Book picks similar to
Ozzie by Ozzie Nelson


biography-memoir
memoir
non-fiction
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Journey To Hell: Inside the World's Most Violent Prison System


Donald MacNeil - 2006
    The pay was good and the work was easy - or so he thought. Then the truth was revealed: he had to sail to South America to collect one of the biggest shipments of cocaine ever bound for the UK. And to the gangsters who hired him, refusal was not an option.There followed a harrowing journey to Venezuela, where almost £50 million of coke was waiting. But someone had tipped off the authorities. Donald and his fellow crewman were arrested, convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to six years in the notorious island prison of San Antonio.He soon discovered why Venezuela’s prisons are the most violent in the world, a nightmare gulag where hundreds are killed and thousands maimed every year in riots, vendettas and petty disputes. Thrown into a filthy, over-crowded dormitory known as Pavilion 4, and surrounded by armed gangs, crack addicts, death and disease, he faced a daily fight to survive. Ferocious guards beat prisoners indiscriminately and many cut themselves in “blood strikes” to protest against the scarce food, undrinkable water and lack of medical care. Finally a war broke out between two prison compounds, involving guns, machetes and even grenades.Through it all, and despite witnessing the brutal killing of his friend and mentor, MacNeil clung to the belief that one-day he would be home. Journey To Hell is a harrowing but compelling account of man’s extraordinary will to survive in a world gone mad.

Six Months to Live . . .: Three Guys on the Ultimate Quest for a Miracle


Arthur P. Boyle - 2014
    Then terminal cancer happened. The best doctors despaired. And Artie dared to look for a miracle. Artie had never put much stock in mysticism or miracles. But when his best friends bought tickets to fly with him to Croatia to the controversial shrine at Medjugorje where healings were known to happen, he dared it all. They found themselves in powerful ways sharing spiritually, even praying together, something they would have found very odd before. And when they came home Artie was healed—completely. The cancer was gone. The doctors at Mass General Hospital were astounded yet could offer no explanation. Six Months to Live relates not only Artie’s miraculous healing but his spiritual transformation and the hope and inspiration he offers to thousands who hear his story.

Adventures of a Surgical Resident


Philip B. Dobrin - 2010
    This is the story of a surgeon in training and his adventures during the years of his residency.

Elbow Room: A Tale of Tenacity on Kodiak Island, Alaska


D.D. Fisher - 2011
    From humorous fishing excursions and frightening bear encounters to snow blinding blizzards and quirky characters, they come face to face with the unpredictable Mother Nature and learn the value of friendship, survival, and solitude in a picturesque but harsh life by the sea. Packed with adventures, challenges, and true Alaskan lifestyle.

Out of My Depth


Anne Darwin - 2016
    

Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage


Dina Matos McGreevey - 2007
    It was an unforgettable scene. Dina Matos McGreevey, an attractive woman in her mid-thirties, wife, mother, and First Lady of the state of New Jersey, watched silently as her husband, then New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey, resigned his office with the revelation that he was a "gay American." The picture of grace and loyalty, perfectly composed in her pale blue suit, Dina Matos McGreevey gave no sign of the tangled mixture of fear, sorrow, and anger she felt that day, no hint of the devastation that was to come. Since then she has been asked repeatedly about the nature of her marriage, about what she knew and when she knew it. Since then, she has remained silent. Until now. Speaking up at last, Dina Matos McGreevey here recounts the details of her marriage to Jim McGreevey. What emerges is a tale of love and betrayal, of heartbreak and scandal . . . and, ultimately, hope. It all began with so much promise. Dina Matos was a responsible and civic-minded young woman who fell in love with the passion of political action. When Jim McGreevey walked into her life, he appeared to be a kind and loving man, someone with whom she could build a life based on shared ideals, a strong spiritual commitment, and a desire to make a difference in the world. Beyond their initial chemistry, Dina Matos was attracted by Jim McGreevey's principles and his unwavering devotion to his work. She didn't know that his life, and thus their marriage, were built on a foundation of lies; that his past was littered with casual sexual encounters in seedy bookstores and public parks; or that, by his own admission, he began an adulterous affair with another man while she was in the hospital awaiting the birth of their child. "Could I have known," she asks. "How could I have known?" With scalding honesty, she tells of her life with the former governor, of the politics and public service that brought them together, and the lies that tore them apart. Here is a story of a marriage that was anything but happily-ever-after, told by a strong and resilient woman who can, and finally will, speak for herself.

Just the Job, Lad


Mike Pannett - 2011
    Working a rural beat in God's Own Country he finds that life and crime in the countryside continue to throw up fresh challenges.

Adventures of a Wonky-Eyed Boy: The Short-Arse Years


Jason Byrne - 2016
    As she was handed me by the midwife, my mother wept for all the wrong reasons. She could have shagged a platypus and I still would have come out better than this.So begins Jason Byrne's Adventures of a Wonky-Eyed Boy, a laugh-out-loud memoir that captures the childhood adventures of an accident-prone youngster in 1970s and 1980s suburban Dublin.It was a time when your brother persuaded you to eat the grease behind the cooker by telling you it was caramel, your house was blown up by lightning, your dad mixed up the toothpaste and the arse-cream, and you fell asleep on Sunday nights to the sound of one of the neighbours who were all named Paddy drunkenly singing Magic Moments in the good front room. All of this while trying to stop your wonky eye from giving the game away.Jason Byrne's childhood adventures are nostalgic, heart-warming and, above all, hilarious."When you read this you'll realise Jason might actually be the normal one in his family." John Bishop."I loved this book so much I wanted to cover it in wallpaper and write to all my pen pals about it!" Amy Huberman"A comedy god" The Mirror."Outright king of live comedy" The Times.

