Central Kansas Library System

"A raw and unflinching look at the objectification and misogyny of the Playboy mansion, a woman's stolen young adulthood and her journey to self-acceptance, and a rare look inside Hugh Hefner's final days. Crystal offers a vulnerable and clear-eyed look at how her experience with Hugh Hefner catalyzed her transformative journey from someone who prized external validation over all else to a person who finally recognizes her true worth. This candid...

When her new husband joins an elite Army unit, Simone Gorrindo is uprooted from New York City and dropped into Columbus, Georgia--a town so foreign she might as well have landed on the moon. With her husband frequently deployed, Simone is left to find her place in this new world, alone--until she meets the wives. Gorrindo gives us an intimate look into the inner lives of a remarkable group of women and a tender, unflinching portrait of a marriage....

"The first English language edition of a lost memoir by an Auschwitz survivor, offering a shocking and deeply moving perspective on life within the camps. When József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944, his life expectancy was forty-five minutes. This was how long it took for the half-dead prisoners to be sorted into groups, stripped, and sent to the gas chambers. He beat the odds and survived...

Poet, writer, and hip-hop educator Tony Keith Jr. makes his debut with a powerful YA memoir in verse, tracing his journey from being a closeted gay Black teen battling poverty, racism, and homophobia to becoming an openly gay first-generation college student who finds freedom in poetry. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, George M. Johnson, and Jacqueline Woodson.Tony dreams about life after high school, where his poetic voice can find freedom...

"In this explosive tell-all memoir, an Olympic figure skater reveals her battle to survive mental illness, eating disorders, and the self-destructive voice inside that she calls "outofshapeworthlessloser." When Gracie Gold stepped onto center stage (or ice, rather) as America's sweetheart at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, she instantly became the face of America's most beloved winter sport. Beautiful, blonde, Midwestern, and media-trained, she was suddenly...

"In this inspiring memoir, a renowned woodworker shares how he found happiness despite real-life struggles with drug addiction, anxiety, depression, financial despair, and permanent blindness caused by a failed suicide attempt at the age of sixteen. As John struggled to free himself from addiction, search for his independence, and find his purpose, he met his future wife, Anni, an artist who also faced her own physical and mental health challenges....

"More than just a story of one woman's love affair with the skies, Life Takes Wings combines lessons in tenacity, humility, humor, perseverance, and partnership with the exhilaration of defying social norms, and the rewards of being true to oneself. Inspired to become a commercial airline pilot in an age when it was not an option for girls, serendipitous relationships lead Lynn to her first flying lessons in a seaplane, then to becoming flight instructor...

"Born in rural Afghanistan, Shakardokht Jafari became a refugee aged just six, after a harrowing half-year trek to Iran. There, at twelve, she discovered she had been promised in marriage at birth to an older cousin. Resisting no fewer than three arranged marriages, she fought to choose her own husband, education and career, defying convention to study radiation technologies at Tehran University. Returning to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban,...

"This is the story of my childhood in Brazil, about the culture shock I experienced when I arrived in the forests of northern Sweden and about the loss of the people I loved most. It's about what I remember of my childhood in the Brazilian wilderness, on the streets of São Paulo, in the orphanage. And it's about my early days in Sweden, when I found myself dropped into a place and life that couldn't have been in sharper contrast to what I had known"--Back...

"This book is an honest and vulnerable first-person account of Celeste Edmunds a young woman who was raised by drug addict parents and, at a young age, learned to survive and protect her siblings among rapists and drug dealers. Eventually the state separated the family and Celeste was adopted, alone, into a dysfunctional, fractured home where she was treated, by a sadistic and manipulating mother, as an unwanted outsider. Contemplating taking her...