"Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. The family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure...

"When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone...

"Seventy-four-year-old Ken Smith has spent the past four decades in the Scottish Highlands. His home is a log cabin nestled near Loch Treig, known as 'the lonely loch,' where he lives off the land. He fishes for his supper, chops his own wood and even brews his own tipple. He is, in the truest sense of the word, a hermit. From his working-class origins in Derbyshire, Ken always sensed that there was more ot life than an empty nine to five. Then one...

"Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh start at the age of 52, he discovered his gift and vision as an artist, and using leather tooling skills he learned in prison, started etching and painting scenes from his youth. Rembert's work has been exhibited at museums...

"In over a decade of working with veterans, Johnny Joey Jones has discovered the power of battle-forged friendships. Suffering a life-changing injury while deployed in Afghanistan, he faced a daunting recovery. But coming home would have been much harder without the support of his brothers and sisters in arms. In Unbroken Bonds of Battle, Joey tells the stories of those very warriors, who for years have supported and inspired him on the battlefield...

"In this mesmerizing memoir-in-essays, Erica Bauermeister renovates a trash-filled house in eccentric Port Townsend, Washington, and in the process takes readers on a journey to discover the ways our spaces subliminally affect us. A personal, accessible, and literary exploration of the psychology of architecture, as well as a loving tribute to the connections we forge with the homes we care for and live in, this book is designed for anyone who’s...

This is the "biography of a woman who made a lifetime of incredible contributions to science. She was the first woman to discover a comet, the first officially recognized in a scientific role, and the first to be given a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society. In a day when girls were barely educated at all, Caroline Herschel's father taught her math and music . . . until, suddenly, he died. Her mother saw her as little more than a household...

"Through poverty, adolescence, and a fraught relationship with her mother, Ashley C. Ford wishes she could turn to her father for hope and encouragement. There are just a few problems: he’s in prison, and she doesn’t know what he did to end up there. She doesn’t know how to deal with the incessant worries that keep her up at night, or how to handle the changes in her body that draw unwanted attention from men. In her search for unconditional...

In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee borrowed $100 from her brother to run a Numbers racket out of her tattered apartment on Delaware Street, in one of Detroit's worst sections. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis' mother. Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, granddaughter of slaves, Fannie became more than a numbers...

"In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life-changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose but also my voice in a world that didn’t always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not...