Derailed in the 1970s by mental illness, drug use, and the shifting fortunes of the band, Wilson came back again and again over the next few decades, surviving and--finally--thriving. Now he weighs in on the sources of his creative inspiration and on his struggles, the exhilarating highs and the debilitating lows. Whether he's talking about his childhood, his bandmates, or his own inner demons, Wilson's story, told in his own voice and in his own way, unforgettably illuminates the man behind the music, working through the turbulence and discord to achieve, at last, a new harmony.

    She's Sandy "Pepa" Denton -- and she's never at a loss for words. Now, in her first tell-all book, Pepa talks about sex, music, life, love, fame, and so much more.... "Most of you know me as Pep, or Pepa, the fun-loving half of Salt-N-Pepa. I am the party girl, the one who is down for whatever. But behind the laughs and the smiles is a whole lot of pain."Funny, fearless, and full of life, Sandy "Pepa" Denton is a pop culture icon whose remarkable story is every bit as captivating and provocative as her Grammy Award-winning music. This is the real Pepa -- upfront, uncensored, unstoppable -- and these are the memoirs of a true pioneer, fighter, survivor, and inspiration to women everywhere.For the first time, Pepa talks about:• Her troubled childhood• Surviving abuse• Her first encounters with Cheryl "Salt" James• Salt-N-Pepa's instant success• Her failed marriages and her escape from domestic abuse• Her "breakup" with Salt and their eventual "reunion"• Her triumphant comeback on the VH1 reality shows The Surreal Life, Fame Games, and The Salt-N-Pepa ShowFilled with surprising insights, outrageous anecdotes, and celebrity cameos -- including Queen Latifah, Martin Lawrence, Janice Dickinson, Omarosa, Missy Elliott, L.L. Cool J, supermodel Caprice, Ron Jeremy, Lisa "Left Eye" Lopez, "Spinderella," and many others -- Let's Talk About Pep offers a fascinating glimpse behind the fame, family, failures, and successes of celebrity...and into the faithful heart of a woman who will always value the good friends she found along the way. In the words of Sandy "Pepa" Denton, "there's no walking away from that."

    For these two teenagers - brother and sister, black and white - the 1980s were a trial by fire.In this memoir, Scheeres takes us from the familiar Midwest, a land of cottonwood trees and trailer parks, to a place beyond her imagining. At home, the Scheeres kids must endure the usual trials of adolescence - high-school hormones, incessant bullying, and the deep-seated restlessness of social misfits everywhere - under the shadow of virulent racism neither knows how to contend with. When they start to crack (or fight back), they are packed off to Escuela Caribe. This brutal, prison-like "Christian boot camp" demands that its inhabitants repent for their sins - sins that few of them are aware of having committed. Julia and David's determination to make it though with heart and soul intact is told here with immediacy, candor, sparkling humor, and not an ounce of malice. Jesus Land is, on every page, a keenly moving ode to the sustaining power of love, and rebellion, and the dream of a perfect family.

    Just twelve, she’s tall, skinny, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to "get to the bottom of this." She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans.SickenedFrom early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman.Sickened is a remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's happiness. The realization that the sickness lay in her mother, not in herself, would not come to Julie until adulthood. But when it did, it would strike like lightning. Through her painful metamorphosis, she discovered the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had found to replace her. Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable story, unforgettably told.

    He often came across as a man possessed, holding forth on culture and politics while mixing in personal revelations – all with mercurial, tongue-twisting intensity as he inhabited and shed one character after another with lightning speed.But as Dave Itzkoff shows in this revelatory biography, Williams’s comic brilliance masked a deep well of conflicting emotions and self-doubt, which he drew upon in his comedy and in celebrated films like Dead Poets Society; Good Morning, Vietnam; The Fisher King; Aladdin; and Mrs. Doubtfire, where he showcased his limitless gift for improvisation to bring to life a wide range of characters. And in Good Will Hunting he gave an intense and controlled performance that revealed the true range of his talent.Itzkoff also shows how Williams struggled mightily with addiction and depression – topics he discussed openly while performing and during interviews – and with a debilitating condition at the end of his life that affected him in ways his fans never knew. Drawing on more than a hundred original interviews with family, friends, and colleagues, as well as extensive archival research, Robin is a fresh and original look at a man whose work touched so many lives.

    A young woman living with the scars of past trauma, she was terrified of being touched and shied away from real passion. But by her late twenties, she knew something had to change. She dug up an old dream and tried on her dancing shoes.   In tango, there’s a leader and a follower, and, traditionally, the woman follows. As Meghan moved from beginner classes to the late-night dance halls of New York’s vibrant tango underground, she discovered that more than any footwork, the hardest and most essential lesson of the dance was to follow with strength and agency; to find her balance, regardless of the lead. And as she broke her own rule—never mix romance and tango—she started to apply those lessons in every corner of her life.   Written in wry, lyrical prose, and beautifully enriched by the vivid history and culture of the dance, Tango Lessons is a transformative story of conquering your fears, living your dreams, and enjoying the dizzying freedom found in the closest embrace.