No Sense of Direction


Eric Raff - 2001
    With a sharp eye for detail and a keen sense of humor, Eric Raff recounts what its like to hit the road with no plan and no destination.If you've ever thought of giving it all up to take off and travel, No Sense of Direction might just give you the incentive to do it.

Huddled Masses: The Voyage to Ellis Island


Kevin Jackson - 2018
    Driven from their home countries by famine and persecution, they arrived at Ellis Island full of fear and hope, determined to claim their share of the American Dream.Among the first to pass through Ellis Island was young Israel Baline, a Russian Jew who at the age of just five had seen his homeland overrun by anti-Semitic violence. Forced to flee their village deep within the Russian Empire, the Baline family used their meagre life savings to cross Europe and buy a one-way steerage-class ticket to America. They landed at Ellis Island in 1893, only to find that the streets of New York were not quite paved with gold; the riches they had risked everything for would not be easily won.Israel Baline may have traded a rural slum for an urban one, but he was an American now. He would not stay impoverished for long. Blessed with talent, spurred by the will to succeed, Israel Baline would grow up to become—under another name—his adopted country’s most famous songwriter.

Mad Frank and Sons


David Fraser - 2016
    It includes the story of Frank's beloved sister, Eva, who was a top-class West End shoplifter, and his sons David and Patrick, who reveal in shocking detail the full extent of the family's network and the influences that shaped them.With sawn-off shotguns as toys, the Kray twins as family friends and a mother who urged them as teenagers to 'get out of bed and rob a bleedin' bank', it is little wonder that the Fraser boys were heavily involved in organized crime by the time they were in their twenties. Packed with new information, and featuring some of the most famous names in the London underworld, this is a fascinating slice of gangland history seen through the eyes of Frank Fraser and his two renegade sons.

Nikitta: A Mother’s Story - The Tragic True Story of My Daughter's Murder


Marcia Grender - 2016
    Marcia and her partner Paul, Nikitta’s father, rushed to the scene but there was nothing they could do. Firefighters had already discovered Nikitta’s body in the wreckage of the home she’d lovingly built with her childhood sweetheart. To add to their agony, Nikitta had been eight months’ pregnant. The fully formed yet unborn baby girl she’d already named Kelsey May was gone, too.But it soon became apparent Nikitta’s death was far from an accident. Within hours, the investigation became a murder inquiry and Ryan’s cousin Carl Whant was the prime suspect. Whant had been openly infatuated with Nikitta and boasted that he thought of her every time he had sex.As her world collapsed around her, Marcia could only watch in horror. Shortly after Whant was charged with murder, child destruction, rape and arson, she began charting her feelings in a searingly honest diary, the contents of which are published for the first time in this book.Marcia painstakingly recalls the agony of holding her granddaughter for the first time in a police mortuary, but being unable to see her dead daughter because of the shocking state in which Whant had left her. She charts the pain of laying them both to rest, knowing she will have to face their killer every day in court when Whant’s case comes to trial. For the first time, she opens up about her turbulent relationship with Ryan and the devastating revelations which almost cause her world to shatter for a second time. But, above all, she speaks of the indescribable hell of learning to live without the most important thing in her life.

Goldfinger and Me: The Real Story of John Palmer, Britain's Most Powerful Gangster


Marnie Palmer - 2018
    Palmer hit the big time in 1983 with the Brink’s-Mat gold bullion raid, netting £500 million in today’s money for himself and Kenneth Noye – the biggest heist in UK criminal history at the time. While murders and lethal accidents befell at least 20 accomplices and police officers connected to the raid, Palmer somehow remained unscathed. His luck finally ran out on 24 June 2015 when he was shot six times by an assassin. The killer remains unknown and, until now, so too did most of Palmer's secrets. Few gangsters have attracted as many newspaper column inches in recent decades, but only one woman saw it all from the start and lives to tell the tale. In Goldfinger and Me, his wife Marnie lifts the lid on Palmer's rise from a deprived childhood in Birmingham to a life of yachts, private jets, helicopters, fast cars, cocaine addiction and infidelity. His criminal exploits in Tenerife as well as his links to the Hatton Garden jewellery heist are also laid bare in this explosive book.

Accidental Agent: Behind Enemy Lines with the French Resistance


John Goldsmith - 2017
    Not easily deterred he eventually became a tank driving instructor in the ranks.In 1942 accidental circumstances saw his recruitment into Buckmaster s F Section of the Special Operations Executive. His faultless French and upbringing in Paris were to prove invaluable. Commissioned overnight and after intensive training he was parachuted into France for the first of his three missions.His adventures included crossing the Pyrenees, sabotage, forming his own circuits, being captured by the Gestapo, a daring escape and black-marketeering. In 1944, now a Major, he was advisor to the Maquis in the Mont Ventoux area where they fought the Germans in pitched battles and won.Although this refreshingly modest account does not admit to it, Goldsmith s extraordinary war is best summed up by his DSO, MC, three Croix de Guerre and Legion d honneur.Accidental Agent is as thrilling an account of war behind enemy lines as has ever been written. The author s descriptions of his experiences and the many colorful characters he came across are a joy to read."

Small Towns, Labradors, Barbecue, Biscuits, Beer, and Bibles


Sean Dietrich - 2016
    writes with humor, dripping Southern charm that you can’t miss.” (The Greenville Examiner). A collection of short stories from the author of Sean of the South, and Lyla. Columnist, humorist, and novelist, Sean Dietrich, is known for his commentary on life in the American South. In his newest work, Small Towns, Labradors, Barbecue, Biscuits, Beer, and Bibles, he delivers a set of quirky tales filled with smiles and a hefty dose of heart.