Enchanting . . . Rather than the rural peasants she always pictured, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily—by phone, fax, they are a boisterous, and letter, loving, in a language she doesn’t understand—until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. She believed herself lucky to have escaped a life that was surely one of poverty and misery, to grow up in comfort with her doting parents and brothers.

Then, when she was in her twenties, her birth family came calling. Spanning cultures and continents, hilarity, Lucky Girl brings home a tale of joy and regret, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny. Mei-ling hopgood had an all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry.

As her biological sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. The true story of an american woman’s unexpected reunion with her Chinese birth family: “A great book” Good Housekeeping. Hopgood’s story entices not because it’s joyful but because she is honest, analytical and articulate concerning her ambivalence about and eventual acceptance of both her families and herself.

The courier-Journal Louisville, Kentucky. In 1974, a baby girl from taiwan was brought to the United States, newly adopted by a loving couple in Michigan.

So Happiness to Meet You: Foolishly, Blissfully Stranded in Vietnam

No longer able to afford their comfortable lifestyle, she and her husband sold everything they had, rented out their house, and took their young autistic son to Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. A lighthearted memoir of new friends, delicious food, and culture shock . . . Full of love, laughter—and a surprising amount of barbecued rat—this is a “loopy adventure and charming cautionary tale for anyone who’s ever dreamed of packing it in and starting over somewhere new” Mark Haskell Smith, author of Naked at Lunch and Baked.

Boy, were they wrong . . . She also paints an endearing portrait of neighbors who unabashedly stared into windows, taught Karin how to shop and cook, kept cockroaches for luck, and ultimately helped her find joy without Western trappings. Esterhammer tells of her family’s trials, overcoming the language barrier, and victories in adapting to a foreign culture, adventures, and enduring the kind of heat and humidity that could drive a soul insane.

A brisk chronicle of a family’s misadventures in Vietnam” Kirkus Reviews. So happiness to meet you is the funny, inspiring, and eye-opening true account of one family’s quest to regain their financial footing while living anything but the high life. They thought that teaching English and living cheap for a year would help get them back on their feet.

During the 2008 recession, karin Esterhammer was laid off from her job as a travel writer for the Los Angeles Times.

Silence and Circumstance

Tolkien, and many others, this historical adventure delves into the shadows of mysterious societies, where it appears something dark is rising . . . While sir arthur conan doyle and his protégé, speed towards Istanbul on the Orient Express in search of Agatha’s diary, Ian Fleming, Charlotte discovers clues that dispatch her to Berlin where she stumbles into a world gone mad.

With a dizzying cast of characters that includes Dorothy Parker, Pablo Picasso, Lillian Hellman, J. R. R. Did the great writer really just “black out, ” only to somehow reappear days later at a spa hotel? Could she be a pawn trapped in an international mystery? Or was she the puppet-master? The adventure unfolds through the perspective of Christie’s trusted governess, Charlotte “Carlo” Fisher.

Historical fact and tantalizing fiction merge in this unique interwar thriller about Agatha Christie’s mysterious disappearance in 1926. After receiving a mysterious letter, Charlotte embarks on a harrowing quest, aided by many of the famous and elite of the twentieth century. When agatha christie disappeared for eleven days in December, 1926, all of England was abuzz with speculation.

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A Tiger's Heart: The Story of a Modern Chinese Woman

Aisling juanjuan shen was born to illiterate peasants in a tiny farming hamlet in China’s Yangtze Delta in 1974. Her story is emblematic of a new generation of Chinese women who are leaving the rice paddies and government jobs in order to enter the free market and determine the course of their own lives.

In this memoir, aisling chronicles her rise from rural poverty to a successful career, illustrating the massive economic and social changes that have taken place in China over the past several decades. Impossible to put down”Library Journal, starred review. . Pronounced useless by her parents because she wasn’t good at planting rice, she became the first person from her village ever to attend college.

