Cherry


Nico Walker - 2018
    A young man is just a college freshman when he meets Emily. They share a passion for Edward Albee and ecstasy and fall hard and fast in love. But soon Emily has to move home to Elba, New York, and he flunks out of school and joins the army. Desperate to keep their relationship alive, they marry before he ships out to Iraq. But as an army medic, he is unprepared for the grisly reality that awaits him. His fellow soldiers smoke; they huff computer duster; they take painkillers; they watch porn. And many of them die. He and Emily try to make their long-distance marriage work, but when he returns from Iraq, his PTSD is profound, and the drugs on the street have changed. The opioid crisis is beginning to swallow up the Midwest. Soon he is hooked on heroin, and so is Emily. They attempt a normal life, but with their money drying up, he turns to the one thing he thinks he could be really good at – robbing banks.Hammered out on a prison typewriter, Cherry marks the arrival of a raw, bleakly hilarious, and surprisingly poignant voice straight from the dark heart of America.

Call Me Sister: District Nursing Tales from the Swinging Sixties


Jane Yeadon - 2013
    Staff nursing in a ward where she's challenged by an inventory driven ward sister, she reckons it's time to swap such trivialities for life as a district nurse.Independent thinking is one thing, but Jane's about to find that the drama on district can demand instant reaction; and without hospital back up, she's usually the one having to provide it. She meets a rich cast of patients all determined to follow their own individual star, and goes to Edinburgh where Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute's nurse training is considered the cr me de la cr me of the district nursing world.Call Me Sister recalls Jane's challenging and often hilarious route to realizing her own particular dream.

Take Off Your Pants! Outline Your Books for Faster, Better Writing


Libbie Hawker - 2015
    She’ll show you how to develop a foolproof character arc and plot, how to pace any book for a can’t-put-down reading experience, and how to ensure that your stories are complete and satisfying without wasting time or words.Hawker’s outlining technique works no matter what genre you write, and no matter the age of your audience. If you want to improve your writing speed, increase your backlist, and ensure a quality book before you even write the first word, this is the how-to book for you.Take off your pants! It’s time to start outlining.

Hurry Up Nurse!: Memoirs of nurse training in the 1970'


Dawn Brookes - 2016
    It follows the experiences of the author as she and her friends come to terms with the non-stop hustle and bustle of hospital life. This book treats the reader to a peep behind the scenes as we enter the hospital wards. As well as an insight into nurse training, hurry up nurse provides a glimpse into the social history of life in the 1970's and early 1980's.

So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came to Be and Why It Endures


Maureen Corrigan - 2014
    It's a book that has remained current for over half a century, fighting off critics and changing tastes in fiction. But do even its biggest fans know all there is to appreciate about The Great Gatsby?Maureen Corrigan, the book critic for "Fresh Air" and a Gatsby lover extraordinaire, points out that while Gatsby may be the novel most Americans have read, it's also the ones most of us read too soon -- when we were "too young, too defensive emotionally, too ignorant about the life-deforming powers of regret" to really understand all that Fitzgerald was saying ("it's not the green light, stupid, it's Gatsby's reaching for it," as she puts it). No matter when or how recently you've read the novel, Corrigan offers a fresh perspective on what makes it so enduringly relevant and powerful. Drawing on her experience as a reader, lecturer, and critic, her book will be a rousing consideration of Gatsby: not just its literary achievements, but also its path to "classic" (its initial lukewarm reception has been a form of cold comfort to struggling novelists for decades), its under-acknowledged debt to hard-boiled crime fiction, its commentaries on race, class, and gender.With rigor, wit, and an evangelistic persuasiveness, Corrigan will leave readers inspired to grab their old paperback copies of Gatsby and re-experience this great novel in an entirely new light.

Little Girls in Pretty Boxes: The Making and Breaking of Elite Gymnasts and Figure Skaters


Joan Ryan - 1995
    An acclaimed expose that has already helped reform Olympic sports—now updated to reflect the latest developments in women's gymnastics and figure skating—it continues to plead for sanity, safety, and an end to our national obsession: winning at any cost.

