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| Elton John |
An official autobiography by the influential music artist, published to coincide with the release of Rocketman, includes coverage of John's complicated upbringing in a London suburb, his celebrity collaborations, his struggles with addiction and the establishment of his AIDS Foundation. |
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| Kate Beaton |
Before there was Kate Beaton, New York Times bestselling cartoonist of Hark! A Vagrant, there was Katie Beaton of the Cape Breton Beatons, specifically Mabou, a tight-knit seaside community where the lobster is as abundant as beaches, fiddles, and Gaelic folk songs. With the singular goal of paying off her student loans, Katie heads out west to take advantage of Alberta's oil rush--part of the long tradition of East Coasters who seek gainful employment elsewhere when they can't find it in the homeland they love so much. Katie encounters the harsh reality of life in the oil sands, where trauma is an everyday occurrence yet is never discussed... Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands is an untold story of Canada: a country that prides itself on its egalitarianethos and natural beauty while simultaneously exploiting both the riches of its land and the humanity of its people.
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| Amanda Jette Knox | An inspirational story of accepting and embracing two trans people in a family—a family who shows what's possible when you "lead with love. |
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| Stephanie Land | An economic-hardship journalist describes the years she worked in low-pay domestic work under wealthy employers, contrasting the privileges of the upper-middle class to the realities of the overworked laborers supporting them. |
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| Jessica J. Lee |
A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.
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| David Robertson |
David A. Robertson, the son of a Cree father and a white, settler mother, grew up with virtually no knowledge or understanding of his family's Indigenous roots. His father, Dulas, or Don as he became known, had grown up on the trapline in the bush only to be transplanted permanently to a house on reserve in Manitoba, where he was not permitted to speak his language--Swampy Cree--and was forced to learn and speak only English while in day school, unless in secret in the forest with his friends. Robertson's mother, Beverly Eyers, grew up in a small town in Manitoba, a town with no Indigenous families, until Don came to town as a United Church minister and fell in love with her. Robertson's parents made the decision to raise their children, in his words, "separate from his Indigenous identity." He grew up without his father's teachings or knowledge of his life or experiences. All he had left was blood memory, the pieces of who he was engrained in the fabric of his DNA. Pieces that he has spent a lifetime putting together. Black Water is a family memoir of intergenerational trauma and healing, of connection, of story, of how David Robertson's father's life--growing up in Norway House Cree Nation in Manitoba, then making the journey from Norway House to Winnipeg--informed the author's own life, and might even have saved it. Facing a story nearly erased by the designs of history, father and son journey together back to the trapline at Black Water, through the past to create a new future.
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| Omer Aziz |
In a tough neighborhood on the outskirts of Toronto, miles away from wealthy white downtown, Omer Aziz struggles to find his place as a first-generation Pakistani Muslim boy. As he falls in love with books, and makes his way to Queen's University in Ontario, Sciences Po in Paris, Cambridge University in England, and finally Yale Law School, he continually confronts his own feelings of doubt and insecurity at being an outsider. In Brown Boy, Omer Aziz has written a book that eloquently describes the complex process of creating an identity that fuses where he's from, what people see in him, and who he knows himself to be.
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| Paris Hilton |
In this deeply personal memoir, the ultimate It Girl shares, for the first time, the hidden history that traumatized and defined her and how she rose above a series of heart-wrenching challenges to find healing, lasting love and a life of meaning and purpose. |
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| Justin Bourne |
Bob Bourne was everything a son wants to emulate--an NHL All-Star, a Sports Illustrated "Sportsman of the Year," a Stanley Cup champion. Justin Bourne followed in those huge footsteps, leading his teams in scoring year after year, and finally garnering an invitation to the New York Islanders' training camp--the same team his father had played for. But Bourne was also following his father down a darker path. Though he hadn't begun drinking until he was 21, by 36 his drinking had nearly swamped his career and his marriage. In an act of brutal self-honesty--which may not have been possible if not for his understanding of how lying spurred by alcoholism can cause a family pain--Bourne got help, got sober, and confronted what his father and the game mean to him. Down and Back is a frank and unflinching appraisal of the game and Bourne's relationship with it: the violence and danger, the booze and drugs, the consequences of fame. But it is also an honest look at what is redeeming about the sport, through the eyes of someone who grew up in NHL dressing rooms, who has skated on NHL ice as both a player and a coach, and who inherited the game from a man he's grown to better understand by looking more closely at himself.
