Faith and Fear in Flushing: An Intense Personal History of the New York Mets


Greg Prince - 2009
    Prince, coauthor of the highly regarded blog of the same name, examines how the life of the franchise mirrors the life of its fans, particularly his own. Unabashedly and unapologetically, Prince stands up for all Mets fans and, by proxy, sports fans everywhere in exploring how we root, why we take it so seriously, and what it all means. What was it like to enter a baseball world about to be ruled by the Mets in 1969? To understand intrinsically that You Gotta Believe? To overcome the trade of an idol and the dissolution of a roster? To hope hard for a comeback and then receive it in thrilling fashion in 1986? To experience the constant ups and downs the Mets would dispense for the next two decades? To put ups with the Yankees right next door? To make the psychic journey from Shea Stadium to Citi Field? To sort the myths from the realities? Greg Prince, as he has done for thousands of loyal Faith and Fear in Flushing readers daily since 2005, puts it all in perspective as only he can.

Zephany: Two mothers. One daughter. An astonishing true story.


Joanne Jowell - 2019
    Desperate pleas from her parents to return her safely went unanswered. There was no trace of the baby. For seventeen years, on her birthday, the Nurses lit candles and hoped and prayed. Living not far away from the Nurses, 17-year-old Miché Solomon had just started Matric. She had a boyfriend. She had devoted parents. She was thinking about the upcoming school dance and the dress her mother was going to make for her. She had no idea that a new girl at her school, who bore an uncanny resemblance to her, and a DNA test would shake her world to its foundations. Miché is now 22. This is her story - for the first time in her own words. Told with astonishing maturity, honesty and compassion, it is also a story of what it means to love and be loved, and of claiming your identity.

I'm not dead... yet


Robby Benson - 2012
    Benson’s goal with this memoir is to help patients and their loved ones get through surgery and recovery with knowledge and humor. Robby Benson wrote the book to “help readers and their families deal with all kinds of illnesses – it’s not heart specific. As baby boomers, our parents, and now our friends, loved ones and contemporaries are dealing with life-changing diagnoses – it’s a new chaos in our lives that we have to deal with. I hope to make readers laugh when at times it seems the events in our lives are overwhelming.”

The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting


Josh Samman - 2016
    In and out of institutions for the greater part of his youth; Josh, a wild teenager, falls into a rollercoaster romance with Isabel, a Southern jewel, who drives him to search for purpose in professional Mixed Martial Arts. As Isabel marches towards personal battles of her own, Josh fights his way from local MMA circuits to front and center of FOX's The Ultimate Fighter TV show. After losing the most important bout of Josh's career, the pair rekindle their love, and seek to find strength in each other. With a penchant for raw and heartfelt honesty, Samman chronicles a gut-wrenching story of love, loss, and what it means to conquer life's greatest tragedies. The Housekeeper is an intimate look into the world of a man fighting for redemption.

Nobody Will Believe You: A Story of Unbreakable Courage


Mary Manning - 2015
    I was completely isolated. He made sure of that.’ Mary was ten years old when she first met her stepfather, Sean McDarby. From the very beginning he seemed to pay her special attention; his praise and compliments quickly won her trust. Then he started touching her in ways she didn’t like. When she was twelve, he raped her. The next twenty years were filled with harrowing abuse as McDarby continued to rape Mary, leading to the birth of five of her children. Finally, after years of abuse – years when justice was denied at every turn – Mary found the strength and courage to break free. Against the odds she created a safe place for her children and reclaimed her life. This is Mary’s inspirational story of courage and survival.

Without A Badge: Undercover in the World's Deadliest Criminal Organization


Jerry Speziale - 2003
    In this true story, career policeman Jerry Speziale chronicles his fast-living years as one of the youngest recruits for the US Drug Enforcement Administration's task force - an odyssey of undercover intrigue, Colombian kingpins, amazing take-downs and nerve-jangling narrow escapes.

Dear Fran, Love Dulcie: Life and Death in the Hills and Hollows of Bygone Australia


Victoria Twead - 2021
    Both are newly-weds; Dulcie has a baby girl and Fran is expecting a baby. But there the similarities end.Fran is a Detroit city girl enjoying modern conveniences. Dulcie is a pineapple farmer’s wife enduring the extremes of Australia. Bushfires, floods, cyclones, droughts, dingo attacks and accidents are all too common. Regardless, Dulcie’s optimism shines through, revealing her love of the land and fascination for the wild creatures that share her corner of Queensland.Each book purchased will help support Careflight, an Australian aero-medical charity that attends emergencies, however remote.

