Half Broke Horses

Half Broke Horses
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2009
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1416586296

A cloth bag containing nine copies of the title.

Half a Life

Half a Life
Author: Darin Strauss
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2011-05-31
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0679643826

In this powerful, unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Darin Strauss examines the far-reaching consequences of the tragic moment that has shadowed his whole life. In his last month of high school, he was behind the wheel of his dad's Oldsmobile, driving with friends, heading off to play mini-golf. Then: a classmate swerved in front of his car. The collision resulted in her death. With piercing insight and stark prose, Darin Strauss leads us on a deeply personal, immediate, and emotional journey—graduating high school, going away to college, starting his writing career, falling in love with his future wife, becoming a father. Along the way, he takes a hard look at loss and guilt, maturity and accountability, hope and, at last, acceptance. The result is a staggering, uplifting tour de force. Look for special features inside, including an interview with Colum McCann.

Half Broken Things

Half Broken Things
Author: Morag Joss
Publisher: Delta
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2006-07-25
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0440242444

A gripping tale of psychological suspense perfect for the readership of Minette Walters and Ruth Rendell, Half Broken Things is a novel that peers into the lives of three dangerously lost people…and the ominous haven they find when they find each other. Jean is a house sitter at the end of a dreary career. Steph is nine months pregnant and on the run. And Michael is a thief. Through a mixture of deceit, good luck, and misfortune, these three damaged loners have come together at a secluded country home called Walden Manor. Now all three have found what they needed most: a new beginning, a little kindness, a little love. Living off the manor’s riches, tending its grounds and gardens, they leave the outside world far behind and build a happiness so long denied them. That is, until the first unexpected visitor arrives...igniting a chain reaction that is at once spellbinding and disastrous. A stunning, thought-provoking crime novel of chilling moral complexity, Half Broken Things is a gripping, haunting exploration of love and our need for it, of the damage done when we go long without it, and the deeds we might be driven to in its name.

The Glass Castle

The Glass Castle
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2007-01-02
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1416544666

A triumphant tale of a young woman and her difficult childhood, The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience, redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and wonderfully vibrant. Jeannette Walls was the second of four children raised by anti-institutional parents in a household of extremes.

Never Broken

Never Broken
Author: Jewel
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2016-09-20
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0399185720

“Jewel is a truth-teller…this is a book that lingers in your heart.” – Brené Brown *The New York Times bestseller* New York Times bestselling poet and multi-platinum singer-songwriter Jewel explores her unconventional upbringing and extraordinary life in an inspirational memoir that covers her childhood to fame, marriage, and motherhood. When Jewel’s first album, Pieces of You, topped the charts in 1995, her emotional voice and vulnerable performance were groundbreaking. Drawing comparisons to Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, a singer-songwriter of her kind had not emerged in decades. Now, with more than thirty million albums sold worldwide, Jewel tells the story of her life, and the lessons learned from her experience and her music. Living on a homestead in Alaska, Jewel learned to yodel at age five, and joined her parents’ entertainment act, working in hotels, honky-tonks, and biker bars. Behind a strong-willed family life with an emphasis on music and artistic talent, however, there was also instability, abuse, and trauma. At age fifteen, she moved out and tasked herself with a mission: to see if she could avoid being the kind of statistic that her past indicated for her future. Soon after, she was accepted to the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, and there she began writing her own songs as a means of expressing herself and documenting her journey to find happiness. Jewel was eighteen and homeless in San Diego when a radio DJ aired a bootleg version of one of her songs and it was requested into the top-ten countdown, something unheard-of for an unsigned artist. By the time she was twenty-one, her debut had gone multiplatinum. There is much more to Jewel’s story, though, one complicated by family legacies, by crippling fear and insecurity, and by the extraordinary circumstances in which she managed to flourish and find happiness despite these obstacles. Along her road of self-discovery, learning to redirect her fate, Jewel has become an iconic singer and songwriter. In Never Broken she reflects on how she survived, and how writing songs, poetry, and prose has saved her life many times over. She writes lyrically about the natural wonders of Alaska, about pain and loss, about the healing power of motherhood, and about discovering her own identity years after the entire world had discovered the beauty of her songs.