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| John Boessenecker |
Black Bart is widely regarded today as not only the most notorious stage robber of the Old West but also the best behaved. Over his lifetime, Black Bart held up at least twenty-nine stagecoaches in California and Oregon with mild, polite commands, stealing from Wells Fargo and the US mail but never robbing a passenger. Such behavior earned him the title of a true 'gentleman bandit.' His real name was Charles E. Boles, and in the public eye, Charles lived quietly as a boulevardier in San Francisco, the wealthiest and most exciting city in the American West. Boles was an educated man who traveled among respectable crowds. Because he did not drink, fight or consort with prostitutes, his true calling as America's greatest stage robber was never suspected until his final capture in 1883. Sheriffs searched and struggled for years to find him, and newspaper editors had a field day reporting his exploits. Legends and rumors trailed his name until his mysterious death, and his ultimate fate remains one of the greatest mysteries of the Old West. Now historian John Boessenecker sheds new light on Black Bart's beginnings, reputation and exploits, bringing to life the glittering story of the mysterious stage robber who doubled as a rich, genteel socialite in the golden era of the Wild West.
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| Whit Fraser |
In this memoir, Whit Fraser weaves scenes from more than fifty years of reporting and living in the North with fascinating portraits of the Dene and Inuit activists who successfully overturned the colonial order and politically reshaped Canada--including his wife, Mary Simon, Canada's first Indigenous governor general. |
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| Elliot Page |
With Juno's massive success, Elliot Page became one of the world's most beloved actors. His dreams were coming true, but the pressure to perform suffocated him. He was forced to play the part of the glossy young starlet, a role that made his skin crawl, on and off set. The career that had been an escape out of his reality and into a world of imagination was suddenly a nightmare.
As he navigated criticism and abuse from some of the most powerful people in Hollywood, a past that snapped at his heels, and a society dead set on forcing him into a binary, Elliot often stayed silent, unsure of what to do, until enough was enough. Full of behind the scenes details and intimate interrogations on sex, love, trauma, and Hollywood, Pageboy is the story of a life pushed to the brink. But at its core, this beautifully written, winding journey of what it means to untangle ourselves from the expectations of others is an ode to stepping into who we truly are with defiance, strength, and joy. |
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| David Grohl | The legendary American musician, singer, songwriter and documentary filmmaker offers a collection of stories, written by his own hand, that focus on the memories of his life, from his childhood to today. |
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| Christie Tate | The author of the New York Times bestseller Group reflects on her lifelong struggles to sustain female friendship and how the return of an old friend helped her explore the reasons she has avoided attachment. |
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| Harrison Mooney |
A narrative that amplifies a voice rarely heard--that of the child at the centre of a transracial adoption--and a searing account of being raised by religious fundamentalists. Harrison Mooney was born to a West African mother and adopted as an infant by a white evangelical family. Growing up as a Black child, Harry's racial identity is mocked and derided, while at the same time he is made to participate in the fervour of his family's revivalist church. Confused and crushed by fundamentalist dogma and consistently abused for his colour, Harry must transition from child to young adult while navigating and surviving zealotry, paranoia and prejudice. After years of internalized anti-Blackness, Harry begins to redefine his terms and reconsider his history. His journey from white cult to Black consciousness culminates in a moving reunion with his biological mother, who waited twenty-five years for the chance to tell her son the truth: she wanted to keep him. This powerful memoir considers the controversial practice of transracial adoption from the perspective of families that are torn apart and children who are stripped of their culture, all in order to fill evangelical communities' demand for babies. Throughout this most timely tale of race, religion and displacement, Harrison Mooney's wry, evocative prose renders his deeply personal tale of identity accessible and light, giving us a Black coming-of-age narrative set in a world with little love for Black children.
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| Tom Felton | The actor who played iconic role of the Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter movies recalls his experiences growing up in the whirlwind of the pop culture phenomenon while navigating life as a normal teenager. |
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| David Ambroz | A national poverty and child welfare expert who was raised homeless in New York City discusses how he escaped poverty to become a powerful child welfare advocate for the Obama administration and major U.S. companies. |
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| Timothy Bella | This definitive new biography of the NBA legend explores his early years growing up in Alabama, his NBA career and emergence as an advocate for social change and enduring voice in pop culture. |
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| Jennette McCurdy | The iCarly and Sam & Cat star, after her controlling mother dies, gets the help she needs to overcome eating disorders, addiction and unhealthy relationships, and finally decides what she really wants for the first time in her life. |
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