Holding the Man


Timothy Conigrave - 1995
    Winner of the United Nations Human Rights Award for Nonfiction, HOLDING THE MAN has been adapted into a play opening in America in September 2007. The playwright who adapted the book for stage refers to this a a memoir of striking and unapologetic honesty.

Wellness Warrior: Fighting for Life in Fabulous Shoes


Lisa Douthit - 2015
    . . multiple times. After surviving four different cancers, she hit the final wall when a life-threatening autoimmune disease took over. Exhausted and discouraged, she had to make a choice: was she going to give in to disease and let nature take its course, or would she use whatever strength she had left to figure out what the hell was happening to her…and more importantly, WHY? After immersing herself in the study of illness from a physical, emotional, and spiritual perspective, Lisa learned how to recreate her body from the cellular level while keeping her sense of humor. Throughout her crazy journey, she shares practical skills and a quirky higher guidance to create positive shifts in our health which will serve as a roadmap through the darkest hours of life. It’s time to take our lives back from disease. With every purchase of this book, you can donate a copy to someone struggling with a chronic illness. Simply go to LisaDouthit.com/WarriorBook to learn how you can help someone be well without having perfect health. Alone we are strong, but together we are invincible. Help others become warriors too. Join the tribe.

Tiny Moons: A Year of Eating in Shanghai


Nina Mingya Powles - 2020
    Nina Mingya Powles journeys between Wellington, Kota Kinabalu and Shanghai, tracing the constants in her life: eating and cooking, and the dishes that have come to define her. Through childhood snacks, family feasts, Shanghai street food and student dinners, she attempts to find a way back towards her Chinese-Malaysian heritage.

Accidentally on Purpose: A One-Night Stand, My Unplanned Parenthood, and Loving the Best Mistake I Ever Made


Mary F. Pols - 2008
    But never—not in a million years—on her own. To take on the physical, emotional, and financial challenges of motherhood without a perfect soul mate/husband would be absurd, kind of like not bothering to use a condom during a one-night stand with an adorable but jobless guy ten years her junior.Pols spends the ensuing weeks despairing over everything, from the financial nightmare of single motherhood to the end of her hopes for a traditional life. Not the least of her worries is finding the right way to drop the bombshell on loved ones, including her five siblings and eighty-four-year-old father, who has a German temper and an Irish Catholic attitude toward babies out of wedlock. Yet faced with the frightening, lonely truth that this might be her only chance at motherhood, she plunges ahead with the pregnancy and an Odd Couple version of a co-parenting relationship that looks like one more disaster in a long line of romantic disappointments. But even as she tries to give her son’s young father a radical makeover, she realizes that his devotion and love for their child matters more than his spotty résumé or his inability to remember to put oil in the car. With humor, insight, and compelling honesty, Pols reveals what it means to compromise in the name of love and to find joy in an accidental life, suddenly brimming with purpose.

Kinsey and Me: Stories


Sue Grafton - 1990
    The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.Between the sheets --Long gone --Parker shotgun --Non sung smoke --Falling off the roof --Poison that leaves no trace --Full circle --Little missionary work --Lying game --Eye for an I : justice, morality, the nature of the hard-boiled private investigator, and all that existential stuff --Woman capable of anything --That's not an easy way to go --Lost people --Clue --Night visit, corridor A --April 24, 1960 --Closet --Maple Hill --Portable life --Quarrel --Jessie --Death review --Letter from my father