Book picks similar to
Bay Boy: Stories of a Childhood in Point Clear, Alabama by Watt Key
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Mum Face: The Memoir of a Woman who Gained a Baby and Lost Her Sh*t
Grace Timothy - 2018
In this wry, resonant and darkly funny memoir, journalist Grace Timothy explores a question most women will face at some point: if becoming a mother means the person you were before has gone; who exactly is left in its place?
Some Fantastic Place: My Life In and Out of Squeeze
Chris Difford - 2018
Six prefabs, three pubs, a school, a church and a yard where the electricity board kept cables. Two long rows of terraced house faced each other at one end of the street; and, at the other, big houses with big doors and even bigger windows. There was a phone box next to one of the pubs and when it rang everyone came out to see who it was for. It was a tiny road - at one end of which there was Greenwich Park. It was heaven being there, its beauty always shone on me from the trees at sunsets and from the bushes in the rain. I was there in all weathers. It was 1964, I was ten years old and this is when my memory really begins. The previous decade is built up from vague recollections that lean heavily on the imagination.'Chris Difford is a rare breed. As a member of one of London's best-loved bands, the Squeeze co-founder has made a lasting contribution to English music with hits such as 'Cool For Cats', 'Up The Junction', 'Labelled With Love', 'Hourglass' and 'Tempted'. Some Fantastic Place is his evocative memoir of an upbringing in Sixties' South London and his rise to fame in one of the definitive bands of the late Seventies and early Eighties.
Sunrise Over Pebble Bay
Della Galton - 2021
Talented, yet relatively unknown actress and celebration cake baker extraordinaire Olivia Lambert is running out of time.Approaching forty, she’s yet to land the role that will launch her television career and she’s desperate to be a mum.Her new man, Phil Grimshaw from the Bluebell Cliff Hotel, seems the perfect match, but seems to be in no rush to settle down.Having ditched her childhood sweetheart and fiancé, Tom Boyd, when he backtracked about being a dad, Olivia dreads making the same mistake again.Rocked by confessions from both her sister Ruby and Tom, Olivia knows it’s time to make some life changing decisions.Then a terrifying incident off Chesil Beach changes the course of her future and brings Olivia to question everything she values and loves.
Miracle Ball: My Hunt for the Shot Heard 'Round the World
Brian Biegel - 2009
Giants third baseman Bobby Thomson hit the most dramatic home run in the history of baseball. The moment occurred in the bottom of the ninth inning of a sudden-death playoff game between the New York Giants and their arch rivals from Brooklyn, the Dodgers. People across the nation watched on their new TV sets, and the home run became known as “the Shot Heard ’Round the World.” But after clearing the left-field wall, the central artifact of the play–the ball itself–inexplicably went missing. The mystery of what happened to the legendary baseball has remained unsolved for a half century. Until now.Miracle Ball is the gripping account of author Brian Biegel’s two-year effort to unravel the mystery that experts said could never be solved. After his father, Jack, finds a baseball at a thrift store with clues dating back to 1951 and believes it could possibly be the most coveted piece of sports history, father and son begin a journey to prove its authenticity. Biegel becomes consumed with the quest–recognizing it as the only chance to rescue himself from an emotionally devastating personal crisis that had long been crippling him.The trail takes Biegel, a sports fan and documentary filmmaker, from an auction house in Long Island to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, to a backroom meeting straight out of a Martin Scorsese film to a dusty oil field in Texas, finally arriving at his final destination on a quiet gravel road in New Mexico, the last place he ever expected to be.Along the way the author meets an amazing cast of characters, including Bobby Thomson himself, who help him in his quest. Each adds their personal memories of the golden age of baseball, giving a broader scope and greater depth to this real-life detective story. As entertaining as it is inspiring, Miracle Ball is a story about faith, family, and heroes, about overcoming the odds and coming into the light, and about discovering the wondrous result of believing in yourself–and the amazing benefits of unconditional love. A sports story for the ages, an engrossing mystery narrative, and a moving account of a man’s unbreakable bond with his family and of his struggles to save himself, Miracle Ball delivers both heart and headlines.
