In this searing memoir of survival in the spirit of Stolen Innocence, the daughter of Warren Jeffs, the self-proclaimed Prophet of the FLDS Church, takes you deep inside the secretive polygamist Mormon fundamentalist cult run by her family and how she escaped it. Born into the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Rachel Jeffs was raised in a strict patriarchal culture defined by subordinate sister wives and men they must obey. No one in this radical splinter sect of the Mormon Church was more powerful or terrifying than its leader Warren Jeffs--Rachel's father. Living outside mainstream Mormonism and federal law, Jeffs arranged marriages between under-age girls and middle-aged and elderly members of his congregation. In 2006, he gained international notoriety when the FBI placed him on its Ten Most Wanted List. Though he is serving a life sentence for child sexual assault, Jeffs' iron grip on the church remains firm, and his edicts to his followers increasingly restrictive and bizarre. In Breaking Free, Rachel blows the lid off this taciturn community made famous by John Krakauer's bestselling Under the Banner of Heaven to offer a harrowing look at her life with Warren Jeffs, and the years of physical and emotional abuse she suffered. Sexually assaulted, compelled into an arranged polygamous marriage, locked away in "houses of hiding" as punishment for perceived transgressions, and physically separated from her children, Rachel, Jeffs' first plural daughter by his second of more than fifty wives, eventually found the courage to leave the church in 2015. But Breaking Free is not only her story--Rachel's experiences illuminate those of her family and the countless others who remain trapped in the strange world she left behind. A shocking and mesmerizing memoir of faith, abuse, courage, and freedom, Breaking Free is an expose of religious extremism and a beacon of hope for anyone trying to overcome personal obstacles

Groomed since the age of eight by his obsessive father Vince Spadea, by most accounts—except Andre Agass's, who called Vince “a journeyman” at age 25—has been a success. At the start of the 2005 season, 19th seed Spadea was the only over-30-year-old player besides Agassi to be ranked in the top-20 on the world professional tennis circuit.

Now in his 13th professional season, Spadea gives a riveting account of the ultra-competitive and often hilarious world of a pro tennis player. He battles injuries, coaching and agent changes, and a slight from American Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe as he continues his improbable climb back up the rankings. Along the way, he considers taking two months off to appear on The Bachelor, practices with a still combative John McEnroe in a New York City tennis club, and prowls LA parties with his buddy, comedian Jon Lovitz, trying to pick up actresses like Natalie Portman and jump start his fledgling acting career.

Agassi, Andy Roddick, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal, Martina Navratilova, Maria Sharapova, Jennifer Capriati, Tim Henman, and Marat Safin are all analyzed in more colourful and personal terms than the tennis media has ever provided. In these pages, Spadea breaks the taboo of the “whatever you see, hear and do here, stays here” locker room mentality.

This is a book about a young Canadian girl, Mae Brown, who exhibited intelligence, stamina, commitment and courage under the exceptionally incapacitating condition of being both deaf and blind. Born in 1935, the third child of a bushworker on a homestead west of Thunder Bay, she walked the six miles to and from school as long as she was able to do so. She then received teaching at home from her devoted and determined mother through correspondence courses as her sight steadily decreased. She would lose her hearing later. Graduating from the University of Toronto in 1972, Mae was the first person who was deaf-blind to do so in Canada, and possibly the second woman in the world since Helen Keller. How this was accomplished over 13 years, 12 months a year, how she coped with periods of loneliness, love relationships and heartbreaks, and how she strove to prove she was just a normal girl who could not see and hear is a poignant, revealing and inspiring tale, unique in every way.

“[P]rofound…a triumph—a full-throated howl to the moon to remind us why we choose to survive and thrive.” —Brendan Kiely, New York Times bestselling author of Tradition

“Razor-sharp, deeply revealing, and brutally honest…emotionally raw and deeply insightful.” —Booklist (starred review)

The critically acclaimed author of We Are the Ants opens up about what led to an attempted suicide in his teens, and his path back from the experience.

“I wasn’t depressed because I was gay. I was depressed and gay.”

Shaun David Hutchinson was nineteen. Confused. Struggling to find the vocabulary to understand and accept who he was and how he fit into a community in which he couldn’t see himself. The voice of depression told him that he would never be loved or wanted, while powerful and hurtful messages from society told him that being gay meant love and happiness weren’t for him.

