She shares both in this honest and relatable account where faith, family, love, and loss intersect. As Samantha’s and Kyle’s public lives grew more pronounced, their private life was being torn apart. The frustrations and uncertainty of their fertility problems took a toll on them as individuals and as a couple, creating a cyclone of emotions that threatened everything they had worked so hard for. Through these trials, they learned how to build a stronger relationship, foster a deeper faith, and find humor through the tears. They also discovered a passion for helping other couples gain access to fertility treatments. In this memoir, Samantha uses her voice to break the silence and stigma that surround the infertility community. She details her battle with infertility, including her IVF experience, her miscarriage, a failed cycle, and the overwhelming grief and depression that surrounded these obstacles.  By sharing practical advice as well as candid and inspiring stories of her journey, she provides support, validation, community, and education for others experiencing similar tribulations.  Fighting Infertility is an opportunity to feel understood, to gain strength through the struggle, and to ignite your inner warrior.

    Using vignettes and illustrations from family, education, religion, the military, and politics, Black presents a determined and unyielding faith in his Creator. His confidence in God's control of his life led not only to amazing achievement but also to abiding peace when things didn't work out as planned. From the Hood to the Hill describes the obstacles and unlikely paths that led Barry Black to become: a two-star Navy admiral; the only African-American to ever serve as U.S. Navy Chief of Chaplains; and the first person of color in the nation's history to serve as Chaplain of the U.S. Senate. Inside each chapter, he offers the lessons he has learned.

    During the past three years he has gone from lover to carer, and he has found his new job exceptionally tough. In this moving and bitterly honest account, the newsreader reveals his loneliness and his despair. For John, it was love at first sight. For many years he had admired Bonnie from afar, hoping and dreaming one day she would feel the same way. Nearly a decade after they first met, their passionate and romantic love affair began. They married in 1985—head over heels in love—and have enjoyed more than 20 years of love and laughter. Both had been married before (she had two children and he had three) but both felt, the day they married, they finally joined their other half. In March 2004, John began to notice strange quirks in Bonnie's behavior. She underwent her first set of neurological tests in March 2005, which brought back no definite results. Then, in February 2006, following a second set of tests, she was diagnosed with Dementia. For three years John personally cared for his beloved wife, keeping her condition secret from all but family and close friends. But in the middle of September this year, more than 26 years after his life with Bonnie began, John made the agonizing decision to move his wife to a full-time care home. Written in passionate and vivid prose that captures both the warmth of the good times and the utter despair of the bad times, John weaves together a series of moving and heartfelt stories. In this combination of present day descriptions of life with Bonnie as her carer and memories of the romantic years they shared together, John gives a unique—and at times stark—insight into the pain of witnessing a loved one lose their memory. This is a story of pain and despair, of anger and guilt. But above all, it is a story of love; a story of devotion, dedication, and the pleasure that those little moments of recognition, those glimmers of joy, can give—even in the hardest times.

    He shares poignant stories of his childhood, including one about rolling pennies by candlelight because the electricity had once again been cut off, and his little sister needed medication. At one point, his alcoholic parents abandoned him and his two siblings for five days, with no food, heat, or electricity in the middle of winter.But as Doug grew, his determination to survive grew with him. Despite being accepted to the Air Force Academy directly after high school, he stayed closer to home so he could look after his younger sister. And as various opportunities opened up to him, he discovered that his heart belonged in the political arena; for it was there, he believed, that he could work for real change and bring help to those who suffered as he did as a child.Rolling Pennies in the Dark reminds readers that it is possible to grow up in the most deplorable of conditions and still find success. More significantly, MacKinnon offers real solutions to our nation’s growing poverty problem. This is an important, essential book.

    Born in a small town in Nova Scotia to a mother who begins yelling at him the moment he is born and a father who keeps his own counsel, Buck imbibes fear and insecurity like other kids guzzle milk. Hobbled by his fears and demons, Buck almost disappears into the “evil in the woods” that lurks just beyond the town's border . . . until he is saved by three gifts: baseball, romantic love and music. His epic journey­­—full of diversions, coincidences, and larger-than-life characters—out of the darkness of his suicide-plagued childhood and into the bright wide world begins with a killer pitching arm (Buck almost makes it to the pros) and continues with his transformation into hip hop artist Buck 65. Along the way, Buck develops into a hopeless romantic and an obsessively creative, shape-shifting man who both fears life and dives into it with abandon. Wicked and Weird is a lively, sometimes shocking portrait of a life lived on the edge, by turns funny and heartbreaking.

