Journey through captivity : story of a hostage in the midst of famine in Ethiopia / Sheth, Sheela

The author portrays the gripping story of a 49-day abduction in Ethiopia during famine and war in 1983, reflecting on resilience, emotional ambivalence, and relationships built during captivity. The book highlights strategies for survival, the experience of solitude, and the complex dynamics between captors and captives.

After lives : on biography and the mysteries of the human heart / Marshall, Megan

Megan Marshall's innovative books, including 'The Peabody Sisters' and the Pulitzer Prize-winning 'Margaret Fuller', are treasured works of American biography. In the richly absorbing essays of 'After Lives', Marshall turns her narrative gift to her own art and life, reinventing the personal essay form as a portal to the past with lessons for living into the future. The book's brilliant, assured interplay between memoir and biography places surprising characters on the page, including the twelfth-century Buddhist hermit Kamo no Chōmei, a reassuring spiritual presence for Marshall during several otherwise deracinating months in Kyoto. In her stunning coming-of-age tale "Free for a While", set in 1970s California, Marshall interweaves the story of her adolescence with that of Black Power martyr Jonathan Jackson, the author's AP history classmate, gunned down at seventeen in a failed attempt to free his famed older brother, George, from prison, in the case that put Angela Davis on the FBI's Most Wanted list. Here, too, is the author's passion for the biographical chase, and for the mysteries at its heart. She tells the astonishing story of viewing the disinterred remains of her onetime subject Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, wife of Nathaniel, and their daughter Una, the truths of whose early death Marshall works to reveal. Throughout these finely wrought essays, Marshall makes palpable her driving impulse to "learn what I could from others: how to live, how not to live, what it means to live."

All the parts we exile : a memoir / Nozari, Roza.

"From a queer Muslim woman and artist, a generous, insightful memoir that traces her journey toward radical self-acceptance and of exile from her ancestral home. As the youngest of three daughters, and the only one born in Canada soon after her parents' emigration from Iran, Roza Nozari began her life hungry for a sense of belonging. From her early years, she shared a passion for Iranian cuisine with her mother and craved stories of their ancestral home. Eventually they visited and she fell in love with its sights and smells, and with the warm embrace of their extended family. Yet Roza sensed something was amiss with her mother's happy, well-rehearsed story of their original departure. As Roza grew older, this longing for home transformed into a desire for inner understanding and liberation. She was lit up by the feminist texts in her women's studies courses, and shared radical ideas with her mother -- who in turn shared more of her past, from protesting for the Islamic revolution to her ambivalence about getting married. In this memoir, Roza braids the narrative of her mother's life together with her own on-going story of self, as she arrives at, then rejects, her queer identity, eventually finds belonging in queer spaces and within queer Iranian histories, and learns the truth about her family's move to Canada. All the Parts We Exile is a memoir of dualities: mother and daughter, home and away, shame and self-acceptance, conflict and peace, love and pain -- and the stories that exist within and between them. In sharp, emotionally honest and funny prose, Roza tenderly explores the grief around the parts we exile and the joy of those we hold close in order to be true to our deepest selves"-- Provided by publisher.

Eternal flame : the authorized biography of The Bangles / Bickerdike, Jennifer Otter.

With unprecedented access to founding members Debbi Peterson, Susanna Hoffs, and Vicki Peterson, this is the first authorized biography of this iconic group, featuring exclusive stories, input, and interviews from the pioneering band members themselves as well as those that knew them best. From playing the club circuit in 1980s' LA to bunking with Sting during a PR trip to the UK to topping the Billboard charts, to interludes with Prince and appearances on the definitive MTV, ETERNAL FLAME traces the band's rise to superstardom, taking readers behind-the-scenes and sharing with them never-before-shared anecdotes and personal ephemera.

Jane Austen's bookshelf : a rare book collector's quest to find the women writers who shaped a legend / Romney, Rebecca

Long before she was a rare book dealer, Rebecca Romney was a devoted reader of Jane Austen. She read and reread all her books, often wishing Austen wrote just one more. But Austen wasn't a lone genius. She wrote at a time of great experimentation for women writers--and clues about those women are sprinkled like bread crumbs throughout Austen's work. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn't a boor sings the praises of Ann Radcliffe. The phrase "pride and prejudice" came from Frances Burney's second novel, Cecilia. The women who populated Jane Austen's bookshelf profoundly influenced her work. So where had these women gone? Why hadn't Romney--despite her training--ever read them? And why were they no longer embraced as part of the wider literary canon? In "Jane Austen's Bookshelf", Romney investigates the lives and work of the women writers whom Austen loved: Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Lynch Thrale Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth. In each chapter, Romney explores how these women became writers, how they influenced Austen, and how they've been forgotten in the years since. Romney collects the once-famed works of these writers, physically re-creating Austen's bookshelf and making a convincing case for why these books should be placed back on the to-be-read pile of all book lovers today. In "Jane Austen's Bookshelf" will encourage you to look beyond assigned reading lists, question who decides what belongs there, and build your very own collection of favorite novels.

