My Thoughts Exactly


Lily Allen - 2018
    Brutally honest' Matt Haig'I love it' Jon Ronson**********************************************************So, this is me. Lily Allen.I am a woman.I am a mother.I was a wife.I drink.I have taken drugs.I have loved and been let down.I am a success and a failure.I am a songwriter.I am a singer.I am all these things and more.When women share their stories, loudly and clearly and honestly, things begin to change - for the better.This is my story.

Break Point: SAS: Who Dares Wins Host's Incredible True Story


Ollie Ollerton - 2019
    THIS IS HIS INCREDIBLE TRUE STORYWhere is your break point?Is it here? Facing the gruelling SAS selection process on one leg, with a busted ankle and the finish line nowhere in sight?Or here? Under heavy fire from armed kidnappers while protecting journalists en route to Baghdad.Or is it here? At the bottom of a bottle, with a family in pieces, unable to adapt to a civilian lifestyle, yearning for a warzone?Ex-Special Forces soldier and star of TV's SAS: Who Dares Wins, Ollie Ollerton has faced many break points in his life and now he tells us the vital lessons he has learnt. His incredible story features hardened criminals, high-speed car chases, counter-terrorism and humanitarian heroics - freeing children from a trafficking ring in Thailand.Ollie has faced break points in his personal life too, surviving a freak childhood attack, run-ins with the law as a teenager rebelling against a broken home, his self-destructive battles with alcohol and drug addiction, and his struggles with anxiety and depression. His final redemption as an entrepreneur and mental health charity ambassador has seen him overcome adversity to build a new and better life.'Everyone has the capacity for incredible achievement, because it's only when it's crunch time, when you're down to your last bullet - when you're at break point - that you find out who you really are.'

The Naked Truth: A Memoir


Leslie Morgan Steiner - 2019
    When Leslie Morgan divorced after a twenty-year marriage, both her self-esteem and romantic optimism were shattered. She was determined to avoid the cliché of the “lonely, middle-aged divorcée” lamenting her stretch marks and begging her kids to craft her online dating profile. Instead, Leslie celebrated her independence with an audacious plan: she would devote a year to seeking out five lovers in hopes of unearthing the erotic adventures and authentic connections long missing from her life. Clumsy and clueless at first, she overcame mortifying early missteps, buoyed by friends and blind faith. And so she found men at yoga class, the airport, and high school reunions—all without the torture of dating websites. Along the way she uncovered new truths about sex, aging, men, self-confidence, and what it means to be a woman over fifty today. Packed with fearless, evocative details, The Naked Truth is a rare, unexpected, and wildly entertaining memoir about a soccer mom who rediscovers the magic of sexual and emotional connection, and the lasting gifts of reveling in your femininity at every age.

Head Case: My Brain and Other Wonders


Cole Cohen - 2015
    For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space—standing at a cross walk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in ten seconds or thirty; if you asked her to let you know when ten minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour. These symptoms had always kept her from getting a driver's license, which she wanted to have for grad school. Instead of leaving the doctor's office with permission to drive, she left with a shocking diagnosis—doctors had found a large hole in her brain responsible for her life-long struggles. Because there aren't established tools to rely on in the wake of this unprecedented and mysterious diagnosis, Cole and her doctors and family create them, and discover firsthand how best to navigate the unique world that Cole lives in. Told without an ounce of self-pity and plenty of charm and wit, Head Case is ultimately a story of triumph, as we watch this passionate, loveable, and unsinkable young woman chart a path for herself.

