It's about the men who leave, and the men who stay.It's a familiar story. Father leaves his wife and children and never looks back. Theresa Weir was five when her father left his family for a better life with a wealthy socialite. Many years passed with only occasional and grudging contact by Theresa's father. When Theresa married into a successful farm family, her father resurfaced, but she couldn't help but be suspicious of his awkward visits.Years later, when the aging socialite dies and Theresa's father is diagnosed with Alzheimer's, people expect Theresa to move to Florida to care for him. A daughter's duty.This is Theresa's personal story of a strained and painful father/daughter relationship.What does a daughter owe the father who abandoned her?~~~From the editor:THE MAN WHO LEFT could be considered a companion to the stunning memoir THE ORCHARD. But where THE ORCHARD is a dark fairy tale, THE MAN WHO LEFT is pure Middle American gothic, told in Theresa Weir's unadorned yet richly powerful and emotionally resonant style. A story about the burdens of remembering and the costs of forgetting, THE MAN WHO LEFT poignantly chronicles the emotional consequences of betrayal and abandonment by those who are supposed to love us the most.

    It is a poignant observation about the relationship between Mira, her sister, and their mentally ill mother. Before she was struck with schizophrenia at the age of nineteen, beautiful piano protégé Norma Herr had been the most vibrant personality in the room. She loved her daughters and did her best to raise them well, but as her mental state deteriorated, Norma spoke less about Chopin and more about Nazis and her fear that her daughters would be kidnapped, murdered, or raped. When the girls left for college, the harassment escalated--Norma called them obsessively, appeared at their apartments or jobs, threatened to kill herself if they did not return home. After a traumatic encounter, Mira and her sister were left with no choice but to change their names and sever all contact with Norma in order to stay safe. But while Mira pursued her career as an artist--exploring the ancient romance of Florence, the eerie mysticism of northern Norway, and the raw desert of Israel--the haunting memories of her mother were never far away. Then one day, Mira’s life changed forever after a debilitating car accident. As she struggled to recover from a traumatic brain injury, she was confronted with a need to recontextualize her life--she had to relearn how to paint, read, and interact with the outside world. In her search for a way back to her lost self, Mira reached out to the homeless shelter where she believed her mother was living and discovered that Norma was dying. Mira and her sister traveled to Cleveland, where they shared an extraordinary reconciliation with their mother that none of them had thought possible. At the hospital, Mira discovered a set of keys that opened a storage unit Norma had been keeping for seventeen years. Filled with family photos, childhood toys, and ephemera from Norma’s life, the storage unit brought back a flood of previous memories that Mira had thought were lost to her forever. The Memory Palace is a breathtaking literary memoir about the complex meaning of love, truth, and the capacity for forgiveness among family. Through stunning prose and original art created by the author in tandem with the text, The Memory Palace explores the connections between mother and daughter that cannot be broken no matter how much exists--or is lost--between them.

    Although Stairlift to Heaven is written by an old age pensioner, non-coffin dodgers should not be put off by this. Everyone will be old someday, if they’re lucky, and there are valuable lessons in coping with old age to be learned here. Written by Terry Ravenscroft, former scriptwriter to Les Dawson, The Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise, Ken Dodd, Alas Smith and Jones and many more top comedians and television shows. Stairlift to Heaven has been likened by one reviewer to be ‘Like Last of the Summer Wine on cocaine’ This journal really will make people of any age laugh out loud.If you enjoyed reading Stairlift to Heaven I would really appreciate it if you were to recommended it to any of your friends who you think might like it.Terry Ravenscroft

    Tolson. The story begins with her suicide attempt at the age of twenty-five. In the aftermath, she commits to counseling to recover from anxiety and depression. The reader accompanies the author through therapy sessions, where the young woman reveals dysfunctional family relationships, including domestic violence, sexual abuse, and mental illness. She learns from her counselor that she'd been suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) which was the underlying cause of self-destructive behaviors, such as addictions and alcoholism. Due to the therapeutic process, the author discovers the value of life. Her story illustrates physical, emotional, and spiritual transformation. In sharing her inspirational journey, she provides readers with a message of hope.Author Lynn C. Tolson appeals to the reader from the first paragraph of her powerful memoir Beyond the Tears: A True Survivor's Story. Tolson uses creative non-fiction to tell her story, fascinating the reader with metaphor, prose, and poetry. Tolson tells her riveting story in first-person narrative, enabling the reader to instantly bond with her authentic voice. Readers can readily visualize the settings, plot, and characters due to the author's well-developed descriptions and dialogue. This is not an average auto-biography: the book combines story-telling with self-help, affirmations, meditations, and therapeutic concepts. Each chapter begins with a quote appropriate to the content, which gives the reader even more to contemplate. The topics challenge the reader to explore social problems within the context of family relationships. However, Tolson uses her clever wit to offer the reader occasional comic relief. Readers say that they simultaneously laughed and cried on the same page. Some readers say that reading the book literally changed their lives. Readers also say they view themselves and their families with a fresh perspective.

