An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons, Professor Stephen Westaby, detailing some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he has worked on. Grim Reaper sits on the heart surgeon's shoulder. A slip of the hand and life ebbs away. The balance between life and death is so delicate, and the heart surgeon walks that rope between the two. In the operating room, there is no time for doubt. It is flesh, blood, rib-retractors, and pumping the vital organ with your bare hand to squeeze the life back into it. An off-day can have dire consequences – this job has a steep learning curve, and the cost is measured in human life. Cardiac surgery is not for the faint of heart.

Professor Westaby took chances and pushed the boundaries of heart surgery. He saved hundreds of lives over the course of a thirty-five-year career. Now, in his astounding memoir, Westaby details some of his most remarkable and poignant cases – such as the baby who had suffered multiple heart attacks by six months old, a woman who lived the nightmare of locked-in syndrome, and a man whose life was powered by a battery for eight years.

A powerful, important, and incredibly moving book, Fragile Lives offers an exceptional insight into the exhilarating and sometimes tragic world of heart surgery, and how it feels to hold someone's life in your hands.

IS GOAT BEEF? is a labor of love. It is a book that combines the author's love of humor, food, and his military service. IS GOAT BEEF? shows the humorous side of the military and how service members relax during times of conflict.

This unique book serves up tales from the front with dishes from the rear, offering a delightful blend of laughter and gastronomy. Discover the lighter side of military life through these entertaining stories.

In this collection of personal essays, the beloved star of Gilmore Girls and Parenthood reveals stories about life, love, and working as a woman in Hollywood—along with behind-the-scenes dispatches from the set of the new Gilmore Girls, where she plays the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore once again.

In Talking as Fast as I Can, Lauren Graham hits pause for a moment and looks back on her life, sharing laugh-out-loud stories about growing up, starting out as an actress, and, years later, sitting in her trailer on the Parenthood set and asking herself, “Did you, um, make it?”

She opens up about the challenges of being single in Hollywood (“Strangers were worried about me; that’s how long I was single!”), the time she was asked to audition her butt for a role, and her experience being a judge on Project Runway (“It’s like I had a fashion-induced blackout”).

In “What It Was Like, Part One,” Graham sits down for an epic Gilmore Girls marathon and reflects on being cast as the fast-talking Lorelai Gilmore. The essay “What It Was Like, Part Two” reveals how it felt to pick up the role again nine years later, and what doing so has meant to her.

Some more things you will learn about Lauren: She once tried to go vegan just to bond with Ellen DeGeneres, she’s aware that meeting guys at awards shows has its pitfalls (“If you’re meeting someone for the first time after three hours of hair, makeup, and styling, you’ve already set the bar too high”), and she’s a card-carrying REI shopper (“My bungee cords now earn points!”).

Including photos and excerpts from the diary Graham kept during the filming of the recent Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, this book is like a cozy night in, catching up with your best friend, laughing and swapping stories, and—of course—talking as fast as you can.

Bernie Sanders is one of the most influential voices in a global movement fighting injustice. He has dominated two Democratic primary races, and changed the political conversation around the world. But he began as an unknown underdog. So how did he get here?

In this remarkable memoir, Sanders shows how a young man from Brooklyn, via Civil Rights demonstrations and a lifetime of independent politics, became one of the most radical voices in America. He provides a unique insight into the campaign that galvanized a movement, and shares experiences from the campaign trail as well as the ideas and strategies that shaped it.

Drawing on decades of experience as an activist and public servant, he outlines his vision for continuing this revolution.

Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place.

In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.

Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world.

Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

Human rights activist Yeonmi Park, who fled North Korea with her mother in 2007 at the tender age of 13, shares her harrowing journey to freedom. Her escape led her to South Korea two years later, following a grueling ordeal. To be completely free, Yeonmi realized she had to confront the truth of her past and share her story.

Her narrative unveils an ugly, shameful story of being sold with her mother into slave marriages by Chinese brokers. Initially, she tried to conceal these painful details while blending into South Korean society. However, she soon recognized the power of her survival story to inspire others. Her journey also includes the quest to find her sister, who had escaped earlier and vanished into China for years.

Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.

Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and co-written with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must-read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a captivating exploration of nature's wonders. In this beautifully crafted narrative, Elisabeth Tova Bailey shares her inspiring and intimate story of encountering a Neohelix albolabris—a common woodland snail. Confined to her bed due to illness, Bailey becomes an astute observer of the snail, which takes residence on her nightstand.

Through her observations, Bailey discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings. She gains a profound understanding of her own place in the world and the interconnectedness of life. Intrigued by the snail's molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, and hydraulic locomotion, Bailey offers a candid and engaging look into the life of this often overlooked and underappreciated small animal.

This remarkable journey of survival and resilience illuminates how a small part of the natural world can enrich our own human existence, providing a deeper appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.

Amy Schumer, the Emmy Award-winning comedian, actress, writer, and star of Inside Amy Schumer and the acclaimed film Trainwreck, has taken the entertainment world by storm with her winning blend of smart, satirical humor.

In The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo, Amy mines her past for stories about her teenage years, her family, relationships, and sex, sharing the experiences that have shaped who she is—a woman with the courage to bare her soul and stand up for what she believes in, all while making us laugh.

Ranging from the raucous to the romantic, the heartfelt to the harrowing, this highly entertaining and universally appealing collection is the literary equivalent of a night out with your best friend—an unforgettable and fun adventure that you wish could last forever.

Whether she’s experiencing lust-at-first-sight while in the airport security line, sharing her own views on love and marriage, admitting to being an introvert, or discovering her cross-fit instructor’s secret bad habit, Amy Schumer proves to be a bighearted, brave, and thoughtful storyteller that will leave you nodding your head in recognition, laughing out loud, and sobbing uncontrollably—but only because it’s over.

An intensely personal narrative of loss, hope, and longing for a child. In this brave and lucid account, Julia Leigh broaches a challenging life event often left undiscussed: how the struggle to have a child can take an agonizing toll.

Leigh’s experience at the vanguard of medical science is acutely rendered, both physically and emotionally, transmitting what it feels like to so desperately wish for a child while knowing that the odds are stacked against you. From the daily shots she puts herself through at home, to hopes raised and dashed, and finally to the decision to stop treatment, Avalanche bears witness to Leigh’s raw desire, suffering, strength, and, in the end, transformation—a shift to a different kind of love.

The reader looks behind the scenes of a clinic and discovers how things really work: reality is a far cry from the slick marketing of the billion-dollar infertility industry. As for so many women, Leigh’s treatment failed, but her ghost child lingers in memory.

Seven Pillars of Wisdom is an unusual and rich work. It encompasses an account of the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War alongside general Middle Eastern and military history, politics, adventure, and drama. It is also a memoir of the soldier known as 'Lawrence of Arabia'.

Lawrence is a fascinating and controversial figure and his talent as a vivid and imaginative writer shines through on every page of this, his masterpiece. Seven Pillars of Wisdom provides a unique portrait of this extraordinary man and an insight into the birth of the Arab nation.

Fed Up chronicles the daily trials and tribulations of a young African-American woman as she navigates through the ins and outs of working for the United States federal government. Full of energy and gusto, the novel takes you on an exploration of her inner thoughts as she deals with some of the government's 'finest.'

An inquisitive observer, thoughtful commentator, and assiduous craftsman, Neil Gaiman has long been celebrated for the sharp intellect and startling imagination that informs his bestselling fiction. The View from the Cheap Seats brings together for the first time ever more than sixty pieces of his outstanding nonfiction.

Analytical yet playful, erudite yet accessible, this cornucopia explores a broad range of interests and topics, including authors past and present; music; storytelling; comics; bookshops; travel; fairy tales; America; inspiration; libraries; ghosts; and the title piece, at turns touching and self-deprecating, which recounts the author’s experiences at the 2010 Academy Awards in Hollywood.

Insightful, incisive, witty, and wise, The View from the Cheap Seats explores the issues and subjects that matter most to Neil Gaiman—offering a glimpse into the head and heart of one of the most acclaimed, beloved, and influential artists of our time.

