Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Women

Christine Brown Woolley had always dreamed of having a picture-perfect family—beautiful children, an adoring husband, and of course, a sisterhood of wives to share him with. Raised in Utah by practicing polygamists, Christine knew her life was less than normal, but that didn’t stop her from loving the full house of her childhood any less. Becoming Kody Brown’s third wife in 1994, Christine finally found the big, happy family she had hoped for.

In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: the two were in love. They were also a pair of addicts, on a collision course toward catastrophe. What if your most beautiful love story turned into your biggest nightmare? What if the dear friend who taught you so much about your self-destructive tendencies became the unstable partner with whom you disastrously reenacted every one of them? And what if your most devastating heartbreak opened a pathway to your greatest awakening?

The Rose Among Thorns is based on the life experiences of Valerie Faulkner-Beal. She was 12 years old when her dad murdered a man in her family's home. That man was the biological father of Guns n Roses front man, Axl Rose.

Tales of a Female Nomad is the story of Rita Golden Gelman, an ordinary woman who is living an extraordinary existence. At the age of 48, on the verge of a divorce, Rita left an elegant life in Los Angeles to follow her dream of connecting with people in cultures all over the world. In 1986, she sold her possessions and became a nomad, living in a Zapotec village in Mexico, sleeping with sea lions on the Galapagos Islands, and residing everywhere from thatched huts to regal palaces.

Sharon Osbourne has lived - in her own words - 'fifty lives in fifty years'. As the daughter of notorious rock manager Don Arden, Sharon's childhood was a chaotic mix of glamour and violence, villains and diamonds. In rock star Ozzy Osbourne, Sharon found her soul mate, yet Ozzy's drug- and alcohol-fuelled excesses - which culminated in his attempt to strangle her - made their marriage a white-knuckle ride from the start; only her devotion to their three children gave her the will to survive.

From an early age, Amber van de Bunt knew she wasn't like the other girls in town. From childhood struggles with depression and eating disorders, her years as a topless dancer in Florida, and an eventual abortion and suicide attempt, to her rebirth in Los Angeles as a porn star named Karmen Karma, overcoming her relationship with her abusive mother, and her struggle to maintain a clean and sober lifestyle - van de Bunt's life has been a roller coaster. With humor, alacrity, and profound insight, she reveals her deepest, darkest secrets and pulls no punches - least of all with herself.

A life of Matilda - empress, skilled military leader, and one of the greatest figures of the English Middle Ages.

What could possibly be “lucky” about addiction? Absolutely nothing, thought Laura McKowen when drinking brought her to her knees. As she puts it, she “kicked and screamed . . . wishing for something - anything - else” to be her issue. The people who got to drink normally, she thought, were so damn lucky. But in the midst of early sobriety, when no longer able to anesthetize her pain and anxiety, she realized that she was actually the lucky one. Lucky to feel her feelings, live honestly, really be with her daughter, change her legacy.

Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying good-bye to her father in a way only he could have understood and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy,and healthy place she is today.

In The Light We Carry, former First Lady Michelle Obama shares practical wisdom and powerful strategies for staying hopeful and balanced in today's highly uncertain world. She considers the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much? Michelle Obama believes that we can all lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux.

For years, Amy Thunig thought she knew all the details about the day she was born, often demanding that the story of her birth be retold. Years later, heavily pregnant with her own first child, she learns what really happened that day. It’s a tale that exemplifies many of the events of her early life, where circumstances sometimes dictated that things be slightly different from how they might seem–including what is meant by her dad being away for ‘work’ and why her legal last name differs from her family’s.

Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’. Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.

I'm only in my mid-twenties, and some might think that's young to write a memoir. Who does that, right? But for me and my team it's always been important to reflect on every part of the journey, especially the end. In that context, the timing is perfect to share my story, from the first time I picked up a racquet as a 5-year-old girl in Ipswich to the night I packed up my tennis bag at Melbourne Park after winning the 2022 Australian Open.

An icon. A household name. One of our best-loved actors. Noni Hazlehurst is finally telling a story of her own. A fourth-generation performer, Noni Hazlehurst has storytelling in her blood. She has graced our screens, stages and airwaves for fifty years—and won our hearts and respect in the process.

The daughter of one of New York's most influential families, niece of Theodore Roosevelt, and wife of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt witnessed some of the most remarkable decades in modern history, as America transitioned from the Gilded Age, the Progressive Era, and the Depression to World War II and the Cold War. A champion of the downtrodden, Eleanor drew on her experience and used her role as First Lady to help those in need.

In 2009 Malala Yousafzai began writing a blog on BBC Urdu about life in the Swat Valley as the Taliban gained control, at times banning girls from attending school. When her identity was discovered, Malala began to appear in both Pakistani and international media, advocating the freedom to pursue education for all. In October 2012, gunmen boarded Malala's school bus and shot her in the face, a bullet passing through her head and into her shoulder. Remarkably, Malala survived the shooting. At a very young age, Malala Yousafzai has become a worldwide symbol of courage and hope.

Gina Chick, the inaugural winner of Alone Australia, tells the story of her extraordinary, indomitable life in one of the most powerful, moving memoirs you will ever listen to. From day one of her wildly unconventional childhood, Gina Chick blazed her own trail, which led her to dance through the hidden world of 90's Sydney nightlife into the arms of a conman. She fled to the wilderness to find healing, began a wondrous love affair with the deepest lessons life—and death—can offer, and found that all the answers are written in the wisdom of the body and the whirling silence of stars.

Tara Westover and her family grew up preparing for the End of Days but, according to the government, she didn’t exist. She hadn’t been registered for a birth certificate. She had no school records because she’d never set foot in a classroom, and no medical records because her father didn’t believe in hospitals. As she grew older, her father became more radical and her brother more violent. At 16, Tara knew she had to leave home. In doing so she discovered both the transformative power of education, and the price she had to pay for it.

May 10, 1940. The Netherlands was swarming with Third Reich troops. In seven days it's entirely occupied by Nazi Germany. Joining a small resistance cell in the Dutch city of Haarlem were three teenage girls: Hannie Schaft, and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, who would soon band together to form a singular female underground squad.

Fifteen million Americans a year are plagued with alcoholism. Five million of them are women. Many of them, like Caroline Knapp, started in their early teens and began to use alcohol as "liquid armor", a way to protect themselves against the difficult realities of life. In this extraordinarily candid and revealing memoir, Knapp offers important insights not only about alcoholism, but about life itself and how we learn to cope with it.