Complete Surrender - The True Story of a Family's Dark Secret and the Brothers it Tore Apart at Birth


Dave Sharp - 2008
    He lived his life happily as a bricklayer and grew up and honest man who loved soccer. In his 60s, he set about the long and arduous process of trying to find out who his real parents were. After much searching he discovered the family who had given him up for adoption and met up with them. He also scheduled to meet with the man he believed to be his half-brother; this man, it turned out, was the noted novelist Ian McEwan, author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach. A shocking revelation concerning a family affair that had long lain hidden was soon unearthed, and Dave learned that Ian was in fact his full brother. This is the amazing and heartwarming story of a sons wish to find his family, and two men gaining the brother that they had always wished for.

Kulfi And Cappuccino (Hindi)


Ashish Chaudhary
    It's an earnest attempt to celebrate youth, their life, aspirations, confusions and their love stories..The novel is set in Jaipur. The plot of the story revolves around two central characters- Anurag and Neha. Anurag narrates the story. He is a middle class boy who comes to Jaipur to fulfill his father's dream (Mere Bete Ka Bhi Bada Package Hoga). He meets Neha. A series of exciting incidents and meetings later, Anurag and Neha to realize they are becoming more than just friends. But as fate would have it, the blooming love story sees a twist in tale when Anurag meets Komal, a family friend's daughter.Meanwhile, Prateek and Bhupi who are roommates with Anurag are facing an emotional turmoil in their personal lives. This affects Anurag's love life. How will Anurag get out of it? Will he be able to resolve his friends' problems? Whom will he say, I love you? Will he fulfill his father's dream? In a nutshell, Kulfi and Cappuccino" is definitely readable. You will love to keep it for a second read too.

Why Can't Everything Just Stay the Same?: And Other Things I Shout When I Can't Cope


Stefanie Preissner - 2017
    And why, at Christmas, she wrote lengthy letters to Santa (note: letters, plural) begging him not to bring any surprises. Change was the enemy. But, as it turns out, one Stefanie hasn't been able to avoid. And, in spite of herself, one she has sometimes invited into her life.Here, in her first book, Stefanie looks at the ways in which her life has changed. From birthdays, friendships and how she celebrates the festive season, to social media (no FOMO here), the importance of asking WWNSD? (What Would Nicole Scherzinger Do?) when faced with big decisions, and her career as a writer, Why Can't Everything Just Stay the Same? is the hilarious and honest account of one woman's journey to and through adulthood, coping (sort of) with the terror, inevitability and beauty of change. 'It's Stefanie's life, but her struggles are universal. Insecurity? Check. Anger? Check. Weight issues? Big fat check. Stefanie shines a light on human frailty and human strength, proving they are not opposites, but often walk hand-in-hand ... an inspiring, thoroughly enjoyable book.' Nell Scovell, creator of Sabrina the Teenage Witch and author of Just the Funny Parts

Running in Circles: A Memoir


Eva Yin - 2016
    Barely recovered and against medical advice, she leaves the hospital for New York City only to end up homeless and face prostitution and violence. Being a heroin addict is like running in circles. You run and you run and you end up exactly where you started. In the end, Eva finally stops running but only after crossing the span of an entire continent and coming back to the shores of California— she is back to where she started but she isn’t the same. Running in Circles is the unflinching true story of one woman’s struggle and recovery from heroin addiction.

Zami: A New Spelling of My Name


Audre Lorde - 1982
    From the author's vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 1950s, the nature of Audre Lorde's work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her . . . Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.--Off Our Backs

Rough Men


Aric Davis - 2013
    Worse, Alex wasn’t an innocent bystander but part of the gang that raided the vault and left behind numerous bodies.Simmering with rage over his loss, Will tries to let the police handle the matter. But as Alex’s killers remain at large, Will decides that it’s up to him—and a few old friends—to enact revenge in a most brutal manner.Now he’s calling on dangerous connections that have been buried for years—and should’ve stayed that way. But Will vows to do whatever it takes to see Alex’s killers repay their sins in blood, even if it means his own damnation.

Important Things That Don't Matter: A Novel


David Amsden - 2003
    That's it. And I want to tell you things, throw fragments your way that I barely understand. Because it's just funny, flat out, the way someone you don't even know can get up in your face, tweak things that should be so ordinary. Or I think it's funny. Maybe you will too.Hailed by The New Yorker as "a fictional report from the strip-mall front lines of Generation Y," Important Things That Don't Matter is a provocative, moving, darkly funny portrait of family and divorce, a boy and his father, the eighties and nineties, and sex and intimacy that raises vital questions about a generation just now reaching adulthood.

A Girl Raised by Wolves: An inspiring memoir of one woman's journey through sex trafficking, cancer, murder and more.


Lockey Maisonneuve - 2018
    town, an adolescent girl is unwittingly handed a one-way ticket by her mother to allegedly "visit" her estranged father in Florida. Young and vulnerable, Lockey Maisonnueve has no idea she is being abandoned and sent to live with a vile and dangerous pedophile who would spend the next several years violently raping, abusing and mercilessly selling his daughter's body into childhood prostitution to other adult men. After being rescued by her naive, but well-intentioned, grandparents, her troubled life is further devastated by cancer and ravaged by the subsequent brutal murder of her mother, in which Lockey is briefly considered a suspect. "A Girl Raised by Wolves' is the inspirational memoir of a survivor of the darkest circumstances one can endure in a single lifetime and still emerge with a sense of humor and to defiantly proclaim "they didn't break me!"

