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  Becky: The Heartbreaking Story...

  Darren Galsworthy

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  This is the heartbreaking story of the murder of 16-year-old Bristol schoolgirl Becky Watts, a personal and heartfelt account of a crime that shocked the nation in a unique way and tore a family in two. 
  A vulnerable and shy girl, Becky Watts was brutally murdered and dismembered by her own step-brother on 19 February 2015. As her father Darren discovered the horrific details of what happened to his darling girl, his world fell apart. 
  Writing about his darkest hours and unbearable pain, Darren uncovers what Becky’s relationship with her step-brother Nathan, a child he had raised as his own son, was really like. He recalls the devastation of discovering the truth about the depravity with which Becky was torn from him in the safety of her own home. And he recounts the torment of the legal battle to see his step-son sentenced to life behind bars. 
  But, at its heart, Becky is a poignant personal story, a chance for Darren to pay tribute to his darling daughter, to celebrate her life and take back control of how she is remembered. 
  Darren recalls with enduring love the daughter he fought so hard to get custody of after she was taken into foster care as an infant; the happy child who completed his life; and the innocent schoolgirl who brought joy and happiness to all her knew her. 
  Both heartfelt and haunting, searingly honest and unflinching, this is the ultimate story of a family tragedy. 
  This top-rated autobiography is a testament to a father's undying love and the lengths he would go to ensure justice for his daughter. It paints a vivid picture of the life of Becky, a girl whose life was tragically cut short, yet her memory continues to inspire and touch the hearts of many. 
  For fans of Mae West (Love as Always, Mum xxx), Gregg Olsen (American Mother), Anna Ruston (Secret Slave), Karen Edwards (A Killer's Confession), and Kevin Wells (Goodbye, Dearest Holly).

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  Band of Sisters - American Women...

  Kirsten Holmstedt

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  Twelve American women serving in the military share their gripping personal stories of combat in Iraq. In Iraq, the front lines are everywhere—and everywhere in Iraq, no matter what their job descriptions say, women in the U.S. military are fighting. More than 155,000 of them have deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2003—four times the number of women sent to Desert Storm in 1991. More than 430 have been wounded and over seventy killed—almost twice the number of American women killed in action in Korea, Vietnam, and Desert Storm combined.  But should women be in combat? Do they have what it takes to be warriors? Compelling questions once, but now empty because, more than ever, American women are in combat, and they are warriors. The real question is: What are their experiences of war? We haven’t heard their stories—until now. Band of Sisters presents a dozen groundbreaking and often heart-wrenching stories of American women in combat in Iraq, such as the U.S.’s first female pilot to be shot down and survive, the military’s first black female pilot in combat, a young turret gunner defending convoys, and a nurse struggling to save lives, including her own.  As one female service member said, “We love our country as much as any man, and we have made the same sacrifices as our brothers in arms.” Band of Sisters reveals those sacrifices for the first time. Praise for Band of SistersWinner of the 2007 American Authors Association Golden Quill AwardWinner of the 2007 Military Writers Society of America Founder's Award“An insightful, intimate portrait of America’s fighting women in Iraq. This is must reading.” —Charles Jones, author of Red, White, or Yellow?: The Media and the Military at War in Iraq “Lyrical, visceral, and potent. Kirsten Holmstedt sets a peerless standard as a raconteur with powerful stories of the valor of today’s women in combat.” —David J. Danelo, author of Blood Stripes and The Border“This overdue account . . . reads a swiftly as a thriller, but the thrills here come from the real sacrifices and valor of America’s fighting women.” —Ralph Peters, author of Never Quit the Fight and Wars of Blood and Faith“Inspirational and revealing.” —Paul Riechkhoff, executive director, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, and author of Chasing Ghosts

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  Physical - An American Checkup

  James McManus

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  A wild ride through the dark heart of American health and health care, plus sex, drugs, and stem-cell wars.PHYSICAL is the story of a hard-living, happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets a three-day "executive checkup" at the Mayo Clinic and is thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake, and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower to follow the Mayo clinicians' advice.On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem-cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant opthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision?PHYSICAL negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem-cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over.

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  Eminent Victorians

  Giles Lytton Strachey

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  On Modern Library's list of 100 Best Non-Fiction books, "Eminent Victorians" marked an epoch in the art of biography; it also helped to crack the old myths of high Victorianism and to usher in a new spirit by which chauvinism, hypocrisy and the stiff upper lip were debunked. In it, Strachey cleverly exposes the self-seeking ambitions of Cardinal Manning and the manipulative, neurotic Florence Nightingale; and in his essays on Dr Arnold and General Gordon, his quarries are not only his subjects but also the public-school system and the whole structure of nineteenth-century liberal values.

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  Born in Slavery: Narratives from...

  William Moss

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  Born in Slavery: Narratives from the WPA Slave Narrative CollectionBy William Moss Narrated by Christopher WagnonThe WPA Slave Narrative Collection was a massive compilation of histories by former slaves undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938. It was the simultaneous effort of state-level branches of FWP in seventeen states, working largely separately from each other.These narratives depict the physical and mental atrocities visited upon black people in a way no other method, save that of witnessing the barbarities firsthand, could. The narratives that disclosed the meanness and depravity of evil "masters," graphically illustrate the abject wrongness of slavery. Lest we be inclined to consider the reports depicting benignant generosity among slave owners as exonerating slavery, consider the aftermath of emancipation. Hundreds of thousands of black people who were taught to depend on the largess of their white masters as the only way to live, were plunged into contemptible, humiliating poverty; swept under the feet of the vanquished foe that once enslaved them.When I Was a Slave is a collection of the expression of these former slaves. Having described the slavery from which they were emancipated, they then speak of a new slavery of exclusion and hatred.

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  Mennonite Valley Girl - A...

  Carla Funk

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  Carla Funk is a teenager with her hands on the church piano keys and her feet edging toward the flames. Coming of age in a remote valley town—a place rich in Mennonites, loggers, and dutiful wives who submit to their husbands—she knows her destiny is to marry, have babies, and join the church ladies’ sewing circle. In her world, the body is hidden in shame, the lines between the sexes are strictly drawn, and the wrong thoughts can tip you over into sin. But increasingly, she wants to push the limits: of her family, her religion, and the little town that can’t contain her desires for much longer.In poignant and hilarious stories, Funk chronicles her 1980s adolescence in all its awkward glory: from summer Bible camp to forbidden school dances, from questionable makeovers to hair-raising pranks. Through it all runs the longing to make her life into a new and different story, as she asks the questions we all must face about where we come from and who we want to be.At once an affectionate coming-of-age tale and a contemplation on meaning, morality, and destiny, Mennonite Valley Girl is about the places we all long to escape—even if they are the same places that define us.

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