Other books that might interest you

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  Gorge - My Journey Up...

  Kara Richardson Whitely

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  Kara Richardson Whitely knew that she could reach the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro. She had done it once before. That's why, when she failed in a second attempt, it brought her so low. As she struggled with food addiction and looked for ways to cope with feelings of failure and shame, Kara's weight shot to more than 300 pounds. Deep in her personal gorge, Kara realized that the only way out was up. She resolved to climb the mountain again-and this time, she would reach the summit without waiting for her plus-sized status to disappear.Gorge: My Journey up Kilimanjaro at 300 Pounds is the raw story of Kara's ascent from the depths of self-doubt to the top of the world. Her difficult but inspiring trek speaks to every woman who has struggled with her self-image or felt that food was controlling her life. Honest and unforgettable, Kara's journey is one of intense passion, endurance, and self-acceptance.

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  Conversations with the Conroys -...

  Walter Edgar

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  “Portrays a deeply troubled family struggling to survive amidst terrifying abuse . . . a page-turner, as engrossing as any of Conroy’s novels.” —Robert H. Brinkmeyer Jr., University of South Carolina 
   
  A New York Times–bestselling author of eleven novels and memoirs, Pat Conroy is one of America’s most beloved storytellers and a writer as synonymous with the South Carolina lowcountry as pluff mud or the Palmetto tree. As Conroy’s writings have been rooted in autobiography more often than not, his readers have come to know and appreciate much about the once-secret dark familial history that has shaped Conroy’s life and work. 
   
  Conversations with the Conroys opens further the discussion of the Conroy family through five revealing interviews conducted in 2014 with Pat Conroy and four of his six siblings: brothers Mike, Jim, and Tim and sister Kathy. In confessional and often comic dialogs, the Conroys openly discuss the perils of being raised by their larger-than-life parents, USMC fighter pilot Col. Don Conroy (the Great Santini) and southern belle Peggy Conroy (née Peek); the complexities of having their history of abuse made public by Pat’s books; the tragic death of their youngest brother, Tom; the chasm between them and their sister Carol Ann; and the healing, redemptive embrace they have come to find over time in one another. With good humor and often-striking candor, these interviews capture the Conroys as authentic and indeed proud South Carolinians, not always at ease with their place in literary lore, but nonetheless deeply supportive of Pat in his life and writing. 
   
  “[A] small gem of a book . . . For fans of Conroy’s books, this is a must-read.” —Publishers Weekly

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  Paradise Lost - A Life of F...

  David S. Brown

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  Pigeonholed in popular memory as a Jazz Age epicurean, a playboy, and an emblem of the Lost Generation, F. Scott Fitzgerald was at heart a moralist struck by the nation's shifting mood and manners after World War I. In Paradise Lost, David Brown contends that Fitzgerald's deepest allegiances were to a fading antebellum world he associated with his father's Chesapeake Bay roots. Yet as a midwesterner, an Irish Catholic, and a perpetually in-debt author, he felt like an outsider in the haute bourgeoisie haunts of Lake Forest, Princeton, and Hollywood—places that left an indelible mark on his worldview. 
  In this comprehensive biography, Brown reexamines Fitzgerald's childhood, first loves, and difficult marriage to Zelda Sayre. He looks at Fitzgerald's friendship with Hemingway, the golden years that culminated with Gatsby, and his increasing alcohol abuse and declining fortunes which coincided with Zelda's institutionalization and the nation's economic collapse. In doing so, he reveals Fitzgerald as a writer with an encompassing historical imagination not suggested by his reputation as "the chronicler of the Jazz Age." Fitzgerald wrote powerfully about change in America, Brown shows, because he saw it as the dominant theme in his own family history and life.

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  Maynard Secrets of a Bacon Curer

  Maynard Davies

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  Fans of Maynard will be delighted to read his further adventures in bacon curing. The last of the traditionally-apprenticed bacon curers, the author regales and inspires his readers with tales of
  
  - visits from the health inspectors
  - his colourful customers and work colleagues
  - his tips on curing, smoking and selling
  - the burglaries, bungled deals and triumphs
  - his growing reputation in the field
  - travels to learn how to make parma ham and much more.This book is the same addictive concoction of humour, tragedy and plain common sense, told in Maynard's disarmingly frank manner.

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  18 Tiny Deaths - The Untold...

  Bruce Goldfarb

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  The story of a woman whose ambition and accomplishments far exceeded the expectations of her time, 18 Tiny Deaths follows the transformation of a young, wealthy socialite into the mother of modern forensics...Frances Glessner Lee, born a socialite to a wealthy and influential Chicago family in the 1870s, was never meant to have a career, let alone one steeped in death and depravity.Yet she developed a fascination with the investigation of violent crimes, and made it her life's work. Best known for creating the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, a series of dollhouses that appear charming?until you notice the macabre little details: an overturned chair, or a blood-spattered comforter. And then, of course, there are the bodies?splayed out on the floor, draped over chairs?clothed in garments that Lee lovingly knit with sewing pins.18 Tiny Deaths, by official biographer Bruce Goldfarb, delves into Lee's journey from grandmother without a college degree to leading the scientific investigation of unexpected death out of the dark confines of centuries-old techniques and into the light of the modern day.Lee developed a system that used the Nutshells dioramas to train law enforcement officers to investigate violent crimes, and her methods are still used today.18 Tiny Deaths transports the reader back in time and tells the story of how one woman, who should never have even been allowed into the classrooms she ended up teaching in, changed the face of science forever.

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  The Little Red Guard - A Family...

  Wenguang Huang

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  In 1973, when Wenguang Huang was eight, his grandmother became obsessed with her own death. Fearing cremation, she appealed to her family to promise to bury her after she'd died. This was in Xi'an, a city in central China, at a time when a national ban on all traditional Chinese practices, including burials, was strictly enforced. But his grandmother was persistent, and two years later, Huang's father built her a coffin. Over the next fifteen years, the whole family was consumed with planning Grandma's burial, a regular source of friction and contention, with the constant risk of being caught by the authorities. Years later, Huang came to understand how much the coffin had influenced his upbringing and shaped the lives of everyone in the family.

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