Biographies & Memoirs

Chapter 1
The Year of Magical Thinking
by Joan Didion
From one of America's iconic writers, a stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Joan Didion explores an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage - and a life, in good times and bad - that will speak to anyone who has

The Surgeon at the Hôtel-Dieu
Flaubert: A Biography
by Frederick Brown
From the highly acclaimed author of Zola: A Life comes the definitive biography of Gustave Flaubert, author of Madame Bovary.

The Capital of Nostalgia
Downtown; My Manhattan
by Pete Hamill
In Downtown, Hamill leads us on an unforgettable journey through the city he loves, from the island's southern tip to Forty-second Street, combining a moving memoir of his days and nights in New York with a passionate history of its most enduring places

Part 1
The Gospel Side of Elvis
by Joe Moscheo
The Gospel Side of Elvis is a rarely explored aspect of this American icon and one that reveals so much about the Elvis so many have yet to discover.

Chapter One
Shattered Dreams; My Life as a Polygamist's Wife
by Irene Spencer
Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's

Bollywood Dreams
King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema
by Anupama Chopra
Here is the astonishing true story of Bollywood, a sweeping portrait about a country finding its identity, a movie industry that changed the face of India, and one man's struggle to become a star.

Ye Nob Hill Inn
The Real Animal House: The Awesomely Depraved Saga of the Fraternity That Inspired the Movie
by Chris Miller
Thirty years after Animal House showed the world the meaning of toga, Chris Miller, a.k.a Pinto, takes us back to a different world. A world where a legendary frat brother really might go to a sorority house for a sympathy date after reading an obituary.

Chapter One
Here If You Need Me: A True Story
by Kate Braestrup
Ten years ago, Kate Braestrup and her husband Drew were enjoying the life they shared together. They had four young children, and Drew, a Maine state trooper, would soon begin training to become a minister as well.

Metropolis
Leni; The Life and Work of Leni Riefenstahl
by Steven Bach
The definitive biography of Leni Riefenstahl, the woman best known as 'Hitler's filmmaker,' one of the most fascinating and controversial personalities of the twentieth century. It is the story of huge talent and huger ambition

Pitched Back
Every Second Counts
by Lance Armstrong, Sally Jenkins
The five-time Tour de France winner and Number 1 New York Times bestselling author returns with an inspirational account of his recent personal and professional victories and some failures and an intimate glimpse into how almost dying taught him to really

Damned If You Do, and Damned If You Don't
The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher
by Debby Applegate
No one predicted success for Henry Ward Beecher at his birth in 1813. The blithe, boisterous son of the last great Puritan minister, he seemed destined to be overshadowed by his brilliant siblings-especially his sister, Harriet Beecher Stowe

Part 1
The Story of a Life
by Aharon Appelfeld
When Aharon Appelfeld was seven years old the Nazis occupied Czernowitz, his hometown. They penned the Jews into a ghetto and eventually sent whoever had not been shot or starved to death on a forced march across the Ukraine to a labor camp.

Part 1
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
by Maya Angelou
A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother.

Prologue
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
In the first volume of an extraordinary autobiographical series, one of the most inspiring authors of our time recalls - with candor, humor, poignancy and grace - how her journey began....

Part 1
The Heart of a Woman
by Maya Angelou
This engaging book chronicles the changes in Maya Angelou's life as she enters the hub of activity that is New York. There, at the Harlem Writers Guild, she rededicates herself to writing, and finds love at an unexpected moment. Reflecting on her many

A House Can Hurt, a Home Can Heal
Even the Stars Look Lonesome
by Maya Angelou
I have written of the black American experience, which I know intimately. I am always talking about the human condition in general and about society in particular. What it is like to be human, and American, what makes us weep, what makes us fall

Corn Mother: Genealogies
Tori Amos: Piece by Piece
by Tori Amos, Ann Powers
Tori Amos: Piece by Piece is a firsthand account of the most intricate and intimate details of Amos's life as both a private individual and a very public performing musician. In passionate and informative prose, Amos explains how her songs come to her

Don't Notice Anything
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed: And Other Things I've Learned
by Alan Alda
He's one of America's most recognizable and acclaimed actors-a star on Broadway, an Oscar nominee for The Aviator, and the only person to ever win Emmys for acting, writing, and directing, during his eleven years on M*A*S*H.

Raising an Arab Father in America
The Language of Baklava
by Diana Abu-Jaber
Diana Abu-Jaber's vibrant, humorous memoir weaves together stories of being raised by a food-obsessed Jordanian father with tales of Lake Ontario shish kabob cookouts and goat stew feasts under Bedouin tents in the desert. These sensuously evoked repasts,

Flying High
Electroboy: A Memoir of Mania
by Andy Behrman
Electroboy is an emotionally frenzied memoir that reveals with kaleidoscopic intensity the terrifying world of manic depression. For years Andy Behrman hid his raging mania behind a larger-than-life personality.