The Beauty in Breaking


Michele Harper - 2020
    Brought up in Washington, DC, in an abusive family, she went to Harvard, where she met her husband. They stayed together through medical school until two months before she was scheduled to join the staff of a hospital in central Philadelphia, when he told her he couldn't move with her. Her marriage at an end, Harper began her new life in a new city, in a new job, as a newly single woman.In the ensuing years, as Harper learned to become an effective ER physician, bringing insight and empathy to every patient encounter, she came to understand that each of us is broken—physically, emotionally, psychically. How we recognize those breaks, how we try to mend them, and where we go from there are all crucial parts of the healing process.The Beauty in Breaking is the poignant true story of Harper's journey toward self-healing. Each of the patients Harper writes about taught her something important about recuperation and recovery. How to let go of fear even when the future is murky. How to tell the truth when it's simpler to overlook it. How to understand that compassion isn't the same as justice. As she shines a light on the systemic disenfranchisement of the patients she treats as they struggle to maintain their health and dignity, Harper comes to understand the importance of allowing ourselves to make peace with the past as we draw support from the present. In this hopeful, moving, and beautiful book, she passes along the precious, necessary lessons that she has learned as a daughter, a woman, and a physician.

A Seaside Practice: Tales Of A Scottish Country Doctor


Tom Smith - 2007
    Certainly nothing in his training could have prepared him for the likes of Mad Maggie, the baker with nine lives and the giggling nuns, to list but a few cases.

The Brink of Being: Talking about Miscarriage


Julia Bueno - 2019
    . . a profound game-changer of a book. --Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You Though approximately one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage, it remains a rarely talked about, under-researched, and largely misunderstood area of women's health. This profoundly necessary book--the first comprehensive portrait of the psychological, emotional, medical, and cultural aspects of miscarriage--aims to help break that silence.With candor, warmth, and empathy, psychotherapist Julia Bueno blends women's stories (including her own) with research and analysis, exploring the effect of pregnancy loss on women and highlighting the ways in which our society fails to effectively respond to it. The result is a galvanizing, urgent, and moving exploration of a too-often-hidden human experience, and a crucial resource for anyone struggling with--or seeking to better understand--miscarriage.

Let Your Mind Run: A Memoir of Thinking My Way to Victory


Deena Kastor - 2018
    In Let Your Mind Run, the vaunted Olympic medalist and marathon and half-marathon record holder, will reveal how she incorporated the benefits of positive psychology into her already-dedicated running practice, setting her on a course to conquer women's distance running. Blending both narrative running insights and deep-dive brain science, this book will appeal to and motivate steadfast athletes, determined runners, and tough-as-nails coaches, and beyond. This memoir, written by perhaps the most famous American woman active in the competitive world of distance running, will appeal to the pragmatic athletic population, and jointly to fans of engaging sports narratives, inspirational memoirs, and uplifiting biographies.

Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts (Kindle Single)


Sunetra Gupta - 2013
    As recently as 1918, a pandemic of influenza claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. The advent of drugs and vaccines led to an era of hope when we thought our battles with infectious disease were won, but our optimism has been eroded by the recognition that many pathogens have the capacity to transform themselves and escape our efforts to eradicate them. Are we now facing an inevitable repeat of a calamity such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the Black Death? Can we anticipate and thwart such an event, or are we wilfully creating the conditions that would promote the emergence of new and highly virulent human infectious disease?Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford specialising in infectious diseases. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She has been awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research. She is also a novelist whose books have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for the Crossword Award, and longlisted for the DSC and Orange Prizes.

The Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times


Jennifer Worth - 2002
    The colorful characters she meets while delivering babies all over London--from the plucky, warm-hearted nuns with whom she lives to the woman with twenty-four children who can't speak English to the prostitutes and dockers of the city's seedier side--illuminate a fascinating time in history. Beautifully written and utterly moving, The Midwife will touch the hearts of anyone who is, and everyone who has, a mother.

Bronze


Kerri-Anne Weston - 2012
    She and her friends from Nobby’s Beach are the first women in Australia to gain their Bronze medallions for Surf Life Saving. On the eve of the year 1981 on the Gold Coast, Australia, this active teenager’s life is about to shatter and transform her once perfect world into one of despair as she tackles a life of paralysis. Through the support of her friends and family, Kerri will find her way back to the water and into the history books.A memoir filled with joy, tears, letters and poetry of a time when all else seemed lost. A life of hopes, dreams, love and humility learned.

