Past Kindle Book Deals but Still Must Read Books!
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494 past books matching Biographies & Memoirs
The Quiet Room chronicles Lori Schiller’s descent into schizophrenia and her fight to survive voices, hospitalizations, and despair.
The Quiet Room
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
The Quiet Room chronicles Lori Schiller’s descent into schizophrenia and her fight to survive voices, hospitalizations, and despair. Through her own words and those of doctors and family, the memoir reveals the terror of mental illness and the courage required to endure it. A candid, harrowing account praised by The New York Times and Publishers Weekly.
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About the book
"A book of rare power, passion, and intelligence. Travel with Lori into the heart of schizophrenia, and you will never be the same." —Diane Sawyer, award-winning television news anchor
Moving, harrowing, and ultimately uplifting, Lori Schiller's memoir is a classic testimony to the ravages of mental illness and the power of perseverance and courage.
At seventeen Lori Schiller was the perfect child—the only daughter of an affluent, close-knit family. Six years later she made her first suicide attempt, then wandered the streets of New York City dressed in ragged clothes, tormenting voices crying out in her mind. Lori Schiller had entered the horrifying world of full-blown schizophrenia. She began an ordeal of hospitalizations, halfway houses, relapses, more suicide attempts, and constant, withering despair. But against all odds, she survived.
In this personal account, she tells how she did it, taking us not only into her own shattered world, but drawing on the words of the doctors who treated her and family members who suffered with her.
"Fascinating . . . undoubtedly will find a place in the cherished literature of first-person accounts of suffering and recovery." —The Washington Post Book World
"Candid . . . courageous." —San Diego Union-Tribune
"Makes frighteningly real the terror of schizophrenia." —USA Today
"[A] stunning story of courage, persistence, and hope." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Chronicles her battle with the illness and reveals a woman who, thought desperately ill, showed tremendous courage." —The New York Times
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Two promising college lives collide with violence when Jennifer Cave disappears in Austin.
Descent Into Hell
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
Two promising college lives collide with violence when Jennifer Cave disappears in Austin. What begins as a missing person search unravels into a brutal murder and a reckless flight from justice led by a privileged student hiding a dangerous edge. This true crime account is praised for its clarity and rigor, with 4.5 stars on Amazon and strong Goodreads acclaim.
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About the book
Bright, attractive, and both from good families, University of Texas college student Colton Pitonyak and vibrant redhead Jennifer Cave had the world at their beckoning. Cave, an ex-cheerleader, had just landed an exciting new job, while a big-money scholarship to UT's prestigious business school lured Pitonyak to Austin. Yet the former altar boy had a dark, unpredictable streak, one that ensnared him in the perilous underworld of drugs and guns. When Jennifer failed to show up for work on August 18, 2005, her mother became frightened. Sharon Cave's search led to Colton's West Campus apartment, where Jennifer's family discovered a scene worthy of the grisliest horror movie. Meanwhile, Colton Pitonyak was nowhere to be found.
A Descent Into Hell is the gripping true story of one of the most brutal slayings in UT history—and the wild "Bonnie and Clyde-like" flight from justice of a cold-blooded young killer and his would-be girlfriend, who claimed that her unquestioning allegiance to Pitonyak was "just the way I roll."
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In Doctor Ice Pick, Claire Prentice recounts the true story of Dr.
Doctor Ice Pick
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
In Doctor Ice Pick, Claire Prentice recounts the true story of Dr. Walter Freeman, whose rapid fire lobotomies scarred thousands of lives. Through chilling detail, this short work exposes how ambition, spectacle, and pseudoscience fueled one of America’s darkest medical tragedies. A haunting examination of harm done in the name of progress.
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A haunting and true short story of the lobotomist who cut a brutal swathe through the lives of thousands of vulnerable Americans from the author of Miracle at Coney Island.
In July 1952, Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the gates of a West Virginia asylum. In his medical bag he carried two metal picks and a surgical hammer. He had invented a “cheap, easy” ten-minute lobotomy. The press described it as a miracle cure, a new frontier in psychosurgery.
That summer, in just twelve days, Freeman lobotomized 228 men, women, and children in West Virginia’s public mental hospitals. His blitzkrieg of brain surgery became known as “Operation Ice Pick,” named after the tools he wielded.
To some, the doctor was a hero, solving the crisis facing the nation’s underfunded and overcrowded psychiatric institutions. But many who watched him operate saw a dangerous risk-taker, a showman and a charlatan. This is the true story of a scientific pioneer whose misguided quest created one of the biggest tragedies in American medical history.
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In Glorious Rock Bottom, Bryony Gordon recounts a twenty year battle with addiction and the moment hitting bottom saved her life.