What Should We Tell Our Daughters?: The Pleasures and Pressures of Growing Up Female


Melissa Benn - 2013
    

The Rainman's Third Cure: An Irregular Education


Peter Coyote - 2015
    For Coyote, the twin forces Dylan identifies as Texas Medicine and Railroad Gin – represent the competing forces of the transcendental, inclusive, and ecstatic world of love with the competitive, status-seeking world of wealth and power. The Rainman’s Third Cure is the tale of a young man caught between these apparently antipodal options and the journey that leads him from the privileged halls of power to Greenwich Village jazz bars, to jail, to the White House, lessons from a man who literally held the power of life and death over others, to government service and international success on stage and screen.Expanding his frame beyond the wild ride through the 1960’s counterculture that occupied so much of his lauded debut memoir, Sleeping Where I Fall, Coyote provides readers intimate portraits of mentors that shaped him—a violent, intimidating father, a be-bop Bass player who teaches him that life can be improvised, a Mafia consiglieri, who demonstrates to him that men can be bought and manipulated, an ex game-warden who initates him into the laws of nature, a gay dancer in Martha Graham’s company who introduces him to Mexico and marijuanas, beat poet Gary Snyder, who introduces him to Zen practice, and finally famed fashion designer Nino Cerruti who made the high-stakes world of haute monde Europe available to him.What begins as a peripatetic flirtation with Zen deepens into a life-long avocation, ordination as a priest, and finally the road to Transmission---acknowledgement from his teacher that he is ready to be an independent teacher. Through Zen, Coyote discovers a third option that offers an alternative to both the worlds of Love and Power’s correlatives of status seeking and material wealth. Zen was his portal, but what he discovers on the inside is actually available to all humans. In this energetic, reflective and intelligent memoir, The Rainman’s Third Cure is the way out of the box. The way that works.

The sands of Kalahari


William Mulvihill - 1960
    

She Will Rise: Becoming a Warrior in the Battle for True Equality


Katie Hill - 2020
    But Katie Hill does not want women to be discouraged from taking positions of power -- in fact, the rampant misogyny we see is all the more reason for women to lead, to work to change the systems that have kept old, wealthy, white men in power for far too long.In this book, to be published on the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th amendment (which gave women the right to vote), Katie Hill looks back on the progress we've made and outlines her battle plan for our future. She details how we can overcome the obstacles holding women back from achieving equal representation in positions of power to create the change we want for the next century. What challenges do women face in the modern era, and what battles will we need to fight in the years to come? Katie Hill is ready to equip readers for the front lines of leadership in all arenas, to guide women in becoming the warriors we need to shape this country for the better.

Apprenticed to Venus: My Secret Life with Anaïs Nin


Tristine Rainer - 2017
    The chance meeting would change the course of her life and begin her years as Anaïs’s accomplice, keeping her mentor’s confidences—including that of her bigamy—even after Anaïs Nin’s death and the passing of her husbands, until now.Set in the underground literary worlds of Manhattan and Los Angeles during the sixties and seventies, Tristine charts her coming of age under the guidance of the infamous Anaïs Nin: author of the erotic bestseller Delta of Venus, lover to Henry Miller, Parisian diarist, and feminist icon of the sexual revolution. As an inexperienced college-bound girl from the San Fernando Valley, Tristine was dazzled by the sophisticated bohemian author and sought her instruction in becoming a woman. Tristine became a fixture of Anaïs’s inner circle, implicated in the mysterious author’s daring intrigues—while simultaneously finding her own path through love, lust, and loss. In what Kirkus calls a “spicy and saucy hybrid of memoir and novel,” Apprenticed to Venus brings to life a seductive and entertaining character —the pioneer whose mantra was, “A woman has as much right to pleasure as a man!”An intimate look at the intricacies—and risks—of the female mentor-protégé relationship, Tristine Rainer’s Apprenticed to Venus stories her deep friendship, for good or ill, with a pivotal historical figure.

The Dollar Rebellion: How Billie Jean King and the Original 9 Became the Change They Wanted to See


Billie Jean King - 2020
    Fifty years ago, King and eight other female tennis players, known as the Original Nine, bravely put their careers and reputations on the line to fight for equal pay and equal footing for women’s tennis, with the indispensable help of promoter Gladys Heldman, the founder and publisher of World Tennis magazine, and the groundbreaking sponsorship of Joseph Cullman III, the CEO of the Philip Morris Company. When the Original Nine signed symbolic one-dollar contracts to stage their first breakaway tournament in Houston, ignoring threats from the existing tennis establishment, it was the start of the pro tennis tour for women as we know it and paved the way for modern stars to earn tens of millions in career prize money today.

Graduates in Wonderland: The International Misadventures of Two (Almost) Adults


Jessica Pan - 2014
      Fast friends since they met at Brown University during their freshman year, Jessica Pan and Rachel Kapelke-Dale vowed to keep in touch after their senior year through in-depth—and brutally honest—weekly e-mails. After graduation, Jess packs up everything she owns and moves to Beijing on a whim, while Rachel heads to New York to work for an art gallery and to figure out her love life. Each spends the next few years tumbling through adulthood and reinventing themselves in various countries, including France, China, and Australia. Through their messages from around the world, they swap tales of teaching classes of military men, running a magazine, and flirting in foreign languages, along with the hard stuff: from harrowing accidents to breakups and breakdowns. Reminiscent of Sloan Crosley’s essays and Lena Dunham’s Girls, Graduates in Wonderland is an intimate, no-holds-barred portrait of two young women as they embark upon adulthood. Named one of Jennifer Weiner's Top Ten Beach Reads