Beautiful Memoir

Birdie dreams of becoming a professional artist, but the constraints of society demand she marries well. In order to fulfil her dreams, she makes a deal with her parents: to let her spend a year at the St. Agnes School of Art in Cornwall, after which she will return home and marry the insufferable but influential and wealthy Charles Bonham, as per her parents' wishes. Birdie however, has no intention of ever going back. Free of responsibility for the first time, she finds herself surrounded by a crew of bohemian artists who show her just how dizzying independence can be.

This is the true story of each of the spiritual "Gang of four" and their master and deep inspiration Neem Karol Baba.

Martha Gellhorn died in February 1998, just shy of her 90th birthday. Well before her death, she had become a legend. She reported on wars from Spain in the 1930s to Panama in the 1980s, and her travel books have become classics. Her marriage to Ernest Hemingway and affairs with legendary lovers like H. G. Wells, and her relationship with two presidents, Roosevelt and Kennedy, reflect her campaigns against tyranny and deprivation, and her outrage at the corruption and cruelty of modern governments.

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.

In Broken and Beautiful, Christine Soule shares the message of hope as she tells how God took the pieces of her own broken life - childhood abuse, poverty, human trafficking, and more - and turned them all into breathtaking joy and purpose. Told with honesty and humor, this is the story of a drug-addicted stripper’s transformation into an exuberant Jesus lover with a passion for meeting others in their journey and watching God’s love mend them together.

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.

The Most Beautiful Girl is a heartbreaking yet uplifting memoir of a daughter, her father, and the healing power of music. The story opens with a scene at Johnny Cash's funeral when author Tamara Saviano is struck with grief about unfinished business with her father. Robert Ruditys died two years before Cash, and hadn't spoken to his only daughter for more than a decade before that. Her grief led the author on a journey to rediscover her father and examine the lost relationship with a man she once loved.

In 2018, I didn’t merely come out MtF transgender, I discovered I was trans in the first place - as much news to me as it became to the world. On December 31, 2017, to quote the movie, Hot Fuzz, I had "a great big bushy beard". A year later, I was growing breasts! What's it like to be a trans woman? Even crazier, what's it like to not know you're trans for your first 50+ years? It's a roller-coaster of joy, heartbreaking sadness, difficult trials and transformations, and tons of comic relief - like any life...

Even when you follow all the rules, life can go very wrong.... Dennis Mansfield and his wife, Susan, planned for and expected every parent's dream, but instead lived every parent's nightmare. This haunting memoir tells the story of a father who diligently followed all the parenting rules that he learned from conservative Christian "experts" - yet life with his son Nate went terribly wrong when the young man died at 27 of drug-related causes.

Despite debuting on Canada’s senior national soccer team 20 years ago, scarce is known of Atiba Hutchinson. We’ve watched him win Canadian Men’s Player of the Year six times; celebrated his club team championships; and mourned his injuries. We’ve lamented the state of Canadian soccer and cursed the lost potential—and years. Yet, we know little about Atiba’s personal life, or how he rose from suburban Brampton to becoming Canada’s most-capped national men’s team player, often described as the country’s greatest athlete you haven’t heard about.

Constance was always a California dreamer, though her circumstances gave her no right to be. She grew up in 1980s San Diego as the fourth of nine children. The crowded two-bedroom apartment where she spent her childhood was far from a safe cocoon that could nurture her dreams into reality. Constance began caring for her siblings while she was still a child herself, stepping in for her overwhelmed mother and her often absent, unpredictable father.

When he was two years old, Hunter Biden was badly injured in a car accident that killed his mother and baby sister. In 2015, he suffered the devastating loss of his beloved big brother, Beau, who died of brain cancer at the age of 46. These hardships were compounded by the collapse of his marriage and a years-long battle with drug and alcohol addiction. In Beautiful Things, Hunter recounts his descent into substance abuse and his tortuous path to sobriety.

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.

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.

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.

Barbara Pamplin’s life was changed by 50, 3, and 3. That's 50 days in intensive care, 3 open heart surgeries, and 3 deaths and resuscitations - all in the fall of 2017. Barbara is a passionate storyteller, committed to inspiring Black women and others to celebrate and engage in the soul work of personal transformation, to confront the health crisis among Black women at its root level.

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.

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.

Linda Phillips followed the light and found her joy after emerging from the overwhelming darkness of losing her son to suicide following a lifelong struggle with severe depression. In the decades since, the state of mental health care has declined. In this tender retelling of the most painful experience of her life, Phillips not only gives raw insight into the reeling effects of suicide on her family and herself, she examines the process that helped her regain herself in the aftermath.