Cats and daughters

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Susan Swingler

"Susan Swingler is the stepdaughter of one of Australia's most revered writers - Elizabeth Jolley. Abandoned by her father, Leonard, at the age of four, Susan had no contact with the Jolley family until they found and reclaimed her at the age of 21. Why they were kept apart is the subject of this startling new memoir. The House of Fiction tells the story of Swingler's quest to find her father. As she painstakingly traces clues to a better understanding of Leonard, she inadvertently unravels an intricate fiction created by Elizabeth to protect those she loves. A story that sheds a new and surprising light on one of Australia's most important writers, it is also an intimate and deeply moving memoir of a daughter's quest to discover her absent father"--Publisher's description.

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Scott Peck

All-American Boy is a compelling story, a beautifully written account of the relationship between a father and son - their fourteen-year estrangement and their ultimate reconciliation. Scott Peck was thrust into the public eye when his father, Marine Colonel Fred Peck, startled the nation with his Senate testimony that he had just learned that his son was gay, and that while he loved his son, he would be loath to see him in the military because of fear of what might happen to him. Scott immediately became the subject of enormous media attention as he eloquently spoke about his own sexuality, his family, and much else. Here is his story, recalling a terrifying childhood in the home of a violently abusive stepfather and the tragic death of an adored and vibrant mother at the age of thirty-seven. It is the testimony of a young man slated for a career as a fundamentalist minister - the quintessential All-American boy - who comes to terms with his own sexuality and the father who had abandoned him. A portrait of two polar opposites - the professional soldier and his outspoken son - it is a powerful and personal document, harrowing and lyrical, the debut of a brilliant young writer whose true story, written with a novelist's flair, is an unforgettable portrait of courage and of forgiveness.

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Meg Mitchell Moore

Desperate to escape her parents' ugly divorce and a former best friend's vicious cyber-bullying, thirteen-year-old Natalie bonds with widowed librarian Kathleen over the diary of an early twentieth-century Boston maid.

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Sy Montgomery

An ardent nature lover describes her unique friendship with a pig named Christopher Hogwood, a once sickly piglet who helped her develop a new relationship with neighbors in her small-town community.