Lost Without My Daughter


Sayed Mahmoody - 2013
    In the book, Betty claimed that she and Mahtob, her five-year-old daughter, had been kidnapped from the USA in 1984 and imprisoned in Tehran by her Iranian husband, Dr Sayed Mahmoody - aka 'Moody' - a man she vilified as a violent, sadistic monster. Betty's story culminated with a dramatic escape, as she takes her daughter from Iran over the Zagros Mountains and into Turkey. The book sold 12 million copies and inspired the 1991 Hollywood film of the same name, starring Oscar-winner Sally Field. For twenty years Betty's husband has kept silent. Now, in Lost Without My Daughter, Sayed Mahmoody finally reveals the astonishing truth. As well as being a moving, frank story of a once happy family's collapse, and a father's subsequent search for meaning in his life, Lost Without My Daughter is also a cultural and political history of Iran, from the revolution to the present day. Perhaps more than anything, it is an exercise in truth, the last-ditch attempt of a father desperate to reach his daughter, to let her know that he is not the monster he has been portrayed to be.

A Life in the Day


Hunter Davies - 2017
     The Co-op’s Got Bananas! left our protagonist at the cusp of working for one of the world’s greatest newspapers – The Sunday Times . In this much-anticipated sequel, Hunter now looks back across five decades of successful writing to reflect on his colourful memories of the living in London during the height of the Swinging Sixties, becoming editor of Britain’s first colour weekend supplement The Sunday Times magazine; where he befriended the Beatles; and reporting on (and partying with) some of the biggest names in television, film and theatre of the day. As time moved on into the 1970s, '80s and '90s, Hunter encountered the likes of Sir Michael Caine, George Best, Melvyn Bragg, Joan Bakewell, Sir Sean Connery, Cilla Black, Paul Gascoigne, and Wayne Rooney to name a few. Hunter brings the story full circle to reflect on his years spent with the love of his life – the bestselling writer Margaret Forster, who sadly passed away in February 2016. This will not only be a colourful and enjoyable memoir of what it was like to be at the epicentre of Britain’s artistic heart, but also an emotional, heart-felt tribute to family, friends and colleagues. For those captivated by The Co-op’s Got Bananas!, this sequel is a must read.

How to Be Australian


Ashley Kalagian Blunt - 2020
    After all,Australia’s just Canada with more sunshine and strange animals, right?But they soon discover things aren’t so simple. Steve struggles to settle and Ashley fears he will come to regret both the move and the marriage – especially after she loses her wedding rings on Bondi Beach. Baffled, homesick and increasingly anxious (in a land renowned for ‘no worries’), she is preparing to return to Canada when Steve shockingly announces that he wants to stay in Australia. Forever.For the sake of her marriage and her happiness, Ashley must find an Australia she can belong to: she decides to travel the country, learn its history, decode its cultural quirks and connect with as many residents as she can meet. How to Be Australian is a remarkable memoir, at once familiar and faraway, that shines a fresh, funny and fascinating light onto the country we think we know.

Martina


Martina Navratilova - 1985
    Born and raised in Czechoslovakia, Martina Navratilova knew by the age of ten that she wanted to be a Wimbledon champion -- and a U.S. citizen. She would attain her goals and so much more -- but not before her incredible life unfolded in ways not even she could have dared imagine.MARTINA is more than the thrilling story of an unparalleled career in the tough, sexy world of women's tennis. It is a startling tale of love (with famed novelist Rita Mae Brown), tragedy (her father "disappeared" when Martina was eight, and only later did she learn the true cause of his death), and personal as well as professional triumph. It includes fascinating, intimate portraits of the greats of women's tennis -- King, Evert, Casals, Austin -- plus revealing glimpses of her working relationship with basketball star Nancy Lieberman.Emotion. Grit. Intensity. Integrity. Martina's shown them all from Flushing Meadows to Wimbledon, from Dallas to Paris to Sydney to Prague. Here they are again, in an autobiography only a champion could write."Fascinating and unexpectedly candid." --The San Francisco Chronicle