Long before U.S. News and World Report named him one of America's Best Leaders and Oprah Winfrey called him an angel from God, Geoffrey Canada was a small, vulnerable, scared boy growing up in the South Bronx. Canada's world was one where "sidewalk" boys learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher.

In this candid and riveting memoir, Canada relives a childhood in which violence stalked every street corner. If you wonder how a fourteen-year-old can shoot another child his own age in the head and then go home to dinner, Canada writes, you need to know you don't get there in a day, or week, or month. It takes years of preparation to be willing to commit murder, to be willing to kill or die for a corner, a color, or a leather jacket.

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.

But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.

Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.

From the Foreword by Marian Wright Edelman

Africa’s Child is an unforgettable and searingly personal book. In the face of repeated obstacles and injustices, Nhambu continued to analyze the world around her with wit and a sharp sense of humor. Above all, as a very young child she decided one day that even if there was no other person in the world who loved and wanted her, she was going to love and care for herself—and that decision changed the course of her life.

Africa’s Child is the story of a mixed-race girl growing up in the Usambara Mountains of Tanzania, East Africa. Raised in an orphanage with no knowledge of her origins or family, she endured abandonment, hardships, severe illnesses, and bullying. Her experiences as a child and teenager included physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, social stigma, and racial discrimination.

Yet Nhambu tells her inspiring story with warmth and humor. Her questioning mind probes the African tribal realities and multi-cultural complexities that impacted her life both at the orphanage and schools run by German nuns as well as at an African high school with American nuns. Nhambu not only survived her childhood but triumphed. Her faith and resilience, along with a belief in learning and her tenacious pursuit of an education, sustained her through many challenges. Dance, especially African tribal dance, became the way she healed and nourished her spirit. Through the love and commitment of an American teacher she met in Africa, Nhambu was able to pursue her dream of education and a new life for herself. The first book in her three-part memoir ends as she is leaving Africa for university studies in America on a full scholarship.

Maria Nhambu is the creator of Aerobics With Soul®, a fitness workout based on African dance.

Written by Naoki Higashida, a very smart, very self-aware, and very charming thirteen-year-old boy with autism, The Reason I Jump is a one-of-a-kind memoir that demonstrates how an autistic mind thinks, feels, perceives, and responds in ways few of us can imagine.

Parents and family members who never thought they could get inside the head of their autistic loved one, at last, have a way to break through to the curious, subtle, and complex life within.

Using an alphabet grid to painstakingly construct words, sentences, and thoughts that he is unable to speak out loud, Naoki answers even the most delicate questions that people want to know. Questions such as: “Why do people with autism talk so loudly and weirdly?” “Why do you line up your toy cars and blocks?” “Why don’t you make eye contact when you’re talking?” and “What’s the reason you jump?” (Naoki’s answer: “When I’m jumping, it’s as if my feelings are going upward to the sky.”)

With disarming honesty and a generous heart, Naoki shares his unique point of view on not only autism but life itself. His insights—into the mystery of words, the wonders of laughter, and the elusiveness of memory—are so startling, so strange, and so powerful that you will never look at the world the same way again.

Reasons to Stay Alive is Matt Haig’s accessible and life-affirming memoir of his struggle with depression, and how his triumph over the illness taught him to live.

Like nearly one in five people, Matt Haig suffers from depression. This book is Matt’s inspiring account of how, minute by minute and day by day, he overcame the disease with the help of reading, writing, and the love of his parents and his girlfriend (and now-wife), Andrea. Eventually, he learned to appreciate life all the more for it.

Everyone’s lives are touched by mental illness: if we do not suffer from it ourselves, then we have a friend or loved one who does. Matt’s frankness about his experiences is both inspiring to those who feel daunted by depression and illuminating to those who are mystified by it.

Above all, his humor and encouragement never let us lose sight of hope. Speaking as his present self to his former self in the depths of depression, Matt is adamant that the oldest cliché is the truest—there is light at the end of the tunnel. He teaches us to celebrate the small joys and moments of peace that life brings, and reminds us that there are always reasons to stay alive.

