""Life changes fast. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory Dunne, was dead. The night before New Year's Eve, while they were sitting down to dinner, he suffered a massive and fatal coronary. The two had lived and worked side by side for nearly...

From one of the most gifted writers of her generation comes the harrowing and exquisitely written true story of how a family tragedy saved her life.
Dani Shapiro was a young girl from a deeply religious home who became the girlfriend of a famous and flamboyant married attorney—her best friend's stepfather. The moment Lenny Klein entered her life, everything changed: she dropped out of college, began to drink heavily, and became estranged...

After inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and {u2018}80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir. "Clearing Dad{u2019}s office felt like prospecting within his brain. As I sorted, like an archaeologist, backward through time, I saw a remarkable mind at work, a life lived on its own terms." When...

The author and her son chronicle his first year as a teenage father and her journey as a mother and new grandmother, describing their respective experiences with changing roles, the baby's mother, and poignant family losses.

This is the author's memoir about gender and parenting, including incredible interviews discussing gender, how families are shaped, and the difficulties and wonders of being human. A father for ten years, a mother for eight, and for a time in between, neither, or both ("the parental version of the schnoodle, or the cockapoo"), she has seen parenthood from both sides of the gender divide.".