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Biography and Memoir November 2025 |
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Last Rites
by Ozzy Osbourne
People say to me, if you could do it all again, knowing what you know now, would you change anything? I'm like, f*** no. If I'd been clean and sober, I wouldn't be Ozzy. If I'd done normal, sensible things, I wouldn't be Ozzy. At the age of 69, Ozzy Osbourne was on a triumphant farewell tour, playing to sold-out arenas and rave reviews all around the world. Then, disaster. In a matter of just a few weeks, he went from being hospitalized with a finger infection to having to abandon his tour - and all public life - as he faced near-total paralysis from the neck down.
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The Trouble with Fairy Tales: A Memoir
by Plum Johnson
The long-awaited second memoir from Plum Johnson, bestselling author of They Left Us Everything. The Trouble with Fairy Tales is a wise and insightful reflection on the relationships that sprawl across a lifetime. In it, Plum explores how we often sacrifice our independence and identity in our love lives, falling for the fairytale notion of happily ever after, and how it can take years, and many detours, to fulfil the most important relationship--the one with ourselves. Ripe with the humorous anecdotes, charming insights, and aching revelations so characteristic of Plum's style, the book is our window onto her reinvention of self as she moves through the various roles that many women inhabit: from compliant child to loving mother, rebel wife, artist, and successful writer.
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John Candy: A Life in Comedy
by Paul Myers
From his humble beginnings in sketch comedy with the Toronto branch of Second City, to his rise to fame in SCTV and Hollywood film classics like Planes, Trains and Automobiles and Uncle Buck, John Candy captivated audiences with his self-deprecating humour, emotional warmth, and gift for improvisation. Now, for the first time since Candy’s tragic death, bestselling biographer Paul Myers tells the full story of the man behind the laughs. Drawing on extensive research and exclusive interviews with many of Candy’s closest friends and colleagues, this book celebrates the comedian’s unparalleled talent, infectious charm, and generosity of spirit.
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Just Call Me Andi: Sports Stories from a Trailblazer
by Andria Petrillo
When Andi Petrillo decided to pursue a career in sportscasting, a woman offering her opinion on sports was still a novelty. She was constantly being criticized, scrutinized, and sexualized, but her love for sports - and her determination to prove she deserved to be doing what she loved - propelled her into a successful and historic career. From becoming the first woman to be part of the Hockey Night in Canada in-studio broadcast, to being the first woman to host a daily sports radio talk show in Canada (Leafs Lunch on TSN), to being the first woman to win a Canadian Screen Award for Best Sports Host, she’s come to see her perseverance as inspiration for young women who now believe they too can achieve great things in sports broadcasting
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Comedy Nerd: A Lifelong Obsession in Stories and Pictures
by Judd Apatow
An intimate, rollicking highly-visual memoir of a comedic genius that offers a rare glimpse into the creative life and inner workings of legendary director producer Judd Apatow through never-before-seen photos, letters and behind-the-scenes stories. In the mid-80s, a young, self-professed comedy nerd from Syosset, Long Island, named Judd Apatow took to the stage to perform his first standup routine - and survived. Over the coming decades, Apatow would translate his obsession for comedy into one of the most successful careers in Hollywood. Spanning decades, Comedy Nerd takes us on Apatow’s lifelong journey of fandom, creativity, and obsession. It is a candid, joyful, and fascinating portrait of an artist and storyteller who has spent decades making us laugh.
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Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, from Revolution to Autocracy
by Julia Ioffe
In 1990, 7-year-old Julia Ioffe and her family fled the Soviet Union. Nearly 20 years later, Ioffe returned to Moscow - only to discover just how much Russian society had changed while she had been living in America. The Soviet women she had known growing up - doctors, engineers, scientists - had seemingly been replaced with women desperate to marry rich and become stay-at-home moms. How had Russia gone from portraying itself as the vanguard of world feminism to the last bastion of conservative Christian values? In MOTHERLAND, Ioffe turns modern Russian history on its head, telling it exclusively through the stories of its women.
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Hammered: The Fight of My Life
by Dave Schultz
Before there was Bob Probert, Tie Domi, or Stu Grimson, there was Dave Schultz. The original enforcer changed the face of the NHL for decades to come, and helped bring the Philadephia Flyers their first Stanley Cup in franchise history, by scaring opponents into submission. His name was known and feared around the league - and still is. Schultz still draws long lines for his autograph. When the bright lights dimmed and the cheers went quiet, Schultz was left to grapple with the scale of all he’d lost. The money dwindled. Friendships faded. The lifeline of his marriage slipped from his hands. Finally, all that was left was the echo of fame, the booze, and the demons that shaped him into the fearsome fighter he became.
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Indignity: A Life Reimagined
by Lea Ypi
When Lea Ypi discovers that a photo of her grandmother, Leman, honeymooning in the Italian Alps in 1941 has been posted by a stranger on social media, she is faced with deeply unsettling questions. Growing up, she had been told all records of her grandmother’s youth were destroyed “when the police came and took everything” in the early days of communism in Albania. But there Leman was with her husband, Asllan Ypi: glamorous newlyweds while WWII was raging in the background. What follows is a thrilling reimagining of the past, as we are transported to the vanished world of Ottoman aristocracy in Salonica, the making of modern Greece and Albania, a global financial crisis, the horrors of war and the dawn of communism in the Balkans, through secret police archives and muddied memories.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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