They are about guns, campaign buttons, and a cabin in the Vermont woods that stinks of wood smoke and kerosene -- and about their associations of pleasure, menace, and regret.The resulting volume may be compared to the plays that have made Mamet famous: it is finely crafted and deftly timed, and its precise language carries an enormous weight of feeling.

    Can a young girl escape a loveless home to seize elusive peace?Portugal. As a baby, Maria Trautman was abandoned at birth by her mother and was raised by her adoring grandmother. But when her grandmother passed away, the distressed child was sent to live with her cruel and cold-hearted mother.After enduring years of physical and emotional attacks, Maria built up the courage to leave her country and emigrated to Canada to seek sanctuary with her aunt. But when her uncle continued the very abuse she was so desperate to stop, Maria feared she would be forever trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence.In a passionate true account exposing unimaginably damaging upheavals, this heartfelt narrative follows Maria’s entry to adulthood and her quest to find one thing that always evaded her: happiness. And through vivid recollection of her own daunting challenges and tragic memories, Maria creates a beautiful tribute to the resilience of the human spirit.Discover the poignant truth of a courageous woman seeking healing through tremendous faith and forgiveness.If you like moving personal accounts, testaments of perseverance and powerful journeys, then you’ll love Maria Trautman’s memoir. Follow her heart wrenching story as she goes from suffering to living in happiness in her shocking memoir, After All...After All... Winner of the Literary Titan Gold book awardBuy After All… to reach the freedom that lies ahead today!

    A christian mother comes to terms with her son being gay through a personal journey that starts with the Church and ends at the Pride Parade.

    Transport the cottage through four Cape Cod towns. Attach it to my three-room house. Create more space for my work and life. Smart, single, and self-employed, Kate was used to fending for herself. But she wasn’t prepared for half the surprises, complications, and self-discoveries of her house-moving adventure.Supported by friends and family, and egged on by Egypt, her bossy gray cat, Kate encountered a parade of town officials, a small convoy of State Police, and an eccentric band of house-movers, carpenters, and tradesmen. She found herself dancing on the edge of the gender divide–infatuated with trucks, cranes, tools, construction terms, and a dreamy mason who teaches her the history of concrete.Sketched with a deft hand and told with an open heart, Cottage for Sale is a deeply personal story that captivates, inspires, and delights. In one remarkable year, Kate moved a cottage and created a home. Once you cross the threshold, you’ll never want to leave.

    New York Times bestselling author of Texts from Jane Eyre Daniel M. Lavery publishing as Daniel Mallory Ortberg has mastered the art of “poetic yelling,” a genre surely familiar to fans of his cult-favorite website The Toast.In this irreverent essay collection, Ortberg expands on this concept with in-depth and hilarious studies of all things pop culture, from the high to low brow. From a thoughtful analysis on the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, Something That May Shock and Discredit You is a laugh-out-loud funny and whip-smart collection for those who don’t take anything—including themselves—much too seriously.

    Fish and Wildlife Service. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed--and endangered--her life. She posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story--a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.

    A collection of thoughts on the beauty and lore of Cape Cod, presented with pen-and-ink drawings, reflects upon the people, the weather, and the country.

    Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood.As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music.In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes listeners through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art - from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat” in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over 15 years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans.Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.

    Described by the New York Times as “a bawdy countercultural sprite” and named one of the most fun people in show business by Time magazine, Alan Cumming is a genuine quadruple threat—an internationally acclaimed, award-winning star of stage, television, and film, as well as a New York Times best-selling author whose real-life vivacity, wit, and charm shine through every page of his third book, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams. In these forty-five picture essays, Cumming recounts his real-life adventures (and often, misadventures), illustrated by his own equally entertaining photographs. From an awkward bonding session with Elizabeth Taylor to poignant stories about his family and friends to some harsh words of wisdom imparted by Oprah that make up the title of this collection, You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams is as eclectic, enchanting, and alive as its author.

    But in I Hate Everyone, Except You, he reveals some heretofore-unknown secrets about himself, like that he’s a finicky connoisseur of 1980s pornography, a disillusioned critic of New Jersey’s premier water parks, and perhaps the world’s least enthused high-school commencement speaker.Whether he’s throwing his baby sister in the air to jumpstart her cheerleading career or heroically rescuing his best friend from death by mud bath, Clinton leaps life’s social hurdles with aplomb. With his signature wit, he shares his unique ability to navigate the stickiest of situations, like deciding whether it’s acceptable to eat chicken wings with a fork on live television (spoiler: it’s not). Clinton delves into all these topics—and many more—in this thoroughly unabashedly frank and uproarious collection.Kamikaze --Brilliant ideas --Auditions, the universe, and other whatnot --Memorizing porn --Turd in the punchbowl --Freakin' fabulous, the sitcom --The switch --Clinton for president! --You young, me restless --Textbook penis --Stockholm syndrome --The way it went --I'm waiting --Your a psychopath --Salad days --Rich and famous --Afterword

    From nicotine gum addiction to lesbian personal ads to incontinent dogs, Possible Side Effects mines Burroughs's life in a series of uproariously funny essays. These are stories that are uniquely Augusten, with all the over-the-top hilarity of Running with Scissors, the erudition of Dry, and the breadth of Magical Thinking. A collection that is universal in its appeal and unabashedly intimate, Possible Side Effects continues to explore that which is most personal, mirthful, disturbing, and cherished, with unmatched audacity. A cautionary tale in essay form. Be forewarned--hilarious, troubling, and shocking results might occur.

