Download or read book Smash Mouth Jesus A Memoir written by Jack Flynn and published by WestBow Press. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The life of an abused child is filled with pain and self-blame. And there is the never-ending question of why one of the people who is supposed to love you is also responsible for hurting you. Millions of children experience abuse and neglect every day. For most, their stories go untold. In author Jack Flynn’s memoir, Smash-Mouth Jesus—A Memoir: God’s Answer to Violence, he takes you on a journey of redemption through the nightmare of helplessness and self-hatred associated with child abuse. Flynn illustrates the challenges an abandoned and abused child faces when thrown into a cruel world with no direction. He shares his journey of coming to terms with a God he fears—a God who seems to be cruel and all-powerful. Each day Flynn faced the challenge to trust the God who seemed to be destroying him. Smash-Mouth Jesus—A Memoir: God’s Answer to Violence is a story of working through the past and not letting it define you. As Flynn shows, that journey is long and difficult, and the temptation to give up can be great. But if one perseveres, the rewards and love are tremendous.

Download or read book Happy written by Alex Lemon and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-12-29 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: His freshman year of college, Alex Lemon was supposed to be the star catcher on the Macalester College baseball team. He was the boy getting every girl, the hard-partying kid everyone called Happy. In the spring of 1997, he had his first stroke. For two years Lemon coped with his deteriorating health by sinking deeper into alcohol and drug abuse. His charming and carefree exterior masked his self-destructive and sometimes cruel behavior as he endured two more brain bleeds and a crippling depression. After undergoing brain surgery, he is nursed back to health by his free-spirited artist mother, who once again teaches him to stand on his own. Alive with unexpected humor and sensuality, Happy is a hypnotic self-portrait of a young man confronting the wreckage of his own body; it is also the deeply moving story of a mother’s redemptive and healing powers. Alex Lemon’s Technicolor sentences pop and sing as he writes about survival—of the body and of the human spirit.

Download or read book Blood in the Water written by Jack Flynn and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2019-09-10 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Blood in the Water by Jack Flynn is a thriller set in Boston in the gritty world of mob bosses, con artists and gangs, where allegiances are formed with law enforcement and criminals just as easily as they are broken. Homeland Security agent, Kit Steel, is committed to avenge terrorism. And she’s after the blood of her nemesis, one of world’s most ruthless and dangerous criminals, Vincente Carpio. He has the blood of her husband and young son on his hands, and Kit is unwavering in her determination to see him kept behind bars forever. Clever, calculating, and manipulative, Carpio has aid and influence on the outside, and he’s waiting for the perfect moment when the final pieces of the jigsaw fall into place. Harbour Union chief, Cormack McConnell, has lived his life close to the wire above and below the law, and he controls everything that happens on Boston’s waterfront. Someone wants him out of the way, fast. After he narrowly survives a brutal attack on his bar, The Mariner, complications arise when Cormack believes he’s been betrayed by one of his crew – a young man, Buddy Cavanaugh, who he’s shocked to discover is the love of his precious nineteen-year-old daughter, Diamond. Everyone has a game to play until it becomes apparent that there are much darker, far-reaching forces of evil at work which look to be preparing for the international stage. What follows is a gripping race against time, a rollercoaster action-packed story with international terrorism at its core and family at its heart.

Download or read book Sex Drugs Jesus written by De'Vannon Hubert and published by De'Vannon Hubert. This book was released on 2022-03-28 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transparency is one of the most effective tools we have that can help us heal. It can also help us understand ourselves better as well as other people. What would you do if you believed you only had months to live? How would you feel if your community was stolen from you? Could you survive living on the streets for any length of time? Can you imagine what it's like to try to find a job when you have felonies on your record? Are there any words to describe the heart of a mother as she watches her youngest child die? It’s taken my whole life to realize that the main person I’ve been battling against has been me. As such, my memoir delves into raw detail about my war with my myself. I open up about my crystal meth addiction and how I became a drug dealer in Houston, Tx. The pain of growing up in poverty under the hand of an abusive dad is put on display as well. The time I spent serving in the Air Force during Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the promiscuity that went along with it is also divulged. I talk about how I received my HIV + diagnosis on a voicemail and my Hep B + diagnosis in the postal mail. My story gets more intense as I share about how I got 3 felonies, the time I spent in jail, and how I ended up homeless after S.W.A.T. kicked my door in. I talk about the biggest heartbreak in my life which happened when I was kicked out of a megachurch, that I had served with my whole soul for years, just because I am a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community and refused to accept the conversion therapy package they offered. So often people judge those who have been in similar situations. My hope is that my honesty can offer a glimpse into these issues from the inside, rather than from the outside looking in. I struggled with dividing my memoir into two separate books, but I felt it would be more impactful to tell everything all at once. My memoir is my testament and it’s the greatest form of outreach I have ever offered to the world. I hope that I can earn your trust and attention with the words I have written within these pages.

