Book picks similar to
Growing Up on Rt. 66: Farm Life Outside Ocoya, Illinois by Theresa M. Ripley
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biography-autobiography
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Last Don standing
Larry McShane - 2017
Natale's reign atop the Philadelphia and New Jersey underworlds brought the region's mafia back to prominence in the 1990s. Smart, savvy, and articulate, Natale came up in the mob and saw first-hand as it hatched its plan to control Atlantic City's casino unions. Later on, after spending 16 years in prison, he reclaimed the family as his own after a bloody mob war that left bodies scattered across South Philly. He forged connections around the country, invigorated the family with more allies than it had in two decades, and achieved a status within the mob never seen before or since until he was betrayed by his men and decided to testify against them in a stunning turn of events.Using dozens of hours of interviews with Natale along with research and interviews with FBI agents, this book delivers revelatory insights into seminal events in American mob history, including: - The truth about Jimmy Hoffa's disappearance- The murder of Jewish mob icon Bugsy Siegel - The identity of the man who created modern-day Las VegasWith the full cooperation of Natale, New York Daily News reporter Larry McShane and producer Dan Pearson uncover the deadly reign of the last great mob boss of Philadelphia, a tale that covers a half-century of mob lore--and gore.
Devi Choudhurani
Debrani Mitra
Gossiping neighbours and an unhappy marriage would have ruined many women, but Prafulla was not one to give in easily. With hard work and good sense, she turned her life around. An attractive heroine in Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay’s novel, Prafulla rose from poverty to a life of riches and fame.
Sweet Southern Sleuths Box Set II
Hope Callaghan - 2016
While still in Vegas, Loretta Sweet and (Uncle) Ichabod McCoy decide to do a little sightseeing and pay a visit to the Hoover Dam via a guided bus tour. The trip is wrought with mishaps, starting with the bus breaking down. The bus driver is able to fix the bus and the passengers climb aboard for the final leg of the trip. Uncle Ichabod and Loretta, who are the last to board, discover they are unable to sit together and Loretta ends up sitting next to a passenger who is quiet, and for good reason...he's dead. Loretta, once again, finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Will her final destination be the local jail? Book 6: Pups in Peril After returning from their harrowing trip to Las Vegas, the Sweet twins, Loretta and Lacy, along with Uncle Ichabod, are excited to celebrate Thanksgiving, but the celebration turns to sadness when they discover that their "adopted" Chihuahua, Barkley, has gone missing. The trio, along with Barkley's owner, Savannah Dogwood, set out to find their beloved pup and soon discover that several other small pedigree dogs have disappeared from Misery and the nearby town of Glimmer. Are the missing pets an eerie coincidence...or has someone targeted the furry friends for something much more sinister? Book 7: Dying to Get Married The Thanksgiving holiday is over and Loretta Sweet, vowing to work off some post-holiday pounds, heads out for an evening stroll along with her twin sister, Lacy, and the neighbor’s dog, Barkley. Barkley breaks loose from his leash and races across Mossy Manor Bed and Breakfast property. When the girls finally catch up with him, they find him in an empty building, standing guard over a young woman's body. Lacy and Loretta quickly discover that the poor victim had more enemies than friends, including Savannah Dogwood, their neighbor. The girls start digging around and the list of suspects quickly grows with Savannah as the prime suspect. Can Loretta and Lacy clear Savannah's name, or is she, as all the evidence seems to indicate, capable of murder? Bonus Book: Deadly Drive-In Spring is in the air and Loretta Sweet is looking forward to a fun-filled Sunday, participating in Misery’s annual Spring Splash events. She's especially excited because Pastor Alex Jessup has asked her to be his date for the evening's Spring Serenade dance. Loretta's twin sister, Lacy, who is desperate to win the mystery scavenger hunt's grand prize, a shopping spree, talks her sister into joining the hunt. The Sweet sisters, along with Uncle Ichabod and their friend and neighbor, Savannah, find much more than the items listed on the scavenger hunt when the clues lead them to the town’s abandoned drive-in movie theater. Will they survive the hunt or will they become the next mystery in Misery? ~~ Click the “Buy now with 1 click” button at the top of the page OR Read it for FREE with Kindle Unlim
(R)evolution: The Autobiography
Gary Numan - 2020
He has been lauded by everyone from Prince ('His album Replicas never left my turntable . . . There are people still trying to work out what a genius he was') through the Foo Fighters and Nine Inch Nails to Lady Gaga ('[He] proves music has always been really inventive for the masses'). (R)evolution is Numan's long-awaited memoir; one that charts his two lives. The first: from growing up in west London, where he was expelled from school and beaten up daily for looking different, before discovering his first synthesiser and conquering the music world in rapid time; to the extravagance, the undiagnosed Asperger's and the slow decline of a career that faded into near obscurity. The second: a twenty-plus year renaissance, catalysed by the date with a super-fan, which has allowed Gary to rediscover his creativity, produce some of his best music and become the true Godfather of electro-pop. This will be the story of one man, several dozen synthesisers, multiple issues and two desperately different lives.
Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy: A True Story of Discovery, Acting, Health, Illness, Recovery, and Life
Dirk Benedict - 1987
It also describes his odyssey of self-discovery and growth as he changes from struggling actor to celebrity, from meat eater to vegetarian, from cancer victim to cancer victor. Brilliantly written--insightful, witty, and always challenging--
Confessions of a Kamikaze Cowboy
may change the way you perceive actors, and even make you reconsider the truths in your own life.
Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?
Steven Tyler - 2011
I'm a rhyming fool and so cool that me, Fritz the Cat, and Mohair Sam are the baddest cats that am. I have so many outrageous stories, too many, and I'm gonna tell 'em all. All the unexpurgated, brain-jangling tales of debauchery, sex & drugs, transcendence & chemical dependence you will ever want to hear." The son of a classical pianist straight out of the Bronx of old Archie comics, Steven Tyler was born to be a rock star. Weaned on Cole Porter, Nat King Cole, Mick—and his beloved Janis Joplin—Tyler began tearing up the streets and the stage as a teenager before finally meeting his "mutant twin" and legendary partner Joe Perry. In this addictively readable memoir, told in the playful, poetic voice that is uniquely his own, Tyler unabashedly recounts the meteoric rise, fall, and rise of Aerosmith over the last three decades and riffs on the music that gives it all meaning. Tyler tells what it's like to be a living legend and the frontman of one of the world's most revered and infamous bands—the debauchery, the money, the notoriety, the fights, the motels and hotels, the elevators, limos, buses and jets, the rehab. He reveals the spiritual side that "gets lost behind the stereotype of the Sex Guy, the Drug Guy, the Demon of Screamin', the Terror of the Tropicana." And he talks about his epic romantic life and his relationship with his four children. As dazzling, bold, and out-on-the-edge as the man himself, Does the Noise in My Head Bother You? is an all-access backstage pass into this extraordinary showman's life.
An Amish Boy and a Mother’s Prayer: The Founder of Graber Post Buildings Tells His Story
Glen S. Graber - 2015
His family was swiftly kicked out of the Old Order Amish church when Glen’s dad bought a rubber-tired tractor. Then Glen’s mother died, and left him with a request: She had been praying for a business that would alleviate the family’s financial hardship, and asked Glen to take responsibility for the family’s future. Despite the pressure, Glen and his family found hope and humor each day as God miraculously answered their mother’s prayer. More than a biography, this book is about a boy being determined to change his place in the world, and the miraculous reversals of misfortune. It’s about the prayers of a mother, the idiosyncrasies and love of a father, and the strength of a family. It is, in other words, the story of us. Endorsements “My friend Glen Graber’s remarkable story unfolds in my own ancestral land of Daviess County, Indiana. In this narrative, I see and sense the indefinable pulse that is Daviess. Names and places I’ve heard spoken from my youth. Glen’s amazing life story exemplifies how it’s possible to pick up and emerge from tough, hardscrabble roots, to triumph over adversity and forge a better life. And it speaks so much to our shared cultural ideals of faith, humility, hard work, gratitude and persistence. I’m glad Glen decided to share his journey in this memoir.” – Ira Wagler, author of New York Times Best-Seller Growing Up Amish About the Author Glen S. Graber was born in Davies County, Indiana. In 1973 he founded Graber Post Buildings. The company went on to be a huge success, and in 1993, Glen received Indiana’s award for Entrepreneur of the Year. He now winters in Florida with his wife Mary Jane.
The Rookie (Flash Fiction)
Kirkus MacGowan - 2012
Every game played with your child has the potential to become a lifelong memory.The Rookie is a flash fiction piece (just over 500 words) based on a childhood memory.
