I'm not blaming it on President Kennedy's assassination or its being the beginning of the sixties or the Vietnam War or The Beatles. The trouble I'm talking about was my first real trouble, the age-old trouble. The getting in trouble as in Is she in trouble? trouble. As in pregnant. As in the girl who got pregnant in high school. Beverly Ann Donofrio wasn't bad because she hung out with hoods - she was bad because she was a hood.

    In "Reminiscences," the first of five pieces, she focuses on the death of her mother, "the greatest disaster that could happen," and its effect on her father, the demanding Victorian patriarch. Three of the papers were composed to be read to the Memoir Club, a postwar regrouping of Bloomsbury, which exacted absolute candor of its members."A Sketch of the Past" is the longest and most significant of the pieces, giving an account of Virginia Woolf's early years in the family household at 22 Hyde Park Gate. A recently discovered manuscript belonging to this memoir has provided material that further illuminates her relationship to her father, Leslie Stephen, who played a crucial role in her development as an individual and as a writer.

    Songs like "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "Rocky Mountain High," and "Annie's Song" have entered the canon of universal anthems, but less than three decades ago, John Denver was a young man with little more than a fine voice, a guitar, and a dream. Growing up in a conservative military family, he was not expected to drop out of college and head to Los Angeles, where the music scene was flourishing. Nor was he expected to succeed. In Take Me Home, John Denver chronicles the experiences that shaped his life, while unraveling the rich, inner journey of a shy Midwestern boy whose uneasy partnership with fame has been one of the defining forces of his first fifty years. With candor and wit, John writes about his childhood, the experience of hitting L.A. as the Sixties roared into full swing, his first breaks, his years with the Mitchell Trio, his first songwriting success with "Leaving on a Jet Plane," and finally a career that made his a global household name. He also explores his relationships with the women in his life - particularly his first wife, Annie Martell, and his second wife, Cassandra Delaney - as well as his parents, his children, his partners through his life, and his friends. Honest, insightful and rich in anecdotes that only a natural-born storyteller could tell so well, Take Me Home is a highly charged and fascinating book from beginning to end. It's like spending a couple of days with a good friend.

    Having survived a profoundly dysfunctional upbringing only to find herself hospitalized and facing a dual diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder and bipolar II disorder; Terese Marie Mailhot is given a notebook and begins to write her way out of trauma. The triumphant result is Heart Berries, a memorial for Mailhot's mother, a social worker and activist who had a thing for prisoners; a story of reconciliation with her father―an abusive drunk and a brilliant artist―who was murdered under mysterious circumstances; and an elegy on how difficult it is to love someone while dragging the long shadows of shame.Mailhot trusts the reader to understand that memory isn't exact, but melded to imagination, pain, and what we can bring ourselves to accept. Her unique and at times unsettling voice graphically illustrates her mental state. As she writes, she discovers her own true voice, seizes control of her story, and, in so doing, reestablishes her connection to her family, to her people, and to her place in the world.

    Jim Carroll grew up to become a renowned poet and punk rocker. But in this memoir of the mid-1960's, set during his coming-of-age from 12 to 15, he was a rebellious teenager making a place and a name for himself on the unforgiving streets of New York City. During these years, he chronicled his experiences, and the result is a diary of unparalleled candor that conveys his alternately hilarious and terrifying teenage existence. Here is Carroll prowling New York City--playing basketball, hustling, stealing, getting high, getting hooked, and searching for something pure.

    That is what troubles animal-phobic, robotics engineer Smith who just got married. He learns that his bride’s dream is to have a farm where there are lots of animals and she can rescue ex-race horses to retrain and find them new homes. But according to a Meyers-Briggs Personality Test that they took for fun, their marriage is doomed. There is only one problem: the newlyweds took the test after the wedding. Whether Smith is chasing a cow named Pork Chop through the woods with a rope, getting locked in a tack room by the family pony, being snubbed by his wife’s dog, or unsuccessfully trying to modernize their barn using the latest technology, the odds are stacked against him. It seems like everything with four legs is out to get him. Will the animals win, forcing Smith to admit defeat, or will he fight to keep his family and the farm together? Enjoy the true, warm, and frequently hilarious stories of Smith’s journey along the bumpy road from his urban robotics lab to a new life on a rural Virginia farm.