The Grim Reaper: The Life and Career of a Reluctant Warrior


Stu Grimson - 2019
    They all grew up dreaming of skating in the big league as stars. Then one day, a coach tells them the only way to make it is to drop the gloves. And every guy says the same thing: I'll do whatever it takes to play in the NHL.Not Stu Grimson, though. When he was offered a contract to patrol the ice for the Calgary Flames, he said no thanks, and went to university instead. And that's the way Grimson has approached his career and his life: on his own terms. He stared down the toughest players on the planet for seventeen years, while working on his first university degree. He retired on his own terms, and went on to practice law, including a stint as in-house counsel for the NHLPA.This has put him in a unique position when it comes to commenting on the game. He's seen it from the trenches, and he's seen it from the courtroom. This puts him in the eye of the storm surrounding fighting and concussions. And he handles that the way he does everything: on his own terms. When Don Cherry called him out on televison, it was the seemingly indominable Cherry who backed down. Hockey fans will be fascinated by his data-driven defence of fighting.But in the end, this is not a book about fighting and locker-room stories. It's the story of a young man who ultimately took on the toughest role in pro sports and came out the other side. Where many others have not.

Nurses On The Inside: Stories Of The HIV/AIDS Epidemic In NYC


Ellen Matzer - 2019
    It is the story of two nurses who witnessed the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic from the frontline. It focuses on their lives and their experiences. Some of the story is raw, sometimes graphic, but familiar for people with HIV infection, family members, friends, and other nurses and medical professionals such as Ellen and Valery. There were hundreds of nurses who went through what Ellen and Valery experienced. They want to tell this story to give a voice to a generation lost, encouraging the world to remember one simple thing: this history cannot be repeated.

Twelve Cases: A Psychiatrist’s True Stories of Mental Illness and Addiction [and Other Human Predispositions]


Daniel Mierlak - 2018
    Daniel Mierlak, a psychiatrist for twenty-five years, on a journey to the stranger corners of human experience. Here you’ll meet: Tony, chauffeur to the fabulously rich, who overcomes crippling anxiety only to find himself descend into a homicidal rage following a botched cosmetic procedure. Amanda, hospitalized for mania, who sees a change to her medicine as an assassination attempt, and then stalks her doctor for a year after discharge. James, a schizophrenic hearing voices telling him to kill himself, whose piano playing leads to a shocking secret about his past. Psychiatric treatment is normally a private encounter and often misunderstood. In describing twelve of his most challenging cases, Dr. Mierlak brings you into his sessions, into his patients’ lives, and into the world of psychiatry. Get ready for some surprises.

The Shape of Love


Gelsey Kirkland - 1989
    By the author of Dancing on My Grave. Reprint. AB. PW.

Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I've Loved


Kate Bowler - 2018
    She lost thirty pounds, chugged antacid, and visited doctors for three months before she was finally diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.As she navigates the aftermath of her diagnosis, Kate pulls the reader deeply into her life, which is populated with a colorful, often hilarious collection of friends, pastors, parents, and doctors, and shares her laser-sharp reflections on faith, friendship, love, and death. She wonders why suffering makes her feel like a loser and explores the burden of positivity. Trying to relish the time she still has with her son and husband, she realizes she must change her habit of skipping to the end and planning the next move. A historian of the "American prosperity gospel"--the creed of the mega-churches that promises believers a cure for tragedy, if they just want it badly enough--Bowler finds that, in the wake of her diagnosis, she craves these same "outrageous certainties." She wants to know why it's so hard to surrender control over that which you have no control. She contends with the terrifying fact that, even for her husband and child, she is not the lynchpin of existence, and that even without her, life will go on.On the page, Kate Bowler is warm, witty, and ruthless, and, like Paul Kalanithi, one of the talented, courageous few who can articulate the grief she feels as she contemplates her own mortality.