What Made Maddy Run: The Secret Struggles and Tragic Death of an All-American Teen


Kate Fagan - 2017
    This was a girl who succeeded at everything she tried, and who was only getting started.But when Maddy began her long-awaited college career, her parents noticed something changed. Previously indefatigable Maddy became withdrawn, and her thoughts centered on how she could change her life. In spite of thousands of hours of practice and study, she contemplated transferring from the school that had once been her dream. When Maddy's dad, Jim, dropped her off for the first day of spring semester, she held him a second longer than usual. That would be the last time Jim would see his daughter.What Made Maddy Run began as a piece that Kate Fagan, a columnist for espnW, wrote about Maddy's life. What started as a profile of a successful young athlete whose life ended in suicide became so much larger when Fagan started to hear from other college athletes also struggling with mental illness. This is the story of Maddy Holleran's life, and her struggle with depression, which also reveals the mounting pressures young people, and college athletes in particular, face to be perfect, especially in an age of relentless connectivity and social media saturation.

It


Alexa Chung - 2013
    Interspersed with pages from Alexa's notebooks and many a photo of a good night out, It appears in real cloth, with hand-crafted marbled endpages covered in polkadots, stripy head and tail bands, and luxiouriously creamy paper. Witty, charming and with a refreshingly down-to-earth attitude, It is a must-have for anyone who loves fashion, worries about growing up, or loves just about everything Alexa Chung.

Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald


Therese Anne Fowler - 2013
    When beautiful, reckless Southern belle Zelda Sayre meets F. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance in 1918, she is seventeen years old and he is a young army lieutenant stationed in Alabama. Before long, the "ungettable" Zelda has fallen for him despite his unsuitability: Scott isn't wealthy or prominent or even a Southerner, and keeps insisting, absurdly, that his writing will bring him both fortune and fame. Her father is deeply unimpressed. But after Scott sells his first novel, This Side of Paradise, to Scribner's, Zelda optimistically boards a train north, to marry him in the vestry of St. Patrick's Cathedral and take the rest as it comes.

American Baby: A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption


Gabrielle Glaser - 2021
    In 1960s America, premarital sex was not uncommon, but birth control was hard to get and abortion was illegal. In 1961, sixteen-year-old Margaret Erle became pregnant. Her unsympathetic family sent her to a maternity home. In the hospital, nurses would not even allow her to hold her own newborn. After she was finally badgered into signing away her rights, her son vanished into an adoption agency's hold.Claiming to be acting in the best interests of all, the adoption business was founded on secrecy and lies. American Baby lays out how a lucrative and exploitative industry removed children from their birth mothers and place them with families, fabricating stories about infants' origins and destinations, then closing the door firmly between the parties forever. They struck shady deals with doctors and researchers for pseudoscientific "assessments," and shamed millions of young women into surrendering their children.Gabrielle Glaser dramatically demonstrates the expectations and institutions that Margaret was up against. Though Margaret went on to marry and raise a large family with David's father, she never stopped longing for and worrying about her firstborn. She didn't know he spent the first years of his life living just a few blocks away from her, wondering often about where he came from and why he was given up. Their tale--one they share with millions of Americans--is one of loss, love, and the search for identity.Adoption's closed records are being legally challenged in states nationwide. Open adoption is the rule today, but the identities of many who were adopted or who surrendered a child in the decades this book covers are locked in sealed files. American Baby both illuminates a dark time in our history and shows a path to justice, honesty and reunion that can help heal the wounds inflicted by years of shame and secrecy.

James Taylor Long Ago and Far Away: His Life and His Music


Timothy White - 2001
    This new edition has been updated by his friend and former Rolling Stone comrade Mitch Glazer and includes an epilogue about the memorial concerts for Timothy that James Taylor helped organize.

The Last Lighthouse Keeper: A Memoir


John Cook - 2020
    A story about madness and wilderness, shining a light onto the vicissitudes of love and nature.'John Cook's ripping life story exposes Tasmania's old kero-fuelled lighthouses: relentless physically and emotionally demanding labour, done under the often cruel vagaries of nature. Noble work that can ultimately redeem a lost soul. Or break them.' - Matthew EvansI loved the life of the island, because I knew my body was more alive than it was on the mainland. People asked how we stood the isolation and boredom, but in some ways, it was more stimulating to have your senses turned up.In Tasmania, John Cook is known as 'The Keeper of the Flame'. As one of Australia's longest-serving lighthouse keepers, John spent 26 years tending Tasmania's well-known kerosene 'lights' at Tasman Island, Maatsuyker Island and Bruny Island.From sleepless nights keeping the lights alive, battling the wind and sea as they ripped at gutters and flooded stores, raising a joey, tending sheep and keeping ducks and chickens, the life of a keeper was one of unexpected joy and heartbreak. But for John, nothing was more heartbreaking than the introduction of electric lights, and the lighthouses that were left empty forever.Evocatively told, The Last Lighthouse Keeper is a love story between a man and a dying way of life, as well as a celebration of wilderness and solitude.

