The founder of the Heritage Home Foundation nonprofit documents her secret abuse-marked childhood in and out of foster care and what she discovered while investigating the story of her mother's own harrowing past.

"One of the most prominent voices of her generation debuts with an extraordinarily powerful memoir: the story of a childhood defined by the ever looming absence of her incarcerated father and the path we must take to both honor and overcome our origins. For as long as she could remember, Ashley has put her father on a pedestal. Despite having only vague memories of seeing him face-to-face, she believes he's the only person in the entire world who...

A professor of English literature presents a memoir of family, identity, and acceptance that examines the messiness and complexity of adoption and parenthood from a black, queer, and feminist perspective.

A time-and-motion expert and his engineer wife use scientific principles to raise their twelve children. No growing pains have ever been more hilarious than those suffered loudly by the riotous Gilbreth clan. First there are a dozen red-haired, freckle-faced kids to contend with. Then there's Dad, a famous efficiency expert who believes a family can be run just like a factory. Finally there's Mother, his partner in everything except discipline. How...

Anderson Cooper chronicles the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty--his mother's family--the Vanderbilts. "[A]uthor and journalist Anderson Cooper teams with...historian and novelist Katherine Howe to chronicle the rise and fall of a legendary American dynasty--his mother's family, the Vanderbilts. When eleven-year-old Cornelius Vanderbilt began to work on his father's small boat ferrying supplies in New York Harbor at the beginning of...

"Carrie Sheffield grew up fifth of eight children with a violent, mentally ill, street-musician father who believed he was a modern-day Mormon prophet destined to become U.S. president someday. She and her seven siblings were often forced to live as vagabonds, remaining on the move across the country. They frequently subsisted in sheds, tents, and, most notably, motorhomes. They often lived a dysfunctional drifter existence, camping out in their motorhome...

"The eldest daughter in a large, highly controlled, fundamentalist Christian household who performed as the Willis Clan and presented themselves to the world as extraordinary and happy reveals what happened behind closed doors, in this harrowing story of the manipulation and codependence that defines abusive family relationships--and how she found her voice to break free. "--

"Seen by the media in 2015 as a white woman who had knowingly been passing as black, the author shares her nuanced and complex story, from being a child of white evangelical parents to an NAACP chapter president and respected educator and activist who identified as black, forcing readers to reconsider race and identity,"--NoveList.