First, We Make the Beast Beautiful: A New Story About Anxiety


Sarah Wilson - 2017
    I bump along, in fits and starts, on a perpetual path to finding better ways for me and my mate, Anxiety, to get around. It's everything I do.Sarah Wilson—bestselling author and entrepreneur, intrepid solver of problems and investigator of how to live a better life—has helped over 1.2 million people across the world to quit sugar. She has also been an anxiety sufferer her whole life.In her new book, she directs her intense focus and fierce investigatory skills onto this lifetime companion of hers, looking at the triggers and treatments, the fashions and fads. She reads widely and interviews fellow sufferers, mental health experts, philosophers, and even the Dalai Lama, processing all she learns through the prism her own experiences.Sarah pulls at the thread of accepted definitions of anxiety, and unravels the notion that it is a difficult, dangerous disease that must be medicated into submission. Ultimately, she re-frames anxiety as a spiritual quest rather than a burdensome affliction, a state of yearning that will lead us closer to what really matters.Practical and poetic, wise and funny, this is a small book with a big heart. It will encourage the myriad sufferers of the world's most common mental illness to feel not just better about their condition, but delighted by the possibilities it offers for a richer, fuller life.

Yoga Girl


Rachel Brathen - 2014
    In Yoga Girl, Brathen takes readers beyond her Instagram feed and shares her journey like never before—from her self-destructive teenage years in her hometown in Sweden to her adventures in the jungles of Costa Rica, and finally to the beautiful and bohemian life she’s built through yoga and meditation in Aruba today. Featuring spectacular photos of Brathen practicing yoga with breathtaking tropical backdrops, along with step-by-step yoga sequences and simple recipes for a healthy, happy, and fearless lifestyle—Yoga Girl is like an armchair vacation to a Caribbean spa.

Blindsided: The True Story of One Man's Crusade Against Chemical Giant DuPont for a Boy with No Eyes


James L. Ferraro - 2016
     It was a battle that nearly everyone but attorney Jim Ferraro deemed unwinnable. After all, it involved one of the world's most powerful industrial giants. In the process, it was a fight that changed the landscape of tort law forever. Before it was over Castillo-vs-DuPont would go down in history as the first and one of the most important cases of its kind, setting precedent and also sparking a crucial debate over the questionable use of what is known as the "junk-science defense." Blindsided is a real life David and Goliath story-a true courtroom drama for the ages.

Cooking and Screaming: Finding My Own Recipe for Recovery


Adrienne Kane - 2009
    Stirring left-handed, I did not want to leave the warmth of the kitchen. I felt good. And for a moment I forgot about the life that I was living. Being in the kitchen, the sights and smells, the smear of crimson tomato sauce on my borrowed apron, felt like a bit of home, a place that felt so far away."Adrienne Kane always loved food. Waiting by the oven for the sweet, crisp cookies she baked with her mother to emerge. Learning to create a simple yet delicious frittata with her best friend. Fueling long hours of work on her senior thesis with a satisfying tagliatelle.But just two weeks before her college graduation, Adrienne suffered a hemorrhagic stroke that left her paralyzed on the entire right side of her body. Once a dancer and aspiring teacher, she was now dependent on her loved ones, embarrassed by her disability, and facing an identity crisis. The next several years were a blur of doctors, therapists, rehabilitation, and frustration.Until she got back in the kitchen.It started with a stir. A stir and a taste. A little more salt. Maybe a side of crisp, sautéed potatoes. She learned to wield a chef's knife with her left hand, and to brace vegetables with her right. As she slowly stumbled from her quiet resting place at the kitchen table to where her mother stood by the stove, food became not only her sustenance and her solace, it became Adrienne's calling.She tested new recipes and created her own, crafting beautiful, delectable feasts for the people who had nurtured her -- her mother and father, who himself had survived a stroke several years earlier; the friends who encouraged her to write a cookbook; and, of course, the boyfriend-turned-husband who stood beside her all the way. Eventually, through determination, hard work, and a healthy portion of courage, she turned her culinary love into a career as a caterer, food writer, photographer, and recipe developer.Filled with simple, tempting recipes and complex, hard-won lessons, Cooking and Screaming is Adrienne's moving and heartfelt story of food, loss, work, and joy...and finding her identity through the most unlikely combination of ingredients.