Memoir Young

FACING THE LION is the autobiographical account of a young girl's faith and courage. In the years immediately preceding World War II, Simone Arnold is a young girl who delights in life – her doting parents, her loving aunts and uncles, and her grandparents at their mountain farm in the Alsace-Lorraine region of France. As Simone grows into her preteen years, her parents turn from the Catholic Church and become devout Jehovah's Witnesses. Simone, too, embraces the faith. The Nazi party (the "Lion") takes over Alsace-Lorraine, and Simone's schools become Nazi propaganda machines.

Hayley Mills's teenage decade in Hollywood produced some of the era's greatest family movies: classics like Pollyanna, The Parent Trap and In Search of the Castaways, and in Britain the acclaimed Whistle Down the Wind. Overnight, Hayley became a teen idol and a household name. In Forever Young Hayley takes us back to a bygone era, charting a journey from her carefree childhood in post-war Britain, growing up in the shadow of her famous theatrical family, to being propelled into the Technicolor boomtown of 1960s Hollywood.

We can hardly imagine a Britain without Elizabeth II on the throne. It seems to be the job she was born for. And yet, for much of her early life, the young princess did not know the role that her future would hold. She was our accidental Queen. As a young girl, Elizabeth was among the guests in Westminster Abbey watching her father being crowned, making her the only monarch to have attended a parent's coronation.

Boldly original, dramatic story of Catherine de’ Medici, Elisabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots – three queens exercising power in a world dominated by men – Young Queens weaves the personal stories of these three queens into one, revealing their hopes, dreams, desires and regrets in a time when even the most powerful women lived at the mercy of the state.

Gregory Blotnick lived a life of excess, spending money as fast as he could make it. At age thirty, he had everything a man could ever want. It still wasn’t enough. Driven by unchecked ambition and vainglory, he risked it all on himself with no plan B . . . only to discover what happens when burning the boats goes horribly wrong. Each time he thought he’d hit rock bottom, an even rockier bottom laid in wait beneath it. But just when he thought that he’d lost everything a man can possibly lose, he found what really matters.

At age five, Esme was asked to write in her notebook, but instead, she filled it with drawings—the only way she knew to express herself. At seven, when it was discovered she was partially deaf, she found refuge in her sketchbooks. Shortly after, Esme made her first garment and a passion for sewing and designing was born. As a teenager, she made her way to London where her creative journey truly began.

From the creator, producer and star of HBO's Girls comes a hilarious, wise and fiercely candid collection of personal essays that establishes Lena Dunham as one of the most original young talents writing today. In Not that Kind of Girl, Dunham illuminates the experiences that are part of making one's way in the world: falling in love, feeling alone, being ten pounds overweight despite eating only health food, having to prove yourself to a room full of men twice your age, finding true love, and most of all, having the guts to believe that your story deserves to be told.

By age twenty, at the height of the Jazz Age, Trudy Ederle was the most accomplished swimmer in the world. She’d won Olympic gold and set a host of world records. But the greatest challenge remained: the English Channel. Only a few swimmers, none of them women, had ever made the treacherous twenty-one mile crossing. Trudy’s failed first attempt seemed to confirm what many naysayers believed: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing. In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong.

This is the Marathi translation of The Diary of a Young Girl - a compilation of diary writings of Anne Frank, a girl who had to resort to hiding along with her family because of the Nazi occupation. This book has received widespread publicity and is one of the most famous literatures of the Nazi era. This book has been translated in more than 60 languages and has received critical acclamation. Anne Frank died of typhus in a concentration camp and her diary was successfully retrieved by Miep Gies, who handed it to Anne’s father, the lone survivor from the family.

Rachel Wilson’s mother died when Rachel was in her twenties. It felt like the definitive end of childhood, a loss that rewired her perspective on life, death, relationships and who she was as a person. In this book, Rachel brings together other stories of bereavement with her own, encountering people who have lost parents, siblings, partners and friends at a young age. Losing Young draws on psychological research, interviews with titans like Julia Samuel and explorations of grief in history.