After graduating with a teaching degree, the government assigned her to a remote and low-paying job that she was expected to hold for the rest of her life. This remarkable true story of a Chinese peasant girl’s unlikely rise to success is “like a suspense novel . . . But she wasn’t satisfied—and she bought her way out of her secure position and left for the special economic zones of southern China, in search of happiness and success in the business world, eventually immigrating to the United States.

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Dinner with Edward: The Story of an Unexpected Friendship

A memoir of food and friendship “combining the warm-heartedness of Tuesdays with Morrie with the sensual splendor of Julie and Julia” Booklist, starred review. Isabel vincent first arrives at Edward’s New York apartment to check on him as a favor to his daughter. But their meeting comes at a moment of transition for each of them: Edward wants nothing more than to follow his late wife to the grave, while Isabel is watching her marriage unravel.

As edward and isabel meet weekly for the glorious dinners that Edward prepares, he shares so much more than his recipes for apple galette or the perfect martini, or even his tips for deboning poultry. Edward teaches isabel the art of slowing down, taking the time to think through her own life—cutting it back to the bone and examining the guts, no matter how messy that proves to be.

Dinner with edward is a book about love and nourishment, and about how dinner with a friend can, in the words of M. F. K. Fisher, “sustain us against the hungers of the world. A rare, beautifully crafted memoir that leaves you exhilarated. Rosemary sullivan, author of Stalin’s Daughter “This is a memoir to treasure.

Booklist starred review. She has no idea that the nonagenarian baking a sublime roast chicken and a light-as-air apricot soufflé will end up changing her life.

Into Enemy Arms: The Remarkable True Story of a German Girl's Struggle against Nazism, and Her Daring Escape with the Allied Airman She Loved

One among them, warrant officer Gordon Slowey, was the man Ditha was destined to meet and fall in love with. Into enemy arms tells the extraordinary story of Ditha and the escaped POWs she helped save. In 1945, ditha bruncel was living with her parents in the small town of Lossen, in Upper Silesia. The suspenseful true story of a love that defied Nazi oppression, and a harrowing journey to freedom.

At the same time more than fifteen hundred British and Commonwealth airmen were being marched out of Stalag Luft VII, a POW camp in the same region. Close jewish friends had vanished, swastikas hung from every building, and neighbors were disappearing in the middle of the night. Together, they embarked on a dangerous and daring flight out of Germany.

As they faced exhaustion, extreme cold, ditha and Gordon’s love for one another intensified, and the constant risk of discovery, hunger, and so did their determination to survive and escape. . Twenty-three of these prisoners managed to escape from the marching column—and by chance hobbled into Lossen.

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Red Sorrow: A Memoir

Declared an outcast, left to care for herself and her younger brother, she witnessed her native Shanghai fall prey to Mao’s “red cyclone” that sought to purge China of all capitalist and old traditional values. Not until schools reopened was Nanchu able to escape the camp for a university. In this “heart-rending” memoir, the author depicts not only her own family’s travails, but also a society upended by a power struggle at the highest levels of the government Library Journal.

There she suffered privation, unspeakable hardships, and constant abuse. At the outbreak of the cultural revolution in 1966 China, thirteen-year-old Nanchu watched as the Red Guards burst into her home and arrested her parents, who were jailed and tortured. But even there, she soon realized, the revolution continued in the classroom.

A searing memoir in fluid, conversational prose that adds to the pool of personal testimonies of China’s historical nightmare” Publishers Weekly. This gripping story is essential reading for anyone interested in China and the struggle for freedom and human dignity. Nanchu was sent to a military-labor camp where a million people of her generation were eventually relocated.

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My Life in Orange: Growing Up with the Guru

A memoir of formative years spent on a series of communes: A “wonderful account of a frankly ghastly childhood . . . In 1985 the movement collapsed amid allegations of mass poisonings, attempted murder, and tax evasion, and Yogesh was once again Tim. Hilarious and heartbreaking” Daily Mail. While his mother worked tirelessly for the cause, tim—or Yogesh, Oregon, as he was now called—lived a life of well-meaning but woefully misguided neglect in various communes in England, India, and Germany.

