Gadsby grew up as the youngest of five children in Tasmania, where homosexuality was illegal until 1997. After moving to mainland Australia and receiving a degree in art history, they found themselves adrift, working itinerant jobs and enduring years of isolation punctuated by homophobic and sexual violence. When Gadsby was twenty-seven, a friend encouraged them to enter a stand-up competition. They won, and so began their career in comedy.

New York Times best-selling author Iyanla Vanzant recounts the last decade of her life and the spiritual lessons learned—from the price of success during her meteoric rise as a TV celebrity on Oprah, the Iyanla TV show (produced by Barbara Walters), to the dissolution of her marriage and her daughter's 15 months of illness and death on Christmas day.

With ribald humor, wit, and incredible insight, Alan seamlessly moves back and forth in time, integrating stories from his childhood in Scotland and his experiences today as the celebrated actor of film, television, and stage. At times suspenseful, at times deeply moving, but always incredibly brave and honest, Not My Father's Son is a powerful story of embracing the best aspects of the past and triumphantly pushing the darkness aside.

It's about time we made motherhood more diverse.... When Candice fell pregnant and stepped into the motherhood playing field, she found her experience bore little resemblance to the glossy magazine photos of women in horizontal stripe tops and the pinned discussions on Mumsnet about what pushchair to buy. Leafing through the piles of prenatal paraphernalia, she found herself wondering: "Where are all the black mothers?".

I was born and broken in Birkenhead, abused from infancy by a network of every kind of pervert from ‘thinks it’s love’ to ‘show it hurts’. I was unwanted, beaten, sold, swapped, photographed, filmed, left for dead, corrupted, blamed, betrayed, ignored and orphaned. But I was also born with a fire inside me. I call it my Phoenix Fire. I am no victim—that word only describes what happened to me. Nor am I a survivor because that implies I am over it. I am a Phoenix—a work in progress. This is my story....

Bryony Gordon has OCD. It's the snake in her brain that has told her ever since she was a teenager that her world is about to come crashing down: that her family might die if she doesn't repeat a phrase five times, or that she might have murdered someone and forgotten about it. It's caused alopecia, bulimia, and drug dependency. And Bryony is sick of it. Keeping silent about her illness has given it a cachet it simply does not deserve, so here she shares her story with trademark wit and dazzling honesty.

Marcia Brady, eldest daughter on television's The Brady Bunch, had it all. But what viewers didn't know about the always sunny, perfect Marcia was that offscreen, her real-life counterpart, Maureen McCormick was living a very different - and not so wonderful - life. Maureen tells the shocking and inspirational true story of the beloved teen and the woman she became.

Christine Ducommun was a happily married wife and mother of two when, after returning to live in the house of her childhood, she began to experience panic attacks and night terrors. Says the author, "I sought therapy, and there I discovered, to my shock and horror, that I had been sexually abused at the hands of my father at a very early age. I surely didn't want to believe it. But as my mind began to release bizarre flashbacks, my alters began to show themselves.

The Mountainview School in working-class Dublin boasts a brightly festooned room brimming with paper flowers and Renaissance posters. There, in an evening class, "An Introduction to Italian," come Aiden Dunne, the supervisor, Signora, the professoressa, and 30 or so students, whose hopes and dreams are bound up in the Tuesday and Thursday lessons.

When Maureen and her ex-husband Mike see their daughter Katie’s needle track marks for the first time, it is a complete shock. But, slowly, the drug use explains everything - Katie’s constant exhaustion, erratic moods, and all those spoons that have gone missing from the house. Once Mike and Maureen get Katie into detox, Maureen goes to sleep that night hoping that in 48 hours she’ll have her daughter back. It’s not that simple. Like the millions of parents and relatives all over the country, Maureen learns that recovery is neither straightforward nor brief.

Electroshock therapy, child abuse, and modern-day slavery... just another day in Christine's life. Take a heart-wrenching yet inspiring ride through one woman's incredible journey that is so compelling that you are simultaneously trying to look away and unable to stop yourself from listening on. Christine's father is a wealthy, tyrannical man renowned in the diamond business. At the age of just five, little Christine is cast aside into a boarding school where she is ridiculed for two embarrassing problems. She grows up in a never-ending circle of traumatic experiences.

This is a powerful true story of one young girl's struggle to survive the state-care-system in the 70s and 80s. Amelia has just one wish, to make it through to adulthood and hold her destiny in her own hands. This is a harrowing true story, one of survival and human strength. Amelia has been tragically separated from all her siblings, never to see them again for many years.

In John, Cynthia recalls those times with the loving honesty of an insider, offering new and fascinating insights into the life of John Lennon and the early days of the Beatles. And with the perspective only years can provide, she also tells the compelling story of her marriage to a man who was to become a music legend, a cultural hero, and a defining figure of the 20th century.

As one-fifth of the iconic Spice Girls and judge on X Factor and America's Got Talent, Melanie Brown, aka Scary Spice, has been an international star since the age of 19. And yet there are sides of Mel that no one has ever seen, or really known. Brutally Honest is an exposé of the struggles and acute pain that lay behind the glamour and success. With deep personal insight, remarkable frankness and Melanie’s trademark Yorkshire humour, this audiobook removes the mask of fame and reveals the mother, wife and daughter behind the Spice Girl everyone thinks they know.

On July 23, 2011, Amy Winehouse's family, friends, and fans around the world mourned the tragedy that this remarkable, talented, and extraordinarily generous young woman was now gone. A legion of dedicated fans had lost their idol; a devastated family had lost their Amy. With this difficult news came an outpouring of love and grief from her fans, along with troubling questions about Amy's very public struggles with drugs and alcohol, as people tried to understand how a soulful singer had been silenced so young.