Lorne : the man who invented Saturday night live / Morrison, Susan

"Ever since its debut in the fall of 1975, Saturday Night Live's impact on the culture has been lasting and profound. It has been a breeding ground for our brightest comedy stars, launching the careers of John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Pete Davidson, and many many more. Its iconic sketches -- from Wayne's World to Weekend Update to Coneheads to the Californians to of course, More Cowbell -- have dominated water cooler talk for five decades, and its catchphrases, from "we're not worthy!" to "Daaaaa Beeeears" are embedded in the public lexicon. And at the center of it all, from the moment of its inception to the present day, is one man: producer Lorne Michaels. Over his 50 years running the show, Lorne Michaels has become a revered, inimitable and bewildering presence in the world of entertainment. He's a mogul, a kingmaker, a tastemaker, a grudge-holder, a mensch, a workaholic, a genius spotter of talent, a ruthless businessman, a name dropper, an obsessive step counter, the inspiration for Dr. Evil, a winner of 90 Emmys -- and a mystery. Generations of writers, actors, and stars have spent their lives trying to figure him out. He's "Obi wan Kenobi" (Tracey Morgan), the "Great and Powerful Oz" (Kate McKinnon), the Godfather (Will Forte), or "some kind of very distant, strange Comedy God" (Bob Odenkirk). Lorne will introduce you to him, in full, for the first time. With unprecedented access to Michaels (who has spent his career mostly avoiding reporters) and the entire SNL apparatus, The New Yorker's Susan Morrison takes you behind the curtain for the rollicking, definitive story of how Lorne created the institution that would change comedy forever. Lorne features hundreds of interviews with Michaels, conducted over several years; his close friends (such as Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and Steve Martin); and the candid, hilarious stars of the show, including Chris Rock, Amy Poehler, Jason Sudeikis, Bill Hader, Buck Henry, Chevy Chase, and more. Nearly a decade in the making, Lorne is an intimate, deeply reported, and wildly entertaining account of a man singularly obsessed with the show that would define his life -- and change American culture"--

No fault : a memoir of romance and divorce / Mlotek, Haley

"An intimate and candid account of one of the most romantic and revolutionary relationships: divorce. When Haley Mlotek was ten years old, she told her mother to leave her father. Divorce was all around her. Her mother ran a mediation and marriage counselling practice out of Mlotek's childhood home, and Mlotek spent her preteen years answering the phones and typing out parenting plans for couples in the process of leaving each other. She grew up with the sense that divorce was an outcome to both resist and desire, an ordeal that promised something better on the other side of something bad. But when she herself went on to marry -- and then divorce -- the man she had been with for twelve years, suddenly, she had to reconsider everything she thought she understood about divorce. Deftly combining her personal story with wry, searching social and literary exploration, No Fault is a brilliant account of 21st century divorce -- its remarkably common yet seemingly singular impact, and what it reveals about our society and our desires for family, love, and friendship. Mlotek asks profound questions about what divorce should be, who it is for, and why the institution of marriage maintains its power, all while charting a poignant and cathartic journey away from her own marriage and towards an unknown future. Brilliant, funny, and unflinchingly honest, No Fault is a kaleidoscopic look at marriage, secrets, ambitions, and what it truly means to love and live with uncertainty, betrayal, and hope"--

One day, everyone will have always been against this / El Akkad, Omar

"From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an empire that doesn't consider you fully human. On October 25th, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: "One day, when it's safe, when there's no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it's too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this." This tweet was viewed more than ten million times. One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture that has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in Western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse"--

The prosecutor : one man's battle to bring Nazis to justice / Fairweather, Jack

"From the #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of The Volunteer, the powerful true story of a Jewish lawyer who returned to Germany after World War II to prosecute war crimes, only to find himself pitted against a nation determined to bury the past. At the end of the Nuremberg trial in 1946, some of the greatest war criminals in history were sentenced to death, but hundreds of thousands of Nazi murderers and collaborators remained at large. The Allies were ready to overlook their pasts as the Cold War began, and the horrors of the Holocaust were in danger of being forgotten. In The Prosecutor, Jack Fairweather brings to life the remarkable story of Fritz Bauer, a gay, Jewish judge from Stuttgart who survived the Nazis and made it his mission to force his countrymen to confront their complicity in the genocide. In this deeply researched book, Fairweather draws on unpublished family papers, newly declassified German records, and exclusive interviews to immerse readers in the shadowy, unfamiliar world of postwar West Germany where those who implemented genocide run the country, the CIA is funding Hitler's former spy-ring in the east, and Nazi-era anti-gay laws are strictly enforced. But once Bauer landed on the trail of Adolf Eichmann, he wouldn't be intimidated. His journey took him deep into the dark heart of West Germany, where his fight for justice would set him against his own government and a network of former Nazis and spies bent on silencing him. In a time when the history of the Holocaust is taken for granted, The Prosecutor reveals the courtroom battles that were fought to establish its legacy and the personal cost of speaking out. The result is a searing portrait of a nation emerging from the ruins of fascism and one man's courage in forcing his people--and the world--to face the truth"--

Talk to me : lessons from a family forged by history / Benjamin, Rich (Richard M.)
Lessons from a family forged by history
"Rich Benjamin's mother, Danielle Fignolé, grew up the eldest in a large family living a comfortable life in Port-au-Prince. Her mother was a schoolteacher, her father a populist hero -- a labor leader and politician. The first true champion of the black masses, he eventually became the country's president in 1957. But two weeks after his inauguration, that life was shattered. Soldiers took Danielle's parents at gunpoint and put them on a plane to New York, a coup hatched by the Eisenhower administration. Danielle and her siblings were kidnapped, and ultimately smuggled out of the country. Growing up, Rich knew little of this. No one in his family spoke of it. He didn't know why his mother struggled with emotional connection, why she was so erratic, so quick to anger. And she, in turn, knew so little about him, about the emotional pain he moved through as a child, the physical agony from his blood disease, while coming to terms with his sexuality at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. For all that they could talk about -- books, learning, world events -- the deepest parts of themselves remained a mystery to one another, a silence that, the older Rich got, the less he could bear. It would take Rich years to piece together the turmoil that carried forward from his grandfather, to his mother, to him, and then to bring that story to light. In Talk to Me, he doesn't just paint the portrait of his family, but a bold, pugnacious portrait of America -- of the human cost of the country's hostilities abroad, the experience of migrants on these shores, and how the indelible ties of family endure through triumph and loss, from generation to generation"--