In The Shadow Of Eight

In the Shadow of Eight: Surviving the Reality of My Childhood

Collin Gosselin · 283 pages

A Wolf at the Table

Augusten Burroughs · 242 pages

PREQUEL TO THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER RUNNING WITH SCISSORSFrom the author: 'My father doesn't feature much in Running with Scissors. And one of the reasons for this is because he didn't feature much in my life. But there's another reason, too: Our relationship was so complicated, so dark, so confusing and so big, that to tell the story would require a book. So finally, upon the death of my fath

Stolen Innocence: My Story of Growing Up in a Polygamous Sect, Becoming a Teenage Bride, and Breaking Free of Warren Jeffs

Elissa Wall, Lisa Pulitzer · 438 pages

In September 2007, a packed courtroom in St. George, Utah, sat hushed as Elissa Wall, the star witness against polygamous sect leader Warren Jeffs, gave captivating testimony of how Jeffs forced her to marry her first cousin at age fourteen. This harrowing and vivid account proved to be the most compelling evidence against Jeffs, showing the harsh realities of this closed community and the lengths

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"--

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.

Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape

Jenna Miscavige Hill, Lisa Pulitzer · 416 pages

Jenna Miscavige Hill was raised to obey. As the niece of the Church of Scientology's leader David Miscavige, she grew up at the center of this highly controversial and powerful organization. But at twenty-one, Jenna made a daring break, risking everything she had ever known and loved to leave Scientology once and for all. Now she speaks out about her life, the Church, and her dramatic escape, goin

Educated

Tara Westover

The daughter of survivalists, who is kept out of school, educates herself enough to leave home for university.

Not My Father's Son

Alan Cumming · 304 pages

**Acclaimed actor Alan Cumming shares the raw and emotional story of his turbulent relationship with his father and the long-buried family secrets that shaped his life and career.** A beloved star of stage, television, and film, Alan Cumming is celebrated for his unparalleled diversity and fearlessness as an artist. However, his success conceals a painful childhood marked by the heavy hand of a

This Boy's Life

Tobias Wolff · 288 pages

Wolff's account of his boyhood and the process of growing up includes paper routes, whiskey, scouting, fistfights, friendship, and betrayal in 1950s America.

Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story

Jewel · 386 pages

When Jewel's first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with more than thirty million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life, and the lessons learned from her experience and her music.

Lit

Mary Karr

Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter

Adeline Yen Mah · 278 pages

Adeline Yen Mah was born in 1937 in Tianjin, a port city one thousand miles north of Shanghai. She was the fifth and youngest child of an affluent family. Her grand aunt - in an unprecedented achievement - had founded the Shanghai Women's Bank in 1924, and her father was a revered businessman whose reputation for turning iron into gold began when he started his own firm at the age of nineteen. Ye

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

What It Is

Sarah Burleton · 182 pages

House Rules

Rachel Sontag · 288 pages

At an early age, Rachel Sontag realized there was something deeply wrong with her father. On the surface, he was a well-respected, suburban physician. But questioning his authority led to brutal fights; disobedience meant humiliating punishments. When she was twelve, he duct-taped her stereo dial to National Public Radio, measured the length of her hair and fingernails with a ruler, and regulated

A Man Named Dave

Dave Pelzer · 339 pages

From the Publisher: "All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself." These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his mother abused him with shocking brutality. But even after he was rescued, his lif

My Struggle: Book 1

Karl Ove Knausgard

Call Me Cockroach

Leigh Byrne · 332 pages

Stitches

David Small · 336 pages

Finalist for the 2009 National Book Award and finalist for two 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards: the prize-winning children's author depicts a childhood from hell in this searing yet redemptive graphic memoir. One day David Small awoke from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he had been transformed into a virtual mute. A vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched toget

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

Betrayed

Lyndsey Harris, Andrew Crofts · 320 pages

A mother. A daughter. A family torn apart. The heartbreaking true story of an unimaginable betrayal. For the first six years of her life, Sarah Harris was a normal, happy, popular little girl. But from the age of six her life was a living hell - as she became the victim of a vicious eighteen-month hate campaign. Before long she was suspended from school, alienated from her friends, completely bewi

Boy Kings of Texas: A Memoir

Domingo Martinez · 449 pages

"Domingo Martinez lays bare his interior and exterior worlds as he struggles to make sense of the violent and the ugly, along with the beautiful and the loving. Partly a reflection on the culture of machismo and partly an exploration of the author's boyhood spent in his sister's hand-me-down clothes, this book delves into the enduring and complex bond between Martinez and his deeply flawed, but fi

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

Chanel Bonfire

Wendy Lawless · 295 pages

"Wendy Lawless' stunning memoir of resilience in the face of an unstable alcoholic and suicidal mother"--