Half Broke: A Memoir

Half Broke: A Memoir
Author: Ginger Gaffney
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 189
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1324003081

Winner of a 2020 Border Regional Library Association Southwest Book Award “Truly transcendent.” —Jessica Lustig, New York Times Book Review This riveting memoir follows professional horse trainer Ginger Gaffney’s year-long odyssey to train a herd of neglected horses at an alternative prison ranch in New Mexico. Working with her is a small team of ranch “residents,” men and women who are each uniquely broken by addiction and incarceration. Gaffney forms a bond with them as profound as the kinship and trust the residents discover among the troubled horses. Through these unforgettable characters—both animal and human—Half Broke tells a new kind of recovery story and speaks to the life-affirming joy of finding a sense of belonging.

Broken Horses

Broken Horses
Author: Brandi Carlile
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2021-04-06
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0593237242

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The critically acclaimed singer-songwriter, producer, and six-time Grammy winner opens up about faith, sexuality, parenthood, and a life shaped by music in “one of the great memoirs of our time” (Glennon Doyle, author of Untamed). NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NPR AND AUTOSTRADDLE • “The best-written, most engaging rock autobiography since her childhood hero, Elton John, published Me.”—Variety Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, fourteen times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving an indelible mark on her formative years and altering her journey into young adulthood. As an openly gay teenager, Brandi grappled with the tension between her sexuality and her faith when her pastor publicly refused to baptize her on the day of the ceremony. Shockingly, her small town rallied around Brandi in support and set her on a path to salvation where the rest of the misfits and rejects find it: through twisted, joyful, weird, and wonderful music. In Broken Horses, Brandi Carlile takes readers through the events of her life that shaped her very raw art—from her start at a local singing competition where she performed Elton John’s “Honky Cat” in a bedazzled white polyester suit, to her first break opening for Dave Matthews Band, to many sleepless tours over fifteen years and six studio albums, all while raising two children with her wife, Catherine Shepherd. This hard-won success led her to collaborations with personal heroes like Elton John, Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples, Pearl Jam, Tanya Tucker, and Joni Mitchell, as well as her peers in the supergroup The Highwomen, and ultimately to the Grammy stage, where she converted millions of viewers into instant fans. Evocative and piercingly honest, Broken Horses is at once an examination of faith through the eyes of a person rejected by the church’s basic tenets and a meditation on the moments and lyrics that have shaped the life of a creative mind, a brilliant artist, and a genuine empath on a mission to give back.

Half-Assed

Half-Assed
Author: Jennette Fulda
Publisher: Seal Press
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-04-29
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1580052339

After undergoing gall bladder surgery at age twenty-three, Jennette Fulda decided it was time to lose some weight. Actually, more like half her weight. At the time, Jennette weighed 372 pounds. Jennette was not born fat. But, by fifth grade, her response to a school questionnaire asking “what would you change about your appearance” was “I would be thinner.” Sound familiar? Half-Assed is the captivating and incredibly honest story of Jennette’s journey to get in shape, lose weight, and change her life. From the beginning—dusting off her never-used treadmill and steering clear of the donut shop—to the end with her goal weight in sight, Jennette wows readers with her determined persistence to shed pounds and the ability to maintain her ever-present sense of self.

The Silver Star

The Silver Star
Author: Jeannette Walls
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-06-11
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1451661509

From one of the bestselling memoirists of all time comes a stunning and heartbreaking novel about an intrepid girl who challenges the injustice of the adult world in a triumph of imagination and storytelling.

Broken Contract

Broken Contract
Author: Richard D. Kahlenberg
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 1999
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9781558492349

In 1986, 70 percent of the first-year class of Harvard Law School wanted to pursue careers in public-interest law. Ten years later, the same percentage of this class was pursuing careers in private corporate firms. How is it that these students began their careers interested in using law as a vehicle for social change, but ended up in those very law firms most resistant to change? How are law students able to reconcile liberal politics with careers in corporate law? Richard D. Kahlenberg's Broken Contract serves to warn prospective law students on the transformation that happens during the second and third years. His memoir explores the intense competitiveness and insidious pressure leading to jobs that are lucrative, prestigious, and challenging-but ultimately unsatisfying. Though Broken Contract doesn't seek to convince every law student to go into public service, Kahlenberg means to challenge and restructure our social institutions to make it easier to follow our impulses toward good instead of toward the goods.