"It happened on a Sunday night, even though I'd been a good girl and gone to church that morning."One brisk November evening during her senior year at a small Midwestern Christian college, two armed intruders broke into the ...

The secrets of love, health, and happiness gleaned from a life lived with dogs. Julie Klam was thirty, single, and working as a part-time clerk in an insurance company, unable to meet a man she could spend her life with. And then i...

After a fairy-tale courtship in 1980s New York City, Maggie's young marriage shatters when her "perfect" husband--a star editor at The Wall Street Journal--is diagnosed with and dies of AIDS, leaving her with two young child...

"This is the happiest story in the world with the saddest ending," writes Elizabeth McCracken in her powerful, inspiring memoir. A prize-winning, successful novelist in her 30s, McCracken was happy to be an itinerant writer ...

Bill Bryson meets Bruce Lee in this raucously funny story of one scrawny American's quest to become a kung fu master at China's legendary Shaolin Temple. Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of K...

A Book Sense Pick Just after her eleventh birthday, Susan Richards Shreve was sent to the sanitarium at Warm Springs, Georgia, the polio haven famously founded by FDR. During Shreves two-year stay, the Salk vaccine would be discovere...

An inspiring true story about losing your place, finding your purpose, and building a community one book at a time. Wendy Welch and her husband had always dreamed of owning a bookstore, so when they left their high-octane jobs for a...

Jen Lancaster was living the sweet life-until real life kicked her to the curb. She had the perfect man, the perfect job-hell, she had the perfect life-and there was no reason to think it wouldn't last. Or maybe there was, but Jen La...

This warmhearted but clear-eyed memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist J.R. Moehringer spotlights the somewhat unorthodox location that served as his refuge in childhood and early adulthood. After Moehringer’s mother left h...

Imagine a young boy who has never had a loving home. His only possesions 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 abusi...

In this sequel to A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, in which he chronicled his addictions, James Frey writes about a friend he met in rehab, a former gangster named Leonard. An exploration of trust and friendship and what they can mean, especi...

The third volume in a trilogy that includes A Child Called 'It' and The Lost Boy, this inspirational memoir completes the journey of Dave Pelzer as he finally confronts his abusive parents and seeks to create an adulthood filled with ...

In this profoundly affecting memoir from the internationally renowned author of The Caged Virgin, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells her astonishing life story, from her traditional Muslim childhood in Somalia, Saudi Arabia, and Kenya, to her inte...

Julia Child single handedly awakened America to the pleasures of good cooking with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she didn't kno...

Readers have followed Jen Lancaster through job loss, sucky city living, weight loss attempts, and 1980s nostalgia. Now Jen chronicles her efforts to achieve cultural enlightenment, with some hilarious missteps and genuine moments of ...

In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen. For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone ...

Includes a new chapter! When Jenny Lawson was little, all she ever wanted was to fit in. That dream was cut short by her fantastically unbalanced father and a morbidly eccentric childhood. It did, however, open up an opportunity for L...

On Valentine's Day 1985, biologist Stacey O'Brien first met a four-day-old baby barn owl -- a fateful encounter that would turn into an astonishing 19-year saga. With nerve damage in one wing, the owlet's ability to fly was forever co...

"This is riveting stuff . . . unputdownable."--O, The Oprah MagazineIn 1986, Susan Jane Gilman and a classmate embarked on a bold trek around the globe starting in the People's Republic of China. At that point, China had bee...

When seventeen-year-old T. J. Parsell held up the local Photo Mat with a toy gun, he was sentenced to four and a half to fifteen years in prison. The first night of his term, four older inmates drugged Parsell and took turns raping hi...

Elyse Schein had always known she was adopted, but it wasn't until her mid-thirties while living in Paris that she searched for her biological mother. What she found instead was shocking: She had an identical twin sister. What's more,...

She had no choice in the matter—none of the girls did. Her mission was to give birth to and raise many children in devoted service to a shared husband. Susan was fifteen years old when she became the sixth wife of Verlan LeBaron—o...

Writer, actress, and gorgeous stand up comedian: Introducing the Mormon Tina Fey It's lonely being a Mormon in New York City. So once again, Elna Baker attends the New York Regional Mormon Singles Halloween Dance-a virgin in a room fu...

The New York Times bestselling memoir by Damien Echols of the "West Memphis Three," who was falsely convicted of committing three murders and spent eighteen years on death row.  In 1993 teenagers Damien Echols, Jason Baldwi...

She charmed America with her smart, likable, down-to-earth personality as she campaigned for her husband, then vice-presidential candidate John Edwards. She inspired millions as she valiantly fought advanced breast cancer after being ...

After undergoing gall bladder surgery at age twenty-three, Jennette Fulda decided it was time to lose some weight. Actually, more like half her weight. At the time, Jennette weighed 372 pounds.Jennette was not born fat. But, by fifth ...

The author of The New York Times bestseller Escape returns with a moving and inspirational tale of her life after she heroically fled the cult she'd been raised in, her hard-won new identity and happiness, and her determination to win...

Growing up in the Missouri Ozarks in the 60s and 70s, Wade Rouse was always a bit of an outsider. While some of his roughneck peers wore Wrangler jeans and had stylish crew cuts, Wade feathered his golden hair and sported a handmade ...

At age six, January ("Jani") Schofield was diagnosed with one of the most severe cases of child-onset schizophrenia on record. Hallucinating constantly, she is at the mercy of her imaginary friends—some of whom are friend...

Helene Cooper is 'Congo,' a descendant of two Liberian dynasties -- traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. H...