For readers of Atul Gawande, Andrew Solomon, and Anne Lamott, When Breath Becomes Air is a profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir by a young neurosurgeon faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis who attempts to answer the question 'What makes a life worth living?'

At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a naïve medical student "possessed," as he wrote, "by the question of what, given that all organisms die, makes a virtuous and meaningful life" into a neurosurgeon at Stanford working in the brain, the most critical place for human identity, and finally into a patient and new father confronting his own mortality.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when the future, no longer a ladder toward your goals in life, flattens out into a perpetual present? What does it mean to have a child, to nurture a new life as another fades away? These are some of the questions Kalanithi wrestles with in this profoundly moving, exquisitely observed memoir. Paul Kalanithi died in March 2015, while working on this book, yet his words live on as a guide and a gift to us all. "I began to realize that coming face to face with my own mortality, in a sense, had changed nothing and everything," he wrote. "Seven words from Samuel Beckett began to repeat in my head: 'I can't go on. I'll go on.'"

When Breath Becomes Air is an unforgettable, life-affirming reflection on the challenge of facing death and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a brilliant writer who became both.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance’s powerful origin story.

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio, this is an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring for more than forty years, is reported with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J.D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J.D.’s grandparents were “dirt poor and in love,” and moved north from Kentucky’s Appalachia region to Ohio in hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually, one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. It is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.

In the mid-seventies at an all-boys Catholic school in Melbourne, Timothy Conigrave fell wildly and sweetly in love with the captain of the football team. So began a relationship that was to last for fifteen years, a love affair that weathered disapproval, separation and, ultimately, death.

With honesty and insight, Conigrave's bestselling memoir explores the highs and lows of any partnership: the intimacy, constraints, and temptations. And the strength of heart both men had to find when they tested positive to HIV.

As uplifting as it is moving, Holding the Man is a funny, sad, and celebratory account of growing up gay, and a powerful love story.

The island is nearly deserted, haunting, and beautiful. Across a slip of ocean lies South Carolina. But for the handful of families on Yamacraw Island, America is a world away. For years, the people here lived proudly from the sea, but now its waters are not safe.

Waste from industry threatens their very existence unless, somehow, they can learn a new way. But they will learn nothing without someone to teach them, and their school has no teacher—until one man gives a year of his life to the island and its people.

Pat Conroy's extraordinary drama is based on his own experience—the true story of a man who gave a year of his life to an island and the new life its people gave him.

From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl is a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life—and finding yourself—in music.

Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one of the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance.

With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They were cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock.

Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later. With deft, lucid prose, Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest, and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage, and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

Black Boy is a classic of American autobiography, a subtly crafted narrative of Richard Wright's journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. An enduring story of one young man's coming of age during a particular time and place, Black Boy remains a seminal text in our history about what it means to be a man, black, and Southern in America.

Furiously Happy is a humor memoir tinged with just enough tragedy and pathos to make it worthwhile. In this book, Jenny Lawson examines her own experience with severe depression and a host of other conditions, explaining how it has led her to live life to the fullest.

"I've often thought that people with severe depression have developed such a well for experiencing extreme emotion that they might be able to experience extreme joy in a way that ‘normal people' also might never understand." And that's what Furiously Happy is all about.

This book is about depression and mental illness, but deep down it's about joy—and who doesn't want a bit more of that?

Jenny’s readings are standing room only, with fans lining up to have Jenny sign their bottles of Xanax or Prozac as often as they are to have her sign their books. There are so many people out there struggling with depression and mental illness, either themselves or someone in their family—and in Furiously Happy they will find a member of their tribe offering up an uplifting message.

Let's Pretend This Never Happened ostensibly was about embracing your own weirdness, but deep down it was about family. Furiously Happy is about taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence.

It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair". It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy."

Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and in Furiously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways.

Lene Fogelberg is dying—she is sure of it—but no doctor in Sweden, her home country, believes her. Love stories enfold her, with her husband, her two precious daughters, her enchanting surroundings, but the question she has carried in her heart since childhood—Will I die young?—is threatening all she holds dear, even her sanity.

