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New Biographies at Riverside Public Library |
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Newest Books are at the Top Click on a title for more information or to place a hold. |
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Ring of Salt: A Memoir of Finding Home and Hope on the Wild Coast of Ireland
by Betsy Cornwell
At twenty-four, Betsy Cornwell runs away to Ireland for a fresh start. Leaving behind a painful past, she chases her dream of becoming a novelist to the misty shores of the Aran Islands. There she meets a handsome and charming horse trainer, and her life takes on the glow of a fairy tale when they elope to Gretna Green. Five years later, her
happy ending has twisted into a nightmare. Betsy is trapped in an abusive marriage, isolated and afraid with a newborn baby. On her son's first birthday, she must flee home again, this time turning to the women around her--her local survivor support group, a trusted family friend,
and an online Smith College alumnae network--for help she'd never known she could ask for. After a brush with homelessness, she
struggles to scrape together a living for herself and her son. On
sleepless nights, she scrolls through real estate listings that might as
well be castles in the air, and starts to foster an impossible dream: What if she could use her writing to buy a home, one that no one could take away from her and her baby? One that might become a haven, not just for her family, but other single parent artists and writers, too? When she discovers a historic knitting factory and former cinema on Ireland's rugged Connemara coastline, left empty and crumbling for years, that precarious dream becomes her lifeline. Over the next two years she works to crowdfund the old knitting factory's purchase by sharing its story and her own, in candid posts that range from the unexpectedly steep learning curves she encounters with home renovations and internet dating, to her heartbreaking fight to keep custody of her son, with her growing online community. But as the deadline to buy nears, she realizes she will have to reckon with everything she believes about family, survival, and what happily-ever-after truly means for her dream
to have any chance of coming true.
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Marilyn and Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe
by Gail Crowther
Far from the spotlights of the Hollywood film sets and the flashbulbs of the press, Marilyn Monroe was a great reader and lover of books. Her association with writers did not stop at reading their words on the page. She was, of course, briefly married to one of America's best-known playwrights, Arthur Miller, and met a number of other writers who
moved in his literary world. But she also met authors independently of Miller, many of whom were fans of her films and keen to meet her. Marilyn And Her Books: The Literary Life of Marilyn Monroe charts the intellectual life of a screen legend, revealing how Monroe, who left high school before graduation, embarked on an impressive and progressive program of self-education, hungry for knowledge and devouring books
as an active and engaged reader. Her personal library reflects this inquiring mind.
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Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith
by J. D. Vance
Communion is a spiritual exploration of what it means to be a Christian in all the seasons of life JD Vance has experienced—as a child, a young man, a husband, a father, and a leader. Picking up in some ways where Hillbilly Elegy left off, Communion recounts how Vance's pursuit of material privileges ultimately led him into a secular wilderness. Communion reveals how Vance regained his faith and discusses his conversion to Catholicism, how his faith guides his work in public life, and how it shapes his thoughts about the future.
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The Traveler: One Man's Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris
by Andrea Wulf
From an early age, it was clear that George Forster possessed a brilliant mind. At just ten years old, he became a botanist when he accompanied his irascible father, Reinhold, on a wild expedition to Russia. By the time he was twelve, they had moved to London and the young boy soon became the breadwinner by publishing translations of the most popular travel accounts of the day. Then, in 1772, at the age of seventeen, George Forster joined Cook's second voyage, the most daring expedition of the time. The HMS Resolution set sail with orders to find what was then the hypothetical southern continent of Antarctica, stopping at the islands of the South Pacific-- including New Zealand, Vanuatu, Tonga, Tahiti, and Easter Island--along the way. The Resolution carried the ambitions of the most powerful empire in the world, but Forster brought an understanding that was far ahead of his day. A gifted observer, linguist, artist, and writer, he studied the diverse cultures of the world without prejudice and was one of the first Europeans to talk about universal human rights. Recognized on his return as one of Europe's brightest minds, Forster used his fame to advocate for freedom and human rights and wrote against empire, white supremacy, and slavery. He admired strong, educated women, even accepting his wife's independence--and her love affairs. Driven by his passion for equality, Forster would eventually be pulled into the vortex of the French Revolution and live in Paris during the Reign of Terror. Throughout it
all, he held close the radical belief that our common humanity is far greater than what sets us apart.