Download or read book How to Murder Your Life written by Cat Marnell and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-01-31 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times bestselling author and former beauty editor Cat Marnell, a “vivid, maddening, heartbreaking, very funny, chaotic” (The New York Times) memoir of prescription drug addiction and self-sabotage, set in the glamorous world of fashion magazines and downtown nightclubs. At twenty-six, Cat Marnell was an associate beauty editor at Lucky, one of the top fashion magazines in America—and that’s all most people knew about her. But she hid a secret life. She was a prescription drug addict. She was also a “doctor shopper” who manipulated Upper East Side psychiatrists for pills, pills, and more pills; a lonely bulimic who spent hundreds of dollars a week on binge foods; a promiscuous party girl who danced barefoot on banquets; a weepy and hallucination-prone insomniac who would take anything—anything—to sleep. This is a tale of self-loathing, self-sabotage, and yes, self-tanner. It begins at a posh New England prep school—and with a prescription for the Attention Deficit Disorder medication Ritalin. It continues to New York, where we follow Marnell’s amphetamine-fueled rise from intern to editor through the beauty departments of NYLON, Teen Vogue, Glamour, and Lucky. We see her fight between ambition and addiction and how, inevitably, her disease threatens everything she worked so hard to achieve. From the Condé Nast building to seedy nightclubs, from doctors’ offices and mental hospitals, Marnell “treads a knife edge between glamorizing her own despair and rendering it with savage honesty.…with the skill of a pulp novelist” (The New York Times Book Review) what it is like to live in the wild, chaotic, often sinister world of a young female addict who can’t say no. Combining “all the intoxicating intrigue of a thriller and yet all the sobering pathos of a gifted writer’s true-life journey to recover her former health, happiness, ambitions, and identity” (Harper’s Bazaar), How to Murder Your Life is mesmerizing, revelatory, and necessary.

Download or read book The Encore written by Charity Tillemann-Dick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-10-03 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this “heartrending, passionate, and surprisingly humorous account of the conjunction between art and death” (Andrew Solomon, New York Times bestselling author), acclaimed opera singer Charity Tillemann-Dick recounts her remarkable journey from struggling to draw a single breath to singing at the most prestigious venues in the world after receiving not one but two double lung transplants. Charity Tillemann-Dick was a vivacious young American soprano studying at the celebrated Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest when she received devastating news: her lungs were failing, her heart was three and a half sizes too big, and she would die within five years. Medical experts advised Charity to abandon her musical dreams, but if her time was running out, she wanted to spend it doing what she loved. In just three years, she endured two double lung transplants and had to slowly learn to breathe, walk, talk, eat, and sing again. With new lungs and fierce determination, she eventually fell in love, rebuilt her career, and reclaimed her life. More than a decade after her diagnosis, she has a chart-topping album, performs around the globe, and is a leading voice for organ donation. Weaving Charity’s extraordinary tale of triumph with those of opera’s greatest heroines, The Encore illuminates the indomitable human spirit and is “an uplifting story of overcoming significant odds to fulfill a dream” (Kirkus Reviews).

Download or read book I Know I Am But What Are You written by Samantha Bee and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-02-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Candid, outspoken, laugh-out-loud funny essays from the much-loved Samantha Bee, the Most Senior Correspondent on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . Critics have called her “sweet, adorable, and vicious.” But there is so much more to be said about Samantha Bee. For one, she’s Canadian. Whatever that means. And now, she opens up for the very first time about her checkered Canadian past. With charming candor, she admits to her Lennie from Of Mice and Men–style love of baby animals, her teenage crime spree as one-half of a car-thieving couple (Bonnie and Clyde in Bermuda shorts and braces), and the fact that strangers seem compelled to show her their genitals. She also details her intriguing career history, which includes stints working in a frame store, at a penis clinic, and as a Japanese anime character in a touring children’s show. Samantha delves into all these topics and many more in this thoroughly hilarious, unabashedly frank collection of personal essays. Whether detailing the creepiness that ensues when strangers assume that your mom is your lesbian lover, or recalling her girlhood crush on Jesus (who looked like Kris Kristofferson and sang like Kenny Loggins), Samantha turns the spotlight on her own imperfect yet highly entertaining life as relentlessly as she skewers hapless interview subjects on The Daily Show. She shares her unique point of view on a variety of subjects as wide ranging as her deep affinity for old people, to her hatred of hot ham. It’s all here, in irresistible prose that will leave you in stitches and eager for more.

