Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness


Susannah Cahalan - 2012
    Days earlier, she had been on the threshold of a new, adult life: at the beginning of her first serious relationship and a promising career at a major New York newspaper. Now she was labeled violent, psychotic, a flight risk. What happened?In a swift and breathtaking narrative, Cahalan tells the astonishing true story of her descent into madness, her family’s inspiring faith in her, and the lifesaving diagnosis that nearly didn’t happen.

My Son's Not Rainman: One Man, One Autistic Boy, A Million Adventures


John Williams - 2015
    It's a story about a young boy who happens to have autism, and there is a difference. John Williams is a stand-up comedian. He is also a single father and full-time carer for his son, who has autism and cerebral palsy. This is their incredible story.In 2012, John started a blog called My Son's Not Rainman, a heartfelt and uplifting account of everyday life for him and 'The Boy'. Following on from the blog's amazing success, John felt there was still much more of their life, past and present, that he wanted to share. And not only of the challenges of bringing up a child who for too long was just dismissed as 'difficult', but also of the joy of living with someone who looks at the world in a unique way.My Son's Not Rainman radiates warmth, care and passion, not to mention laugh-out-loud humour, on every page. It is a brilliantly different story about a brilliantly different boy.

I Am AspienGirl®: The Unique Characteristics, Traits and Gifts of Females on the Autism Spectrum


Tania Marshall - 2014
    Check out Tania's first book, now available for order at www.aspiengirl.comTania's first book, I Am AspienGirl was released on June 20th, 2014 as an eBook. It went to the #1 Amazon Australia best seller ranking in 3 categories on July 4th, 2014. Paperback and Special Edition hardcover formats coming soon.Available for order in E-book and PaperbackAvailable from www.aspiengirl.comFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/taniamarshal...Twitter: https://twitter.com/TaniaAMarshallPinterest: https://pinterest.com/taniaamarshallWordpress: http://taniaannmarshall.wordpress.comLinkedIn: au.linkedin.com/in/taniaannmarshall/ AspienGIRL can be found at:Website: www.aspiengirl.com Amazon: www.amazon.com/author/taniamarshallFacebook: www.facebook.com/AspienGIRLTwitter: https://twitter.com/aspiengirlVIP

Paid For: My Journey Through Prostitution


Rachel Moran - 2013
    The result is riveting, compelling, incontestable. Impossible to put down. This book provides all anyone needs to know about the reality of prostitution in moving, insightful prose that engages and disposes of every argument ever raised in its favor.” —Catharine A. MacKinnon, law professor, University of Michigan and Harvard UniversityBorn to mentally unstable parents, Rachel Moran left home at the age of fourteen. Being homeless, she became prostituted to survive. With intelligence and empathy, she describes the fears she and others had working on the streets and in the brothels. Moran also speaks to the psychological damage that accompanies prostitution and the estrangement from one’s body. At the age of twenty-two, Moran escaped prostitution. She has since become a writer and an abolitionist activist.

Do You Mind If I Cancel? (Things That Still Annoy Me)


Gary Janetti - 2019
    He chronicles the torture of finding a job before the internet when you had to talk on the phone all the time, and fantasizes, as we all do, about who to tell off when he finally wins an Oscar. As Gary himself says, "These are essays from my childhood and young adulthood about things that still annoy me."Original, brazen, and laugh out loud funny, Do You Mind if I Cancel? is something not to be missed.

Every Third Thought: On life, death and the endgame


Robert McCrum - 2017
    Ever since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. And now, 21 years on, he is noticing a change: his friends are joining him there. Death has become his contemporaries' every third thought. The question is no longer "Who am I?" but "How long have I got?" and "What happens next?" This book takes us on a journey through a year and towards death itself. As he acknowledges his own and his friends' aging, McCrum confronts an existential question: in a world where we have learnt to live well at all costs, can we make peace with what Freud calls "the necessity of dying?" Searching for answers leads him to others for advice and wisdom, and this book is populated by the voices of brain surgeons, psychologists, cancer patients, hospice workers, writers and poets. Witty, lucid and provocative, this book is an enthralling exploration of what it means to approach the "end game," and begin to recognize, perhaps reluctantly, that we are not immortal.

The Hell I Carry: An Autobiography


Lucas Derion - 2019
    We are then forced to re-live the moments we have spent decades burying beneath amicable smiles and a false sense of security. This is my story; one shrouded in as much truth as my mind can tolerate. My story may mean nothing to you, but I believe, that if these words were to fall into the right hands, then they could have the potential to change someone’s life, someone’s mind. At a young age I learned what it meant to carry the scorching secrets of a fiery hell. For years I allowed the flames to consume my mind as I proceeded to live a life devoted to destruction and chaos. I blamed my mother. I blamed the men that raped me. I blamed the woman that refused to love me back. But when the smoke cleared, the mirror on the wall only painted a single reflection, that of myself. So, when the big bad wolf no longer blows, yet the house still falls, who will I have to blame then? Only me.

