Between Two Trailers

Author: J. Dana Trent

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $12.99

Deal price: $1.99

Deal starts: September 26, 2024

Deal ends: September 26, 2024

Description:

A powerful, unforgettable memoir about a girl who escapes her childhood as a preschool drug dealer in rural Indiana—only to find that no one can really “make it out” until they make peace with where their story began: homeHome, it turns out, is where the war is. It’s also where the healing begins.Dana Trent is only a preschooler the first time she uses a razor blade to cut up weed and fill dime bags for her schizophrenic father, King. While King struggles with his unmedicated psychosis, Dana’s mother, the Lady, a cold and self-absorbed woman whose personality disorders rule the home, guards large bricks of drugs from the safety of their squalid trailer. But when the Lady impulsively plucks Dana from the Midwest and moves the two of them south, their fresh start results in homelessness and bankruptcy. In North Carolina, Dana becomes torn between her gritty midwestern past and her newfound desire to be a polite southern girl, struggling to reconcile her shame with an ache to figure out who she is, and where she belongs.But the past is never far behind. After persevering through childhood and eventually graduating from Duke University, Dana imagines that her hidden Indiana life is finally behind her, only to realize that running from her upbringing has kept her from making peace with the people and places that shaped her. Ultimately, Dana finds that though love for family is universally complicated, there is no shame in survival, and for those who want it, there is always a path home.

Radical Survivor

Author: Nancy Saltzman

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $6.99

Deal price: Free

Deal starts: September 25, 2024

Deal ends: September 25, 2024

Description:

"Radical Survivor" chronicles elementary school principal Nancy Saltzman's extraordinary saga as a two-time cancer survivor who lost her entire family in a small plane crash. Told with honesty, insight and laugh out loud flashes of humor, Radical Survivor traverses the full spectrum of human emotions. Several aspects of this book make it unique among memories. *The book is enriched by letters to the author interwoven with narrative throughout the book. Most of the notes were received after the death of her family, but some are mementos from her husband and entries from her son's journals. *The author has experienced an extraordinary number of life challenges: two bouts of breast cancer before she turned forty; the loss of her entire family--husband and two young sons--in a small-plane crash when she was in her early forties; the premature death of her sister; losing her father to cancer and her mother to Alzheimer's Disease. *The story is uncommonly open and honest about what one must go through in a catastrophic accident resulting in multiple deaths. Yet it also shares the strength that can be mustered when necessary, and showcases one woman's remarkable resilience in the face of ultimate loss. *We learn how the heart ultimately makes room for both loved ones lost and happiness found.

From the Inside Out

Author: Erik O. Ronningen

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $4.99

Deal price: $1.99

Deal starts: September 24, 2024

Deal ends: September 24, 2024

Description:

Fifteen survivors of the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center share their dramatic stories of that fateful day. On September 11, 2001, tens of thousands in New York City awakened to a beautiful Tuesday morning. Just like any other day, they completed their morning routines and headed to work. For Erik Ronningen, that was his job with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at the World Trade Center. Ronningen had a big, career-changing meeting scheduled for 9 A.M. At 8:46 A.M., Erik was on the seventy-first floor of the North Tower when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building. As acrid smoke filled the building, he made his way downstairs, hoping to get to the Security Command Center in the basement of the South Tower. However, he was unable to reach it and was the last person to exit the South Tower alive . . . In From the Inside Out, Ronningen shares the story of his harrowing escape, along with stories from fourteen other survivors. These gripping accounts chronicle individuals displaying courage and heroism when their ordinary day quickly became a fiery scramble for survival.

Charlie Chaplin vs. America

Author: Scott Eyman

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $14.99

Deal price: $3.99

Deal starts: September 23, 2024

Deal ends: September 23, 2024

Description:

The “shocking” (The Wall Street Journal), must-read story of Charlie Chaplin’s years of exile from the United States during the postwar Red Scare, and how it ruined his film career, from bestselling biographer Scott Eyman.Bestselling Hollywood biographer and film historian Scott Eyman tells the story of Charlie Chaplin’s fall from grace. In the aftermath of World War II, Chaplin was criticized for being politically liberal and internationalist in outlook. He had never become a US citizen, something that would be held against him as xenophobia set in when the postwar Red Scare took hold. Politics aside, Chaplin had another problem: his sexual interest in young women. He had been married three times and had had numerous affairs. In the 1940s, he was the subject of a paternity suit, which he lost, despite blood tests that proved he was not the father. His sexuality became a convenient way for those who opposed his politics to condemn him. Refused permission to return to the US after a trip abroad, he settled in Switzerland and made his last two films in London. In Charlie Chaplin vs. America, Scott Eyman explores the life and times of the movie genius who brought us such masterpieces as City Lights and Modern Times. “One of the finest surveys of the man and the artist ever written” (Leonard Maltin) this book is “a sobering account of cancel culture in action.” (The Economist).

The French Ingredient

Author: Jane Bertch

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $13.99

Deal price: $1.99

Deal starts: September 22, 2024

Deal ends: September 22, 2024

Description:

The inspiring and delicious memoir of an American woman who had the gall to open a cooking school in Paris—a true story of triumphing over French naysayers and falling in love with a city along the way“An engaging, multilayered story of a woman navigating innumerable cultural differences to build a life in Paris and create her dream: to establish a French cooking school.”—David Lebovitz, author of My Paris KitchenWhen Jane Bertch was seventeen, her mother took her on a graduation trip to Paris. Thrilled to use her high school French, Jane found her halting attempts greeted with withering condescension by every waiter and shopkeeper she encountered. At the end of the trip, she vowed she would never return.Yet a decade later she found herself back in Paris, transferred there by the American bank she worked for. She became fluent in the language and excelled in her new position. But she had a different dream: to start a cooking school for foreigners like her, who wanted to take a few classes in French cuisine in a friendly setting, then bring their new skills to their kitchens back home. Predictably, Jane faced the skeptical French—how dare an American banker start a cooking school in Paris?—as well as real-estate nightmares, and a long struggle to find and attract clients.Thanks to Jane’s perseverance, La Cuisine Paris opened in 2009. Now the school is thriving, welcoming international visitors to come in and knead dough, whisk bechamel, whip meringue, and learn the care, precision, patience, and beauty involved in French cooking. The French Ingredient is the story of a young female entrepreneur building a life in a city and culture she grew to love. As she established her school, Jane learned how to charm, how to project confidence, and how to give it right back to rude waiters. Having finally made peace with the city she swore to never revisit,she now offers a love letter to France, and a master class in Parisian cooking—and living.

Sound Man

Author: Glyn Johns

Category: Biography & Memoir

Regular price: $6.99

Deal price: $1.99

Deal starts: September 21, 2024

Deal ends: September 21, 2024

Description:

A ROCK AND ROLL MEMOIR FROM GLYN JOHNS, THE LEGENDARY PRODUCER FEATURED IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY SERIES The Beatles: Get Back“Few figures in rock history have a more impressive résumé than Glyn Johns...[Sound Man] is full of amazing anecdotes from his fifty-year career.”—Rolling Stone“A fantastic romp through the pages of rock and roll history.”—Sir Paul McCartney, the Beatles In 2012, legendary producer and sound engineer Glyn Johns was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Over the course of his incredible career, Johns helped create some of rock’s most iconic albums, including those by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, the Eagles, the Who, the Clash, and, more recently, Ryan Adams and Band of Horses. In this one-of-a-kind memoir, Johns shares incredible stories about the musicians he’s worked with from the freewheeling sixties to the present. Sound Man is an intimate glimpse into rock and roll history and the perfect gift for any music fan.