In this award-winning memoir, a poet recalls his difficult childhood as the son of a poor lay preacher in a Pennsylvania mountain town.In Spellbound, David McKain brings readers inside the secret world of a boy growing up in "God's Country," a small oil-drilling town in the Allegheny Mountains through the forties and fifties. His devoutly religious parents, overwhelmed by their own struggles, relinquished their son's upbringing to the town and the wooded s...

In this "richly imagined" dystopian vision, mankind must find a way to survive as modern civilization slowly comes apart ( O, The Oprah Magazine).When Earth ran dry of oil, the age of the automobile came to an end; electricity flickered out. With deprivation came desperation—and desperation drove humanity backward to a state of existence few could have imagined.In the tiny hamlet of Union Grove, New York, every day is a struggle. For Mayor Robert E...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the ide...

The New York Times bestselling memoir about growing up in small-town Indiana, from the author of The Solace of Leaving Early.When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the Pulitzer Prize–winner and bestselling author, "a grand memoir.... Bragg tells about the South with such power and bone-naked love ... he will make you cry" (Atlanta Journal-Constitution).This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and inste...

Small Beneath the Sky is a tender, unsparing portrait of a family. It is also a book about place. Growing up in a small prairie city, where the local heroes were hockey players and curlers, Lorna Crozier never once dreamed of becoming a writer. Nonetheless, the grace, wisdom, and wit of her poetry have won her international acclaim. In this marvellous volume of recollections, she charts the geography that has shaped her character and her sense of ...

**#4 on The New York Times’ list of The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 YearsThe New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of a hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation“Wickedly funny and always movingly illuminating, thanks to kick-ass storytelling and a poet’s ear.” —Oprah.com**The Liars’ Club took the world by storm and raised the art of the memoir to an entirely new level, bringing about a drama...

From Charles Portis, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of True Grit**,** The Dog of the South is a novel about a husband on a crazy road trip pursuing his runaway wife.“Hilarious . . . A very American voice.” —Bob Odenkirk, The WeekRay Midge is waiting for his credit card bill to arrive. His wife, ...

Newbery medalist Jerry Spinelli has penned his early autobiography with all the warmth, humor, and drama of his best-selling fiction. And don't miss the author's highly anticipated new novel, Dead Wednesday!"A master of those embarrassing, gloppy, painful, and suddenly wonderful things that happen on the razor's edge between childhood and full-fledged adolescence" --The Washington PostFrom first memories through high school, including firs...

In New York's Long Island, in the unpredictable decade of the 1960s, a young boy laments the approaching close of summer and the advent of sixth grade. Growing up in a household with an overworked father whom he rarely sees, an alcoholic mother who paints wonderful canvases that are never displayed, an older brother who serves as both tormentor and protector, and a younger sister who inhabits her own secret world, the boy takes his amusements where he can find them. Some of his free time i...

"She goes a long way with her book to prove that humor is the best -- possibly the only -- way to keep the world on an even keel."CHICAGO SUN-TIMESRemember the things Mother used to say? Erma Bombeck remembers them all and now she's using them on her own kids! With clever illustrations by Bil Keane, these really funny, too-true observations on family and kids and why it shouldn't work but does, is a wonderful antitdote to the daily problems and crises that every family faces....

Told in her own words, My Own Two Feet is Newbery Medal–winning author Beverly Cleary’s second heartfelt and relatable memoir.The New Yorker called Beverly Cleary's first volume of memoirs, A Girl From Yamhill, "a warm, honest book, as interesting as any novel."Now the creator of the classic children's stories millions grew up with continues her own fascinating story. Here is Beverly Cleary, from college years to the publication of her first book. It is a f...