Queen in 3-D


Brian May - 2017
    It's just me." -- Brian May With these words, the author announces the first book ever to be published about the legendary rock band Queen by a member of the band. And certainly the first book of its kind in the world. It's a unique collection of original, highly personal snapshots of Queen in Three Dimensions, from the band's inception in the early '70s right up to the present day, accompanied by the exclusive recollections of founding member and lead guitarist, Brian May. Brian's typically honest account of his experiences within and without the band, including many extreme highs and lows, bravely opens the door to his feelings, beliefs and motivations on this trip though an extraordinary life. This book will entrance millions of Queen fans; but it will also inspire anyone who wonders what they might learn from a man who used his intellect, musical talent, and ability to make the transition from college boy to rock star in just a few years, and then go on building creatively for the next forty! The book is illustrated with over 300 photographs, the majority actually taken by Brian, and mostly in 3-D. These shots of Freddie Mercury, John Deacon, Roger Taylor, and Brian himself, on and off stage all round the world, spring into life when viewed with Brian's patented OWL viewer (supplied free with the book). Through the eyes of Brian's camera you are transported back in time to experience Queen's miraculous 46-year journey as if you were actually there whether in a dressing room, in a car, on a plane, or on stage at Madison Square Garden. The three dimensional stereoscopic images (the precursor of Virtual Reality) immerse and engage you in the atmosphere of the moment as no flat 2-D picture ever could.

Madoff with the Money


Jerry Oppenheimer - 2009
    From the values Madoff was taught growing up in the working class town of Laurelton, Queens to his high-life on Wall Street and the super-rich enclaves of Palm Beach and the French Riviera, bestselling author Jerry Oppenheimer follows the disgraced money manager's trail as he works his way up the social and economic ladder, and eventually scams his trusting clients in a $50 billion Ponzi scheme.Through Oppenheimer's in-depth reporting, you'll discover new revelations in this startling case, and become familiar with the trusting victims-ranging from non-profit Jewish charities to the likes of seemingly sophisticated individuals such as actress Jane Fonda who would "like to shake Madoff until his teeth fall out," the scion of the Baskin-Robbins ice cream empire who lost a bundle and was forced to rent out rooms in his house, and New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg. There's even Madoff's own sister-in-law and talk show host Larry King, who apparently didn't ask the right questions when he invested. All lost their much-needed life savings, while others saw fortunes small and large evaporate in the greedy financial operations of one of history's all-time charlatans.Madoff With the MoneyDelves into the details of the illusive man that lost investors billions Weaves stories of Madoff's past with those of the present in an engaging and accessible style Explores how the financial scam that Madoff ran cost individuals and institutions billions of dollars Other titles by Oppenheimer: Toy Monster: The Big, Bad World of Mattel, and Just Desserts: Martha Stewart the Unauthorized BiographyWhile there may be other books on the Bernie Madoff debacle, none digs as deep or goes as far to uncover the truth behind the man, and his incredible scam.

Messenger: The Legacy of Mattie J.T. Stepanek and Heartsongs


Jeni Stepanek - 2009
    Five years after his death from a rare neuromuscular disease, Mattie is still being celebrated for his indomitable spirit and message of hope. Now the world will get to know the full story of the poet, the peacemaker, the philosopher, and New York Times bestselling author in the first book to share all of the intimate details of his incredible life. In "Messenger," Mattie's mother, Jeni Stepanek, recounts the years before Mattie got sick; how he handled the loss of his siblings from the same disease he had; his decision to spread the message of peace and hope; and how, when he became a celebrity, Jeni helped to keep him grounded, and remember to embrace being a kid. Including never-before- seen poems, journal entries, photos, and correspondence with famous friends, "Messenger" is an inspirational book about a life lived to the fullest. "Not a day goes by when I don't receive e-mails and letters saying that Mattie's poetry and speeches are not enough-people want to know about him directly and intimately. I am thrilled to have joined with Dutton so that I can now tell all his fans the full story behind my son." - Jeni Stepanek, Good Morning America.