An estranged son and his alcoholic father travel from Montana to Nebraska to claim a million dollar sweepstakes prize.

The child of an alcoholic father and an eccentric artist mother discusses her family's nomadic upbringing, during which she and her siblings fended for themselves while their parents outmaneuvered bill collectors and the authorities.

"Out of the Rabbit Hole is a memoir written from a child's point of view as a little girl manages to survive an environment of alcoholism and violence. Her escape is found in the world of movies and records. Starting at age three, being left alone becomes the norm—at four, the movie theater becomes her babysitter. As she grows, so do her views and observations that enable her to climb Out of the Rabbit Hole into the real world with insight and solidity."...

Jillian Slater hadn't seen her father or his mother in almost 20 years until, on the news that her father had finally drunk himself to death, Adella Atwater, the manager of her grandmother's apartment house, calls and says Jillian's expenses would be paid if she'd fly in to New Orleans for the burial. What Adella didn't tell her was that the apartment house bears the dead weight of a long and painful history. As an investigation into her father's...

The Gallaghers have always scraped by, but they're finally getting a leg up. When Frank awakens from a coma to learn that his family tossed him in the river, he declares war, Gallagher vs. Gallagher.

"A small town pianist ponders a new life away from her embarassing mother when a beautiful girl shows up and changes everything"-- Grace, tough and wise, has nearly given up on wishes, thanks to a childhood spent with her unpredictable, drinks-too-much mother Maggie. Then Grace meets Eva, a girl who believes in dreams despite her own difficult circumstances. One fateful evening Eva climbs through a window in Grace's room, setting off a chain of stolen...

Dave Pelzer's story is the story of a child brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games -- games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. Dave had to learn how to play his mother's games in order to survive because she no longer considered him a son, but a slave, and no longer a boy but an 'it'.

Young Richard Antoine White and his mother don't have a key to a room or a house. Sometimes they have shelter, but they never have a place to call home. Still, they have each other, and Richard believes he can look after his mother, even as she struggles with alcoholism and sometimes disappears, sending Richard into loops of visiting familiar spots until he finds her again. And he always does--until one night, when he almost dies searching for her...

"The story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Born under different stars--Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic--they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Their environment is a hyper-masculine and sectarian one, for gangs of young men and the violence they might dole out dominate the Glaswegian estate where they live. And yet against all odds Mungo and James become best friends as they find a...