When her young family moves to the US, an answer, a diagnosis, is finally found: she is in the last stages of a fatal congenital heart disease. But is it too late?

A young woman risks everything to save her own life in this unusual, riveting medical drama crafted with deep emotion and exquisite detail.

A memoir about three interconnected relationships and three special men in my life. The fact that you're reading this makes me happy. Maybe you've mistaken this for a how-to guide on giving a good happy ending in a sexual self-help book. Maybe you're reading because you have a genuine interest in another's journey. Either way, I'm good.

My journey almost destroyed me. Almost. Boy, have I come to like that word. What a pleasurable word almost can be. You may almost be ready to buy my book. You may almost be ready to begin an amazing new journey of your own. You may almost be over that rainbow Judy Garland sings about. What great potential almost can hold, if you can flip your way of thinking.

Just imagine controlled pessimism, doubt, and fear flipped into blind optimism, faith, and love.

Imagine a young boy who has never had a loving home. His only possessions are the old, torn clothes he carries in a paper bag. The only world he knows is one of isolation and fear. Although others had rescued this boy from his abusive alcoholic mother, his real hurt is just beginning — he has no place to call home.

This is Dave Pelzer's long-awaited sequel to A Child Called "It". In The Lost Boy, he answers questions and reveals new adventures through the compelling story of his life as an adolescent. Now considered an F-Child (Foster Child), Dave is moved in and out of five different homes. He suffers shame and experiences resentment from those who feel that all foster kids are trouble and unworthy of being loved just because they are not part of a "real" family.

Tears, laughter, devastation, and hope create the journey of this little lost boy who searches desperately for just one thing — the love of a family.

Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

In this profound work, Coates pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, offering a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?

An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world’s most ruthless and secretive dictatorships – and the story of one woman’s terrifying struggle to avoid capture, repatriation, and guide her family to freedom.

As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal totalitarian regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom. As the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question, and realize that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty, and starvation she witnessed, surely her country could not be, as she had been told, “the best on the planet”?

Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family. She could not return, since rumors of her escape were spreading, and she and her family could incur the punishments of the government authorities – involving imprisonment, torture, and possible public execution.

Hyeonseo instead remained in China and rapidly learned Chinese in an effort to adapt and survive. Twelve years and two lifetimes later, she would return to the North Korean border in a daring mission to spirit her mother and brother to South Korea, on one of the most arduous, costly, and dangerous journeys imaginable.

This is the unique story not only of Hyeonseo’s escape from the darkness into the light, but also of her coming of age, education, and the resolve she found to rebuild her life – not once, but twice – first in China, then in South Korea. Strong, brave, and eloquent, this memoir is a triumph of her remarkable spirit.

Zen in the Art of Writing by the celebrated author of Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles offers inspiration and insight on finding one’s muse and channeling it onto the page. Acclaimed writer of novels and short stories as well as screen- and stage plays, Ray Bradbury has established himself as one of the most legendary voices in science fiction and fantasy.

In Zen in the Art of Writing, he shares how his unbridled passion for creating worlds made him a master of the craft. Part memoir, part philosophical guide, the essays in this book teach the joy of writing. Rather than focusing on the mechanics of putting words together, Bradbury’s zen is found in the celebration of storytelling that drove him to write every day.

Bringing together eleven essays and a series of poems written with his own unique style and fervor, Zen in the Art of Writing is a must-read for all prospective writers and Bradbury fans. Follow the unique path of your instincts and enthusiasms to the place where your inner genius dwells.

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson is a genre-bending memoir that intertwines the author's personal narrative with a deep engagement in literary and theoretical texts. At the heart of this work is a story of romance between Nelson and her partner, artist Harry Dodge, whose experiences of gender transition and reassignment intersect with Nelson's journey through pregnancy.

This reflective, poignant exploration of motherhood, desire, and identity is grounded in an intimate portrayal of the author's queer family life. Nelson challenges the societal norms surrounding sexuality, gender, marriage, and childrearing, advocating for radical individual freedom and the value of caregiving.