Tim and his mother were given Sanskrit names, dressed entirely in orange, and encouraged to surrender themselves into their new family. The bhagwan preached an eclectic doctrine of Eastern mysticism, and sexual freedom, preaching from a dentist's chair, chaotic therapy, and enjoyed inhaling laughing gas, and collecting Rolls Royces.

In this extraordinary memoir, Tim Guest chronicles the heartbreaking experience of being left alone on earth while his mother hunted heaven. At the age of six, tim guest was taken by his mother to a commune modeled on the teachings of the notorious Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. An intelligent, wry, openhearted memoir of surviving a childhood and a cultural phenomenon that were both extraordinary.

Booklist starred review.

Saigon Kids: An American Military Brat Comes of Age in 1960's Vietnam

In 1962, saigon was a vibrant, when us navy chief petty officer Bryant Arbuckle brought his wife and three sons to his new post in Southeast Asia, exciting, dirty, and perilous metropolis filled with exotic temptations. Young leslie Arbuckle was fourteen at the time. Instead of running from angry street vendors, he found himself fleeing machine gun fire and witnessing the self-immolation of Buddhist monks protesting a corrupt political regime.

At once vivid, beautiful, and frightening, funny, les arbuckle’s Saigon Kids is an unforgettable evocation of a unique adolescence spent in a strange and volatile world—a remarkable memoir of growing up American on the edge of a war zone. But saigon in the mid-sixties was a lit powder keg about to explode, as an expanding war in the Vietnamese countryside began creeping closer.

A fearless and inquisitive american boy, he was eager to explore the city’s forbidden wonders, from its bustling black market to its late-night brothels. This memoir of an american teenager coming of age in 1960s Vietnam “is a rip-roaring historical snapshot of a capitol teetering on the brink of war” Rick Frederickson, Vietnam Magazine.

. The new world surrounding him was intoxicating, and he enthusiastically drank it all in. As life went on within the confines of the US military compound, Les watched the city dissolve into chaos on the other side of the barbed wire. For les, an exciting overseas lark would soon turn darker and more dangerous.

Happy Days: My Mother, My Father, My Sister & Me

She shares insights about growing up with a cold, her relationship with her younger sister, the suicide of her adopted daughter, hypercritical mother, and her reconciliation with her parents after a twenty-year estrangement. I had to do a lot of detective work to uncover the truth about my parents’ lives, ” Alexander said.

I knew almost nothing about them as people. But by the end they really did become my best friends. ” . This wise, unflinchingly candid memoir is also a revealing account of Alexander’s own life, witty, from her successful career as a writer and national-news commentator to her troubled marriages and emotionally wrenching love affairs.

They remained together for fifty-seven years, and yet they lived separate lives. Milton ager was a famous songwriter whose creations included “Ain’t She Sweet” and “Happy Days Are Here Again. Cecelia ager was a film critic and Variety columnist. Acclaimed 60 minutes commentator and true-crime author shana Alexander turns her journalist’s eye to her own unconventional family—and herself—in this fascinating, moving memoir Shana Alexander spent most of her life trying to figure out her enigmatic parents.

They were a glamorous jazz age couple that moved in charmed circles with George and Ira Gershwin, Dorothy Parker, and Jerome Kern.

Looking After Minidoka: An American Memoir Break Away Books

You’ll wince but read it anyway. During world war ii, 110, 000 japanese Americans were removed from their homes and incarcerated by the US government. In looking after minidoka, the “internment camp” years become a prism for understanding three generations of Japanese-American life, from immigration to the end of the twentieth century.

Nakadate blends history, prejudice and pain, language and education, and family stories in an American narrative of hope and disappointment, poetry, rescued memory, employment and social standing, communal values and personal dreams. Your soul will be better for it. Nuvo “this book is highly readable and contains fascinating details not usually covered in other books on Japanese-American history.

Oregon Historical Quarterly. A “clear-eyed, carefully researched but nonetheless passionate book” that is “rich with the closely observed details of internment camp life” Lauren Kessler, author of Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family. Poetic yet sharply honest, the family story unfolds within the larger context of the national saga.

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