Thirty years ago Tobias Wolff wrote a memoir that changed the form. This Boys Life is the story of the young, tough-on-the-outside but vulnerable Toby Wolff. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother travel from Florida to Utah to a small village in Washington state, with many stops along the way. As each place doesnt quite work out, they pick up to find somewhere new. In the story of their journey, Wolff masterfully recreates...

"Drama, family secrets, and a KGB spy in his own kitchen! How will Yevgeny ever fulfill his parents' dream that he become a national hero when he doesn't even have his own room? He's not a star athlete or a legendary ballet dancer. In the tiny apartment he shares with his Baryshnikov-obsessed mother, poetry-loving father, continually outraged grandmother, and safely talented brother, all Yevgeny has is his little pencil, the underside of a massive...

Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Told in alternating dramatic narratives that take readers from heart-wrenching losses to moments of surprising redemption, this is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation trying to find their...

A harrowing memoir of a Cambodian family shattered by Pol Pot's regime, First They Killed My Father is a powerful, unforgettable story of courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.

"Legendary singer Roberta Flack reflects on her early childhood and her love of music"--

"The companion to Rex Ogle's award-winning Free Lunch is a searing account of adolescence in a household torn by domestic violence. Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate,...

"Forget the moon landing, the Nobel prizes, and the famous inventions. When the world's most brilliant scientists were growing up, they had regular-kid problems just like you. Albert Einstein daydreamed instead of paying attention in class. Jane Goodall got in trouble for bringing worms and snails in her house. And Neil deGrasse Tyson had to start a dog-walking business to save up money to buy a telescope. Kid Scientists tells these stories and more...

In a story of liberation and self-empowerment, the author shares her hauntingly intimate coming-of-age narrative of growing up in and escaping from the Children of God, an oppressive, extremist religious cult. Faith Jones was raised to be part of an elite army preparing for the End Times. At twenty-three, thirsting for knowledge and freedom, she broke away, leaving behind everything to forge her own path in America.

A collection of stories that reveal Kinsey Millhone's origins -- and Grafton's past. The nine stories that open the book show how fully formed Kinsey was from the beginning. The thirteen stories in the second part, written in the decade following her mother's death, feature Kit Blue, a younger version of Grafton herself, and reflect her troubled family life and the author's journey from anger to understanding and forgiveness.

"A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day...