Glorious Rock Bottom
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
In Glorious Rock Bottom, Bryony Gordon recounts a twenty year battle with addiction and the moment hitting bottom saved her life. With unflinching honesty, she traces relapse, recovery, and hard won self acceptance. Praised by Marian Keyes and Fearne Cotton, this memoir is raw, compassionate, and ultimately hopeful.
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About the book
DARK, HONEST, UPLIFTING. THIS IS A SOBRIETY MEMOIR LIKE NO OTHER.
'This is a book that tears down walls.' Marian Keyes
'Bryony Gordon is a terrific, compassionate writer whose razor-sharp honesty slices through every sentence of this compelling memoir.' Liz Day
'Poetic, raw and very important.' Fearne Cotton
Bryony Gordon is a respected journalist, a number-one bestselling author and an award-winning mental health campaigner. She is also an alcoholic.
In Glorious Rock Bottom Bryony opens up about a toxic twenty-year relationship with alcohol and drugs and explains exactly why hitting rock bottom - for her, a traumatic event and the abrupt realisation that she was putting herself in danger, time and again - saved her life. Known for her trademark honesty, Bryony re-lives the darkest and most terrifying moments of her addiction, never shying away from the fact that alcoholism robs you of your ability to focus on your family, your work, your health, your children, yourself. And then, a chink of light as the hard work begins - rehab; twelve-step meetings; endless, tedious, painful self-reflection - a rollercoaster ride through self-acceptance, friendship, love and hope, to a joy and pride in staying sober that her younger self could never have imagined.
From the author of Sunday Times bestselling Mad Girl and Mad Woman, shining a light on the deep connection between addiction and mental health issues, Glorious Rock Bottom is in turn, shocking, brutal, dark, funny, hopeful and uplifting. It is a sobriety memoir like no other.
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After losing their home and livelihood and facing a terminal diagnosis, Raynor Winn and her husband set out to walk England’s South West Coast Path with only what…
The Salt Path
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
After losing their home and livelihood and facing a terminal diagnosis, Raynor Winn and her husband set out to walk England’s South West Coast Path with only what they can carry. What unfolds is a raw, life-affirming journey through hardship, love, and endurance. An international bestseller and Costa Book Award shortlisted memoir praised for its honesty and grace.
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About the book
THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING GILLIAN ANDERSON AND JASON ISAACS
"Polished, poignant... an inspiring story of true love."—Entertainment Weekly
A BEST BOOK OF 2019, NPR's Book Concierge
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BOOK AWARD
The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England
Just days after Raynor Winn learns that Moth, her husband of thirty-two years, is terminally ill, their house and farm are taken away, along with their livelihood. With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, through Devon and Cornwall.
Carrying only the essentials for survival on their backs, they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea, and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable and life-affirming journey. Powerfully written and unflinchingly honest, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home—how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.
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One of America’s most infamous unsolved murders gets a chilling reexamination.
The Black Dahlia Files
True Crime
Our take
One of America’s most infamous unsolved murders gets a chilling reexamination. Drawing on long-buried files from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, Donald H. Wolfe uncovers new evidence pointing to a shocking culprit behind the Black Dahlia killing. This gripping true crime investigation explores corruption, cover-ups, and the dark machinery of Hollywood power.
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About the book
In 1946, Elizabeth Short traveled to Hollywood to become famous and see her name up in lights. Instead, the dark-haired beauty became immortalized in the headlines as the "Black Dahlia" when her nude and bisected body was discovered in the weeds of a vacant lot. Despite the efforts of more than four hundred police officers and homicide investigators, the heinous crime was never solved. Now, after endless speculation and false claims, bestselling author Donald H. Wolfe discovers startling new evidence—buried in the files of the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office for more than half a century.
With the aid of archival photos, news clippings, and investigative reports, Wolfe documents the riveting untold story that names the brutal murderer—the notorious Mafia leader, Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel—and the motive—an unwanted pregnancy resulting from Short's involvement with the most powerful figure in Los Angeles, Norman Chandler. But Wolfe goes even further to unravel the large-scale cover-up behind the case. Wolfe's extensive research, based on the evidence he discovered in the recently opened LADA files, makes The Black Dahlia Files the authoritative work on the murder that has drawn endless scrutiny but remained unsolved—until now.
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Pulled from school at nine, Stefan Merrill Block grows up isolated inside his mother’s increasingly controlling vision of love and education.
Homeschooled: A Memoir
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Pulled from school at nine, Stefan Merrill Block grows up isolated inside his mother’s increasingly controlling vision of love and education. When he returns to public school years later, the reckoning is brutal. Homeschooled is a darkly funny, deeply compassionate memoir about autonomy, family, and a childhood spent out of sight.
