Memoir / Biography


  
  • OVERLAND BEFORE THE HIPPIE TRAIL - A 2024 GOLD BOOK AWARD WINNER OF INDEPENDENT PUBLISHERS OF NEW ENGLAND (IPNE)

    The year was 1965 when Patricia and her new husband set off to Europe on their honeymoon. Little did she know that this trip would stretch into a two-year journey that would take them around the world on a bare-bones budget.

    While living rarely more than an arm’s distance apart in their VW van, they make their way from Europe and West Asia to South Asia, then continue across East Asia by train, bus, and hitchhiking.

    In those days with no mobile phones, no Internet, and few guidebooks, they were out of contact with family for months at a time while dodging a cholera epidemic in Iraq, staying in a palace in Pakistan, meeting a maharaja in India, and floating down the Mekong River in Laos.

    The journey had become a way of life, one in which they found a world that was not only large and varied, but filled with people who were curious, welcoming, and generous.

  • What does it take to overcome deeply embedded family traumas, career-ending betrayals, and failed relationships? What is the personal cost of keeping secrets—and staying in the closet? These are questions that Mary Means explores in her memoir, as she navigates growing up as a young closeted lesbian in Georgia during the 1960s and learning to love—and be loved—as an adult. Through the deaths of loved ones, the fear of discovery, and the budding of a legacy that would come to change lives across the nation, Something Worth Saving tells a story of resilience and self-discovery perfect for anyone who has ever struggled to maintain a flawless facade when inside they were crumbling. Mary Means is an award-winning leader, founder of the Main Street revitalization movement that has brought vitality back to countless town centers. Her candor and vulnerability permeate her remarkable story.
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    Memoir/Biography published by NORFOLK PRESS

    At last, the public can go inside the experience of Hunter Thompson at Random House. The Hell’s Angels Letters: Hunter S. Thompson, Margaret Harrell and the Making of an American Classic is an important revelation in the legacy of Thompson, with letters that survived precarious shipping and travel over decades, cloaked away from the public. “If Hell’s Angels hadn’t happened I never would have been able to write Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas or anything else . . . I felt like I got through a door just as it was closing,” Hunter told Paris Review. When he secured a hardcover contract with Jim Silberman (Random House), the known part of the story breaks off. To whip up the final edits, Margaret A. Harrell, a young copy editor/assistant editor to Jim, was—in a break from the norm—given full rein to work with him by expensive long-distance phone and letter. This galvanizing action led to a fascinating tale. She uses the letters to resuscitate the cloaked, suspenseful withheld drama. The book peaks in their romantic get-together at his ranch twenty-one years after they last met, a moving tie maintained over the years. Co-Authored by Hunter S. Thompson, with special collaboration by Ron Whitehead.