Through her narrative, Nelson conducts a rigorous examination of philosophical and theoretical discourses, tracing the contours of what iconic theorists have to say about the complexities of contemporary social structures. The Argonauts is thus not only a memoir but also an impassioned argument for the embracement of unorthodox forms of love and kinship in the modern age.

In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since.

Funny in Farsi chronicles the American journey of Dumas's wonderfully engaging family: her engineer father, a sweetly quixotic dreamer who first sought riches on Bowling for Dollars and in Las Vegas, and later lost his job during the Iranian revolution; her elegant mother, who never fully mastered English (nor cared to); her uncle, who combated the effects of American fast food with an army of miraculous American weight-loss gadgets; and Firoozeh herself, who as a girl changed her name to Julie, and who encountered a second wave of culture shock when she met and married a Frenchman, becoming part of a one-couple melting pot.

In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies—a complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey—an even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture (Firoozeh’s parents laugh uproariously at Bob Hope on television, although they don’t get the jokes even when she translates them into Farsi).

Above all, this is an unforgettable story of identity, discovery, and the power of family love. It is a book that will leave us all laughing—without an accent.

We all know that growing up is hard to do, and sometimes the only thing that makes it better are the reassuring words of someone who has walked that bumpy road just a few steps ahead of you and somehow ended up as a fully-functioning adult. Carrie Hope Fletcher is that person.

Thanks to her phenomenally popular YouTube videos, Carrie has become an 'honorary big sister' to hundreds of thousands of young people who turn to her for advice, friendship and, most of all, the knowledge that things will get better.

Carrie has created a safe and positive space for young people to connect and share their hopes and concerns online, and now she shares her most personal thoughts and experiences in her first book, ALL I KNOW NOW. Part memoir, part advice guide, it includes Carrie's thoughts on some of the topics she's asked about most regularly: bullying, body image, relationships, and perhaps the scariest question of all: what does the future hold for me?

With warmth, wit and a sprinkling of hard-won wisdom, Carrie provides the essential tools for growing up gracefully... most of the time.

In this intimate memoir of life beyond the camera, Connor Franta shares the lessons he has learned on his journey from small-town boy to Internet sensation—so far.

Here, Connor offers a look at his Midwestern upbringing as one of four children in the home and one of five in the classroom; his struggles with identity, body image, and sexuality in his teen years; and his decision to finally pursue his creative and artistic passions in his early twenties, setting up his thrilling career as a YouTube personality, philanthropist, entrepreneur, and tastemaker.

Exploring his past with insight and humor, his present with humility, and his future with hope, Connor reveals his private struggles while providing heartfelt words of wisdom for young adults. His words will resonate with anyone coming of age in the digital era, but at the core is a timeless message for people of all ages: don’t be afraid to be yourself and to go after what you truly want.

This full-color collection includes photography and childhood clippings provided by Connor and is a must-have for anyone inspired by his journey.

Walking with the Wind is an eloquent, epic firsthand account of the civil rights movement by a man who lived it—an American hero whose courage, vision, and dedication helped change history. The son of an Alabama sharecropper, and now a sixth-term United States Congressman, John Lewis has led an extraordinary life, one that found him at the epicenter of the civil rights movement in the late '50s and '60s.

As Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Lewis was present at all the major battlefields of the movement. Arrested more than forty times and severely beaten on several occasions, he was one of the youngest yet most courageous leaders. Written with charm, warmth, and honesty, Walking with the Wind offers rare insight into the movement and the personalities of all the civil rights leaders—what was happening behind the scenes, the infighting, struggles, and triumphs.

Lewis takes us from the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where he led more than five hundred marchers on what became known as "Bloody Sunday." While there have been exceptional books on the movement, there has never been a front-line account by a man like John Lewis.

Rock star, crowdfunding pioneer, and TED speaker Amanda Palmer knows all about asking. Performing as a living statue in a wedding dress, she wordlessly asked thousands of passersby for their dollars. When she became a singer, songwriter, and musician, she was not afraid to ask her audience to support her as she surfed the crowd (and slept on their couches while touring). And when she left her record label to strike out on her own, she asked her fans to support her in making an album, leading to the world's most successful music Kickstarter.

