Showing results for "memoir" in Divorce & Separation

On July 13, 2011, Laura Jean Ackerson of Kinston, North Carolina, went to pick up her two toddler sons. It would be the last time she was seen alive. Laura's ex, Grant Hayes - the father of her two sons - and his wife, Amanda, the mother of his newborn daughter, both pointed the finger at each other as the one guilty of murdering Laura, cutting up her body, and then transporting and disposing of the remains on the shores of Oyster Creek, Texas.

Melanie Sykes has lived most of her life in the public eye. But after a lifetime of being seen – as model, chat show host and broadcaster, Melanie walked away from that career to spend her time helping others be heard, as a campaigner for women’s rights and an advocate for neurodiversity. Then, at 52, Melanie got her own diagnosis of autism and it flicked a switch in her own life. It cast a new light on her own journey and also illuminated the other side of her story – her struggle to be heard, her heartbreaks and challenges, her self-medicating and trauma.

Before: Jen Waite has met the partner of her dreams. A handsome, loving man who becomes part of her family, evolving into her husband, her best friend, and the father of her infant daughter. After: A disturbing email sparks suspicion, leading to an investigation of who this man really is and what was really happening in their marriage. In alternating before and after chapters, Waite obsessively analyzes her relationship, trying to find a single moment form the past five years that isn't part of the long con of lies and manipulation.

Caro Giles lives on the far edge of the country, with her tribe of daughters: The Mermaid, The Whirlwind, The Caulbearer and The Littlest One. She is at once alone and yet surrounded. Bound by circumstance, financial constraints, illness and the challenges of single motherhood, she has nowhere to go but the fierce landscape that surrounds her. Over the course of the year, the moon becomes her fellow traveller through dark times, and companion through joyful ones – and even when the sky is wreathed in cloud, the moon is still felt in the pull of the tides.

When Delia's beloved first husband, Jerry, died of cancer in 2015, after 35 years of marriage, she struggled without him. Focusing on the day-to-day, she decided to make one small move forward and cancel Jerry's dedicated landline. This spiralled into days of frustration, prompting Delia to turn to words to process her grief and bewilderment. Her New York Times piece about the woes of customer service caught the eye of Peter, who emailed to commiserate.

Despite what appeared to be a glamorous existence full of globetrotting adventures, behind the scenes, Anna felt invisible in her own life. Consumed by a marriage that left no space for her own desires and creativity, she chose to reframe the failure of her marriage as an opportunity to begin again.

In this book, Dru shares never-before-told details about what it was like marrying into the Dr. Armand Hammer dynasty. She writes exclusively about the emotional pain she endured through a difficult divorce and how she came through it as a more faith-filled person. For the first time ever, Dru shares intimate and anecdotal stories about mingling with world leaders and royalty, the importance of financial independence for all women, and how cancel culture ultimately brought her family back together.

After their parents divorced in the 1970s, Andre Dubus III and his three siblings grew up with their exhausted working mother in a depressed Massachusetts mill town saturated with drugs and crime. To protect himself and those he loved from street violence, Andre learned to use his fists so well that he was even scared of himself. He was on a fast track to getting killed—or killing someone else—or to beatings-for-pay as a boxer.

At age 36, while serving on a jury, author Molly Wizenberg found herself drawn to a female attorney she hardly knew. Married to a man for nearly a decade and mother to a toddler, Wizenberg tried to return to her life as she knew it, but something inside her had changed irredeemably. Instead, she would discover that the trajectory of our lives is rarely as smooth or as logical as we'd like to believe.

Within the Tokyo underworld there is an industry which exists to break up marriages. It is known today as 'wakaresaseya' - agents who, for a fee, can be hired by one spouse to seduce the other and provide grounds for divorce on favourable terms. Inspired by a real case, this is the story of Kaitaro Nakamura, a wakaresaseya agent, who is hired by a man to seduce his wife. Kaitaro falls in love with his target, Rina, and after the divorce she moves in with him, unaware of his role in the demise of her marriage.