     “A pleasure. Ellie Kemper is the kind of stable, intelligent, funny, healthy woman that usually only exists in yogurt commercials. But she’s real and she’s all ours!” —Tina Fey “Ellie is a hilarious and talented writer, although we’ll never know how much of this book the squirrel wrote.”—Mindy KalingMeet Ellie, the best-intentioned redhead next door. You’ll laugh right alongside her as she shares tales of her childhood in St. Louis, whether directing and also starring in her family holiday pageant, washing her dad’s car with a Brillo pad, failing to become friends with a plump squirrel in her backyard, eating her feelings while watching PG-13 movies, or becoming a “sports monster” who ends up warming the bench of her Division 1 field hockey team in college. You’ll learn how she found her comedic calling in the world of improv, became a wife, mother and New Yorker, and landed the role of a bridesmaid (while simultaneously being a bridesmaid) in Bridesmaids. You’ll get to know and love the comic, upbeat, perpetually polite actress playing Erin Hannon on The Office, and the exuberant, pink-pants-wearing star of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. If you’ve ever been curious about what happens behind the scenes of your favorite shows, what it really takes to be a soul cycle “warrior,” how to recover if you accidentally fall on Doris Kearns Goodwin or tell Tina Fey on meeting her for the first time that she has “great hair—really strong and thick,” this is your chance to find out. But it’s also a laugh-out-loud primer on how to keep a positive outlook in a world gone mad and how not to give up on your dreams. Ellie “dives fully into each role—as actor, comedian, writer, and also wife and new mom—with an electric dedication, by which one learns to reframe the picture, and if not exactly become a glass-half-full sort of person, at least become able to appreciate them” (Vogue.com).

     Equality for LGBT people has come a long way and all, but voices of persons of color within the community are still often silenced, and being black in America is…well, have you watched the news? With the characteristic wit and candor that have made him one of today’s boldest writers on social issues, I Can’t Date Jesus is Michael Arceneaux’s impassioned, forthright, and refreshing look at minority life in today’s America. Leaving no bigoted or ignorant stone unturned, he describes his journey in learning to embrace his identity when the world told him to do the opposite. He eloquently writes about coming out to his mother; growing up in Houston, Texas; that time his father asked if he was “funny” while shaking his hand; his obstacles in embracing intimacy; and the persistent challenges of young people who feel marginalized and denied the chance to pursue their dreams. Perfect for fans of David Sedaris and Phoebe Robinson, I Can’t Date Jesus tells us—without apologies—what it’s like to be outspoken and brave in a divisive world.

     On the night of June 22, 1986, ten-year-old Rachel Howard woke to a disturbing sight: pools of blood on the hallway carpet and a glimpse of her father clutching his stabbed throat. Stan Howard died minutes later, and his bizarre small-town murder was never solved. Rachel’s father was thirty-two, a laid-back, handsome man who loved the music of Rod Stewart and had no known enemies. Faced with her family’s shock, Rachel decided she would cope the only way she knew how: By keeping silent and trying to pretend the murder had never happened. Now, seventeen years later and recently engaged, Rachel attempts to uncover for herself what happened that night. Finally reconnecting with her father’s family, she sorts through her relatives’ memories of his death and presses the less-than-helpful detectives. Still bewildered, she seeks the only other two people present at the murder: her former stepmother and stepbrother, neither of whom she has seen since her father’s funeral. The result is a tender portrait of a father and a keen investigation of memory, truth, and how a family moves on from a tragedy for which they may never find answers. “Homicide has lifelong effects for its secondary victims, and educating people to that fact is an essential part of the battle for victims’ rights. The genres of True Crime and Memoir both need more books like The Lost Night. Rachel’s memoir is important and enlightening. She is very brave for taking on the telling of this story. --Jeanine Cummins, author of A Rip in Heaven "From the first page to the last, I read Rachel Howard's spellbinding memoir of murder and its harrowing aftermath with my heart in my mouth. A riveting exploration of grief, suspicion, and the tangled ties that make up the modern family, her need to uncover the identity of the person responsible for the vicious stabbing death of her beloved, but flawed father compels her on a brave, emotional quest for the truth. I turned the pages late into the night, eager to follow Howard as she pursued the next clue and the next, as well as to discover how she would come to terms with her terrible loss. A clear-sighted writer, willing to admit to the gaps in fact and memory that will always remain, the true triumph of her story is the hard-won, if uneasy truce she ultimately establishes with the past." --Anna Cypra Oliver, author of Assembling My Father: A Daughter's Detective Story

    Fans around the world are drawn to Her Grace’s voice, her wit, her life-affirming love for all humanity, and the fun and friendship of the community that’s sprung up around her.