Download or read book Jesus Land written by Julia Scheeres and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2012-10-30 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times bestseller: An “exquisitely wrought memoir” about how “love can flourish even in the harshest climates”—for readers of The Liar’s Club and Running with Scissors (People). This poignant, darkly funny account of two siblings—one white, one Black—growing up in the Christian fundamentalist communities of Indiana and the Dominican Republic is “one of the best memoirs in years” (Anne Lamott, author of Bird by Bird). Julia and her adopted brother, David, are 16 years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid–1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and an all–encompassing racism. At home are a distant mother—more involved with her church’s missionaries than her own children—and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, Escuela Caribe—a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic—is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. Julia and David strive to make it through these ordeals and their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and wry humor. Over a decade after its first publication, Jesus Land remains deeply resonant with readers. This New York Times bestselling memoir is a gripping tale of rage and redemption, hope and humor, morality and malice—and most of all, the truth: that being a good person takes more than just going to church.

Download or read book Things I Didn t Know written by Robert Hughes and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2009-06-03 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Robert Hughes has trained his critical eye on many major subjects, from the city of Barcelona to the history of his native Australia. Now he turns that eye inward, onto himself and the world that formed him. Hughes analyzes his experiences the way he might examine a Van Gogh or a Picasso. From his relationship with his stern and distant father to his Catholic upbringing and school years; and from his development as an artist, writer, and critic to his growing appreciation of art and his exhilaration at leaving Australia to discover a new life, Hughes’ memoir is an extraordinary feat of exploration and celebration.

Download or read book Fresh Off the Boat written by Eddie Huang and published by One World. This book was released on 2013-01-29 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NOW AN ORIGINAL SERIES ON ABC • “Just may be the best new comedy of [the year] . . . based on restaurateur Eddie Huang’s memoir of the same name . . . [a] classic fresh-out-of-water comedy.”—People “Bawdy and frequently hilarious . . . a surprisingly sophisticated memoir about race and assimilation in America . . . as much James Baldwin and Jay-Z as Amy Tan . . . rowdy [and] vital . . . It’s a book about fitting in by not fitting in at all.”—Dwight Garner, The New York Times NATIONAL BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS Assimilating ain’t easy. Eddie Huang was raised by a wild family of FOB (“fresh off the boat”) immigrants—his father a cocksure restaurateur with a dark past back in Taiwan, his mother a fierce protector and constant threat. Young Eddie tried his hand at everything mainstream America threw his way, from white Jesus to macaroni and cheese, but finally found his home as leader of a rainbow coalition of lost boys up to no good: skate punks, dealers, hip-hop junkies, and sneaker freaks. This is the story of a Chinese-American kid in a could-be-anywhere cul-de-sac blazing his way through America’s deviant subcultures, trying to find himself, ten thousand miles from his legacy and anchored only by his conflicted love for his family and his passion for food. Funny, moving, and stylistically inventive, Fresh Off the Boat is more than a radical reimagining of the immigrant memoir—it’s the exhilarating story of every American outsider who finds his destiny in the margins. Praise for Fresh Off the Boat “Brash and funny . . . outrageous, courageous, moving, ironic and true.”—New York Times Book Review “Mercilessly funny and provocative, Fresh Off the Boat is also a serious piece of work. Eddie Huang is hunting nothing less than Big Game here. He does everything with style.”—Anthony Bourdain “Uproariously funny . . . emotionally honest.”—Chicago Tribune “Huang is a fearless raconteur. [His] writing is at once hilarious and provocative; his incisive wit pulls through like a perfect plate of dan dan noodles.”—Interview “Although writing a memoir is an audacious act for a thirty-year-old, it is not nearly as audacious as some of the things Huang did and survived even earlier. . . . Whatever he ends up doing, you can be sure it won’t look or sound like anything that’s come before. A single, kinetic passage from Fresh Off the Boat . . . is all you need to get that straight.”—Bookforum

Download or read book Seriously I m Kidding written by Ellen DeGeneres and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ~b~>With the winning, upbeat candor that has made her show on of the most popular and honored daytime shows on the air, beloved talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres shares her views on life, love, and American Idol. "I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I've put together for you in this book. I think you'll find I've left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?" Seriously... I'm Kidding is a lively, hilarious, and often sweetly poignant look at the life of the much-loved entertainer as she opens up about her personal life, her talk show, and more. PRAISE FOR Seriously... I'm Kidding "DeGeneres's amiably oddball riffs on everything from kale to catwalks to Jesus will make fans smile." -- People "Whatever the topic, DeGeneres's compulsively readable style will appeal to fans old and new." - Publishers Weekly "Fans will not be disappointed...[DeGeneres's] trademark wit and openness shine through and through." -- Kirkus/DIVspan

Download or read book The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs Kip written by Sara Brunsvold and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2022-07-05 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aidyn Kelley is talented, ambitious, and ready for a more serious assignment than the fluff pieces she's been getting as a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star. In her eagerness, she pushes too hard, earning herself the menial task of writing an obituary for an unremarkable woman who's just entered hospice care. But there's more to Clara Kip than meets the eye. The spirited septuagenarian may be dying, but she's not quite ready to cash it in yet. Never one to shy away from an assignment herself, she can see that God brought the young reporter into her life for a reason. And if it's a story Aidyn Kelley wants, that's just what Mrs. Kip will give her--but she's going to have to work for it. Debut author Sara Brunsvold delights with this emotional multigenerational story that shows that the very best life is made up of thousands of little deaths to self. You'll want to be just like Mrs. Kip when you grow up!