I Own You: She Was an Abused Girl and a Battered Wife - Until the Day She Fought Back


Dawn McConnell - 2017
    Then, aged fourteen, she was groomed by the father of a schoolfriend, a local businessman who seemed to love her. She ran away from home to be with him. Pregnant at sixteen, and rejected by her parents, she ended up marrying him. For years, Dawn suffered psychological abuse from her husband, who belittled and threatened her. She was also forced to work all hours in the bars he owned and realized she was good at business - better than him. As her confidence grew, she found the strength to tell the police about her brother. Gradually, Dawn realized she was more than an abused wife - she was a survivor. When she fell in love with a genuinely good man, she hatched a dangerous plan to free herself from her husband and take the thing he cared about most - his money.

The Vegas Diaries


Holly Madison - 2016
    . . from scratch. Without the security of a job or relationship, she set out to reinvent herself on no one's terms but her own.Deciding to roll the dice and begin again in the glamorous and dreamlike city of Las Vegas, Holly quickly realized that while she may have left her past in the rearview mirror, the labels and stereotypes that came from it weren't so quick to leave her. With a fierce commitment to take charge of her own narrative, Holly dives headfirst into a journey of self-discovery.

Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking


Julia Bascom - 2012
    Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking is a collection of essays written by and for Autistic people. Spanning from the dawn of the Neurodiversity movement to the blog posts of today, Loud Hands: Autistic People, Speaking catalogues the experiences and ethos of the Autistic community and preserves both diverse personal experiences and the community’s foundational documents together side by side.-from ASAN

The Possibility Dogs: What a Handful of "Unadoptables" Taught Me About Service, Hope, and Healing


Susannah Charleson - 2013
    Now, in The Possibility Dogs, Charleson journeys into the world of psychiatric service, where dogs aid humans with disabilities that may be unseen but are no less felt. This work had a profound effect on Charleson, perhaps because, for her, this journey began as a personal one: Charleson herself struggled with posttraumatic stress disorder for months after a particularly grisly search. Collaboration with her search dog partner made the surprising difference to her own healing. Inspired by that experience, Charleson learns to identify abandoned dogs with service potential, often plucking them from shelters at the last minute, and to train them for work beside hurting partners, to whom these second-chance dogs bring intelligence, comfort, and hope. Along the way she comes to see canine potential everywhere, often where she least expects it – from Merlin the chocolate lab puppy with the broken tail once cast away in a garbage bag, who now stabilizes his partner’s panic attacks; to Ollie, the blind and deaf terrier, rescued moments before it was too late, who now soothes anxious children; to Jake Piper, the starving pit bull terrier mix with the wayward ears who is transformed into a working service dog and, who, for Charleson, goes from abandoned to irreplaceable.

Guarding the Moon: A Mother's First Year


Francesca Lia Block - 2003
    This unique but far–reaching story makes for a gem of a book.

My Story


Elizabeth Smart - 2013
    She has created a foundation to help prevent crimes against children and is a frequent public speaker. In 2012, she married Matthew Gilmour, whom she met doing mission work in Paris for her church, in a fairy tale wedding that made the cover of People magazine.

The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology


Mark Boyle - 2019
    Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce.In this honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life without modern technology, Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging and fishing.What he finds is an elemental life, one governed by the rhythms of the sun and seasons, where life and death dance in a primal landscape of blood, wood, muck, water, and fire – much the same life we have lived for most of our time on earth. Revisiting it brings a deep insight into what it means to be human at a time when the boundaries between man and machine are blurring.

Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome: A User Guide to Adolescence


Luke Jackson - 2002
    Over the years Luke has learned to laugh at such names but there are other aspects of life which are more difficult. Adolescence and the teenage years are a minefield of emotions, transitions and decisions and when a child has Asperger Syndrome, the result is often explosive. Luke has three sisters and one brother in various stages of their adolescent and teenage years but he is acutely aware of just how different he is and how little information is available for adolescents like himself. Drawing from his own experiences and gaining information from his teenage brother and sisters, he wrote this enlightening, honest and witty book in an attempt to address difficult topics such as bullying, friendships, when and how to tell others about AS, school problems, dating and relationships, and morality. Luke writes briefly about his younger autistic and AD/HD brothers, providing amusing insights into the antics of his younger years and advice for parents, carers and teachers of younger AS children. However, his main reason for writing was because "so many books are written about us, but none are written directly to adolescents with Asperger Syndrome. I thought I would write one in the hope that we could all learn together."