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About the book
A heartbreaking, empowering and often hilarious debut memoir about a mother’s all-consuming love, a son’s perilous quest to discover the world beyond the front door and the unregulated homeschool system that impacts millions like him
Stefan Merrill Block was nine when his mother pulled him from school, certain that his teachers were “stifling his creativity.” Hungry for more time with her boy who was growing up too quickly, she began to instruct Stefan in the family’s living room. Beyond his formal lessons in math, however, Stefan was largely left to his own devices and his mother’s erratic whims, such as her project to recapture her twelve-year-old son's early years by bleaching his hair and putting him on a crawling regimen.
Years before homeschooling would become a massive nationwide movement, at a time when it had just become legal in his home state of Texas, Stefan vanished into that unseen space and into his mother’s increasingly eccentric theories and projects. But when, after five years away from the outside world, Stefan reentered the public school system in Plano as a freshman, he was in for a jarring awakening.
At once a novelistic portrait of mother and son, and an illuminating window into an overlooked corner of the American education system, Homeschooled is a moving, funny and ultimately inspiring story of a son’s battle for a life of his own choosing, and the wages of a mother’s insatiable love.
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Catherine Cho recounts the postpartum psychosis that led to her involuntary hospitalization and separation from her newborn son and husband, weaving her time in the psychiatric ward with…
Inferno
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Catherine Cho recounts the postpartum psychosis that led to her involuntary hospitalization and separation from her newborn son and husband, weaving her time in the psychiatric ward with memories of childhood, relationships, marriage, and motherhood, with a 4.2-star average from more than 5,000 Goodreads ratings. A strong fit for memoir readers interested in motherhood, mental health, identity, and firsthand accounts of psychiatric illness.
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About the book
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
"Inferno is a disturbing and masterfully told memoir, but it's also an important one that pushes back against powerful taboos. . ." --The New York Times Book Review
"Explosive" --Good Morning America
"Sublime" --Bookpage (starred review)
When Catherine Cho and her husband set off from London to introduce their newborn son to family scattered across the United States, she could not have imagined what lay in store. Before the trip's end, she develops psychosis, a complete break from reality, which causes her to lose all sense of time and place, including what is real and not real. In desperation, her husband admits her to a nearby psychiatric hospital, where she begins the hard work of rebuilding her identity.
In this unwaveringly honest, insightful, and often shocking memoir Catherine reconstructs her sense of self, starting with her childhood as the daughter of Korean immigrants, moving through a traumatic past relationship, and on to the early years of her courtship with and marriage to her husband, James. She masterfully interweaves these parts of her past with a vivid, immediate recounting of the days she spent in the ward.
The result is a powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience – of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.
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This will appeal to readers who want investigative nonfiction about missing hikers, wilderness searches, and the people who refuse to stop looking.
Trail of the Lost
Biographies & Memoirs · True Crime
Our take
A New York Times bestseller and Goodreads Choice Award nominee, Trail of the Lost follows former park ranger Andrea Lankford as she joins families and volunteer investigators searching for three men who vanished along the Pacific Crest Trail, with a 4.2-star rating from more than 1,600 Amazon reviewers. This will appeal to readers who want investigative nonfiction about missing hikers, wilderness searches, and the people who refuse to stop looking.
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About the book
From an award-winning former law enforcement park ranger and investigator, this female-driven true crime adventure follows the author’s quest to find missing hikers along the Pacific Crest Trail by pairing up with an eclectic group of unlikely allies.
As a park ranger with the National Park Service's law enforcement team, Andrea Lankford led search and rescue missions in some of the most beautiful (and dangerous) landscapes across America, from Yosemite to the Grand Canyon. But though she had the support of the agency, Andrea grew frustrated with the service's bureaucratic idiosyncrasies, and left the force after twelve years. Two decades later, however, she stumbles across a mystery that pulls her right back where she left off: three young men have vanished from the Pacific Crest Trail, the 2,650-mile trek made famous by Cheryl Strayed's Wild, and no one has been able to find them. It’s bugging the hell out of her.
Andrea’s concern soon leads her to a wild environment unlike any she’s ever encountered: missing person Facebook groups. Andrea launches an investigation, joining forces with an eclectic team of amateurs who are determined to solve the cases by land and by screen: a mother of the missing, a retired pharmacy manager, and a mapmaker who monitors terrorist activity for the government. Together, they track the activities of kidnappers and murderers, investigate a cult, rescue a psychic in peril, cross paths with an unconventional scientist, and reunite an international fugitive with his family. Searching for the missing is a brutal psychological and physical test with the highest stakes, but eventually their hardships begin to bear strange fruits—ones that lead them to places and people they never saw coming.
