Spent


Antonia Crane - 2014
    She gets drugged, does enema shows, and unionizes the club. When she tries to quit and go to graduate school, her mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Broke and broken, she returns to sex work, which leads to her arrest and a new resilience. Spent is a memoir about a woman’s journey through the sex industry, but it’s also a story of family, community, and our constant struggle against loneliness.

To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret


Jedidiah Jenkins - 2018
    He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living?In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure--the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world--as well as the internal journey that started it all. As he traverses cities, mountains, and inner boundaries, Jenkins grapples with the question of what it means to be an adult, his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing, and his belief in travel as a way to wake us up to life back home.A soul-stirring read for the wanderer in each of us, To Shake the Sleeping Self is an unforgettable reflection on adventure, identity, and a life lived without regret.Praise for To Shake the Sleeping Self"[Jenkins is] a guy deeply connected to his personal truth and just so refreshingly present."--Rich Roll, author of Finding Ultra"This is much more than a book about a bike ride. This is a deep soul deepening us. Jedidiah Jenkins is a mystic disguised as a millennial."--Tom Shadyac, author of Life's Operating Manual"Thought-provoking and inspirational . . . This uplifting memoir and travelogue will remind readers of the power of movement for the body and the soul." --Publishers Weekly

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl


John Colapinto - 2000
    The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds.

The Fixed Stars


Molly Wizenberg - 2020
    Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we’d like to believe.   Like many of us, Wizenberg had long understood sexual orientation as a stable part of ourselves: we’re “born this way.” Suddenly she realized that her story was more complicated. Who was she, she wondered, if something at her very core could change so radically? The Fixed Stars is a taut, electrifying memoir exploring timely and timeless questions about desire, identity, and the limits and possibilities of family. In honest and searing prose, Wizenberg forges a new path: through the murk of separation and divorce, coming out to family and friends, learning to co-parent a young child, and realizing a new vision of love. The result is a frank and moving story about letting go of rigid definitions and ideals that no longer fit, and learning instead who we really are.

The Apostle : A Life of Paul


John Charles Pollock - 1969
    As you turn the pages, you'll sense Paul's motives, his aims and priorities; what mattered to him; and what he was willing to die for.

Freefall to Fly: A Breathtaking Journey Toward a Life of Meaning


Rebekah Lyons - 2013
    In a female culture built on Photoshopped perfection and Pinterest fantasies, we've lost the ability to dream our own big dreams. So busy trying to do it all and have it all, we've missed the life we were really designed for. And we are paying the price. The rise of loneliness, depression, and anxiety among the female population in Western cultures is at an all-time high. Overall, women are two and a half times more likely to take antidepressants than men. What is it about our culture, the expectations, and our way of life that is breaking women down in unprecedented ways?In this vulnerable memoir of transformation, Rebekah Lyons shares her journey from Atlanta, Georgia, to the heart of Manhattan, where she found herself blindsided by crippling depression and anxiety. Overwhelmed by the pressure to be domestically efficient, professionally astute, and physically attractive, Rebekah finally realized that freedom can come only by facing our greatest fears and fully surrendering to God's call on our lives. This book is an invitation for all women to take that first step toward freedom. For it is only when we free-fall that we can truly fly.

Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret


F. Howard Taylor - 1932
    But at his heart, he loved the Chinese people and learned through his misfortunes to trust God completely. 'HUDSON TAYLOR'S SPIRITUAL SECRET' is a stirring biography that challenges you to live a life of faith.RUNNING TIME ⇒ 7hrs. and 16mins.Public Domain (P)2011 christianaudio.com

Raising My Rainbow: Adventures in Raising a Fabulous, Gender Creative Son


Lori Duron - 2013
    Whereas her older son, Chase, is a Lego-loving, sports-playing boy's boy, her younger son, C.J., would much rather twirl around in a pink sparkly tutu, with a Disney Princess in each hand while singing Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi."   C.J. is gender variant or gender nonconforming, whichever you prefer. Whatever the term, Lori has a boy who likes girl stuff—really likes girl stuff. He floats on the gender-variation spectrum from super-macho-masculine on the left all the way to super-girly-feminine on the right. He's not all pink and not all blue. He's a muddled mess or a rainbow creation. Lori and her family choose to see the rainbow.   Written in Lori's uniquely witty and warm voice and launched by her incredibly popular blog of the same name, Raising My Rainbow is the unforgettable story of her wonderful family as they navigate the often challenging but never dull privilege of raising a slightly effeminate, possibly gay, totally fabulous son.Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content

Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality


Debbie Cenziper - 2016
    Through insider accounts and access to key players, this definitive account reveals the dramatic and previously unreported events behind Obergefell v Hodges and the lives at its center. This is a story of law and love—and a promise made to a dying man who wanted to know how he would be remembered. Twenty years ago, Jim Obergefell and John Arthur fell in love in Cincinnati, Ohio, a place where gays were routinely picked up by police and fired from their jobs. In 2013, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government had to provide married gay couples all the benefits offered to straight couples. Jim and John—who was dying from ALS—flew to Maryland, where same-sex marriage was legal. But back home, Ohio refused to recognize their union, or even list Jim’s name on John’s death certificate. Then they met Al Gerhardstein, a courageous attorney who had spent nearly three decades advocating for civil rights and who now saw an opening for the cause that few others had before him. This forceful and deeply affecting narrative—Part Erin Brockovich, part Milk, part Still Alice—chronicles how this grieving man and his lawyer, against overwhelming odds, introduced the most important gay rights case in U.S. history. It is an urgent and unforgettable account that will inspire readers for many years to come.www.Facebook.com/LoveWins#LoveWins

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The First Forty Years, 1899-1939 v. 1


Iain H. Murray - 1982
    From his rural Welsh background to St Bartholomew’s Hospital (where at the age of 23 he was Chief Clinical Assistant to Sir Thomas Horder, the King’s Physician), then, suddenly at 27, to a struggling Calvinistic Methodist Church in Aberavon, South Wales, he appears successively as schoolboy, dairyman’s assistant, political enthusiast, debater, doctor, and finally Christian preacher.Some regarded his change of career as romantic, others as foolish. The one thing of which Dr Lloyd-Jones was sure was that his settlement amid the industrial depression of South Wales was no sacrifice: ‘I gave up nothing. I received everything. I count it the highest honour God can confer on any man to call to be herald of the gospel’This volume traces the unforgettable events of his first pastorate, his wider ministry in Wales (where, by 1933, the press reported, ‘he draws thousands to hear his message in all parts of the Principality’), his first visits to North America, and finally his settlement at Westminster Chapel, London,on the eve of World War II. While some saw him as ‘the modern Moody’, and others as ‘the last of the Calvanistic preachers’, Iain H. Murray’s work makes constant use of the hitherto unpublished material, and is able to present Dr Lloyd-Jones’ own view of his life and ministry.