Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife

Diary of an Alcoholic Housewife

Brenda Wilhelmson

Autobiography / Memoir / Nonfiction

Brenda Wilhelmson was like a lot of women in her neighborhood. She had a husband and two children. She was educated and made a good living as a writer. She had a vibrant social life with a tight circle of friends. She could party until dawn and take her children to school the next day. From the outside, she appeared to have it all together. But, in truth, alcohol was slowly taking over, turning her world on its side. Waking up to another hangover, growing tired of embarrassing herself in front of friends and family, and feeling important moments slip away, Brenda made the most critical decision of her life: to get sober. She kept a diary of her first year (and beyond) in recovery, chronicling the struggles of finding a meeting she could look forward to, relating to her fellow alcoholics, and finding a sponsor with whom she connected. Along the way, she discovered the challenges and pleasures of living each day without alcohol, navigating a social circle where booze is a...
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Futureface

Futureface

Alex Wagner

Nonfiction / Autobiography / Memoir

An acclaimed journalist travels the globe to solve the mystery of her ancestry, confronting the question at the heart of the American experience of immigration, race, and identity: Who are my people? Alex Wagner has always been fascinated by stories of exile and migration. Her father's ancestors immigrated to the United States from Ireland and Luxembourg. Her Buddhist mother fled Rangoon in the 1960s, escaping Burma's military dictatorship. In her professional life, Wagner reported from the Arizona-Mexico border, where agents, drones, cameras, and military hardware guarded the line between two nations. She listened to debates about whether the United States should be a melting pot or a salad bowl. She knew that moving from one land to another—and the accompanying recombination of individual and tribal identities—was the story of America. And she was happy that her own mixed-race ancestry and late twentieth-century education had taught her that...
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Travels in the Scriptorium

Travels in the Scriptorium

Paul Auster

Fiction / Memoir

A man pieces together clues to his past—and the identity of his captors—in this fantastic, labyrinthine novel An old man awakens, disoriented, in an unfamiliar chamber. With no memory of who he is or how he has arrived there, he pores over the relics on the desk, examining the circumstances of his confinement and searching his own hazy mind for clues. Determining that he is locked in, the man—identified only as Mr. Blank—begins reading a manuscript he finds on the desk, the story of another prisoner, set in an alternate world the man doesn’t recognize. Nevertheless, the pages seem to have been left for him, along with a haunting set of photographs. As the day passes, various characters call on the man in his cell—vaguely familiar people, some who seem to resent him for crimes he can’t remember—and each brings frustrating hints of his identity and his past. All the while an overhead camera clicks and clicks, recording his movements, and a microphone records every sound in the room. Someone is watching.
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Becoming Us: Where It All Began.

Becoming Us: Where It All Began.

Amy Daws

Romance / Contemporary / Memoir

The dreaded friend-zone... The last place I ever want to be with college basketball God, Jake LaShae. I am losing my mind trying to figure out what this gorgeous and confident man wants from me. I need to break through his walls. What is it about me that makes him not go there? What am I lacking? When a mind-blowing betrayal knocks the wind out of me, and I think I can't feel any lower...Brody stumbles into my path-barefoot no less, and sexy as hell. His direct and mouth-watering swagger is a breath of fresh air. The feelings this man gives me are like nothing I've ever experienced. But Brody has a past. A past that makes it nearly impossible for him to trust me and let us become us in whatever capacity that may be. Just when Brody and I truly connect, just when I think that finding my soul-mate in college isn't a total joke, Jake comes back into my life...and messes things up...possibly for good.
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81 Days Below Zero

81 Days Below Zero

Brian Murphy

Biography / Memoir / Nonfiction

Shortly before Christmas in 1943, five Army aviators left Alaska's Ladd Field on a test flight. Only one ever returned: Leon Crane, a city kid from Philadelphia with little more than a parachute on his back when he bailed from his B-24 Liberator before it crashed into the Arctic. Alone in subzero temperatures, Crane managed to stay alive in the dead of the Yukon winter for nearly twelve weeks and, amazingly, walked out of the ordeal intact.81 Days Below Zero recounts, for the first time, the full story of Crane's remarkable saga. In a drama of staggering resolve with moments of phenomenal luck, Crane learned to survive in the Yukon's unforgiving landscape. His is a tale of the human capacity to endure extreme conditions and intense loneliness—and emerge stronger than before.
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The Parish

The Parish

Alice Taylor

Cultural / Ireland / Autobiography / Memoir

In a series of vignettes of life in her village, Alice Taylor reasserts the priorities of public space and local community. The Parish evokes and explores the positive values of community, which could be renewed and reinvigorated for a present and future that achieves harmony between comfort and the pressing need to respect the environment.
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Forward

Forward

Abby Wambach

Nonfiction / Memoir

"Forward is the powerful story of an athlete who has inspired girls all over the world to believe in themselves. Abby shows us by example how to overcome problems and live a happier, braver life." —Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO, New York Times Bestselling author of Lean In "This is the best memoir I've read by an athlete since Andre Agassi's Open. I could not put it down, and you will not want it to end." —Adam Grant, Wharton professor and New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and TakeAbby Wambach has always pushed the limits of what is possible. At age seven she was put on the boys' soccer team. At age thirty-five she would become the highest goal scorer—male or female—in the history of soccer, capturing the nation's...
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A Festival of Ghosts

A Festival of Ghosts

William Alexander

Memoir / Humor and Comedy

National Book Award winner William Alexander conjures up a spooky adventure full of excitement in this entertaining sequel to A Properly Unhaunted Place.Rosa Ramona Diaz, the ghost appeasing assistant librarian, has unleashed all the ghosts who were previously shut out of the small town of Ingot. Now ghosts are everywhere, and the town's living residents are either learning to cope or trying to do the one thing no one can successfully do—banish the ghosts. At school, something supernatural is stealing kids' voices and leaving them speechless. And it's Rosa's job to solve the mystery and set things right. Meanwhile her best friend Jasper is dealing with what remains of the Renaissance Festival, where ghosts from Ingot's past are now battling it out with the ghosts of the Renaissance reenactors. And Rosa is experiencing a haunting of her own—could her father's ghost have followed her here? Somehow Rosa and Jasper are going to have to find a way...
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