The Consent
Elayne Kaye - 2021
After years of exhaustive in-vitro efforts and disheartening adoption attempts, she fears her marriage may not survive. But when she and her husband Mark learn of a young couple who want to give their baby up for adoption, Amy’s despair turns to joy. They will finally become parents.Twenty-year-old Marnie Swanson and her long-time friend and now father of her baby, NFL hopeful Trent Dillard, aren’t ready to be parents. They believe that putting their new-born up for adoption is the best decision… until they sign the consent form to give him away. Now, they desperately want their son back, but it's up to a judge to decide their baby's future.Fate and circumstance bring together two couples who find themselves on opposite sides of a custody battle. Waging the fight of their lives over a beautiful baby boy, one will leave court overjoyed and the other devastated...
The Wrong Shade of Yellow
Margaret Eleanor Leigh - 2014
I couldn’t jack it in and go home, because I didn’t have a home to go to anymore. The bicycle and the tent were now home. Wherever I found myself on any given night was now home. And that meant, for tonight, Genoa Piazza Principe Railway Station was home.I was cycling across Europe in search of Utopia, a place I believed was located somewhere in Greece. When I found it, I would start a new life there. It was my big, fat, Greek midlife crisis. But now I was having a crisis within a crisis. What the hell had I been thinking?
Hunted
Alex Knight - 2020
It's a young girl, the daughter of the love of your life. She's scared, covered in blood, she says her mother is hurt. You let her in, try to calm her down, tell her you're going to get help. You reach for your phone, but it lights up with a notification before you touch it.It's an Amber alert, sent simultaneously to four million phones in the Bay Area. A child has been abducted by a dangerous suspect.The child is the girl standing in front of you.
The suspect? You.
Girl Love Happens: Season Three
T.B. Markinson - 2021
Her friends are spiraling, one in particular with dire consequences. If that’s not enough, Tegan’s job is threatened by a conman and a cop trying to recruit Tegan into a leadership role at the university.Whoever said college was the best years of your life never had to come out in a state determined to strip basic human rights from the LGBTQ community.Girl Love Happens: Season Three contains all six episodes of the continuing lesbian romance series infused with 1990s’ nostalgia. If you like tumultuous love stories, simmering chemistry, and a quirky and troubled cast of characters, then you’ll love T.B. Markinson’s smart, sexy series.
The Baby's Coming
Virginia Howes - 2014
Still broody, but not really wanting to add to her family, she realised that becoming a midwife was her true vocation. It was a long journey to get the education and qualifications she needed, especially with a young family, but she was determined and never doubted her decision. Following her training, she spent two years working within the NHS, but her naturally independent spirit fought against the constraints of the system and fourteen years ago she decided to set up on her own. Virginia works with mothers who want to give birth at home naturally, something which Virginia believes in passionately. 350 births later, Virginia still loves what she does.The Baby's Coming is Virginia's memoir and tells the stories of her training as a midwife as well as some of the most memorable births: the most dramatic, the most touching. Virginia particularly remembers the births of her own grandchildren whose arrivals in the world were some of the most special moments for her as both a midwife and grandmother.
Where I Come from: Stories from the Deep South
Rick Bragg - 2020
From the best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All Over but the Shoutin' and The Best Cook in the World, a collection of irresistible columns from Southern Living and Garden & GunCelebrated author and newspaper columnist Rick Bragg brings us an ode to the stories and history of the Deep South, filled with "eclectic nuggets about places and people he knows well" (USA Today) and written with honesty, wit, and deep affection.A collection of wide-ranging and endearingly personal columns--from Bragg's love of Tupperware (his mother preferred margarine tubs and thought Tupperware was "just showing off") to the decline of country music, from the legacy of Harper Lee to the metamorphosis of the pickup truck to the best way to kill fire ants--Where I Come From is a book that will be treasured by fans old and new.
The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers
Dawn Dais - 2015
And you’re not getting any more sleep.Second in the Sh!t No One Tells You series, in The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers Dawn Dais tells it like it is – again – offering real advice for parents of growing children. Filled with tips, encouragement, and a strong dose of humor, The Sh!t No One Tells You About Toddlers is a survival handbook for parents on the edge.Chapters include:You Suck at This. It’s not just your imagination.Walking Is Hard. Bruising is considerably less difficult.Remember When You Judged Other Parents? Prepare to eat your words, with a side of karma’s a bitch.Restaurants Are Battle Zones. Spoiler Alert: You are not the victor.Kids Get Sick. Then everyone gets sick.This Childhood Will Be Televised. Hello, camera phones.Your TV Has Been Hijacked. By things with very high-pitched voices.Coming from one empathetic parent to another, the tips in this book are real, clever, honest, and designed to make life with a terrible two- or three-year-old a little bit more manageable. Hilarious, helpful, and handy, this book will be appreciated by any parent who has asked: “Why didn’t anybody warn me that unconditional love would be so much work?”