Beautifully written, heartfelt, and at times harrowing, TRAIL OF THE LOST paints a vivid picture of hiker culture and its complicated relationship with the ever-expanding online realm, all while exploring the power and limits of determination, generosity, and hope. It also offers a deep awe of the natural world, even as it unearths just how vast and treacherous it can be.
On the TRAIL OF THE LOST, you may not find what you are looking for, but you will certainly find more than you seek.
** THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER **
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Deep Waters follows a marine biologist in Alaska whose life is upended when her healthy husband suffers a rare stroke.
Deep Waters
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
Deep Waters follows a marine biologist in Alaska whose life is upended when her healthy husband suffers a rare stroke. His radical approach to recovery pulls their family into dangerous sailing expeditions with their young son. This intimate memoir explores marriage under pressure, medical crisis, and the courage required to reimagine a shared future.
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About the book
". . . a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined."
—CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass
A marine biologist's adventurous life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. His radical approach to recovery clashes with her instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska's magnificent yet unforgiving waters.
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In The Bright Hour, poet Nina Riggs writes with clarity and grace as she faces terminal breast cancer at thirty seven.
The Bright Hour
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
In The Bright Hour, poet Nina Riggs writes with clarity and grace as she faces terminal breast cancer at thirty seven. A mother and wife, she reflects on love, memory, literature, and what it means to live honestly with limited time. This New York Times bestseller has been praised by People and The Washington Post for its beauty and emotional depth.
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About the book
* INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER *
“Stunning…heartrending…this year’s When Breath Becomes Air.” —Nora Krug, The Washington Post
“Beautiful and haunting.” —Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY
“Vivid, immediate.” —Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe
The New York Times bestseller by poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, is “a stunning…heart-rending meditation on life…It is this year’s When Breath Becomes Air” (The Washington Post).
We are breathless but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other.
Poet and essayist Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer—one small spot. Within a year, she received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal.
How does a dying person learn to live each day “unattached to outcome”? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? How does a young mother and wife prepare her two young children and adored husband for a loss that will shape the rest of their lives? How do we want to be remembered?
Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, Nina asks: What makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? “Profound and poignant” (Oprah Daily), The Bright Hour is about how to make the most of all the days, even the painful ones. It’s about the way literature, especially Nina’s direct ancestor, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer.
Brilliantly written and exceptionally moving, it’s a “deeply affecting memoir, a simultaneously heartbreaking and funny account of living with loss and the specter of death. As Riggs lyrically, unflinchingly details her reality, she finds beauty and truth that comfort even amid the crushing sadness” (People).
Tender and heartwarming, The Bright Hour “is a gentle reminder to cherish each day” (Entertainment Weekly) and offers us this important perspective: “You can read a multitude books about how to die, but Riggs, a dying woman, will show you how to live” (The New York Times Book Review).
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In The Lost Voice, musician Greta Morgan recounts losing her ability to sing after Covid and rebuilding her creative life from silence.
The Lost Voice
Biographies & Memoirs
Our take
In The Lost Voice, musician Greta Morgan recounts losing her ability to sing after Covid and rebuilding her creative life from silence. As grief gives way to reinvention, she searches for meaning beyond performance. Touring stories and desert solitude frame an intimate memoir from a former Vampire Weekend collaborator about identity, listening, and choosing to keep creating.
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About the book
A poignant, tenacious memoir by musician Greta Morgan chronicling how she rediscovered her artistic voice after losing her ability to sing.
In 2019, Greta Morgan was on the rise. She was a touring member of Vampire Weekend, performed with Jenny Lewis, and garnered critical acclaim with her own musical projects. But in March 2020, after contracting Covid-19, she was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological disorder with no known cure that left her unable to sing. Her once crystalline voice now reduced to a hush, she saw her career come to an abrupt standstill.
Beyond the physical ramifications, what does it mean to cultivate a true voice? Morgan’s loss launches her into a journey of grief and self-discovery, forcing her to broaden her artistic horizons and reconstruct her sense of self. Her narrative takes us on a whirlwind tour of music studios, band buses, and celebrity-filled backstage parties, but it also takes us to the red canyons of Utah and the spacious wilderness of the American Southwest. In these vast landscapes, Morgan finds unexpected community. In the silence, she learns how to listen to parts of herself she has neglected.
Questioning the purpose of creativity and what defines artistic passion, The Lost Voice is a raw and intimate portrait of grief, self-discovery, and the choice to keep living and creating.
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