Even while Amanda is both celebrated and attacked for her fearlessness in asking for help, she finds that there are important things she cannot ask for-as a musician, as a friend, and as a wife. She learns that she isn't alone in this, that so many people are afraid to ask for help, and it paralyzes their lives and relationships. In this groundbreaking book, she explores these barriers in her own life and in the lives of those around her, and discovers the emotional, philosophical, and practical aspects of The Art of Asking.

Part manifesto, part revelation, this is the story of an artist struggling with the new rules of exchange in the twenty-first century, both on and off the Internet. The Art of Asking will inspire readers to rethink their own ideas about asking, giving, art, and love.

Do you want to get to know the woman we first came to love on Comedy Central's Upright Citizens Brigade? Do you want to spend some time with the lady who made you howl with laughter on Saturday Night Live, and in movies like Baby Mama, Blades of Glory, and They Came Together? Do you find yourself daydreaming about hanging out with the actor behind the brilliant Leslie Knope on Parks and Recreation? Did you wish you were in the audience at the last two Golden Globes ceremonies, so you could bask in the hilarity of Amy's one-liners?

A collection of stories, thoughts, ideas, lists, and haiku from the mind of one of our most beloved entertainers, Yes Please offers Amy’s thoughts on everything from her “too safe” childhood outside of Boston to her early days in New York City, her ideas about Hollywood and “the biz,” the demon that looks back at all of us in the mirror, and her joy at being told she has a “face for wigs.”

Yes Please is a chock-full of words and wisdom to live by. 

Curfewed Night is a brave and unforgettable piece of literary reporting that reveals the personal stories behind one of the most brutal conflicts in modern times.

Basharat Peer was a teenager when the separatist movement exploded in Kashmir in 1989. Over the following years, countless young men, seduced by the romance of the militant and fueled by feelings of injustice, crossed over the Line of Control to train in Pakistani army camps. Peer was sent off to boarding school in Aligarh to keep out of trouble. He finished college and became a journalist in Delhi. But Kashmir—angrier, more violent, more hopeless—was never far away.

In 2003, the young journalist left his job and returned to his homeland to search out the stories and the people which had haunted him. In Curfewed Night, he draws a harrowing portrait of Kashmir and its people. Here are stories of a young man’s initiation into a Pakistani training camp; a mother who watches her son forced to hold an exploding bomb; a poet who finds religion when his entire family is killed. Of politicians living in refurbished torture chambers and former militants dreaming of discotheques; of idyllic villages rigged with landmines, temples which have become army bunkers, and ancient sufi shrines decapitated in bomb blasts.

And here is finally the old story of the return home—and the discovery that there may not be any redemption in it. Lyrical, spare, gut-wrenching, and intimate, Curfewed Night is a stunning book and an unforgettable portrait of Kashmir in war.

Tired of memoirs that only tell you what really happened? Sick of deeply personal accounts written in the first person? Seeking an exciting, interactive read that puts the “u” back in “aUtobiography”? Then look no further than Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography!

In this revolutionary, Joycean experiment in light celebrity narrative, actor/personality/carbon-based life-form Neil Patrick Harris lets you, the reader, live his life. You will be born in New Mexico. You will get your big break at an acting camp. You will get into a bizarre confrontation outside a nightclub with actor Scott Caan.

Even better, at each critical juncture of your life, you will choose how to proceed. You will decide whether to try out for Doogie Howser, M.D. You will decide whether to spend years struggling with your sexuality. You will decide what kind of caviar you want to eat on board Elton John’s yacht. Choose correctly and you’ll find fame, fortune, and true love. Choose incorrectly and you’ll find misery, heartbreak, and a hideous death by piranhas.

All this, plus magic tricks, cocktail recipes, embarrassing pictures from your time as a child actor, and even a closing song. Yes, if you buy one book this year, congratulations on being above the American average, but make that book Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography!

