failed, she swallowed bleach 'because it kills all known germs and my mother always told me I was a germ'. When Constance was thirteen, her mother

I'm Glad My Mom Died

Jennette McCurdy · 320 pages

A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor—including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother—and how she retook control of her life. 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

Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return

Marjane Satrapi · 187 pages

187 pages : illustrations ; 24 cmGN500L Lexile

The Sisters Antipodes

Jane Alison · 277 pages

In this heartbreaking memoir, novelist Alison recounts how she and her sister were thrown into a state of silent combat for the affections of their absent fathers--a contest that would prove tragic--in this unique window on the intimate devastations of family betrayal.

Here's the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice

Maureen McCormick · 277 pages

Marcia! Marcia! Marcia!Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all—style, looks, boys, brains, and talent. No wonder her younger sister Jan was jealous! For countless adolescents across America who came of age in the early 1970s, Marcia was the ideal American teenager. Girls wanted to be her. Boys wanted to date her. But what viewers didn't know about the always-sunny

Why Not Say What Happened?: A Memoir

Ivana Lowell · 302 pages

Born into a celebrated Anglo-Irish family, the Guinnesses, Ivana Lowell tells of coming to terms with her blue-blood heritage and her own childhood traumas. This is also the story of her intense relationship with her complicated mother, writer Caroline Blackwood. A keen observer with a wicked sense of humor and no self-pity, Lowell sets scenes with an almost madcap cast of characters, introducing

You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know

Heather Sellers · 356 pages

An unusual and uncommonly moving family memoir, with a twist that give new meaning to hindsight, insight, and forgiveness. The author is face blind--that is, she has prosopagnosia, a rare neurological condition that prevents her from reliably recognizing people's faces. Growing up, unaware of the reason for her perpetual confusion and anxiety, she took what cues she could from speech, hairstyle, a

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Alison Bechdel · 236 pages

A fresh and brilliantly told memoir from a cult favorite comic artist, marked by gothic twists, a family funeral home, sexual angst, and great books. This breakout book by Alison Bechdel is a darkly funny family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Bechdel's sweetly gothic drawings. Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, it's a story exhilaratingly suited to graphic memoir form. Meet Alison's