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Always look on the bright side of life : a sortabiography
by Eric Idle
Published to commemorate the troupe's 50th anniversary, the Monty Python founding member and creator of the Tony Award-winning ""Spamalot"" shares riotous celebrity and family anecdotes from his boarding-school childhood and landmark career in comedy.
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This will only hurt a little
by Busy Philipps
Presents a memoir by the beloved comedic actress known for her roles on Freaks and Geeks, Dawson’s Creek and Cougar Town, who has become a breakout star on Instagram
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Beastie Boys book
by Mike D
Featuring contributions by the group's surviving members and complemented by rare visuals, a panoramic chronicle of the Beastie Boys traces their early collaborations, genre-breaking achievements and evolution as musicians and social activists.
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| Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive by Stephanie LandSingle mom Stephanie Land struggles to make a living as a housecleaner and dreams of attending college to become a writer. "An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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Germaine : The Life of Germaine Greer
by Elizabeth Kleinhenz
As a student in Melbourne, Elizabeth Kleinhenz heard frequent talk of this almost mythical figure, Germaine Greer. Urged on by her mother she read The Female Eunuch, a clarion call that rallied women to assert their female power, and, like her mother and millions of others across the world, changed her life.
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Lady Sings the Blues : 50th Anniversary Edition
by Billie Holiday
In a fiftieth anniversary edition of Holiday's unforgettable memoir, the legendary singer describes her early childhood in an East Baltimore ghetto, her career as an internationally acclaimed jazz vocalist, and her years in bondage to a drug habit. Reprint.
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| The Man Who Would Be Sherlock: The Real-Life Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle by Christopher SandfordAn engrossing biography that investigates the similarities between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous creation, such as their shared penchant for crime solving. Doyle helped exonerate two falsely convicted men --Oscar Slater was tried for murder; George Edalji for animal mutilation.
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Napoleon : the Man Behind the Myth
by Adam Zamoyski
The first writer in English to go back to the original European sources, Adam Zamoyski's portrait of Napoleon is historical biography at its finest. Napoleon inspires passionately held and often conflicting visions. Was he a god-like genius, Romantic avatar, megalomaniac monster, compulsive warmonger or just a nasty little dictator?
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| Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love by Dani ShapiroAfter submitting her DNA for analysis on a whim, Dani Shapiro discovered that her long-deceased dad was not her biological father. Grappling with the consequences of this shocking family secret, she set out to uncover the true story of her parentage.
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| The Unwinding of the Miracle: A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After by Julie Yip-WilliamsA poignant and page-turning memoir of Julie Yip-Williams' five-year battle with Stage IV colon cancer. Moving anecdotes of the author's early life; born with congenital cataracts to an impoverished Chinese family in Vietnam, she barely survived infancy after her grandmother suggested a potion to help her "sleep forever."
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I am dynamite! : a life of Nietzsche
by Sue Prideaux
Illuminates the life of the famous philosopher and the events and people—including family members, the composer Richard Wagner and former lover Lou Salomé—that helped shape his brilliant, eccentric but also deeply troubled mind.
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Journey Towards Justice
by Kim Workman
Life is nothing more than a collection of stories – but within those stories there are threads of meaning that, over a seventy-year journey, make sense of one human life. Kim Workman grew up in the Wairarapa, son of a Pākehā mother and Māori father. His whakapapa comes from Ngāti Kahungunu and Rangitāne; Pāpāwai Marae near Greytown is the place to which he always returns. Jazz musician, policeman, public servant, prison manager, prominent campaigner for restorative justice - Kim’s life is full of passion and spirit, research and writing, action and commitment.
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Slippery Jim or Patriotic Statesman? : James Macandrew of Otago
by R. J. Bunce
This is a biography of one of New Zealand's most colourful and persuasive politicians. When James Macandrew arrived in Dunedin from Scotland in 1851, other settlers were impressed by his energy and enthusiasm for new initiatives. With his finger in a lot of commercial pies, he set about making himself a handsome income which he eventually lost, declaring himself bankrupt and ending up in a debtors' prison for a time. Politics became another enterprise at which he threw himself with a passion.
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The beginning of everything : The Year I Lost My Mind and Found Myself
by Andrea J Buchanan
Andrea Buchanan lost her mind while crossing the street one blustery March morning. The cold winter air triggered a coughing fit, and she began to choke. She was choking on a lot that day. A sick son. A pending divorce. The guilt of failing as a partner and as a mother. When the coughing finally stopped, she thought it was over. She could not have been more wrong. When she coughed that morning, a small tear ripped through her dura mater, the membrane covering the brain and spinal cord. But she didn't know that yet.
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| Autumn by Karl Ove KnausgaardWritten as a "Letter to an Unborn Daughter," each section of this perceptive free-association memoir eschews traditional storytelling conventions to find the extraordinary in the mundane.
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| Dear Mr. You by Mary-Louise ParkerA lyrical and nostalgic collection of letters addressed (but never sent) to the men (both real and hypothetical) who have impacted Mary-Louise Parker's life. Don't miss: Parker's touching letter to her deceased father: "To convey in any existing language how much I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean." |
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| Love, Nina: A Nanny Writes Home by Nina StibbeWhile working as a 20-year-old nanny in early 1980s London, Nina Stibbe wrote gossipy letters home detailing life with her charges and their famous parents. For fans of: quirky British humor and snappy dialogue. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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