Alexander the Great’s story often reads like fiction: son to a snake-loving mother and a battle-scarred father, tutored by Aristotle, a youth from the periphery of the Greek world who took part in his first campaign aged 16, becoming king of Macedon at 20 and king of Asia by 25, leading his armies into battle like a Homeric figure. Each generation has peered through the glass of history and come to their own conclusion about Alexander, be it enlightened ruler, military genius, megalomaniac, drunkard or despot. Yet the first two decades of his life have until now been a mystery.

The extraordinary story of British junior officers in the First World War, who led their men out of the trenches and faced a life expectancy of six weeks. During the Great War, many boys went straight from the classroom to the most dangerous job in the world - that of junior officer on the Western Front. Although desperately aware of how many of their predecessors had fallen before them, nearly all stepped forward, unflinchingly, to do their duty. The average life expectancy of a subaltern in the trenches was a mere six weeks.

Disillusioned with overly competitive organized sports and concerned about her lively daughter’s growing shyness, author Angie Abdou sets herself a challenge: to hike a peak a week over the summer holidays with Katie. They will bond in nature and discover the glories of outdoor activity. What could go wrong? Well, among other things, it turns out that Angie loves hiking but Katie doesn’t. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply felt, This One Wild Life explores parenting and marriage in a summer of unexpected outcomes and growth for both mother and daughter.

Alathea's home life was an unhappy one. Her parents had separated and so during the war she was sent to live with her grandfather, Viscount Fitzalan of Derwent, at Cumberland Lodge in Windsor Great Park. There Alathea found the affection and harmony she craved as she became a close friend of the two princesses, visiting them often at Windsor Castle, enjoying parties, balls, cinema evenings, picnics and celebrations with the royal family and other members of the court.

A deliciously funny and sage guide to midlife - an unscientific, flaws-and-all account of one woman's adventures and misadventures through the dark comedy of the wilderness years. Through her own experiences as a 50-something woman, and those of her three sisters, her indomitable mum and rebellious auntie, Charlotte tackles the big questions every woman seeks answers to at this time of our lives - chiefly: how the hell am I going to get over being young in a world obsessed with youth?

Most famous for playing Neil the hippy in The Young Ones and a pillar of the 80s alternative comedy (the Comic Strip Presents and Bad News) and inspired by a recent sold-out tour where the audiences lapped up his witty and self-depreciating stories, Nigel Planer wants to take us back through the roles, the friendships and the rivalries, the triumphs and comic disasters (from 20 foot giant éclairs falling from the skies to exploding ovens) that have taken him to where he is now, all wrapped up in the moving and funny story of his on-off relationship with his wife Roberta.

This is Annie Ernaux’s account of her passionate love affair with A., a man some thirty years younger, when she was in her fifties. The relationship pulls her back to memories of her own youth and, at the same time, leaves her feeling ageless, outside of time—together with a sense that she is living her life backwards. Amidst talk of having a child together, she feels time running its course and menopause approaching. The Young Man recalls Ernaux as the “scandalous girl” she once was but is composed with the mastery and the self-assurance she has achieved across decades of writing.

Thurgood Marshall was the most important American lawyer of the 20th century. He transformed the nation's legal landscape by challenging the racial segregation that had relegated millions to second-class citizenship. He won 29 of 33 cases before the United States Supreme Court, was a federal appeals court judge, served as the US solicitor general, and, for 24 years, sat on the Supreme Court. Marshall is best known for achievements after he relocated to New York in 1936 to work for the NAACP.

Where do we find our ideals? What does it mean to live for them - and to risk dying for them? For Americans during World War I, these weren't abstract questions. Young Radicals tells the story of five activists, intellectuals, and troublemakers who agitated for freedom and equality in the hopeful years before the war, then fought to defend those values in a country pitching into violence and chaos.

Celebrated essayist, biographer, and nonfiction book writer Robert Kanigel presents a memoir of his meandering, serendipitous path from engineer to writer. Kanigel invites the listener back in time for a journey rich with a sense of time and place, beginning with his childhood as the son of Jewish parents in Brooklyn.