Beautiful Memoir

Carey Perloff, Artistic Director of San Francisco's legendary American Conservatory Theater, pens a lively and revealing memoir of her 20-plus years at the helm and delivers a provocative and impassioned manifesto for the role of live theater in today's technology-infused world. Perloff's personal and professional journey - her life as a woman in a male-dominated profession, as a wife and mother, a playwright, director, producer, arts advocate, and citizen in a city erupting with enormous change.

As a refugee in Denmark, Khalida Popal worked to uncover widespread sexual abuse of players by the former president of the Afghanistan Football Federation - forcing FIFA and the government of Afghanistan to act. When Kabul falls Khalida is safe, but her teammates are left behind. Against all the odds, she and a small but mighty network of allies orchestrate an international evacuation strategy to save them. My Beautiful Sisters is a gripping memoir about courage, the power of teamwork against all odds and the existence of hope in dark times.

Young, cocksure, handsome and absurdly talented, Australian actor Heath Ledger shot to prominence with his first Hollywood film "10 Things I Hate About You": and a star was born. With huge charisma and smouldering looks lighting up the screen in a series of subsequent films, Heath was soon established as Hollywood A-list, dating a series of beauties such as Heather Graham and Naomi Watts, and living every young man's dream.

My Beautiful Psychosis is a stunning debut memoir from international award winning documentary filmmaker, Emma Goude. It is a gritty tale of transformation, depicting from the inside some of the most powerful experiences a human mind can endure. What if psychosis is really a wake up call? Emma is a 20-something who likes to party and take drugs...until she decides to give them up...and that’s when the insomnia starts. After five nights without sleep she ends up in A&E. Three questions determine whether she is sane or not.

For Magda Newman, normal was a goal—she wanted her son Nathaniel to be able to play on the playground, swim at the beach, enjoy the moments of childhood that are often taken for granted. But Nathaniel's severe Treacher Collins syndrome—a craniofacial condition—meant that other concerns came first. Could he eat without the aid of a gastrointestinal tube? Could he hear? Would he ever be able to breathe effortlessly?

49-year-old George Kogan grew up in Puerto Rico before making his way to New York City, where he enjoyed great success as an antiques and art dealer. Until one morning in 1990, when George was approached on the street by an unidentified gunman - and was killed in cold blood. Before the shooting, George had been on the way to his girlfriends's apartment. Mary-Louise Hawkins was 28 years old and had once worked as George's publicist. But ever since they became lovers, George's estranged wife, Barbara, was consumed with bitterness.

For much of history, people with learning disabilities have been regarded as unworthy of interest—often seen as a threat to the social order and sometimes dismissed as barely human. While recent years have seen an improvement, learning-disabled people are still treated as fundamentally different. Beautiful Lives is a personal and pragmatic account, told through the eyes of a father whose son has severe learning disabilities. From early civilisation to the chilling realities of twentieth-century eugenics, this powerful book uncovers a startling and rarely told history.

We all know the fairy-tale. An everyday girl meets her Prince Charming, they get married, have children and ride off into the sunset. Sadly, this isn't always the case and Christine McGuinness is keen to change the stereotype that marriage, fame and fortune brings an easy and blissful life. This is Christine's first audiobook, where she tells the world her life story for the very first time. While telling her story, Christine was diagnosed with autism, as revealed in this book for the very first time.

Roddy Collins is a football man—now in the sixth decade of a career as a player (at 16 clubs), manager (12 clubs) and commentator. And he is a funny man: an unequalled raconteur with a sharp eye for the absurdities of the professional game and spectacular recall. He has made friends wherever he has gone, along with some high-quality enemies. When John Delaney said he could get Roddy a job if he'd just stop criticising him, Roddy replied that he'd 'rather dig holes in the road'.

Twenty-six-year-old actor Daniel Wozniak was unemployed, facing eviction, and deep in debt for his upcoming wedding. So he devised a diabolical plan: He asked his neighbor Sam Herr, a young war veteran, to help him move some things into the attic of an empty theater. There, Wozniak shot Herr twice in the head before taking his ATM card and cell phone.