Fear: Our Ultimate Challenge
Ranulph Fiennes - 2016
He's crossed both Poles on foot. He's been a member of the SAS and fought a bloody guerrilla war in Oman. And yet he confesses that his fear of heights is so great that he'd rather send his wife up a ladder to clean the gutters than do it himself.In Fear, the world's greatest explorer delves into his own experiences and those of others to try and explain what fear is, and how we feel it. With an enthralling combination of story-telling, research and personal accounts of his own struggles to overcome fear, Sir Ranulph Fiennes sheds new light on one of humanity's strongest emotions.
Underneath It All
Erica Mena - 2013
When I m alone I am haunted by my truth. A girl who entered this world in a jail cell. A girl who was served struggle with a side of pain on a broken platter. A girl who was thrown into a tank with sharks deep in a world whose motto is to eat or be eaten. I can still see the dirt underneath my nails; I've fought too hard to get where I am and I don t plan on looking back. However, there s always someone waiting to knock me down because they don t think I deserve it. Well I say to hell with them. I've put in too much to allow anyone to drag me down. So either you re riding with me or against me...
How To Be a Woman Quick Reads 2021
Caitlin Moran - 2021
But a few nagging questions remain...Why are we supposed to get Brazilians? Should we use Botox? Do men secretly hate us? And why does everyone ask you when you're going to have a baby?Part memoir, part protest, Caitlin answers the questions that every modern woman is asking.
Boy: One Child's Fight to Survive in the Brutal British Care System
Nigel Cooper - 2015
After eighteen months of trying, my mother eventually conceived and nine months later I was born. My birth was a difficult one. It was like I was never meant to be in this world.” Boy is Nigel Cooper’s memoir from the age of five to sixteen. It tells the shocking, brutal, disturbing, emotional story of his childhood spent in and out of various care homes and institutions during the 1970s and 1980s. When Nigel was just seven years old, after the untimely death of his sister and father, his mother asked social services to take him away – and then his nightmare began. For the next nine years of his life, Nigel was repeatedly rejected by his mother and spent his childhood among bullies, abusers, psychopaths and criminals. He spent time in a children’s psychiatric hospital, where they carried out unimaginable tests, pumped him full of drugs and physically abused him; care homes, where he would come face to face with rough estate kids who would beat him up, force him to steal for them and threaten his life; and barbaric assessment centres for disturbed and delinquent children, where the staff were, at times, sicker than the children.The system tried to break Nigel and it was a miracle that he survived. The British care system robbed him of his childhood. His story is truly extraordinary and will do a lot more than shed light on what it was like growing up during the Jimmy Savile years.Boy is powerfully written, edgy, gripping and beautifully crafted.
A Life Half Lived: A True Story of Love, Addiction, Tragedy, and Hope
Darryl Rodgers - 2015
His family loved him dearly. His generosity and sense of humor made him popular among his peers. His speed, agility, and competitive nature made him a force to be reckoned with on the football field. Young ladies were drawn to his good looks, quiet charm, and spontaneity. How will his family and friends cope when Chase makes choices that ultimately lead to his death in a tragic car wreck? A Life Half Lived gives the reader a glimpse inside the modern drug culture and the consequences that come with it.
Full Moon: The Amazing Rock and Roll Life of Keith Moon
Dougal Butler - 1981
In 1967 Peter 'Dougal' Butler became a roadie for the Who and their mercurial genius drummer Keith Moon. Soon he would be Moon's personal assistant, chauffeur, and all-purpose wingman. The ride lasted a tumultuous ten years, ending just prior to Moon's untimely death in 1978. "Full Moon" is Butler's memoir of that ride: essential reading for Who fans, and a masterclass in the mayhem caused by rock 'n' roll excess.
Inxs: Story to Story: The Official Autobiography
INXS - 2005
This Australian band, made up of three brothers and their three best mates, took the world by storm, turning rock, pop, and funk into a cutting edge, danceable style, and selling more than thirty million albums worldwide. "INXS: Story to Story" tells the tale of their incredible journey, from playing the world's biggest concert venues to living a high life rivaling any in rock history, filled with sex, drugs, and supermodels. Now for the first time, they reveal everything they experienced in their more than two decades of making music -- the partying, the pressure, the wild times on the road, the heights and depths of rock-star life, and the bonds of brotherhood and friendship that not only got them through the tough times but made the fun times even more intense. They also talk about the sadness of watching their closest friend and collaborator, Michael Hutchence, slipping away from them, and share their thoughts about why he left them far too soon.Fully authorized and reflecting the band's firsthand point of view, this is the real story behind the phenomenon that is INXS -- and the book every rock fan will need to own.