Walking Out on the Boys


Frances K. Conley - 1998
    Conley, the first female tenured professor of neurosurgery in the country, made headline news when she resigned from Stanford University to protest the medical school's unabashed gender discrimination. In this controversial, forthright memoir, Conley portrays the world of academic medicine in which women are still considered inferior; she also explains why, as a consequence, the research and treatment of women's health problems lag far behind those of men. In assessing why women's careers and psyches are suffering, Conley provides a first-person look into what it is like to be an accomplished woman within this restrictive medical world, offering invaluable advice to patients and future doctors alike.

The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness


Sarah Ramey - 2020
    Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her devastating symptoms were psychological.The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission, to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions.Ramey's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness is a medical mystery that she says reveals a new understanding of today's chronic illnesses as ecological in nature, driven by modern changes to the basic foundations of health, from the quality of our sleep, diet, and social connection to the state of our microbiomes.

Little Matches: A Memoir of Grief and Light


Maryanne O'Hara - 2021
    Thirty-one years later, Caitlin lost her battle with this devastating disease following an excruciating two-year wait on the transplant list and a last-minute race to locate a pair of healthy lungs. The sudden spiral of events left Maryanne in an existential crisis, searching to find an answer to the eternal question: Why we are here? During her final years, Caitlin had become a source of wisdom and comfort for her mother—the partner with whom she shared a deep spiritual quest to understand what it meant to have a soul. After Caitlin’s passing, Maryanne began to notice signs—poignant, persistent synchronicities that seemed to lean toward proof of Caitlin’s enduring presence.Weaving together a series of interconnected meditations with illuminating glimpses of life rendered via text messages, e-mails, and journal entries, Little Matches is a profound reflection on life and death, motherhood, the pain of chronic uncertainty, and finding inspiration in the unexpected sparks that light our way through the darkness.

Alice in the Looking Glass: A Mother and Daughter's Experience of Anorexia


Jo Kingsley - 2005
    In the first part of the book Jo Davenport writes with raw intensity about Alice's illness and what she hopes is her recovery. At ten, Alice was an easy going, free spirited child with a tremendous sense of humour and adored by everyone who knew her. At eleven, she started to develop her 'rigmaroles' - little rituals which grew into severe Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - and then, at fourteen, turned into anorexia. Jo describes her journey through what she calls Planet Anorexia, recognising the amazing support she received both professionally and personally and telling of the long periods of despair, guilt, anger and, as the mother of a much-loved child, sheer terror. By opening her heart and writing this book her wish is to pass on her experiences as the mother of an anorexic child, to share all her doubts, failures, anxieties and eventually some successes in the hope of supporting other families going through the same trauma. In the second part of the book Alice, now eighteen and on the road to recovery, also looks back over the past eight years. recovery, other sufferers she met, and her relationship with her mother, friends and siblings. Finally, Jo brings the story up to date and offers guidance and hope to others who love and care for an anorexic child.

Sickened: The Memoir of a Munchausen by Proxy Childhood


Julie Gregory - 2003
    Just twelve, she’s tall, skinny, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to "get to the bottom of this." She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans.SickenedFrom early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman.Sickened is a remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's happiness. The realization that the sickness lay in her mother, not in herself, would not come to Julie until adulthood. But when it did, it would strike like lightning. Through her painful metamorphosis, she discovered the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had found to replace her. Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable story, unforgettably told.

18 in America: A Young Golfer's Epic Journey to Find the Essence of the Game


Dylan Dethier - 2013
    His goal: play a round of golf in each of the lower forty-eight states. From a gritty municipal course in Flint, Michigan, to rubbing elbows with Phil Mickelson at Quail Hollow, Dylan would spend a remarkable year exploring the astonishing variety of the nation’s golf courses—and its people. Over one year, thirty-five thousand miles, and countless nights alone in his dusty Subaru, Dylan showered at truck stops, slept with an ax under his seat, and lost his virginity, traveling “wherever the road took him, with golf as a vehicle for understanding America” (The New York Times). The result is a book that “would be considered fine work by any writer, let alone one so young” (Maine Edge).