A million moments large and small over the years all came together to convince Shaun that he couldn’t keep going, that he had no future. And so he followed through on trying to make that a reality.

Thankfully Shaun survived, and over time, came to embrace how grateful he is and how to find self-acceptance. In this courageous and deeply honest memoir, Shaun takes readers through the journey of what brought him to the edge, and what has helped him truly believe that it does get better.

Winner of the 1997 International Association of the Fantastic in the Arts Best Non-fiction Book In 1897, Archibald Constable & Company published a novel by the unheralded Bram Stoker. That novel, Dracula, has gone on to become perhaps the most influential novel of all time. To commemorate the centennial of that great novel, Carol Margaret Davison has brought together this collection of essays by some of the world’s leading scholars. The essays analyze Stoker’s original novel and celebrate its legacy in popular culture. The continuing presence of Dracula and vampire fiction and films provides proof that, as Davison writes, Dracula is "alive and sucking." "Dracula is a Gothic mandala, a vast design in which multiple reflections of the elements of the genre are configured in elegant sets of symmetries. It is also a sort of lens, bringing focus and compression to diverse Gothic motifs, including not only vampirism but madness, the night, spoiled innocence, disorder in nature, sacrilege, cannibalism, necrophilia, psychic projection, the succubus, the incubus, the ruin, and the tomb. Gathering up and unifying all that came before it, and casting its great shadow over all that came and continues to come after, its influence on twentieth-century Gothic fiction and film is unique and irresistible." from the Preface by Patrick McGrath

What do King Tut, Galileo, Crazy Horse, Bruce Lee, Chico Mendes, Elvis Presley, Bill Gates, Tiger Woods, and the Dalai Lama all have in common? They each left their mark on the world in a big way-and all were boys or young men when they did! Did you know that King Tut was one of the youngest pharaohs ever to rule Ancient Egypt? If that sounds like a huge responsibility in itself, imagine that he was able to restore order, peace, and prosperity to the people after years of chaos! Have you ever heard about Chico Mendes? In 1959 Brazil, 15-year-old Chico protested against the rubber barons who were destroying the Amazonian rain forest. Winning many important victories using non-violent methods, Chico became an inspiration to people around the world!

Simon's memoir reveals her remarkable life, beginning with her storied childhood as the third daughter of Richard L. Simon, the co-founder of publishing giant Simon & Schuster, her musical debut as half of The Simon Sisters performing folk songs with her sister Lucy in Greenwich Village, to a meteoric solo career that would result in 13 top 40 hits, including the #1 song "You're So Vain." She was the first artist in history to win a Grammy Award, an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award, for her song "Let the River Run" from the movie Working Girl . The memoir recalls a childhood enriched by music and culture, but also one shrouded in secrets that would eventually tear her family apart. Simon brilliantly captures moments of creative inspiration, the sparks of songs, and the stories behind writing "Anticipation" and "We Have No Secrets" among many others. Romantic entanglements with some of the most famous men of the day fueled her confessional lyrics, as well as the unraveling of her storybook marriage to James Taylor. Includes original music composed especially for the program by Carly Simon and Teese Gohl, plus a previously unreleased bonus song from Carly Simon.

"The most fascinating things about life are the banalities we so rarely discuss amongst ourselves but that we devote most of our energies to navigating. How did that day you've forgotten look? What did it feel like? Were you lonely? Did you have the sense you were progressing anywhere? Probably not. Yet string a few thousand of them together and that's a life." —From Boy Wonders
 
Cathal Kelly grew up in the seventies and eighties, decades when dressing like Michael Jackson seemed like a good idea and The Beachcombers—"an adventure show about logging"—seemed to make sense. But apart from fashion missteps and baffling TV plotlines, Kelly's youth was a time of wonder, obsession and discovery. Navigating an often fraught fam­ily life, Kelly sought refuge in books, music, movies, games and at least one backyard hole. However, looking back he sees that his passion for George Orwell, Star Wars or The Smiths was never just about the book, movie or band. Rather, it was about the promise each new experience offered him in making sense of the world, and how he might find a home within it.
 
By turns funny, elegiac and insightful, Boy Wonders is an unvarnished celebration of grow­ing up and stumbling toward identity. It's about the good and the bad of those brief years when we find purpose without end, obsession with­out limit and joy in the strangest of places.

A powerful memoir about a Holocaust survivor who was deemed hopeless--and the rehabilitation center that gave him and other teen boys the chance to learn how to live again.