    Its isolation—miles from her teaching job in a neighboring city—feels right. She buys the house and ultimately doubles its size as she waits for the call from the adoption agency to tell her she’s going to be a mom. Now in her forties, she is swept into the strange new world of single motherhood, complicated by the fact that she’s white and her daughter is black. As Monroe learns to deal with her daughter’s hair and to re-enter the dating scene, all the while coping with her own and her daughter’s major illnesses, they live under the magnified scrutiny of the small, conservative town.  Confronting her past in order to make a better life for her daughter, Monroe rebuilds not only a half-ruined cabin in the woods but her sense of what it is that makes a sustainable family.“Having driven across the country to see her brand-new adopted granddaughter, Debra Monroe’s mother says the first thing that comes into her head: ‘I knew she’d be black, but not this black.’  Monroe simply says, ‘Mom, there’s a blank in the baby book called Grandma’s First Words.’  The sly, dry humor of this, the offering of the second chance, the reminder that everything, even the mistakes, will be written down—tells you most of what you need to know about Monroe’s approach to life, and to memoir. Her generosity of spirit never fails her.”—Marion Winik, author of First Comes Love“Monroe’s memoir forges a remarkable canniness about motherhood and its twin perils, grief and love.”—Karen Brennan, author of Being with Rachel

    Like a house. We could just buy a block of land, you know, the four of us, and have a go.' It was just an idea. then it started to take shape. In this frank, funny and thought-provoking memoir, Richard Glover describes how he and his friend Philip and their partners built a house in the bush on weekends. It was a huge and exhausting undertaking ... not least because they decided to use mudbricks. 'Imagine this - with mudbrick you have a building that is made out of the very earth it stands on ... there is another thing: the stuff is free. Once we buy the land we'll have no money left. this way we can get started as soon as we have the block.' In the end it took three years simply to make the bricks. As for the house itself ... But the process gave Richard the opportunity to examine things he had never quite reconciled to himself - big things like what it means to be a man, the nature of male relationships, fatherhood - and to challenge himself in the kind of blokey environment he had rejected. Above all, the mud house proved that even if it 'wasn't the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel' there is nothing like the satisfaction of making something with your own hands.

    A traumatic, violent upbringing saw to that. But after serving a short sentence for theft as a teenager, she worked hard to break the cycle. Thirteen years later Angela was studying, teaching, providing a stable home for her son, and finally feeling like she'd got her life together. Then she got hit by a postie bike. Police realised that Angela still had ten months to go on the prison sentence she'd thought was in her distant past. However, Angela was a different prisoner the second time around: no longer a scared, damaged nineteen-year-old, she knew how to speak up for herself and her fellow prisoners against a system of power, privilege and cruelty that controls the lives of Australia's most vulnerable women and offers little hope for redemption. With unwavering courage, intelligence and humour, SNAKES AND LADDERS reveals an astonishing true story of falling through the cracks, and what it takes to climb back out again.

    because he wants to watch Caillou, he’s an a-hole. When your daughter outlines every corner of your living room with a purple crayon, she’s an a-hole. When your rug rats purposely decorate the kitchen ceiling with their smoothies, they’re a-holes. So it’s only natural to want to kill them sometimes. Of course you can’t because you’d go to prison, and then you’d really never get to poop alone again. Plus, there’s that whole loving them more than anything in the whole world thing. Karen Alpert is the writer of the popular blog Baby Sideburns. You may have seen some of her more viral posts like “Ten Things I Really F’ing Want for Mother’s Day,” “Daddy Sticker Chart” and “What NOT to F’ing Buy My Kids this Holiday.” Or you may know her from her Facebook page that has over 130,000 followers. I Heart My Little A-Holes is full of hilarious stories, lists, thoughts and pictures that will make you laugh so hard you’ll wish you were wearing a diaper.