    Born into a notorious London crime family, his uncle Micky was one of the key players in the legendary Brink's-Mat gold bullion caper. John bought his first gun at 16 and carved out a lucrative career in armed robbery. At one point he was one of Britain's most-wanted men. It took two spells in prison and the death of a friend on a botched heist to change his path. During his second stint in jail he discovered a miraculous natural talent while serving life in the Belmarsh high security unit - where fellow inmates included Abu Hamza, the hook-handed extremist cleric, and the 7/7 bombers. John broke three world rowing records while still an inmate and since his release has become one of the UK's leading Ironman competitors. He aims to turn pro in 2016 after competing in the European championships in Frankfurt. Redemption is the ultimate story of sporting salvation.

    With her characteristic charm and simplicity, Margaret Craven describes her research in Canada and how - at the age of sixty-nine - she came to write a first novel that became the modern classic that called international attention to a new "Grandma Moses". Filled with touching reminiscences of a wise and courageous woman whose writing reflects the pioneering spirit of her youth, AGAIN CALLS THE OWL is the inspiring companion volume to one of the country's most well-loved works, I HEARD THE OWL CALL MY NAME.

    She has hit rock bottom and here, for the first time, Kerry shares how bad it's really been.But this incredible story of survival charts Kerry's rise out of the mire of addiction, depression and bankruptcy. She has brought her life and health back from the brink of total collapse and has become a happy single parent and working mother of four.

    Restored to its original form, Sculptor's Daughter gives us a glimpse of the mysteries of winter ice, the bonhomie of balalaika parties, and the vastness of Christmas viewed from beneath the tree.Published in a deluxe hardback edition for Christmas 2013, to mark the centenary of Tove Jansson's birth (1914-2014)

    This autobiography traces Janet Frame's childhood in a poor but intellectually intense family, life as a student, years of incarceration in mental hospitals and eventual entry into the saving world of writers.

    Spanning his 50-year career and incorporating a rich and varied range of material, this second anthology is as wonderfully unmissable as the first. When Spike Milligan died in 2002, he left behind one of the most diverse legacies in British entertainment history – as well as a legion of devoted fans and admirers. His themes ranged from environmental issues to the war, from nostalgia to depression, and his prolific output covers some of the most evocative events of the twentieth century, in a style both twistedly comic and harrowingly honest.The huge success of the Spike Milligan anthology, ‘The Essential Spike Milligan’, has inspired a second raid on the original brilliant source. Milligan was arguably the most one of the prolific and mould-breaking comic writers of the twentieth century and this second anthology gives another opportunity to sample his finest writing. It includes more of the best from his war memoirs and novel Puckoon, his children's stories, poetry and drawings plus a wonderful collection from his voluminous correspondence from the 1960s onwards with such varied recipients as the House of Commons, the Director-General of the BBC, Private Eye and British Telecom. A compulsive read for all Milligan fans.

    Since Roald Amundsen completed the first successful crossing of the fabled Northwest Passage in 1906, only twenty-four pleasure craft have followed in his wake. Many more people have gone into space than have traversed the Passage, and a staggering number have died trying. From his home port of Newport, Rhode Island, through the Passage and around Alaska to Seattle, it would be an 8,500-mile trek filled with constant danger from ice, polar bears, and severe weather. What Theobald couldn't have known was just how life-changing his journey through the Passage would be. Reuniting his children and stepchildren after a bad divorce more than fifteen years earlier, the family embarks with unanswered questions, untold hurts, and unspoken mistrusts hanging over their heads. Unrelenting cold, hungry polar bears, and a haunting landscape littered with sobering artifacts from the tragic Franklin Expedition of 1845, as well as personality clashes that threaten to tear the crew apart, make The Other Side of the Ice a harrowing story of survival, adventure, and, ultimately, redemption.TO WATCH THE OFFICIAL HD TEASER FOR "The Other Side of The Ice" (book and documentary) PLEASE GO TO SPRAGUETHEOBALD.COM50 color illustrations

    From fond childhood memories of his eccentric and brilliant grandfather William Foyle, 'the Barnum of Bookselling' and his aunt, the beautiful, charming, witty, self centred and at times utterly ruthless Christina Foyle, to the 21st century rejuvenation of a dying family business, An Accidental Bookseller will appeal to all who have their own memories of Foyles.