Other books that might interest you

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  Hello Molly! - A Memoir

  Molly Shannon, Sean Wilsey

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  A New York Times bestseller  
  A candid, compulsively readable, hilarious, and heartbreaking memoir of resilience and redemption by comedic genius Molly Shannon 
  At age four, Molly Shannon’s world was shattered when she lost her mother, baby sister, and cousin in a car accident with her father at the wheel. Held together by her tender and complicated relationship with her grieving father, Molly was raised in a permissive household where her gift for improvising and role-playing blossomed alongside the fearlessness that would lead her to become a celebrated actress. 
  From there, Molly ventured into the wider world of New York and Los Angeles show business, where she created her own opportunities and developed her daring and empathetic comedy. Filled with behind-the-scenes stories involving everyone from Whitney Houston to Adam Sandler to Monica Lewinsky, many told for the first time here, Hello, Molly! spans Molly’s time on Saturday Night Live—where she starred alongside Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, Cheri Oteri, Tracy Morgan, and Jimmy Fallon, among many others. At the same time, it explores with humor and candor her struggle to come to terms with the legacy of her father, a man who both fostered her gifts and drive and was left with the impossible task of raising his kids alone after the loss of her mother. 
  Witty, winning, and told with tremendous energy and heart, Hello, Molly!, written with Sean Wilsey, sheds new and revelatory light on the life and work of one of our most talented and free-spirited performers.

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  Coolie Woman - The Odyssey of...

  Gaiutra Bahadur

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  Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize: “[Bahadur] combines her journalistic eye for detail and story-telling gifts with probing questions . . . a haunting portrait.” —The Independent 
   
  In 1903, a young woman sailed from India to Guiana as a “coolie” —the British name for indentured laborers who replaced the newly emancipated slaves on sugar plantations all around the world. Pregnant and traveling alone, this woman, like so many coolies, disappeared into history. Now, in Coolie Woman, her great-granddaughter embarks on a journey into the past to find her.  
   
  Traversing three continents and trawling through countless colonial archives, Gaiutra Bahadur excavates not only her great-grandmother’s story but also the repressed history of some quarter of a million other coolie women, shining a light on their complex lives. Shunned by society, and sometimes in mortal danger, many coolie women were runaways, widows, or outcasts. Many left husbands and families behind to migrate alone in epic sea voyages—traumatic “middle passages” —only to face a life of hard labor, dismal living conditions, and, especially, sexual exploitation. As Bahadur explains, however, it is precisely their sexuality that makes coolie women stand out as figures in history. Greatly outnumbered by men, they were able to use sex with their overseers to gain various advantages, an act that often incited fatal retaliations from coolie men and sometimes larger uprisings of laborers against their overlords. Complex and unpredictable, sex was nevertheless a powerful tool. 
   
  Examining this and many other facets of these remarkable women’s lives, Coolie Woman is a meditation on survival, a gripping story of a double diaspora—from India to the West Indies in one century, Guyana to the United States in the next—that is at once a search for roots and an exploration of gender and power, peril and opportunity.

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  You Should Sit Down for This - A...

  Tamera Mowry-Housley

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  The beloved star of Sister, Sister and former co-host of The Real sheds her “good girl” image and inspires women to do the same in this powerful memoir. A lighthearted and supremely entertaining memoir, You Should Sit Down for This is like spending the afternoon sharing tea, fresh baked cookies, and conversation with Tamera Mowry-Housley, the fun-loving, wisdom-sharing girlfriend we all need in our lives (always ready to top off your wine!). Most of us know Tamera Mowry-Housley as a beloved TV star—one‑half of the memorable duo on the hit show Sister, Sister and co-host of the FOX talk show The Real. Tamera’s spunky Sister, Sister character stole the hearts of millions, but the transition in the public eye from teen-girl star to grown woman with a family and thriving career wasn’t easy. Being raised in Hawaii as an army brat instilled in her the discipline needed to succeed and conquer her dreams, but she felt secluded and sheltered, and wondered if living on her own terms would ever be her reality. Then, she decided it would. Vowing to live true to herself, Tamera stopped letting other people define her, tapped into her faith, and tossed away negativity to hone her own happiness and create a unique path forward for herself. In this pink book of quirky advice and storytelling, she encourages everyone to do the same. A celebration of love, cookies, and the juicy parts of life, she’ll leave you feeling liberated and motivated to embrace the highs and lows of growing. In You Should Sit Down for This, Tamera shares heartfelt stories about exiling herself from the world of beauty pageants, the pressures of being a teenage star, her struggle with rejection, the craziness of dating later in life, the challenges of balancing family and career, and why it’s okay for women to hide out in their closets when they just need a few minutes of peace. Tamera doesn’t shy away from the tough experiences, hilarious missteps, and big lessons it took to build a thriving career and the full life she’s living today.  Our favorite girl next door offers “Tameraisms,”—bite-sized pieces of wisdom to empower other women to step up to life’s unexpected turns and surprises and make it all work. You Should Sit Down for This is a much-needed reminder of the magic that can happen when we open our minds and hearts to become the very best versions of ourselves.

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  Best-Loved Oscar Wilde

  John Wyse Jackson ( dec'd)

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  Those whom the gods love grow young.
  Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (1854–1900), one of Ireland's most beloved writers, was a playwright, poet, novelist and author of fairy stories and political essays. A complex man with many sides, he was both a revolutionary thinker and a flamboyant dandy and man about town. His wit and razor-sharp observation made him the toast of society on both sides of the Atlantic before scandal and notoriety stripped him of his position and his freedom.
  Best-Loved Oscar Wilde gathers a selection of Wilde's celebrated writing, chosen and introduced by John Wyse Jackson.

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  Charles Darwin - The Concise...

  Tim M. Berra

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  A brief biography of English naturalist responsible for the advancement of the science of evolution. 
   
  Two hundred years after Charles Darwin’s birth (February 12, 1809), this thoroughly illustrated, yet concise biography reveals the great scientist as husband, father, and friend. 
   
  Tim M. Berra tells the fascinating story of the man and the idea that changed everything. Berra discusses Darwin’s revolutionary scientific work, its impact on modern-day biological science, and the influence of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on Western thought. But Berra digs deeper to reveal Darwin the man by combining anecdotes with carefully selected illustrations and photographs. 
   
  This small gem of a book includes 20 color plates and 60 black-and-white illustrations, along with an annotated list of Darwin’s publications and a chronology of his life. 
   
  “Berra meets the essential curiosities a reader new to Darwin will have about a scientist still controversial in some quarters: Berra describes Darwin’s wealthy family background; notes his search for a purpose in life, which led to his embarkation on the survey ship HMS Beagle; chronicles Darwin’s fabled voyage on that ship; steers Darwin into his happy marriage to an heiress to the Wedgwood pottery fortune; and recounts the éclat with which On the Origin of Species burst upon the world in 1859. . . . A finer asset of this volume is its abundance of portraits and illustrations, including a suite of photos taken by Berra of Darwin’s home.” —Booklist

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  The Strenuous Life

  Theodore Roosevelt

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  Theodore Roosevelt began this 1899 speech with his thesis: “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.” He discusses how the many hardships of his life shaped him for the better. Roosevelt believed that if Americans wished to succeed in the world, they would need to embrace the virtue of hard work. He applied this same belief to foreign affairs, stating that America must establish itself as a powerful military force and exert this power when necessary.  

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