Carrie And Me

Despite her busy schedule, Carol Burnett always made time for her three young children. But her oldest daughter, Carrie, faltered in adolescence, losing the self-esteem that had fueled her popularity and success in school and hiding her pain in a downward spiral of addiction. As Carrie became lost to drugs, Carol found herself with a daughter in grave danger and a marriage that was bending under the pressure. Carrie eventually broke free from her addiction. Like her mother, she had a wonderful sense of humor and became a successful actress, singer, and writer, even writing a play about Carol's childhood. But tragedy struck again when Carrie was diagnosed with cancer. She died at the young age of thirty-eight, leaving a legacy of kindness, creativity, and joy along with a short story that mirrors her own journey, published for the first time in this book. In Carrie and Me, Carol Burnett shares her personal diary entries and correspondence revealing her anguish as a mother of a troubled teenager, the epiphanies that helped her help her family, and the grief and then the hope she felt after Carrie's death. Through Burnett's inimitable voice, we get a portrait of an unforgettable young woman that will bring hope to anyone struggling with raising or losing a child.

Carrie Host knows that the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness takes a split second to change your life. When told at forty, with her youngest child just nine months old, that she had a rare form of cancer known as carcinoid tumor, Host felt as if she'd been hurled into a raging river, stripped of all forms of potential rescue. Between Me and the River is Host's candid and uplifting memoir of how she found the strength and fortitude to triumph over this disease, and craft a new and meaningful life. The voyage of this strong-minded, openhearted woman is told with uncompromising honesty and respect for the miracles that medicine and love can work. Host's unquenchable sense of humor in the midst of suffering creates poignant moments of laughter through tears. Bracing, lyrical and deeply moving, Between Me and the River is a tribute to one life, and all lives, rerouted by illness.

Girl Runner is the story of Aganetha Smart, a former Olympic athlete who was famous in the 1920s, but now, at age 104, lives in a nursing home, alone and forgotten by history. For Aganetha, a competitive and ambitious woman, her life remains present and unfinished in her mind. When her quiet life is disturbed by the unexpected arrival of two young strangers, Aganetha begins to reflect on her childhood in rural Ontario and her struggles to make an independent life for herself in the city. Without revealing who they are, or what they may want from her, the visitors take Aganetha on an outing from the nursing home. As ready as ever for adventure, Aganetha’s memories are stirred when the pair return her to the family farm where she was raised. The devastation of WWI and the Spanish flu epidemic, the optimism of the 1920s and the sacrifices of the 1930s play out in Aganetha’s mind, as she wrestles with the confusion and displacement of the present. Part historical page-turner, part contemporary mystery, Girl Runner is an engaging and endearing story about family, ambition, athletics and the dedicated pursuit of one’s passions. It is also, ultimately, about a woman who follows the singular, heart-breaking and inspiring course of her life until the very end.

A queer psychological thriller from a beguiling, fresh new voice. Victoria is unraveling. Her best friend is missing, and she's the only one who seems to care: there are clues all over Cambridge, but Deb is nowhere to be found--and the harder Victoria looks, the less she sees. Victoria is raised in a crumbling house in England by her working-class aunt and uncle, until her academic brilliance gains her entrance to Cambridge. There, she meets her first true friend, Deb, a spacey aristocrat, and the girls create their own tiny bubble within Cambridge's strict class system. Until Deb disappears. In her search for her friend, Victoria finds an unlikely ally--a police officer named Julie. They travel the countryside, visiting sites of suicides, murders, and accidents. But eventually, Julie's emotional demands overwhelm Victoria, and she retreats into a lonely life of academia, always teetering on the edge of emotional collapse. Wandering through a miasma of sexism, isolation, physical and mental health issues, Victoria's story is haunted by the spectre of her mother, whose own assault and subsequent pregnancy represent a break in her contract with the world.

From the guitarist of the pioneering band Sleater-Kinney, the book Kim Gordon says "everyone has been waiting for" and a New York Times Notable Book of 2015-- a candid, funny, and deeply personal look at making a life--and finding yourself--in music. Before Carrie Brownstein became a music icon, she was a young girl growing up in the Pacific Northwest just as it was becoming the setting for one the most important movements in rock history. Seeking a sense of home and identity, she would discover both while moving from spectator to creator in experiencing the power and mystery of a live performance. With Sleater-Kinney, Brownstein and her bandmates rose to prominence in the burgeoning underground feminist punk-rock movement that would define music and pop culture in the 1990s. They would be cited as “America’s best rock band” by legendary music critic Greil Marcus for their defiant, exuberant brand of punk that resisted labels and limitations, and redefined notions of gender in rock. HUNGER MAKES ME A MODERN GIRL is an intimate and revealing narrative of her escape from a turbulent family life into a world where music was the means toward self-invention, community, and rescue. Along the way, Brownstein chronicles the excitement and contradictions within the era’s flourishing and fiercely independent music subculture, including experiences that sowed the seeds for the observational satire of the popular television series Portlandia years later. With deft, lucid prose Brownstein proves herself as formidable on the page as on the stage. Accessibly raw, honest and heartfelt, this book captures the experience of being a young woman, a born performer and an outsider, and ultimately finding one’s true calling through hard work, courage and the intoxicating power of rock and roll.

Meet fifteen-year-old Laura, who thinks her name is plain, her stepmom's insane, and her stepbrother is lame. Enter a new friend and new grade in high school, a sister she never sees, a mom she doesn't want to see, and a sister she didn't want to happen, and you've got big problems! The last thing Laura expects is for someone to understand. Hopefully it will happen before it's too late.

Carol Burnett spent most of her childhood in a Depression-scarred Hollywood neighborhood, where she lived in a single-room apartment with her endearingly batty grandmother, Nanny, a hypochondriacal Christian Scientist with a buried past. The child of two alcoholic parents, Burnett presents a sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking coming-of-age: from her sadly hopeful mother, who was hooked on Tinseltown fantasy, to the first signs of her own comic gift; from happy weekends spent with her father, to their last tragic meeting in a public sanatorium. Featuring a new Afterword by the author, about teaming up with her daughter to bring this story to Broadway, One More Time is an intimate, touching, and astonishing narrative of a financially desperate but emotionally rich childhood on the wrong side of Hollywood’s tracks.

The comedienne and actress draws on diary entries, correspondence, and family memories to present a tribute to her late daughter that traces Carrie's struggles with self-esteem and addiction before her cancer-related death, in an account that also sharesthe life lessons they learned together.