    She is seven; he is fifty-one. When Peter invites her and her mother to his house, the little girl finds a child's paradise of exotic pets and an elaborate backyard garden. Her mother, beset by mental illness and overwhelmed by caring for Margaux, is grateful for the attention Peter lavishes on her, and he creates an imaginative universe for her, much as Lewis Carroll did for his real-life Alice. In time, he insidiously takes on the role of Margaux's playmate, father, and lover. Charming and manipulative, Peter burrows into every aspect of Margaux's life and transforms her from a child fizzing with imagination and affection into a brainwashed young woman on the verge of suicide. But when she is twenty-two, it is Peter -- ill, and wracked with guilt -- who kills himself, at the age of sixty-six. Told with lyricism, depth, and mesmerizing clarity, Tiger, Tiger vividly illustrates the healing power of memory and disclosure. This extraordinary memoir is an unprecedented glimpse into the psyche of a young girl in free fall and conveys to readers -- including parents and survivors of abuse -- just how completely a pedophile enchants his victim and binds her to him.

    This is a book about life with Ewan—the center of one family's universe and the gravity that holds them together. Far from being the stressor that causes this family to disintegrate, autism has made this family what it is today. A family that laughs more than it cries, and a family that eagerly awaits for the next Ewanism to spring forth from the lips of this solar system’s sun. Over the years we have built a bridge between his world and ours, his brain and ours, and his perspective and ours. Join us on the journey we’ve taken to help create a world of possibility for our son—a world filled with words, thoughts, ideas, and love. Alicia Hart, author of Brains, Trains & Video Games, is a wife, mother and advocate for children and adults with autism spectrum disorder. She has worked for various autism related agencies, early intervention programs, and has consulted with schools, hospitals, and other programs regarding autism spectrum disorders, feeding aversions, and augmentative and alternative communication. Alicia continues to write and has planned a series of books surrounding the autism life. The first book, Brains, Trains & Video Games, details their life through infancy, early intervention, augmentative and alternative communication, feeding problems, medical care and preschool. The next book in the series, Foods, Moods & Isms, is about a single year in the life of this family--a year of great change, difficult obstacles and an ever changing view of life. Foods, Moods & Isms was released on March 8, 2013. For more updates, please visit The Autism Life or the Alicia Hart -- Author Facebook page.

    Using excerpts and written prayers from her journal, Kate Gosselin offers an intimate look at the heart of a mother during the three years her family transitioned from obscurity into television fame.

    The product of world-famous crooner Eddie Fisher and ’60s sex kitten Connie Stevens, she struggled with her own identity and place in the world on the way to a decades-long career as an acclaimed actress, singer, and director.Now, Joely shares her unconventional coming of age and stories of the family members and co-stars dearest to her heart, while stripping bare her own misadventures. In Growing Up Fisher, she recalls the beautifully bizarre twist of fate by which she spent a good part of her childhood next door to Debbie Reynolds. She speaks frankly about the realities of Hollywood—the fame and fortune, the constant scrutiny. Throughout, she celebrates the anomaly of a two-decade marriage in the entertainment industry, and the joys and challenges of parenting five children, while dishing on what it takes to survive and thrive in the unrelenting glow of celebrity. She speaks frankly about how the loss of her sister Carrie Fisher became a source of artistic inspiration.Fisher’s memoir, with never-before-seen photos, will break and warm your heart.

