Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

When Emmett de Monterey is eighteen months old, a doctor diagnoses him with cerebral palsy. Words too big for his 25-year-old artist parents and their happy, smiling baby. Growing up in South East London in the 1980s, Emmett is spat at on the street and prayed over at church. At his school for disabled children, he's told he will be expelled if the rumours are true, if he's gay; at his mainstream school, teachers refuse to schedule his classes on the ground floor, and he loses a stone from the effort of getting up the stairs.

“A brutally honest memoir that socks you in the gut with its candor” (Elton John and David Furnish) about lust, abuse, addiction, stardom, and redemption from Arrow and Teen Wolf actor Colton Haynes. In 2018, Colton Haynes woke up in a hospital. He’d had two seizures, lost vision in one...

Do you know me?, the email began, sparking tremors of fear that turned into a full quake of panic when William Dameron discovered that his selfie had been stolen by strangers. On social networks and dating sites, his image and identity - a forty-year-old straight white male - had been used to hook countless women into believing in lies of love and romance.

Siri Lindley wanted to be a world champion triathlete . . . even though she didn't know how to swim. She wanted to love and be loved . . . even though her father shunned her because she was gay. She wanted to savor every day and enjoy the life she'd made with her wife, her career, and her passion for horses . . . even though in November 2019 she was diagnosed with a rare—and usually fatal—form of acute myeloid leukemia. Every time Siri has faced what seemed impossible, she found a way to not only survive the situation, but to thrive within it.

When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending "more funerals than birthday parties". Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes you through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time.

Kimberly Davis knew who she was on the inside. Despite being born a male, she was very much a woman. Unfortunately, the realities of living in a rural, redneck area forced her to dress and act as a man. She spent 63 years living as one. It was only when her beloved wife passed away that Kimberly decided to complete her transition. This poignant memoir chronicles every step of her transition, from her first feelings of gender dysphoria to the surgery that completely changed her life.

Some years ago, Oliver Darkshire stepped into the hushed interior of Henry Sotheran Ltd on Sackville Street (est. 1761) to interview for their bookselling apprenticeship, a decision which has bedevilled him ever since. He'd intended to stay for a year before launching into some less dusty, better remunerated career. Unfortunately for him, the alluring smell of old books and the temptation of a management-approved afternoon nap proved irresistible. Soon he was balancing stacks of first editions, fending off nonagenarian widows with and trying not to upset the store's resident ghost.

“Wholly transportive and spellbinding.” —Ling Ma, bestselling author of Severance and Bliss Montage “Exquisitely researched, deeply felt, and poignant. This one belongs on your shelf.” —Sarah Rose Etter, author of Ripe “A fascinating account of a remarkable woman dangerously ahead...

In her critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, Melissa Febos laid bare the intimate world of the professional dominatrix, turning an honest examination of her life into a lyrical study of power, desire, and fulfillment. In her dazzling Abandon Me, Febos captures the intense bonds of love and the need for connection - with family, lovers, and oneself. First, her birth father, who left her with only an inheritance of addiction and Native American blood, its meaning a mystery.

From the outside, Oliver Radclyffe spent four decades living an immensely privileged, beautifully composed life. As the daughter of two well-to-do British parents and the wife of a handsome, successful man from an equally privileged family, Oliver played the parts expected of him. He checked off every box—marriage, children (four), a white-picket fence surrounding a stately home in Connecticut, and a golden retriever named Biscuit. But beneath the shiny veneer, Oliver was desperately trying to stay afloat as he struggled to maintain a facade of normalcy.

Denham (Denny) Fouts, the 20th century's most famous male prostitute, was a socialite and literary muse whose extraordinary life started off humbly in Jacksonville, Florida. But in short order he befriended (and bedded) the rich and celebrated and in the process conquered the world.

The Queer Bible is a collection of essays written by queer icons, about the queer trailblazers throughout history who inspired them. From Elton John on Divine to Graham Norton on Armistead Maupin; Russell Tovey on David Robilliard to Lady Phyll on Moud Goba; Tan France on the Queer Eye cast to Mae Martin on Tim Curry, today’s queer heroes write about the icons that provided a creative inspiration to them. 

In 2012, Rhyannon Styles began her gender transition and attended her first 12-step meeting - beginning two journeys that changed the course of her life. Using her personal narrative as a springboard for exploring addiction, recovery and LGBTQ+ mental health, Rhyannon writes with searing honesty about the complexity of her experiences. The audiobook spans a range of addictions including alcohol, food, sex and relationships, the internet and narcotics, and highlights the ways in which addiction and the transition process can overlap.

Bastard Out of Carolina, nominated for the 1992 National Book Award for fiction, introduced Dorothy Allison as one of the most passionate and gifted writers of her generation. Now, in Two or Three Things I Know for Sure, she takes a probing look at her family's history to give us a lyrical, complex memoir that explores how the gossip of one generation can become legends for the next.

An unflinching and, at times, raw memoir, The Storm is filled with heart, optimism, and love, interspersed with Los Angeles history, gay and lesbian history, AIDS history, and the backdrop of the 1980s and 1990s.

Entwined explores the fuzzy lines between friendship, romance, and family with various essay forms, including a play, an advice column, and a love letter. Rather than wallowing in the throes of jealousy, this collection celebrates the hard work, humor, and wisdom needed to create a love life that resists conventional narratives.

How do you tell the real story of someone misremembered - an icon and idol - alongside your own? Jenn Shapland’s celebrated debut is both question and answer: an immersive, surprising exploration of one of America’s most beloved writers, alongside a genre-defying examination of identity, queerness, memory, obsession, and love.

Peggy Caserta, founder of the famous Haight-Ashbury hippie boutique Mnasidika and lover and girlfriend of Janis Joplin, was a Louisiana homecoming queen turned airsick stewardess who eventually landed in 1960s San Francisco and set up shop. Her store was a hang-out for The Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company; it was where Wes Wilson’s posters hung, where Bill Graham sold concert tickets, and where Owsley’s LSD was enjoyed. 

Brought to you by Penguin. The hilarious and piercing memoir about growing up gay in a not-so-gay world. I’m just a man, standing in front of a salad, asking it to be a cake. What do you do when you’re too gay for Pakistan, too Pakistani to be gay in America and you’re ashamed of your body...

Father Shannon Kearns is familiar with liminal spaces. He’s lived in them his whole life. And while his experience as a transgender man has often made it difficult for him to fit in—especially in the context of Christianity—it has also shaped his perspective in important ways on complicated, gender-transgressing aspects of theology and Scripture.