Other books that might interest you

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  Laugh Cry Rewind - A Memoir

  Judy Haveson

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  Growing up in 1970s and 80s suburban Houston, Judy Haveson is funny, sarcastic, and fiercely loyal, especially to her family, friends, and big sister, Celia. When she suffers a series of unimaginable traumatic events, her seemingly idyllic childhood comes to a halt, changing her life forever. 
  In Laugh Cry Rewind, Judy takes readers on her journey of self-discovery, sharing funny, touching, and heartbreaking stories from her childhood all the way to the birth of her son. Her experiences serve as a reminder that while life is not always fair, ultimately, the choice to surrender or keep on living is ours. Her message to others who have experienced loss or tragedy is this: stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Let life go on, and good things will be waiting for you on the other side of the pain.

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  The Hummingbird Kiss - My Life...

  Trish MacEnulty

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  Trish spends her time hustling and cheating to score. Heroin, Dilaudids, whatever she can get. 
  Precisely plotting the slippery slope of a heroin addict's existence, The Hummingbird Kiss paints a bleak picture but still manages to offer a ray of hope. The '70s are young, and 18-year-old Trish is a newlywed. When a Florida judge sentences her junkie husband to ten years for stealing stereos, she immediately seeks out a fix, and before she knows it she's hooked. There follows a long sojourn as she and her friends work small scams to score, head to California in search of better highs, move back to Florida, shoot up and nod off every chance they get — until death gets some of them. 
  MacEnulty has constructed a gritty and sorrowful book about a young girl with an appetite for the damage done. Trish comes from a broken but still functional family. She's witty, articulate and street-smart enough to know better than to get caught up in this life of self destruction, but childhood abandonment and the ensuing self-loathing are too much for her to manage without medication. Her life unravels as her cross-country wanderings take her from drug dens to rehabs to prison, with a few bleary-eyed months spent scoring drugs in the Tijuana barrios. 
  The author spares us no detail of her sordid descent, but Trish remains an engaging voice whose innate grain of goodness and interest in humanity keeps the reader on her side. Trish declines to blame anyone for her calamitous state. All she wants is the "hummingbird kiss of the needle" — the most wonderful experience she knows — until she inevitably winds up in prison and rediscovers the girl she once was. 
  "Searingly honest, often funny, always sordid story of a junkie’s life in the 1970s."—Chauncey Mabe, Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel

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  Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders

  Mike Rothmiller, Douglas Thompson

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  All the varieties of power – star, political, sexual, criminal and emotional – are on show in this definitive, untold story of Frank Sinatra and the Mafia. 
  Drawing on an enormous archive of previously unseen records held by international law agencies, the FBI, the CIA and big-city police departments, Rothmiller and Thompson reveal Sinatra’s pact with the Mob in shocking detail. 
  With additional evidence from decades of investigations and testimony, they expose Sinatra’s lifelong association with the Mafia, which he always denied, and its deadly collateral damage. 
  This revelatory showstopper is a wild dance made coherent by intelligent choreography. Sinatra may not have been an actual made man, but the Mafia certainly made him. 
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  Praise for Bombshell: ‘Reads like a James Ellroy novel’, Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph

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  Summary of Tom Clavin’s...

  Falcon Press

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  Buy now to get the main key ideas from Tom Clavin’s Lightning Down 
    
  A lot has been written about World War II: the triumphs, the tribulations, and the horrors. Tom Clavin’s Lightning Down (2021) includes all three, as he covers the incredible story of Joseph “Joe” Moser, an American pilot who survived his stay at the Buchenwald concentration camp. 
  Buchenwald is one of the most infamous German concentration camps, not for its sheer size, but the absolutely horrifying conditions its occupants had to endure. Joe was one of 170 Allied airmen who were illegally sent there. Only through sheer acts of will and unity were many of those men spared the camp’s most common fate of death. 
  Even after he made it out of Buchenwald, Joe’s story was initially not believed, with many thinking he was over-exaggerating the horrors he experienced and witnessed. Of course, that is not the case, and Clavin spares no detail in retelling it.

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  To the River - A Journey Beneath...

  Olivia Laing

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  An author’s walk “from source to sea along the Ouse in Sussex is a meandering, meditative delight” drawing on history, literature, and the river itself (The Guardian, UK). In To The River, author Olivia Laing embarks on a weeklong, midsummer odyssey along the banks of the River Ouse in Sussex, England, from its source near Haywards Heath to the sea, where it empties into the Channel at Newhaven. More than sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned herself in the River Ouse, Laing still finds inspiration and guidance in the author’s abiding presence. Through cow pastures, woods, and neighborhood streets, Laing’s meandering walk occasions a profound and haunting reflection on histories both personal and cultural, and on landscapes both physical and emotional. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.“Magical…By turns lyrical, melancholic and exultant, To the River just makes you want to follow Olivia Laing all the way to the sea.”—Daily Telegraph, UK

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  Hear Me Roar

  Erna Walraven

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  A memoir about zookeeping, and what animals taught me about feminism. 
   
  In the early 1980s, when Erna Walraven decided to follow her dreams and become one of the first female zookeepers in Australia, she thought her biggest challenges would be feeding big cats and subduing irate gorillas. In fact, it was her male colleagues who made work miserable, harassing and humiliating her for doing a 'man's job'. So, she looked to the animals under her care to prove them wrong. 
   
  Despite what Erna's colleagues seemed to think, the females of the animal world were far from weak and demure. Elephant matriarchs led their herds; female bonobos revelled in sexual exploration; emu mothers abandoned their chicks to the care of their fathers. Her colleagues wouldn't dare tell a female tiger that hunting was a 'male's job' - why were they so intent on limiting Erna? 
   
  In this insightful and delightful book, Erna blends memoir and pop science to tell a fiercely female story. She recounts a life spent caring for animals in a fast transforming industry, and dives into scientific evidence and evolutionary history to debunk the myths that once held her back.

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