30 Chic Days at Home: Self-care tips for when you have to stay at home, or any other time when life is challenging


Fiona Ferris - 2020
    One minute we were living life and doing our thing, the next, most of us were advised to stay at home for a month or more.

Journey to the Edge of the Light: A Story of Love, Leukemia and Transformation


Cristina Nehring - 2011
    Then her life was irreversibly transformed—and so was her philosophy. In this wholly unexpected personal account, the author of A Vindication of Love: Reclaiming Romance for the Twenty-first Century (2009) offers us a Vindication of Life as inspiring as it is heartbreaking. The story of Cristina and her little daughter, Eurydice, is a tale of redemption and self-reinvention. It is about expanding definitions of love--and it is about confronting death. Not least, it speaks to us of life’s sweeping ironies: Sometimes bad luck is the new good luck, and the realization of your worst fears may be the greatest gift you can receive.Biography: Nehring first acquired national attention through her fiery criticism in the pages of Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Book Review. A "compassionate contrarian," she won many awards for her politically incorrect cultural and literary essays. Her first book, A Vindication of Love (Harper Collins, 2009) argues for a bolder, braver, wilder form of modern loving, drawing extensively on literary and historical analysis. It was published to wide acclaim and translated into several languages. Nehring also works as a travel writer for Condé Nast Traveler, and holds a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. She lives in Paris and Los Angeles.

The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked


David Benjamin - 2002
    Whether he’s stalking frogs through the bogs of Tomah, Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, or sneaking into the theater to watch Saturday-afternoon Westerns, Benjamin is the kind of little kid who would have fallen in eagerly with the redoubtable Tom Sawyer.Traversing the nooks and crannies of kidhood, from ballfields to swimming holes, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked captures a time and a place in twentieth-century American life and celebrates the adventures and wanderlust that once made childhood such an exhilarating enterprise.

Pope Awesome and Other Stories


Cari Donaldson - 2013
    Catholic homeschooler Cari Donaldson here relates how her friend’s newborn baby, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, and the words of the Miraculous Medal called her forth from a selfish, small way of life into the welcoming arms of the Church.

I'm (No Longer) a Mormon: A Confessional


Regina Samuelson - 2012
    This is not as easy as one would imagine: She was born in the church, educated at BYU, married in the temple, and is raising more Mormons. She faced a serious conundrum: keep quiet (and avoid losing everything dear to her), or tell the world what being raised LDS does to a person's psyche, especially when they realize that everything they were taught and everything they hoped to believe is a lie. To expose the difficulty faced by Mormons who leave the Church and to seek support for their plight, Regina offers a first-person confessional memoir recounting her many atrocious experiences, managing to weave in enough humor to keep you turning pages, and enough brutal honesty to bring you to an understanding of what it is to be a Mormon, and to try to leave it behind...

Shadow of My Father


John Gotti - 2015
    But now in "Shadow of My Father," the real story of the King of the Volcano is revealed for the first time. John A. Gotti, who survived four trials and a parole violation hearing, in four years, without a guilty verdict, now takes up his pen to tell the story of his father’s unwavering dedication to the street, and how, as his son, he entered that life, and then, with his father’s permission, left the life of crime, and put the “Family” behind him to live a legitimate life with his real family. It is a saga of betrayal and redemption, and an insider’s view of how, at times, those who are tasked with upholding the law readily broke it to further their careers.

Truevine: Two Brothers, a Kidnapping, and a Mother's Quest: A True Story of the Jim Crow South


Beth Macy - 2016
    George and Willie Muse were two little boys born to a sharecropper family. One day a white man offered them a piece of candy, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever.Captured into the circus, the Muse brothers performed for royalty at Buckingham Palace and headlined over a dozen sold-out shows at New York's Madison Square Garden. They were global superstars in a pre-broadcast era. But the very root of their success was in the color of their skin and in the outrageous caricatures they were forced to assume: supposed cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars." Back home, their mother never accepted that they were "gone" and spent 28 years trying to get them back. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy expertly explores a central and difficult question: Where were the brothers better off? On the world stage as stars or in poverty at home? Truevine is a compelling narrative rich in historical detail and rife with implications to race relations today.

Backstage Past


Barry Fey - 2011
    Always concerned that his audiences had the best experience possible, he was honored a never equaled three consecutive years by "Billboard Magazine" as Concert Promoter of the Year in 1978 through 1980. During Barry Fey's 32 years as a promoter he has rubbed elbows and cut deals with nearly every legend of Rock 'n Roll and in "Back Stage Past" he shares those behind the scenes stories of a mercurial business during a tumultuous time. It is a backstage pass to never before revealed tales of the Rock 'n Roll business and its performers. Includes an original poem by U2 great Bono.