    Instead, she found a city full of people who knew where they were going and what they were doing and didn't have time for a girl still trying to figure it all out. Lonely and depressed, she noticed a woman who looked like she felt the same way on the subway. Hannah did something strange--she wrote the woman a letter. She folded it, scribbled If you find this letter, it's for you on the front and left it behind. When she realized that it made her feel better, she started writing and leaving love notes all over the city--in doctor's offices, in coat pockets, in library books, in bathroom stalls. Feeling crushed within a culture that only felt like connecting on a screen, she poured her heart out to complete strangers. She found solace in the idea that her words might brighten someone's day.Hannah's project took on a life of its own when she made an offer on her blog: She would handwrite a note and mail it to anyone who wanted one. Overnight, her inbox exploded with requests from people all over the world. Nearly 400 handwritten letters later, she started the website, The World Needs More Love Letters, which quickly grew. There is something about receiving a handwritten note that is so powerful in today's digital era. If You Find This Letter chronicles Hannah's attempts to bring more love into the world,and shows how she rediscovered her faith through the movement she started.

    

    On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity—a forty-year-old straight white male—had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance. Was it all an ironic cosmic joke? Almost a decade prior, William himself had been living a lie that had lasted for more than twenty years. His secret? He was a gay man, a fact he hid from his wife and two daughters for almost as long as he had hidden it from himself.In this emotional and unflinchingly honest memoir of coming out of the closet late in life, owning up to the past, and facing the future, William Dameron confronts steroid addiction, the shame and homophobia of his childhood, the sledgehammer of secrets that slowly tore his marriage apart, and his love for a gay father of three that would once again challenge the boundaries of trust. At the true heart of The Lie is a universal story about turning self-doubt into self-acceptance and about pain, anger, and the long journey of both seeking and giving forgiveness.

    Along the way, she details the struggles in her life, such as the pressure to support her family as a teenager, divorcing Lachey, enduring what she describes as an emotionally abusive relationship with musician John Mayer, being body-shamed in an overly appearance-centered industry, and going through bouts of heavy drinking. But Simpson ends on a positive note, discussing her billion-dollar apparel line and marriage with professional football star Eric Johnson, with whom she has three children.

    Her recording of Prince's Nothing Compares 2 U made her a global icon. She outraged millions when she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on American television.O'Connor was unapologetic and impossible to ignore, calling out hypocrisy wherever she saw it.She has remained that way for three decades.Now, in Rememberings, O'Connor tells her story - the heartache of growing up in a family falling apart; her early forays into the Dublin music scene; her adventures and misadventures in the world of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll; the fulfilment of being a mother; her ongoing spiritual quest - and through it all, her abiding passion for music.Rememberings is intimate, replete with candid anecdotes and full of hard-won insights. It is a unique and remarkable chronicle by a unique and remarkable artist.

    She draws from her own experiences of illness and bodily injury to engage in an exploration that extends far beyond her life, spanning wide-ranging territory—from poverty tourism to phantom diseases, street violence to reality television, illness to incarceration—in its search for a kind of sight shaped by humility and grace.

    This autobiography traces Janet Frame's childhood in a poor but intellectually intense family, life as a student, years of incarceration in mental hospitals and eventual entry into the saving world of writers.

    Spandex. Drugs. Hair spray. . . . Welcome to heavy metal rock ’n’ roll, circa 1980, when all you needed was the right look, burning ambition, and a chance. Stephen Pearcy and supergroup Ratt hit the bull’s-eye. What they did with their fame and fortune is a riotous tale of . . .SEX, DRUGS, RATT & ROLLPearcy was a scrawny, horny, thrill-seeking teenager with an electric guitar who had graduated from backyard parties in San Diego to half-empty dives in Los Angeles before he and his band broke through at Whiskey a Go Go. Cranking out metal just as metal got hot, Ratt was the perfect band at the perfect time, and their hit single “Round and Round” became a top-selling anthem. The bigger Ratt got, the more excessive Pearcy and his “pussy pirates” became. There was nothing these guys wouldn’t snort, drink, bed, or break. And the fans were just as bad, as husbands and mothers offered up nubile wives and daughters as tribute to their rock ’n’ roll idols.On a journey that could happen only in America, Pearcy met everyone from Michael Jackson to Drew Barrymore (at age twelve, at a New York nightclub, at 2 a.m.) to Rodney Dangerfield. His infamous partner-in-crime, Ratt guitarist Robbin Crosby, a blond Viking with an unsurpassed appetite for drugs and women, cuts a towering and tragic figure throughout.As Ratt scrambled up a wall of fame and wealth, so they experienced the gut-wrenching free fall, after too many hours in buses, planes, and limos; too many women; too many drugs; and all the personality clashes and ego trips that marked the beginning of the end. Pearcy offers a stunningly honest selfportrait of a man running on the fumes of ambition and loneliness as the party crashed. His rock ’n’ roll confessional, by turns incredible, hilarious, and lyrical, is a story of survival—and a search for the things that matter most.

    Randy Taraborrelli comes the definitive biography of the most enduring icon in popular American culture. When Marilyn Monroe became famous in the 1950s, the world was told that her mother was either dead or simply not a part of her life. However, that was not true. In fact, her mentally ill mother was very much present in Marilyn's world and the complex family dynamic that unfolded behind the scenes is a story that has never before been told...until now. In this groundbreaking book, Taraborrelli draws complex and sympathetic portraits of the women so influential in the actress' life, including her mother, her foster mother, and her legal guardian. He also reveals, for the first time, the shocking scope of Marilyn's own mental illness, the identity of Marilyn's father and the half-brother she never knew, and new information about her relationship with the Kennedy's-Bobby, Jack, and Pat Kennedy Lawford. Explosive, revelatory, and surprisingly moving, this is the final word on the life of one of the most fascinating and elusive icons of the 20th Century.