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You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir
by Christina Applegate
Christina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights-camera-action. What started as a financial necessity soon became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 70s and 80s. She rocketed to stardom on the sitcom Married...with Children and went on to captivate audiences in classics like Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead..., Anchorman, and Dead to Me in her five-decade
long career. Then it all stopped. A Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2021 confined her to a king-sized bed and the company of memories she'd rather forget: memories of the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that stalked her meteoric rise, of her mother's fight against addiction and abuse after her father left, and of the tax life had taken on her body
and mind that was suddenly coming due. Now, at her most intimate
and vulnerable, she unveils a story not even those closest to her fully know.
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This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, a Life
by Deborah Lutz
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) was only twenty-seven-years old when she began work on one of the most important novels in the English language. Two years later in 1847, she completed Wuthering Heights.
It took the world almost a century to catch up to Brontë’s masterpiece, and it has taken even longer to know Brontë―an elusive figure, with a ghostly legacy provoked by her early death and the loss (and likely destruction) of almost all her personal papers. Drawing on formerly inaccessible notebooks and manuscripts, This Dark Night constructs a portrait of Brontë, her famous writing sisters Charlotte and Anne, and the effect of their sisters’ and mother’s tragic deaths. In the first full-length biography in over twenty years, renowned scholar Deborah Lutz sketches the days of a woman crafting otherworldly fiction while
running her father’s parsonage: writing interweaving with household work, daydreaming, and exploring the rough-hewn outdoors. As she traces the influence of Brontë’s life and work, Lutz follows how Brontë’s fantastical early poems of the night sky, women rulers, and outsiders
and rebels grew into the stormy, transcendent Wuthering Heights. Lutz also illuminates the overlooked ways that the legendary writer
addressed debates of her time that still resonate today, including questions of gender and sexuality, race and class, and rapid industrialization set against the natural world. From her menagerie of dogs and birds to the beloved moors that Brontë wandered and later emblazoned in her novel, Lutz depicts the passions of an author at odds with convention.
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Famesick: A Memoir
by Lena Dunham
In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain. For the last decade, as
she's spent countless hours in doctor's waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of
Lena Dunham's body has felt, as she puts it, like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight. It's not easy dragging a wrecked car
anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lam corset. Or to the set of the hit show that you--as a twenty-five-year-old--are writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House,
the Golden Globes, or your publicist's office to discuss the latest internet disaster. But Dunham does it--even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she's meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her--because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again--if only she could remember who that self was.
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George Orwell: Life and Legacy
by Robert Colls
George Orwell: Life and Legacy is an intellectual biography which offers an authentic account of Orwell's life and work from his birth in the high noon of British imperialism in 1903, to his death on the eve of the Cold War in 1950―a life played out against a background of two world wars, the rise of communism, and the war-time pre-eminence of the United States. Yet no matter how alert he was to the world order, and no
matter how guarded he was in his personal life, Orwell never shied
away from the question of who he was, and the contradictions that entailed. His two great modern masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) arrived to define the age he lived in. Interest in him has never abated since; no writer is more quoted or misquoted. Orwell is in danger of being lost to soundbites. Colls reveals the author once again.
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American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington
by H. W. Brands
From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to
public service as the first president of the United States, American Patriarch brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to lead. With a dazzling cast of characters--from the French and Indians on the Ohio frontier; to the Marquis de Lafayette, Benedict Arnold, and Baron von Steuben on the revolutionary battlefield; to Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton locked in conflict during his presidency--American Patriarch casts Washington as the icon of
American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow. Arriving in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence, this is a masterful
portrait of Washington as the unrivaled leader of his times.
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