Growing up in poverty, in a family with extremist religious beliefs, Noell Jett knows what it’s like to work hard to survive. When she married Daniel and they began a family together, she discovered the joy of working hard to achieve her dreams. In From the Ground Up, Noell shares the unbelievable story behind her 3,700-square-foot custom farmhouse—built by hand and savvy influencer marketing—and the key strategies she learned about never giving up.

Katie Piper was 24 and well on her way to fulfilling her dream of becoming a model. She has the world at her feet – but then she meets Daniel Lynch on Facebook. After a horrific rape and acid attack her mind, body and spirit are snatched away. This is the inspiring story of her fight to get them back.

In 2016, Nuseir Yassin quit his job to travel for 1,000 consecutive days. But instead of the usual tourist traps, Nas set out to meet real people, see the places they call home, and discover what unites all of us living on this beautiful planet - from villages in Africa and slums in India, to the high-rises of Singapore and the deserts of Australia. While he journeyed from country to country, Nas uploaded a single 60-second video per day for his Nas Daily Facebook following to highlight the amazing, terrifying, inspiring and downright surprising sh*t happening all over the world.

Now settled into the sleepy Yorkshire village of Darrowby, and married to Helen the farmer’s daughter, James Herriot thinks he’s finally got himself sorted. But life as a vet in the 1930s was never going to be easy. Quite aside from his unpredictable colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, he must contend with new fangled medical techniques, delivering calves after far too much home-made wine, and a grudge holding dog called Magnus who never forgets. And then, with Britain on the verge of war, James faces a decision that could separate him from Darrowby – and Helen – for ever....

Sarah Thebarge, a Yale-trained physician assistant, nearly died of breast cancer at age 27, but that did not end her deeply felt spiritual calling to medical missions in Africa. Risking her own health, she moved to Togo, West Africa - ranked by the United Nations as the least happy country in the world - to care for sick and suffering patients. Serving without pay in a mission hospital, she pondered the intersection of faith and medicine in her quest to help make the world "well".

In 1940 Edmund Wilson was the undisputed big dog of American letters. Vladimir Nabokov was a near-penniless Russian exile seeking asylum in the States. Wilson became a mentor to Nabokov, introducing him to every editor of note, assigning to him book reviews for the New Republic, engineering a Guggenheim. Their intimate friendship blossomed over a shared interest in all things Russian, ruffled a bit by political disagreements. But then came Lolita, and suddenly Nabokov was the big (and very rich) dog.

In The Most Beautiful, a title inspired by the hit song Prince wrote about their legendary love story, Mayte Garcia for the first time shares the deeply personal story of their relationship and offers a singular perspective on the music icon and their world together: from their unconventional meeting backstage at a concert (and the long-distance romance that followed) to their fairy-tale wedding (and their groundbreaking artistic partnership) to the devastating losses that ultimately dissolved their relationship.

Why Live? is a story of vulnerability and transformation. In the face of depression and trauma, Faolan Sugarman-Lash learns to love his life despite his pain. In this audiobook, he shares his mistakes, lessons, stories, and advice for how to overcome mental health challenges by experiencing each part of life fully and finding meaning. He offers the full spectrum of his life experience from relationships to travel and from trauma to spirituality. This audiobook is a manifestation of Faolan’s vision for a vulnerable, open, and courageous world.

What happens when an ordinary teenager has to turn into a warrior just to survive? And can the journey through post-traumatic stress disorder really become an “adventure"? Amy had ambitious plans for college and a Broadway career, until her stomach exploded a week before senior prom. As a survivor - and “thriver” - of abuse and extensive medical, she creates a tapestry made from each thread of her journey, empowering others to find gratitude in every setback and discover their own infinite inner strength.

As a child, Susan Silverman was surrounded by a loving family; although her parents weren't happily married, they were devoted to their kids. In a vibrant, funny, imminently relatable voice (think Anne Lamott meets Katrina Kenison), Silverman tells of a family's evolution - from her parents' devastating loss of their infant son to raising bright and wildly unique daughters. It's also the creation story of her own family - raising her own bright and wildly unique daughters and taking a journey to adopt two boys from Ethiopia.