Ginger

Sample

Rosanne Cash

For thirty years as a musician, Rosanne Cash has enjoyed both critical and commercial success, releasing a series of albums that are as notable for their lyrical intelligence as for their musical excellence. In this memoir, Cash writes compellingly about her upbringing in Southern California as the child of country legend Johnny Cash, and of her relationships with her mother and her famous stepmother, June Carter Cash. In her account of her development as an artist she shares memories of recording her own first album on a German label; working her way to success; her Nashville marriage to Rodney Crowell; her relationship with the country music establishment; taking a new direction in her music and moving to New York; motherhood; dealing with the deaths of her parents, in part through music; the process of songwriting; and her fulfillment with her current husband and musical collaborator, John Leventhal.--From publisher description.

Sample

Richard Selzer

Biography of surgeon and writer Richard Selzer focusing on his childhood in Troy, New York and revisiting his childhood home.

Sample

Isabella Rossellini

A fascinating, quirky, and above all personal look at herself and her life by the renowned model/actress, who illuminates her life and her world in a brilliant mosaic of short takes accompanied by scores of pictures ranging from those she keeps on her bedside table to family snapshots and her many Richard Avedon Vogue covers. She writes of her mother, Ingrid Bergman: "Second to acting, Mother loved cleaning, which is not to say she loved even that above me. I'm sure she loved me more than cleaning, but what made her happiest was combining the two." She writes of her father, Roberto Rossellini: "My father was a Jewish mother.... When we were children (there were seven of us), one of our favorite games was throwing ourselves onto Daddy's body. Lying on his side, he pretended to be the sow and we were the piglets.". She writes about her famous nude scene in David Lynch's Blue Velvet and of posing for Avedon, Bruce Weber, and Steven Meisel. About being fired as the face of Lancome because she dared to turn forty. About the two years of scoliosis that blighted her adolescence. About acting as opposed to modeling. About being a daughter, a sister, and a mother. About her children: Elettra, who, when asked by her kindergarten teacher what she would do if she got lost in an airport, answered, "I'd look for my mamma's poster and wait underneath it for help"; and Roberto, her adopted son. About her unforgettable encounters with Anna Magnani (her father's onetime mistress) and Katharine Hepburn, as well as the peculiar behavior of her many pets. About her wardrobe. About lying. She talks - candidly yet discreetly - about the men in her life: her ex-husband Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Gary Oldman. And she conducts intimate and extended dialogues with her beloved dead ones.

Sample

Barbara Leaming

At last, the definitive biography of Katharine Hepburn - the story she herself has never told. Hollywood has produced many stars, but no one compares to Katharine Hepburn. She is the last of the great ones: a celebrated actress, a brilliant personality, an original. In more than sixty years of public life, countless men have fallen in love with her, women have admired her, and yet only a handful have ever known the real Kate. What drove Katharine Hepburn? Why was she so loved? How could such a fiercely independent woman have given up her life to one man - Spencer Tracy - to the point of curling up on the floor outside his hotel room while he drank himself into unconsciousness behind a locked door? Barbara Leaming has discovered thousands of never-before-seen documents that finally illuminate the mystery of this enigmatic, fascinating woman. Growing up in a family shadowed by suicide and madness, young Kate was unaware of her family's tragic history until the day - she was thirteen - she discovered her brother hanging dead in an attic. His death - and the heritage that might have explained it - was never talked of again, leaving Kate with unresolved questions that have haunted her ever since. It is a love story - though not the one you would expect. It is also a family story that brings alive three generations of fearless women, personal and political crusaders who shaped the history of women in our century.