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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
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Alex Awards The Glass Castle
If You Like Jeanette Walls
Page Modified: April 7, 2008
Memoirs . . .
These booklists include adult titles suggested for teens - not all books are suitable for all readers. Please use your judgement when considering these titles.
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
- Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Author: Bechdel, Alison
Publisher: Houghton $ 19.95 ISBN: 0618477942 Date: 2006
PW
Kirkus Booklist
This breakout book by Alison Bechdel takes its place alongside the
unnerving, memorable, darkly funny family memoirs of Augusten
Burroughs and Mary Karr. It"s a father-daughter tale pitch-perfectly
illustrated with Bechdel"s sweetly gothic drawings and--like Marjane
Satrapi"s Persepolis--a story exhilaratingly suited to the graphic memoir form. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Graphic Novels & Comic Stars | All Stars
Updated 3.16.06 - Ava's Man
by Bragg, Rick
Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 0375410627 Date: 2001
Kirkus Booklist PW
No one writes about the South like Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Bragg (All Over But the Shoutin). Once again, he lends his voice to the working people of the Deep South, and tells the story of a memorable figure in a singular time--a man on a lost stretch of dirt road along the Alabama/Georgia border.
Suggested Reading: All Stars - Nasty: My Family and Other Glorious Varmints
Author: Doonan, Simon
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743267044 Date: 2005
Kirkus
In his breakthrough memoir, Doonan revisits his formative years and the defiantly eccentric, loveably odd family he calls his own. The essays chronicle the misadventures of the Doonan clan in all their endearingly dysfunctional glory.
Updated 3.25.05 - Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Eggers, Dave
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0684863472 Date: 2000
Booklist Library Journal
One of the most mesmerizing memoirs of the literary season: a wrenching, hilarious, and stylistically groundbreaking story of a college senior who, in the space of five weeks, loses both of his parents to cancer and inherits his eight-year-old brother.
McSweeney's - a literary journal and web site, founded by Dave Eggers. - Girlbomb: A Halfway Homeless Memoir
Author: Erlbaum, Janice
Publisher: Villard $ 21.95 ISBN: 1400064228 Date: 2006
Kirkus
Janice Erlbaum paints a wry, mesmerizing portrait of being underprivileged, underage, and underdressed in the 1980s, bouncing from shelters to group homes, from tenement squats to legendary nightclubs. A moving and tremendously entertaining ridethrough the seediest parts of New York City, Girlbomb provides an unflinching look at street life, survival sex, female friendships, and first loves. - Publisher Marketing
Suggested Reading: Memoirs
Updated 12.27.05 - Another Bullshit Night in Suck City: A Memoir
Author: Flynn, Nick
Publisher: Norton $ 23.95 ISBN: 0393051390 Date: 2004
LJ
In bold, dazzling prose, Flynn tells the story of two lives and the trajectory that led him and his father into that homeless shelter, onto those streets, and finally to each other.
Updated 9.20.04 - Dont' Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood
by Fuller, Alexandra
Publisher: Random House $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507507 Date: 2002
Kirkus
Booklist
PW
Magnificently original and affecting, Fuller's memoir of a childhood dominated by the Rhodesian civil war of 1971-1979 captures the fascinating life of a white family living in one of the most remote regions of Africa.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Reading Group Stars | Memoir Stars
Updated 11.27.01 - My Life in Orange
Author: Guest, Tim
Publisher: Harvest $ 14 ISBN: 015603106x Date: 2005
Booklist
At the age of six, Tim Guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. In this extraordinary memoir, Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven.
Updated 12.6.04 - Rescuing Patty Hearst: Memories from a Decade Gone Mad
Author: Holman, Virginia
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23 ISBN: 0743222857 Date: 2003
Kirkus PW LJ
In a dexterous portrait of madness and shadows, Pushcart Prize winner Holman recounts the dark days her family was held hostage by her mother's delusions and her country was beset with the folly of the Watergate era.
Suggested Reading: All Stars
Updated 1.3.03 - A Girl Named Zippy: Growing Up Small in Mooreland, Indiana
by Kimmel, Haven
Publisher: Bantam $ 21.95ISBN: 0385499825 Date: 2001
PW
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965, Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet. Nicknamed "Zippy", she possessed big eyes and even bigger ears. In this loving memoir, Kimmel takes readers back in time to when small-town America was still in the innocent postwar period and treats readers to an appealing, and knowing, heroine.
Suggested Reading: Reading Group Stars - Blackbird: A Childhood Lost
by Lauck, Jennifer
Publisher: Pocket $ 23.95 ISBN: 0671042556 Date: 2000
Kirkus Booklist
Lauck's heartbreaking and inspiring memoir--debuting to advance critical acclaim--tells how an ordinary child growing up under the blue skies of Carson City, Nevada, in the early 1970s lost her childhood after her world became unhinged by family tragedy.
- Name All
the Animals: A Memoir
Author: Smith, Alison
Publisher: Scribner $ 24 ISBN: 0743255224 Date: 2004
Kirkus LJ
A story of grief and secret love, of a family holding on to the memory of a lost child, Name all the Animals is an extraordinary memoir about a girl who learns to define herself beyond the death of her brother.
Suggested Reading: Nonfiction That Reads Like Fiction | Memoir Stars
Updated 3.1.04 - Five Fingered Discount: A Crooked Family History
by Stapinski, Helene
Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679463062 Date: 2001
LJ Booklist
The Mafia, the Catholic Church, toxic waste, the DMV, and corrupt local officials are all part of this sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking family history, a story as polluted as the Jersey City air. Stapinski tells an extraordinary tale of her crooked family that, unlike the swag of her childhood, is her very own. - Learning Joy from Dogs Without Collars: A Memoir
Author: Summer, Lauralee
Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 24 ISBN: 0743201027 Date: 2003
Kirkus
In a memoir of a life in which nothing is taken for granted, Summer tells a moving story of triumph over adversity. Imbued with the wisdom of a woman who has seen life as a homeless girl and as a student within Harvard University's esteemed walls, this is a stirring tale of the power of the human will.
Updated 4.7.03 - Falling Through the Earth: A Memoir
Author: Trussoni, Danielle
Publisher: Holt $ 23 ISBN: 0805077324 Date: 2006
Kirkus Booklist LJ
Danielle Trussoni unflinchingly explores a daughter's love for her flawed father and confronts the demons that haunt them both. Falling Through the Earth is tender and tough, harrowing and triumphant. - Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle.
Suggested Reading: All Stars | Memoirs
Updated 1.26.06 - Flim-Flam Man: A True Family History
Author: Vogel, Jennifer
Publisher: Putnam $ 23 ISBN: 0743217071 Date: 2004
Kirkus
An intense psychological portrait of a man--a doting father, a scheming philanderer, a charming scammer, counterfeiter, and would-be killer--is recorded by the daughter who loved him.
Suggested Reading: Adult Books for Teens
Updated 10.8.03
Hotlists
Crime Fiction - embedded
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
Hotlists
Hotlists: Fiction | Crime Fiction
Genre Hotlists: Christian Fiction | African American Fiction
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
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