  • Rachel likes to think of herself as a nice Jewish girl, dedicated to doing what’s honorable, just as her parents raised her to do. But when her husband, David, survives a plane crash and is left with severe brain damage, she faces a choice: will she dedicate her life to caring for a man she no longer loves, or walk away? Their marriage had been rocky at the time of the accident, and though she wants to do the right thing, Rachel doesn’t know how she is supposed to care for two kids in addition to a now irrational, incontinent, and seizure-prone grown man. And how will she manage to see her lover? But then again, what kind of selfish monster would refuse to care for her disabled husband, no matter how unhappy her marriage had been? Rachel wants to believe that she can dedicate her life to David’s needs, but knows in her heart it is impossible. Crash tackles a pervasive dilemma in our culture: the moral conflicts individuals face when caregiving for a disabled or cognitively impaired family member.
  • "Two-Pound Baby Wins Life Fight" Imbalanced traces Sheri Thomas' remarkable journey from a front-page headline in 1962 to her current role as an advocate fighting to remove the stigmas surrounding physical disabilities and mental health. Unflinching, poignant and humorous, Imbalanced is her personal account of juggling lifelong challenges-including cerebral palsy, migraines and brain surgery-with a successful career before unexpectedly facing serious mental health crises in her fifties.
  • 2025 IPPY Awards Silver Medalist for Sexuality/Relationships 2025 ZIBBY Most Anticipated Book of 2025 2025 ZIBBY Summer Reads Selection Can a loving relationship endure career setbacks, infidelities, and mismatched sexual desires? This is the question psychologist Bonnie Comfort grapples with as she navigates her unpredictable thirty-year marriage to Hollywood screenwriter Bob, while she provides marital therapy to others. Bob is affectionate, brilliant, and hilarious—but his sexual desires are incompatible with Bonnie’s. Despite her misgivings, she indulges his kinks, which often included photographing her in lingerie. Their Hollywood life is exciting, but eventually Bob’s growing career frustrations lead to his complete sexual shutdown. Tensions rise, and Bob suggests Bonnie have discreet affairs and not tell him. She does just that—but when she confesses her infidelities five years later, his sexual demands become more extreme. When she complies, Bonnie feels shame; when she refuses, as she increasingly does, their fights threaten to tear their marriage apart. Bonnie understands the rhythm of disconnection and repair that is common in love relationships. As we follow the journey of her own life, she shares with the reader the nature of intimacy, distance and expectations placed on long-term love. With honesty and vulnerability, she recounts the passionate highs and lows of her own marriage which sadly ends with Bob’s death. As she grieves, Bonnie reflects on her role in their marital struggles and offers profound insights about marriage from her personal and professional experience. Her story lays bare the complexities of love, the ongoing challenges women face in intimate relationships, and how even difficult marriages can find a way to thrive.
  • The author has spent his life studying the Japanese martial art of Aikido. When looking for teachers, he asks questions about the meaning of sacrifice, the physical and mental limits that can be exceeded. This is a book about passion and the cost of following your dreams. With beautiful illustrations by Kim Soung (USA) - former Disney illustrator and an intriguing cover by Kuba Krawczyk (Poland), the book brings a new quality to the message of universal importance of the relationship between teacher and student. While it describes the martial arts world, this book does ask fundamental questions for which there are no simple answers, and the value is just asking these questions.
  • The accidental result of a collaboration by Margaret A. Harrell and Jef Crab, Stop All the Clocks was conceived when Jef commented about Harrell’s An Underground PRINCIPIA: “My biggest concern is that I have no idea how many people will be able to grasp the depth of the principles you describe. It is amazing enough that you take a lifetime of experiences and connect them into a driving force that leads to the realization of one’s purpose. Even more amazing is that you include the most subtle levels of existence that play a role in these processes . . . Most breathtakingly, by reading An Underground PRINCIPIA, the reader can gain the insight that all of this is happening, not in one lifetime, whether human or universal, but in an eternal now. Amazing achievement.”—Jef Crab, An Underground PRINCIPIA review Why not make that depth accessible? Tell even more stories? Do it in conversations? Reveal tales that neither even knew about the other? Harrell pondered. Why not take the obstacle as a Giant Opportunity? And so this new book was born in conversations on Skype. Miraculously, they needed little editing and fitted neatly into Stop All the Clocks, which Harrell had started writing. Jef stepped in and the conversations that followed sparkled with probing wisdom, as the two simplified ideas, telling of experiences, helping bring about what Jef called a crashing down of the old paradigm.
  • David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of countless untamed boys who grew up in Middle America at mid-century. Whether he’s stalking snakes in the bogs of Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favorite cousins, leaping garbage cans for a beautiful little redheaded girl, or joining Chucky Dutcher for a movie marathon at the Erwin Theater, Benjamin is the kind of precocious ironist who would have found a sidekick in Huck Finn. His tales and insights lyrically capture a precious moment in bygone American life, as Benjamin recalls the myriad scrapes, reckless escapades and wanderlust that once made childhood an exhilarating — or terrifying — adventure.
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