Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

On May 16, 1922, a young man's body was found on a desolate road in Westchester County. The victim was penniless ex-sailor Clarence Peters. Walter Ward, the handsome scion of the family that owned the largest chain of bread factories in the country, confessed to the crime as an act of self-defense against a violent gang of "shadow men," blackmailers who extorted their victims' moral weaknesses. From the start, one question defined the investigation: What scandalous secret could lead Ward to murder?

Celebrate Pride with Shangela (RuPaul’s Drag Race), Nikki Levy (Don’t Tell My Mother!), and six fabulous storytellers as they share heartfelt, hilarious, true tales about coming out.

Derek, a distinguished designer and J, his husband, a pioneering entrepreneur and creator of both The Embassy Club, London's answer to Studio 54, and iconic Heaven, Europe's largest gay discotheque, met and fell in love more than 40 years ago. Their lives were high-octane, full of adventure, fun and fearless creativity. Suddenly, their friends began to get sick and die - AIDS had arrived in their lives.

In this unflinching and riveting coming-of-age memoir, Patricia Grayhall battles sexism in a male-dominated profession. She plunges into a life that is never boring—and certainly never without passion. Tossed around in the rough seas of medical training, chronically exhausted and emotionally drained, Patricia chafes at the toxic masculinity of the culture of medicine facing many of the same issues women face in male-dominated fields today.

One winter's night in 1976, over 20 million people in Britain watched John Curry skate to Olympic glory on an ice rink in Austria. Many millions more watched around the world. Overnight he became one of the most famous men on the planet. He was awarded the OBE. He was chosen as BBC Sports Personality of the Year. Curry had changed ice skating from marginal sport to high art. And yet the man was - and would always remain - an absolute mystery to a world that had been dazzled by his gift.

In Dysphoria Mundi, Paul B. Preciado, best known for his 2013 cult classic Testo Junkie, has written a mutant text assembled from essays, philosophy, poetry, and autofiction that captures a moment of profound change and possibility. Rooted in the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, and taking account of the societal convulsions that have ensued, Preciado tries to make sense of our times from within the swirl of a revolutionary present moment.

A stunning memoir of coming of age and coming out bisexual by award-winning writer and teacher Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew.

Dream big! Do it now! We all have strengths and weaknesses. So, do you want to learn how to get out of your own way and build your strengths and eliminate your weaknesses? Do it now with Get out of Your Own Way Guide to Life: 10 Tips to Shift Gears, Dream Big, Do It Now! Do you want to be known as a tremendous talent...or a lazy, unfocused slacker? This is an in-your-face, funny, no-nonsense, socio-business, coming-of-ageless audio handbook for anyone who is yearning for true, inner-personal success.

I Am Enough, A Gay Guy's Truths is the memoir of the author, James A. Fink; a father of four. At the age of 15, young James suddenly found himself a father-to-be with a woman 13 years his senior. After a years-long journey of self-discovery, James came out as a gay man in 2011.

Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw is an inspirational and truly intersectional memoir from global humanitarian and disability-justice advocate Eddie Ndopu—a queer, Black wheelchair user. Ndopu’s incredible story begins with his childhood being raised by a single mother fleeing Apartheid South Africa before rocketing through every boundary put in front of him—because of his disability, his ethnicity, and his sexuality—to eventually hold official positions at both the United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

Me, Myself, They: Life Beyond the Binary chronicles Joshua M. Ferguson’s extraordinary story of transformation to become the celebrated non-binary filmmaker, writer, and advocate for trans rights they are today. Beginning with their birth and early childhood years of gender creativity, Ferguson recounts the complex and challenging evolution of their identity, including traumatizing experiences with gender conversion therapy, bullying, depression, sexual assault, and violent physical assault. But Ferguson’s story is above all about survival, empathy, and self-acceptance.

Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For 50 years, P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout - the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement.

An androgynous gender-bending musician from the get-go, Cidny Bullens toured extensively with Sir Elton John and performed with Bob Dylan, undergoing a complete immersion in the drug-fueled excesses of 1970s rock 'n' roll. Despite getting sober, climbing the charts with the Grammy-nominated Survivor, as well as a Grammy nomination for his lead vocals in the soundtrack for the movie Grease, Bullens was unable to break out as a solo star in a world that allowed its artists to cross the gender line, but had much more narrow expectations about how women could behave and perform.

As his parents watched their restaurant business collapse in the wake of the Great Recession, Michael Sayman was googling “how to code". Within a year, he had launched an iPhone app that was raking in thousands of dollars a month, enough to keep his family afloat - and in America. Entirely self-taught, Sayman headed from high school straight into the professional world, and by the time he was 17, he was Facebook’s youngest employe ever, building new features that wowed its founder Mark Zuckerberg and are now being used by more than half a billion people every day.

Susan Calman is a well-known comedian and writer who has appeared on countless radio and television programmes. Her solo stand up show, Susan Calman Is Convicted, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and dealt with subjects like the death penalty, appearance and depression. The reaction to the show she wrote about mental health was so positive that she wanted to expand on the show and write a more detailed account of surviving when you're the world's most negative person.

In 1978, Harvey Milk asked Gilbert Baker to create a unifying symbol for the growing gay rights movement, and on June 25 of that year, Baker's Rainbow Flag debuted at San Francisco's Gay Liberation Day parade. Baker had no idea his creation would become an international emblem of freedom. Rainbow Warrior is Baker's passionate personal chronicle, from a repressive childhood in 1950s Kansas to a harrowing stint in the US Army, and finally his arrival in San Francisco, where he bloomed as both a visual artist and social justice activist.

In July 2012, aged 30, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time when the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity.

"Why aren't you angry?" people often asked Martin Moran after he told his story of how he came to forgive the man who sexually abused him as a boy. At first the question pissed him off. Then it began to haunt him. Why didn't he have more anger? Why had he never sought redress for the crime committed against him? Was his fury hidden, buried? Was he not man enough? Here he was, an adult in midlife, with an established acting career, a husband. A life. And yet the question of rage began to obsess him.

Terrell and Jarius Joseph—a picturesque home, adorable children, family businesses, and millions of fans online. Love Out Loud is Terrell and Jarius’s guide to help couples of all kinds sustain their relationship and nurture their nontraditional family. Filled with empathetic advice and a healthy dose of real talk, you, too, can discover how to build a relationship and family your way and build the life of your dreams.

Ewan Forbes was born to a wealthy, landowning family, holders of a baronetcy, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in 1912. Assigned female at birth, his true identity was nevertheless clear even in childhood - and so, with the support of his mother, he was taken to European specialists and eventually treated with early preparations of synthetic testosterone. Socially obliged to present himself as a girl in public until his official coming out to the Queen, Ewan lived a quiet life as a husband, doctor, and a pillar of the local community.