Memoirs Books

Book SynopsisWalking the road to recovery enabled him to change his life and become the man he was destined to be.

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Book SynopsisMeet Boris, the chimp who took a bite out of the Big Appleand wished it had been a banana: No one concerned with either apes or people should miss it. Peter S.Beagle, award-winning author of The Last Unicorn This book answers the question that is on everybody's mind: What's it like to raise a chimpanzee in Manhattan? Hester Mundis's hilarious memoir No He's Not a Monkey, He's an Ape and He's My Son is the complete guide to raising a chimp in the heart of urban America. Join Hester, her husband, their terrifying attack dog Ahab, and the funniest monkeyexcuse us, apeever to occupy an apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City in this true adventure of woman versus beast.

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Trade Review“An arresting and deeply moving memoir.” —People“A brave, candid, moving and very well-written memoir of Mary Rockefeller Morgan’s life struggle with ‘twin loss’ after the tragic disappearance fifty years ago off the New Guinea coast of her twin brother Michael.” —Peter Matthiessen, two-time winner of the National Book Award“A master storyteller. Be prepared for this book to make you less afraid of loss and of life.” —Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, bestselling author of Kitchen Table Wisdom“For anyone who has loved another deeply and lost them to death, this book is a boon. It reaches deep into the psyche and illuminates the soul.” —Ann Belford Ulanov, professor at Union Theological Seminary and author of The Unshuttered Heart

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Book Synopsis"Mesmerizing." —The New York Times Book Review Welcome to Hollywood, circa 1950, the end of the Golden Age. A remarkably handsome young boy, still a teenager, gets "discovered" by a big-time movie agent. Because when he takes his shirt off young hearts beat faster, because he is the picture of innocence and trust and need, he will become a star. It seems almost preordained. The open smile says, "You will love me," and soon the whole world does. The young boy's name was Tab Hunter—a made-up name, of course, a Hollywood name—and it was his time. Stardom didn't come overnight, although it seemed that way. In fact, the fame came first, when his face adorned hundreds of magazine covers; the movies, the studio contract, the name in lights—all that came later. For Tab Hunter was a true product of Hollywood, a movie star created from a stable boy, a shy kid made even more so by the way his schoolmates—both girls and boys—reacted to his beauty, by a mother who provided for him in every way except emotionally, and by a secret that both tormented him and propelled him forward. In Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star, Hunter speaks out for the first time about what it was like to be a movie star at the end of the big studio era, to be treated like a commodity, to be told what to do, how to behave, whom to be seen with, what to wear. He speaks also about what it was like to be gay, at first confused by his own fears and misgivings, then as an actor trapped by an image of boy-next-door innocence. And when he dared to be difficult, to complain to the studio about the string of mostly mediocre movies that were assigned to him, he learned that just like any manufactured product, he was disposable—disposable and replaceable. Hunter's career as a bona fide movie star lasted a decade. But he persevered as an actor, working continuously at a profession he had come to love, seeking—and earning—the respect of his peers, and of the Hollywood community. And so, Tab Hunter Confidential is at heart a story of survival—of the giddy highs of stardom, and the soul-destroying lows when phone calls begin to go unreturned; of the need to be loved, and the fear of being consumed; of the hope of an innocent boy, and the rueful summation of a man who did it all, and who lived to tell it all.

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Book SynopsisTo his friends and neighbours, Glenn L. Carle was a wholesome, stereotypical New England Yankee, a former athlete struggling against incipient middle age, someone always with his nose in an abstruse book. But for two decades Carle broke laws, stole, and lied on a daily basis about nearly everything. I was almost never who I said I was, or did what I claimed to be doing." He was a CIA spy. He thrived in an environment of duplicity and ambiguity, flourishing in the gray areas of policy. The Interrogator is the story of Carle's most serious assignment, when he was surged to become an interrogator in the U.S. Global War on Terror, and assigned to interrogate a Top-level detainee at one of the CIA's notorious black sites overseas. It tells of his encounter with one of the most senior al-Qa'ida detainees the U.S. captured after 9/11, a ghost detainee" who, the CIA believed, might hold the key to finding Usama Bin Ladin.As Carle's interrogation sessions progressed, he began to seriously doubt the operation. Was this man, kidnapped in the Middle East, really the senior al-Qa'ida official the CIA believed he was? Headquarters viewed these misgivings as naïve troublemaking, so Carle found himself isolated and progressively at odds with his institution and his orders. He struggled over how far to push the interrogation, wrestling with whether his actions constituted torture, and with what defined his real duty to his country. Then, in a dramatic twist, Headquarters spirited the detainee and Carle to the CIA's harshest interrogation facility, a place of darkness and fear, which even CIA officers dared mention only in whispers.A haunting tale of sadness, confusion, and determination, The Interrogator is a shocking and intimate look at the world of espionage. It leads readers through the underworld of the Global War on terror, asking us to consider the professional and personal challenges faced by an intelligence officer during a time of war, and the unimaginable ways in which war alters our institutions and American society.Trade ReviewThe Longest War: The Enduring Conflict between America and al-Qaeda "Glenn Carle writes with great verve and lyricism about a decidedly unlyrical moment in the history of the U.S. intelligence community; the decision after 9/11 to take the gloves off when it cane to the detention and interrogation of al Qaeda suspects. As Carle witnesses, the U.S. government's assumptions about how important those suspects were was sometimes way off base, while their treatment at the hands of American officials often did not measure up to the high ethical standards the United States wishes to uphold as a country. Carle tells the story from inside the CIA's "war on terror" and he does it with great honesty and realism; he has the eye of the novelist and the analytical skills of the senior CIA officer he was. That makes "The Interrogator" an engrossing read, and also an important book." David Ignatius, columnist for The Washington Post and author of Body of Lies Glenn Carle's "The Interrogator" is a remarkable memoir--for its searing personal honesty, for its portrait of the amoral secret bureaucracy of the CIA, and most of all for its revelation of how a decent American became part of a process that we can only call torture." Gilles Kepel, Professor, Institute of Political Studies, Paris, author of Beyond Terror and

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Book SynopsisAn honest and compelling memoir, Girl in Need of a Tourniquet is Merri Lisa Johnson's account of her borderline personality disorder and how it has affected her life and relationships. Johnson describes the feeling of "bleeding out" , unable to tell where she stopped and where her partner began. A self-confessed "psycho girlfriend," she was influenced by many emotional factors from her past. She recalls her path through a dysfunctional, destructive relationship, while recounting the experiences that brought her to her breaking point. In recognizing her struggle with borderline personality disorder, Johnson is ultimately able to seek help, embarking on a soul-searching healing process. It's a path that is painful, difficult, and at times heart-wrenching, but ultimately makes her more able to love and coexist in healthy relationships.

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