The Yellow World is not just a memoir; it's a journey into a vibrant way of living. Albert Espinosa, diagnosed with cancer at thirteen, spent a decade in and out of hospitals. Through this experience, he discovered a world full of hope and resilience, which he calls 'the yellow world.'

In this rich and rewarding book, Espinosa shares his most touching, funny, and tragic memories with the hope that others, whether healthy or sick, can draw strength and vitality from them. He takes us into a place where fear loses its meaning, where strangers become allies, and where the lessons learned nourish you for life.

Espinosa's narrative is both uplifting and insightful, providing a simple philosophy that has the makings of a spiritual classic. The yellow world is a world within everyone's reach, a world the color of the sun, where life is seen through a lens of positivity and possibility.

Alicia is a compelling and heart-wrenching autobiography of Alicia Appleman-Jurman, a young Jewish girl who survived the horrors of the Nazi occupation during World War II. At the tender age of thirteen, Alicia faced unimaginable tragedy as she lost her entire family to the Nazis. Despite this, she exhibited extraordinary courage and resilience, saving the lives of thousands of Jews. Her story is one of humanity and heroism, vividly expressing the capacity for goodness in the face of Nazi brutality.

Alicia's journey began in the East Polish town of Buczacz in 1935, where she was raised amidst growing anti-Semitism. With the onset of the Russian invasion and subsequent Nazi occupation, the reality of war became starkly apparent. Fleeing through fields and forests, Alicia escaped her captors and encountered fellow refugees, occasionally finding safe harbors. Her unwavering faith in family and humanity supported her through physical and mental deprivation.

After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life by leading Polish Jews to freedom in Palestine through a clandestine route. Her story is not just one of survival, but of active resistance to oppression. Alicia's legacy is a testament to her ferocious bravery and remarkable spirit, making her a beacon of hope and inspiration for both Jews and non-Jews alike.

Zeina Abirached, author of the graphic novel A Game for Swallows, returns with a powerful collection of wartime memories. Abirached was born in Lebanon in 1981. She grew up in Beirut as fighting between Christians and Muslims divided the city streets.

Follow her past cars riddled with bullet holes, into taxi cabs that travel where buses refuse to go, and on outings to collect shrapnel from the sidewalk. With striking black-and-white artwork, Abirached recalls the details of ordinary life inside a war zone.

Obsession, madness, memory, myth, and history combine to achieve a distinctive blend of nature writing and memoir from an outstanding literary innovator.

When Helen Macdonald's father died suddenly on a London street, she was devastated. An experienced falconer—Helen had been captivated by hawks since childhood—she'd never before been tempted to train one of the most vicious predators, the goshawk. But in her grief, she saw that the goshawk's fierce and feral temperament mirrored her own.

Resolving to purchase and raise the deadly creature as a means to cope with her loss, she adopted Mabel and turned to the guidance of The Once and Future King author T.H. White's chronicle The Goshawk to begin her challenging endeavor.

Projecting herself "in the hawk's wild mind to tame her" tested the limits of Macdonald's humanity and changed her life. Heart-wrenching and humorous, this book is an unflinching account of bereavement and a unique look at the magnetism of an extraordinary beast, with a parallel examination of a legendary writer's eccentric falconry.

In this rare insider's view into contemporary North Korea, a high-ranking counterintelligence agent describes his life as a former poet laureate to Kim Jong-il and his breathtaking escape to freedom.

"The General will now enter the room." Everyone turns to stone. Not moving my head, I direct my eyes to a point halfway up the archway where Kim Jong-il's face will soon appear.

As North Korea's State Poet Laureate, Jang Jin-sung led a charmed life. With food provisions (even as the country suffered through its great famine), a travel pass, access to strictly censored information, and audiences with Kim Jong-il himself, his life in Pyongyang seemed safe and secure. But this privileged existence was about to be shattered.

When a strictly forbidden magazine he lent to a friend goes missing, Jang Jin-sung must flee for his life. Never before has a member of the elite described the inner workings of this totalitarian state and its propaganda machine. An astonishing exposé told through the heart-stopping story of Jang Jin-sung's escape to South Korea, Dear Leader is a rare and unprecedented insight into the world's most secretive and repressive regime.