Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Woman Who Walked into Doors

by Roddy Doyle

The Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha draws a portrait of a working-class woman struggling to reclaim her dignity after marriage to an abusive husband and her own alcoholism. Reprint. NYT.

A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness

A Man Named Dave: A Story of Triumph and Forgiveness

by Dave J. Pelzer

The inspiring conclusion to A Child Called "It" and The Lost Boy "All those years you tried your best to break me, and I'm still here. One day you'll see, I'm going to make something of myself."--Dave Pelzer, from A Man Named Dave These words were Dave Pelzer's declaration of independence to his mother, and they represented the ultimate act of self-reliance. Dave's father never intervened as his... (more)

All But My Life: A Memoir

by Gerda Weissmann Klein

All But My Life is the unforgettable story of Gerda Weissmann Klein's six-year ordeal as a victim of Nazi cruelty. From her comfortable home in Bielitz (present-day Bielsko) in Poland to her miraculous survival and her liberation by American troops--including the man who was to become her husband--in Volary, Czechoslovakia, in 1945, Gerda takes the reader on a terrifying journey. Gerda's serene and idyllic... (more)

Brick Lane: A Novel

by Monica Ali

After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell's Angel? And how must she comfort... (more)

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

by Anne Lamott

When Anne Lamott was twenty-five, her father died after a long struggle with brain cancer. Over the next few years she herself began to suffer from an overwhelming sense of desperation and fear which she tried to suppress with alcohol and pills. Although she was managing to write and publish successful novels at the time, it was clear that her life was spinning out of control. In Traveling Mercies , a... (more)

A Child Called "It"

One Child's Courage to Survive

by David J. Pelzer

This book chronicles the unforgettable account of one of the most severe child abuse cases in California history. It is the story of Dave Pelzer, who was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games--games that left him nearly dead. He had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him... (more)

Fat Girl : A True Story

by Judith Moore

For any woman who has ever had a love/hate relationship with food and with how she looks; for anyone who has knowingly or unconsciously used food to try to fill the hole in his heart or soothe the craggy edges of his psyche, Fat Girl is a brilliantly rendered, angst-filled coming-of-age story of gain and loss. From the lush descriptions of food that call to mind the writings of M.F. K.Fisher at her... (more)

Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction)

Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You (Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction)

by Sue William Silverman

From age four to 18, Sue William Silverman was sexually abused by her father, a high-ranking government official. This is an often graphic memoir of those years which recounts how Silverman's mother ignored her distress, thus conspiring in an attempt to keep the situation unreported and undetected.

Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

by Jennifer Lauck

To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was home -- the place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles. Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a child's will to survive takes flight....

Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival (Women Writing Africa)

Born in the Big Rains: A Memoir of Somalia and Survival (Women Writing Africa)

by Fadumo Korn

This powerful memoir portrays the life-altering transformation of a feisty nomad girl who undergoes genital excision. Crippled with rheumatism as a result of the cutting, Fadumo Korn, who once freely roamed the deserts of her native Somalia, is sent to live with a wealthy uncle, brother to the Somali president. She enters a world of luxury underpinned with political instability and cruelty, but receives an... (more)

A Paper Life

by Tatum O'Neal

A real Hollywood-style tell-all, this is the extremely candid and highly explosive autobiography of one of the movie industry's most talented and troubled young stars. At age ten, Tatum O'Neal became the youngest Oscar winner in history for her performance in the film classic Paper Moon . As the sidekick to her father, the flamboyant star and man-about-town Ryan O'Neal, she became a fixture at the most... (more)

Still Waters

by Jennifer Lauck

Anger is a poison ivy in the heart and if it grows unchecked, it covers all the soft spaces where you love and understand and feel joy. There's power in anger, sure, a power that can help you survive. But true wisdom is in knowing when to let it go. In Still Waters, Jennifer Lauck continues the riveting true story begun in her critically acclaimed memoir, Blackbird. Clutching her pink trunk filled with... (more)

Act One: An Autobiography by

by Moss Hart

One of the most celebrated theater books of the century and a memorial to a bygone age--filled with the wonder of Broadway during the Depression and the years before World War II.

A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood

A Hole in the World: An American Boyhood

by Richard Rhodes

When he first published A Hole in the World in 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winner Richard Rhodes helped launch and legitimate a decade-long publishing phenomenon--the memoir of abused childhood. In this tenth anniversary edition, Rhodes offers new reflections on the abuse he and his older brother endured at the hands of their terrorizing stepmother and negligent father. He also describes readers' powerful and moving... (more)

Before the Knife

by Carolyn Slaughter

In this unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Carolyn Slaughter recalls her childhood in Africa and how the land itself released her from a rage that threatened to destroy her. For Carolyn Slaughter, who grew up in Botswana in the 1950s, it was the Kalahari Desert that made life bearable. Her father was a cruel and violent district commissioner during the last days of British colonial rule, and their family’s... (more)

Twisted Roots of Evil

by Susan A. Kesegich

Twisted Roots of Evil details the authors journey from her abusive upbringing in the rural south to survival at the turn of the millennium. As a child, Susan Kesegich and her sisters suffered extreme neglect, sexual, mental and physical abuse. Their father raped them and they watched him tie their mother to a tree, light a fire beneath her, and shoot at her. Marrying at the tender age of fourteen to escape the... (more)

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

by Ishmael Beah

My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life. “Why did you leave Sierra Leone?” “Because there is a war.” “You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?” “Yes, all the time.” “Cool.” I smile a little. “You should tell us about it sometime.” “Yes, sometime.” This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s.... (more)

Familiar Heat

by Mary Hood

When a brutal accident leaves young Faye Perry with permanent amnesia, her new husband, Vic, reverts to his old ways, leading to an estrangement that seems irreparable, but Faye and Vic live in a world where both love and memory can perish and come back to life in wonderful, unexpected ways. Reprint.

Acting Out: A Novel

by Benilde Little

From the bestselling author of Good Hair and The Itch comes a novel about a modern woman living in -- and acting out -- her role as an upper-class African-American suburban wife. Ina West is caught between the life she thought she was supposed to lead and the dreams she gave up long ago. Raised by loving but imperfect parents, Ina grew up a free spirit, getting a fine education and spending her... (more)

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife

Shattered Dreams: My Life as a Polygamist's Wife

by Irene Spencer

Irene Spencer did as she felt God commanded in marrying her brother-in-law Verlan LeBaron, becoming his second wife. When the government raided the fundamentalist, polygamous Mormon village of Short Creek, Arizona, Irene and her family fled to Verlan's brothers' Mexican ranch. They lived in squalor and desolate conditions in the Mexican desert with Verlan's six brothers, one sister, and numerous wives and... (more)

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: and still i rise

by Roddy Doyle

by Dave J. Pelzer

by Gerda Weissmann Klein

by Monica Ali

by Anne Lamott

One Child's Courage to Survive

by David J. Pelzer

by Judith Moore

by Sue William Silverman

by Jennifer Lauck

by Fadumo Korn

by Tatum O'Neal

by Jennifer Lauck

by Moss Hart

by Richard Rhodes

by Carolyn Slaughter

by Susan A. Kesegich

by Ishmael Beah

by Mary Hood

by Benilde Little

by Irene Spencer