The Paradiso Files: Exposing an Unknown Serial Killer
Timothy M. Burke - 2008
Burke makes his case against one Leonard Paradiso. Lenny “The Quahog” was convicted of assaulting one young woman and paroled after three years, but Burke believes that he was guilty of much more – that Paradiso was a serial killer who operated in the Boston area, and maybe farther afield, for nearly fifteen years, assaulting countless young women and responsible for the deaths of as many as seven. Burke takes the reader inside the minds of prosecutors, police investigators, and one very dangerous man who thought he had figured out how to rape and murder and get away with it. The Paradiso Files generated headlines when first published in February 2008. Nine days later, Paradiso died at the age of sixty-five without commenting on any of Burke’s accusations, including that he murdered Joan Webster, a Harvard graduate student who disappeared from Logan Airport in 1981. Boston-area prosecutors announced in September 2008 that Burke’s revelations had led them to reopen the unsolved murder cases of three young women – Melodie Stankiewicz, Holly Davidson, and Kathy Williams. There were “too many similarities between the individual cases to ignore,” a prosecutor involved in the new investigation said. Burke’s account leaves little doubt that Paradiso’s deeds should go down in infamy, alongside those of the Boston Strangler.
My Teenage Werewolf: A Mother, a Daughter, a Journey Through the Thicket of Adolescence
Lauren Kessler - 2010
Everywhere from middle school classrooms to the mall, from summer camp to online chat groups, Kessler observes and chronicles-and sometimes participates in-the vibrant, dynamic, and scary life of a twenty-first-century teen.
Stripped Down: A Naked Memoir
Stacey Keith - 2013
This chronicle of life in the skin trade follows the meteoric rise of Stacey Keith, a girl scarcely out of her teens whose eye-popping assets launch her from wet T-shirt contests to the catwalks of Houston, strip bar capital of the world. Almost overnight, she is discovered by a famous porn star, who Svengalis her onto the pages of Playboy, Penthouse, and dozens of other men’s magazines. While strutting her stuff onstage and across the country, Stacey makes the fateful decision to head to Hollywood. She’s got everything a girl could want: fame, attention, endless piles of cash...but no idea what awaits her. With Internet porn overtaking men’s magazines, everyone from her Mafia-boss road manager to her smarmy talent agent pressures Stacey to do more than just flash her flesh. Uber-boob filmmaker Russ Meyer verbally abuses her; rocker Don Henley tries to use her. Yet through it all, from the warped misogyny of Playboy to the S&M dungeons of the Pacific Palisades, Stacey’s dark, self-deprecating humor will leave you laughing, crying and rooting for her at every step of the way.
Tragedy Plus Time: A Tragi-Comic Memoir
Adam Cayton-Holland - 2018
Anna, Adam, and Lydia were taught by their father, a civil rights lawyer, and mother, an investigative journalist, to recognize injustice and have their hearts open to the universe—the good, the bad, the heartbreaking (and, inadvertently, the anxiety-inducing and the obsessive-compulsive disorder-fueling).Adam chose to meet life’s tough breaks and cruel realities with stand-up comedy; his older sister, Anna, chose law; while their youngest sister, Lydia, struggled to find her place in the world. Beautiful and whip-smart, Lydia was witty, extremely sensitive, fiercely stubborn, and always somewhat haunted. She and Adam bonded over comedy from a young age, running skits in their basement and obsessing over episodes of The Simpsons.When Adam sunk into a deep depression in college, it was Lydia who was able to reach him and pull him out. But years later as Adam’s career takes off, Lydia’s own depression overtakes her, and, though he tries, Adam can’t return the favor. When she takes her own life, the family is devastated, and Adam throws himself into his stand-up, drinking, and rage. He struggles with disturbing memories of Lydia’s death and turns to EMDR therapy to treat his post-traumatic stress disorder when he realizes there’s a difference between losing and losing it.Adam Cayton-Holland is a tremendously talented writer and comedian, uniquely poised to take readers to the edges of comedy and tragedy, brilliance and madness. Tragedy Plus Time is a revelatory, darkly funny, and poignant tribute to a lost sibling that will have you reaching for the phone to call your brother or sister by the last page.