When writer Catherine Deveny faced the end of a 17-year relationship with the father of her children, she had no idea what lay on the other side of the months of tumult—she just knew she had to create space for a new life. But this wasn’t the first time Deveny had taken a plunge into the unknown or let go of conventional assumptions. In True North, she shares how she emerged from an oppressive Catholic upbringing in working-class Reservoir, found her tribe in Fitzroy’s share houses in the '80s and learnt to live life on her own terms.

When Meredith May is abandoned by both parents, she ends up learning life lessons about family, generosity and resilience from a rather unexpected source: the honeybees her grandfather keeps in Big Sur. In a converted WWII military bus marooned in the backyard, Grandpa shows her the nuances of harvesting honey while the bees become a guiding force in her life, bonding her to the natural world and modeling a successful community that thrives on industry, democratic decision-making and loyalty.

Life is a work in progress, as ever-changing as a sandy shoreline along the beach. During the years Joan Anderson was a loving wife and supportive mother, she had slowly and unconsciously replaced her own dreams with the needs of her family. With her sons grown, however, she realized that the family no longer centered on the home she provided, and her relationship with her husband had become stagnant. Like many women in her situation, Joan realized that she had neglected to nurture herself and, worse, to envision fulfilling goals for her future.

Told primarily through conversations, The Tuesday Girl is raw, witty, emotional, and ultimately inspirational. Tanya takes the listener on intimate dates, walks with friends, and conversations with people in her life. She falls in love with someone who she is certain is different from anyone she’s ever met, only to discover that he is a conman. Through it all, she relies on her friend Erin and learns that romance isn’t something that just happens in books—it’s something that runs throughout your own life.

When it comes to divorce, forewarned is forearmed. This book delivers both in a story you won't be able to pause. Equal parts suspense thriller and how-to manual, Tim’s memoir is a must read for anyone who’s facing a divorce with children, or loves somebody who is. While most intuitively understand that divorce brings out the worst in people, and many have heard that separating can be extremely costly and frustrating, few approach the process aware of its greatest pitfalls, how truly terrible they are, and just how prevalent they’ve become.

Discover a story of healing and personal transformation. Marlena’s childhood was full of contradictions. Her father was both a heroic doctor for people with leprosy and an abusive parent. Her Mennonite missionary community was both a devoted tribe and a controlling society. And Marlena longed to both be accepted in Paraguay and escape to somewhere new. In Nothing Bad Between Us, follow Marlena’s journey as she takes control of her life and learns to be her authentic self, scars and imperfections included.

As a naive freshman, Catherine meets Walter, a senior and Big Man on Campus whose sophistication, confidence, and wealth both intimidate and excite her. A three-year absentee courtship follows, during which time the idea of Walt tethers Catherine to safety. She was programmed to marry someone like him, so she ignores the warning signs that they might not be a good match. Hoping to please her mother and seeking refuge from her fraught childhood, she marries and has children with him—but the marriage doesn’t last.

Steve and Kirsten Beckwith shared 26 years together. There was the bliss of courtship, the contentment of marriage, and the love of parenthood—then anger, spite, unforgivable damage. When Steve dies suddenly of colon cancer, he leaves Kirsten saddled with his debts of $1.5 million. As she fights toward recovery, she begins to receive communications from Steve in the afterlife that lead her on an unexpected path to forgiveness.

Attention troublemakers, parents of troublemakers, and everyone who embraces a rebellious spirit! This captivating narrative is dedicated to you. In the heart of Reston, Virginia, an openly integrated community established amidst the civil rights movement, Ellen’s coming-of-age journey unfolds against the backdrop of societal change. With vivid detail and emotional depth, Ellen chronicles a blissful childhood that comes to an abrupt end when her parents divorce.

Two families assemble for a wedding at a family mansion on the beach in East Hampton. But as the festivities are readied, the father of the bride suffers a massive stroke from alcohol withdrawal and lies in a coma in the hospital. So begins Jeanne McCulloch’s vivid memoir of her wedding weekend in 1983 and its aftereffects on her family and the family of the groom. As McCulloch reveals, the repercussions from that weekend will ripple throughout her own family and that of her in-law as they grapple with questions of loyalty, tradition, marital honor, hope, and loss.