Published in 1913, My Childhood is the first in an autobiographical trilogy by the Russian writer and five-time Nobel Prize-nominee Maxim Gorky. Painfully moving in places, the book tells of the experiences of a young boy who goes to live with his grandparents following the death of his father. Gorky's depiction of 19th-century Russia through the eyes of his younger self is remarkable. As he recalls memories of his youth, contrasting themes and emotions...

The story begins in the 1950s, in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else. As they grow, as their paths repeatedly diverge and converge, Elena and Lila remain best friends whose respective destinies are reflected and refracted in the other. They are likewise the embodiments of a nation undergoing momentous change. Through...

Award-winning filmmakers Phil Grabsky and Shoaib Sharifi release a real-life epic of boyhood and manhood – they follow Mir and his familyfilmed across twenty years in one of the most embattled corners of the globe. They form a portrait of embattled Afghanistan that no other film has ever captured. War, politics, poverty, and heartbreak – all seen from the level of a child frolicking in a muddy, bullet-laden pool, playing soccer on a dirt pitch,...

Kid on the Go! is Neill McKee's third work of creative nonfiction. It's a standalone prequel to his award-winning Finding Myself in Borneo. In this new book, McKee takes readers on a journey through his childhood, adolescence, and teenage years from the mid-40s to the mid-60s, in the small, then industrially-polluted town of Elmira, Ontario, Canada-one of the centers of production for Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. McKee's vivid descriptions,...

Jeanne Walker Harvey delights young readers by bringing history to life. In My Hands Sing the Blues, she focuses on Romare Bearden, a young boy from North Carolina who traveled to New York City and became a famous painter known for his rich depiction of African-American culture. Drawing inspiration from Bearden's paintings and love of jazz, Harvey crafts a dazzling fictionalized account of what life would have been like for young Romare as he stared...

Sometimes misery is little, and sometimes it is epic and yawning, capable of swallowing every childhood memory. There are the miseries the Castles will talk about-old family lore about a great great great uncle who was split in two while connecting railroad cars-and the misery none of them will face. There are days at the lake, placid except for inexplicable tension the parents won't address and the three Castle children don't have names for. There...

The never-before-published diaries of Alathea Fitzalan Howard-who spent her teenaged years living out World War II in Windsor Great Park with her close friends Princess Margaret and Princess Elizabeth, the future queen of the United Kingdom-provide an extraordinary and intimate look at the British Royal Family. Like so many others in Great Britain, young Alathea Fitzalan Howard's life was turned upside down by the start of the Second World War. Sent...

With 275 million impacted worldwide, UNICEF calls childhood domestic violence "One of the most damaging, unaddressed human rights violations in the world today." In her early thirties, Renesia Martin seemed to have it all together. She was thriving in her corporate career, and she was married to an outgoing and handsome man, in a beautiful home in an upper-class neighborhood. Yet, behind closed doors she was living in the cycle of abuse. "Don't...

The memoir Perfection returns with an unforgettable and vividly written account of her late mother's lost childhood in Nazi-occupied Austria and the parallels she sees between that dark time and present-day America. To Julie Metz, her mother, Eve, was the quintessential New Yorker. It was difficult to imagine her living anywhere else except the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where she could be found attending Carnegie Hall and the Metropolitan Opera...