    His struggles with heroin addiction led him to jail, and he eventually hit rock bottom. Soon, his two pack a day cigarette habit was the healthiest thing he did. One dark night in jail, his suicide attempt failed. What happened next transcends the term recovery.The Hurt Artist is the searing yet luminous travelogue of Shane's powerful journey from suicidal addict to Ironman. He vividly depicts the landscape of pain in which he's lived his life—emotional and physical pain inflicted upon him and that he inflicts upon himself, pain that pulls him down, and, in detailing his training, the pain he harnesses to lift himself up. Ultimately, Shane's story is one of redemption and triumph, a lesson in the value of second chances and a clear reminder that nobody, regardless of how seemingly desperate their circumstances, is beyond the reach of salvation.From inmate #71768 to Ironman Triathlon World Championship competitor #1419, Shane paints a stirring self-portrait in this hilarious, horrifying, and hopeful account that is sure to hook readers of edgy sports biographies.

    Behind the public acclaim which his wartime achievements brought him, he had vanity and a controversial lifestyle. He had influential connections with the Royal Family but made many enemies, including Winston Churchill, who never forgave him for his part in "giving away India", while courtiers in the Royal Household disliked him for his arrogance and interference. Both Mountbatten and his wife were widely known to have had numerous affairs, but this was rarely spoken of outside their circle. He was an egotistical man, fascinated by Royalty and his own relationship to the Royal Family, and delighted in being seen with celebrities. His biographer, Brian Hoey, knew Mountbatten for ten years and interviewed him on radio and television. Hoey talked to many in the Royal Household, and also to Prince Philip, Prince Michael of Kent and King Constantine of Greece about their memories of Mountbatten. Both of Mountbatten's daughters, and his grandchildren also agreed to speak.

    . .— explored the squalid world of medical marijuana; — made a mess of himself on the road to Pittsburgh; — got upstaged on live TV by comedy legend Martin Short; — rode a Street Dragon through the laneways of Sochi; — shared a drink with Jay-Z and was then asked to leave;And much, much more!

    Her sweet baby, Grace, was a dream come true. Then Vanessa made a highly uncommon gesture: when Grace’s biological parents became homeless, Vanessa invited them to stay.Without a blueprint for navigating the practical basics of an open adoption or any discussion of expectations or boundaries, the unusual living arrangement became a bottomless well of conflicting emotions and increasingly difficult decisions complicated by missed opportunities, regret, social chaos, and broken hearts.Written with wit, candor, and compassion, Rock Needs River is, ultimately, Vanessa’s love letter to her daughter, one that illuminates the universal need for connection and the heroine’s journey to find her tribe.

    There, he’s just dad. In this winning collection of stories, Ben shares his funny and poignant adventures as the husband of Melissa McCarthy, and the father of their two young daughters. He also shares tales from his own childhood in Southern Illinois, and life with his father—an outspoken, brilliant, but unconventional man with a big heart and a somewhat casual approach to employment named Steve Falcone.Ben is just an ordinary dad who has his share of fights with other parents blocking his view with their expensive electronic devices at school performances. Navigating the complicated role of being the only male in a house full of women, he finds himself growing more and more concerned as he sounds more and more like his dad. While Steve Falcone may not have been the briefcase and gray flannel suit type, he taught Ben priceless lessons about what matters most in life. A supportive, creative, and downright funny dad, Steve made sure his sons’ lives were never dull—a sense of adventure that carries through this warm, sometimes hilarious, and poignant memoir.

    'Poster child: the Kemba Smith story' chronicles how she went from college student to drug dealer's girlfriend to domestic violence victim to federal prisoner. Kemba shares her story of how making poor choices blinded by love and devotion can have long-term consequences. Kemba's case drew support from across the nation and the world. Often being labeled the 'poster child' for reversing a disturbing trend in the rise of lengthy sentences for first-time, non-violent drug offenders, Kemba's story has been featured on CNN, Court TV, 'Nightline', 'Judge Hatchett', 'The Early Morning Show', and a host of other television programs.