    Krakauer's book, Into the Wild, became an international bestseller, translated into thirty-one languages, and Sean Penn's inspirational film by the same name further skyrocketed Chris McCandless to global fame. But the real story of Chris's life and his journey has not yet been told—until now. The missing pieces are finally revealed in The Wild Truth, written by Carine McCandless, Chris's beloved and trusted sister. Featured in both the book and film, Carine has wrestled for more than twenty years with the legacy of her brother's journey to self-discovery, and now tells her own story while filling in the blanks of his. Carine was Chris's best friend, the person with whom he had the closest bond, and who witnessed firsthand the dysfunctional and violent family dynamic that made Chris willing to embrace the harsh wilderness of Alaska. Growing up in the same troubled household, Carine speaks candidly about the deeper reality of life in the McCandless family. In the many years since the tragedy of Chris's death, Carine has searched for some kind of redemption. In this touching and deeply personal memoir, she reveals how she has learned that real redemption can only come from speaking the truth.

    For no apparent reason, she's singled out from her siblings, blamed for her family's problems and targeted for unspeakable abuse. The loving environment she's come to know becomes an endless nightmare of twisted punishments as she's forced to confront the dark cruelty lurking inside the mother she idolizes. Based on a true story, Call Me Tuesday recounts, with raw emotion, a young girl's physical and mental torment at the mercy of the monster in her mother's clothes--a monster she doesn't know how to stop loving. Tuesday's painful journey through the hidden horrors of child abuse will open your eyes, and her unshakable love for her parents will tug at your heartstrings.

    Fourteen-year-old Carolyn Maull was just a few feet away when the bomb exploded, killing four of her friends in the girls' rest room she had just exited. It was one of the seminal moments in the Civil Rights movement, a sad day in American history . . . and the turning point in a young girl's life. While the World Watched is a poignant and gripping eyewitness account of life in the Jim Crow South - from the bombings, riots and assassinations to the historic marches and triumphs that characterized the Civil Rights movement. A uniquely moving exploration of how racial relations have evolved over the past 5 decades, While the World Watched is an incredible testament to how far we've come and how far we have yet to go.

    Headstrong, accomplished journalist Martha Gellhorn is confident with words but less so with men when she meets disheveled literary titan Ernest Hemingway in a dive bar. Their friendship—forged over writing, talk, and family dinners—flourishes into something undeniable in Madrid while they’re covering the Spanish Civil War.Martha reveres him. The very married Hemingway is taken with Martha—her beauty, her ambition, and her fearless spirit. And as Hemingway tells her, the most powerful love stories are always set against the fury of war. The risks are so much greater. They’re made for each other.With their romance unfolding as they travel the globe, Martha establishes herself as one of the world’s foremost war correspondents, and Hemingway begins the novel that will win him the Nobel Prize for Literature. Beautiful Exiles is a stirring story of lovers and rivals, of the breathless attraction to power and fame, and of one woman—ahead of her time—claiming her own identity from the wreckage of love.

    They’re also tired of smelling of fish.When offered the chance to escape from the dreary market stalls of England to run a bar on a sub-tropical island, they recklessly jump at the opportunity - despite their spectacular lack of experience.In Tenerife, dreams of a better life overseas are soon crushed by mini-mafias, East European prostitutes and biblical-grade cockroach infestations.Joe and Joy's foreign fantasy turns into a nightmare as they find themselves trapped with a failing bar in a foreign land, pandering to a bar full of oddball expats while trying to stop their relationship crashing into the rocks.Can they save their business, their dreams, and their relationship before it's too late...

    He was left in a permanent vegetative state. Over the following years, Cathy and her parents took care of Matty - they built an extension onto the village pub where they lived and worked; they talked to him, fed him, bathed him, loved him. But there came a point at which it seemed the best thing they could do for Matty - and for themselves - was let him go. With unflinching honesty and raw emotional power, Cathy describes the unimaginable pain of losing her brother and the decision that changed her family's lives forever. As she delves into the past and reclaims memories that have lain buried for many years, Cathy reconnects with the bright, funny, adoring brother she lost and is finally able to see the end of his life as it really was - a last act of love. Powerful, intimate and intensely moving, this is a personal journey with universal resonance - a story of unconditional love, of grief, survival and the strength of the ties that bind. It's a story that will speak to anyone who has lost someone close to them, to anyone who has fiercely loved a sibling, and to anyone who has ever wondered whether prolonging a loved one's life might be more heartbreaking than saying goodbye.

    Based on Crystal's one-man Broadway show of the same name, "700 Sundays"--referring sadly to the time shared by an adoring father and his devoted son--offers a heartfelt, hilarious memoir.