Download or read book Care To Make Love In That Gross Little Space Between Cars written by The Believer and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-03-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Believer magazine presents a compendium of advice from producers, writers, and actors of The Daily Show, Saturday Night Live, Parks and Recreation, Late Show with David Letterman, The Hangover, and The Colbert Report, along with other musicians, cartoonists, New Yorker writers, and those similarly unqualified to offer guidance. Here Amy Sedaris describes the perfect murder for unwanted hermit crabs—you will need a piece of meat and a brick. Simon Rich explains how to avoid being found dead in your underwear by firemen—buy some long johns. Zach Galifianakis provides insight into how he changed his name without a social security card—he just started calling himself Adam Zapple, and it stuck. Bob Saget finally illuminates what “friends with benefits” really means—a nonsexual relationship wherein your ex makes monetary deposits into your bank account. Contributors include: Rob Baedeker, Anne Beatts, Elizabeth Beckwith, Jerri Blank, Roz Chast, Louis C.K., Mike Doughty, Dave Eggers, Rich Fulcher, Zach Galifianakis, Dan Guterman, Anthony Jeselnik, Julie Klausner, Lisa Lampanelli, Nick Hornby, Sam Lipsyte, Liam Lynch, Merrill Markoe, Rose McGowan, Misc. Canadian rock musicians, Laraine Newman, The Pleasure Syndicate, Bob Powers, Simon Rich, Bob Saget, George Saunders, Kristen Schaal, Paul Scheer, Amy Sedaris, Allison Silverman, Paul Simms, Brendon Small, Jerry Stahl, Scott Thompson, Fred Willard, Cintra Wilson, Weird Al Yankovic, and Alan Zweibel

Download or read book The Devil in Pew Number Seven written by Rebecca Nichols Alonzo and published by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.. This book was released on 2010-07-27 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2011 Retailers Choice Award winner! Rebecca never felt safe as a child. In 1969, her father, Robert Nichols, moved to Sellerstown, North Carolina, to serve as a pastor. There he found a small community eager to welcome him—with one exception. Glaring at him from pew number seven was a man obsessed with controlling the church. Determined to get rid of anyone who stood in his way, he unleashed a plan of terror that was more devastating and violent than the Nichols family could have ever imagined. Refusing to be driven away by acts of intimidation, Rebecca’s father stood his ground until one night when an armed man walked into the family’s kitchen . . . And Rebecca’s life was shattered. If anyone had a reason to harbor hatred and seek personal revenge, it would be Rebecca. Yet The Devil in Pew Number Seven tells a different story. It is the amazing true saga of relentless persecution, one family’s faith and courage in the face of it, and a daughter whose parents taught her the power of forgiveness.

Download or read book Trick Mirror written by Jia Tolentino and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-08-06 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.”—Vulture FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Chicago Tribune • The Washington Post • NPR • Variety • Esquire • Vox • Elle • Glamour • GQ • Good Housekeeping • The Paris Review • Paste • Town & Country • BookPage • Kirkus Reviews • BookRiot • Shelf Awareness Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet. FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

Download or read book Don t Try This at Home written by Dave Navarro and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2012-10-09 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step into the booth. Check your judgments at the curtain. Close your eyes. Listen: you can hear the voices of the visitors who sat here before you: some of the most twisted, drug-addled, deviant, lonely, lost, brilliant characters ever to be caught on film. What do you have to offer the booth?

Download or read book House of Meetings written by Martin Amis and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2007-01-16 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary, harrowing, endlessly surprising novel set in 1946, starring two brothers and a Jewish girl who fall into alignment in pogrom-poised Moscow—from "one of the most gifted novelists of his generation” (Time). “A bullet train of a novel that barrels deep into the heart of darkness that was the Soviet gulag and takes the reader along on an unnerving journey into one of history’s most harrowing chapters.” —The New York Times The brothers' fraternal conflict then marinates in Norlag, a slave-labor camp above the Arctic Circle, where a tryst will haunt all three lovers long after the brothers are released. And for the narrator, the sole survivor, the reverberations continue into the new century.