Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Biographies & Memoirs

Once a barista in a small cafe making $6.50 an hour, Andrew Wilkinson built a business valued at over a billion dollars by the time he was 36—and yet, his path to success was anything but a straight line. In Never Enough, Wilkinson pulls back the curtain on the lives of the ultra-rich, sharing insights into building a successful business that has been called a “Berkshire Hathaway, but for internet companies,” and a surprising first-person account of what it's actually like to become a billionaire.

Andrea Buchanan lost her mind while crossing the street one blustery March morning. The cold winter air triggered a coughing fit, and she began to choke. She was choking on a lot that day. A sick child. A pending divorce. The guilt of failing as a partner and as a mother. When the coughing finally stopped, she thought it was over. She could not have been more wrong.

Precious Brady-Davis remembers the sense of being singular and grappling with “otherness." Born into traumatic circumstances, Davis was brought up in the Omaha foster care system and the Pentecostal faith. As a biracial, gender-nonconforming kid, she felt displaced. Yet she realized by coming into her identity that she had a purpose all along. In I Have Always Been Me, Brady-Davis reflects on a childhood of neglect, instability, and abandonment.

A Civil War veteran who perpetrated one of the most ghastly mass slaughters in the annals of U.S. crime. A nineteenth-century female serial killer whose victims included three husbands and six of her own children. A Gilded Age “Bluebeard” who did away with as many as fifty wives throughout the country. A decorated World War I hero who orchestrated a murder that stunned Jazz Age America.

As a first-time parent, Kyl Myers had one aspect dialed in from the start: not being beholden to the boy-girl binary, disparities, or stereotypes from the day a child is born. With no wish to eliminate gender but rather gender discrimination, Kyl and her husband, Brent, ventured off on a parenting path less traveled. Raising a confident, compassionate, and self-aware person was all that mattered.

In the car she’d had since high school—with the boyfriend she’d had just as long riding shotgun—Minda Honey made the cross-country drive to sunny Southern California. By the end of 2008, Obama would be president, she’d be single, and change would be upon us all.

From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction - a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, and lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.

On today's world stage, there is one leader who stands apart from the rest. Queen Elizabeth II has seen more of the planet and its people than any other head of state and has engaged with the world like no other monarch in modern history. The iconic monarch never ventured further than the Isle of Wight until the age of 20 but since then has now visited over 130 countries across the globe in the line of duty, acting as diplomat, hostess, and dignitary as the world stage has changed beyond recognition.

Even when the dauphin’s own mother betrayed him, Yolande of Aragon, Queen of Sicily, fought to save her son-in-law and his claim to the throne. But the enemy seemed invincible. Just as French hopes dimmed, an astonishingly courageous young woman named Joan of Arc arrived from the farthest recesses of the kingdom, claiming that she carried a divine message. Now, on the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, this beautifully written book explores the relationship between these two remarkable women.

In January 2021, Freda Love Smith, acclaimed rock musician and author of Red Velvet Underground, watched as insurgents stormed the U.S. Capitol. It felt like the culmination of eight months of pandemic anxiety. She needed a drink, badly. But she suspected a midday whiskey wouldn’t cure what was really ailing her—nor would her nightly cannabis gummy, or her four daily cups of tea, or any of the other substances she relied on to get through each day. Thus began her experiment to remove one addictive behavior from her life each month to see if sobriety was really all it was cracked up to be.

When Laura Munson’s essay appeared in the “Modern Love” column of The New York Times, it created a firestorm. Readers sent it to their friends, therapists gave it to their patients, pastors read it to their congregations. People everywhere were struck by Munson’s wisdom. But how was she able to implement this strategy? How was she able to commit herself to an “End of Suffering” in such a critical time?

"A Rose for Her Grave" - the principal story of this collection - vividly recreates the cautionary tale of Randy Roth, a misogynistic sociopath from the Pacific Northwest whose rage was directed primarily at women and children. Addicted to his own greed, Roth exercised a powerful aura of control over his victims, using his ability to charm and boyish good looks to lower their defenses. By the time they saw the reality of the madness in his eyes, it was usually too late.

For years, the DeCavalcantes, the most powerful Mob family in Jersey, labored in the shadows of the more famous families in New York - the likes of the Gambinos and the Columbos. Dismissed by the big-city capos, the DeCavalcantes finally came into their own when they found their lives mirrored in the television hit, The Sopranos. Overnight it legitimized the made men of the Garden State. Now they were a familia to be reckoned with. Unfortunately with high profile came high risk.

From 1974 to 1991, someone in the midwestern city of Wichita was leaving behind slain tortured bodies and anonymously proclaiming himself to police and reporters as "BTK" for "Bind, Torture, Kill." Then, for the next 14 years, BTK was silent. But when he began sending letters again, investigators would not miss their chance... Stunningly, police arrested Dennis Rader, the president of his church board and the father of two. As a shocked community watched, evidence began to pile up.

Atop a hill in the rainforest of Belize, next to the ruins of a fallen civilization, a butterfly farm raises the brilliant blue morpho. What starts out as the worst vacation ever turns into a quest to learn more about the first-of-its-kind farm when journalist Diana Marcum inadvertently discovers this wildlife sanctuary, which is supported by an international live-butterfly trade.

Born into bondage in 1818, Elizabeth Keckley was able to purchase her freedom only after years of saving. She then went on to build a thriving business as a seamstress, eventually becoming modiste to Mary Todd Lincoln herself. In this dressmaking role, Keckley was a close confidante of Mary Todd, and her 1868 memoir recounted her incredible rise while also providing revelatory insights into everyday life among the Lincolns.

In 1927, while the majority of the township of Bath, Michigan, was celebrating a new primary school - one of the most modern in the Midwest - Andrew P. Kehoe had other plans. The local farmer and school board treasurer was educated, respected, and an accommodating neighbor and friend. But behind his ordinary demeanor was a narcissistic sadist seething with rage, resentment, and paranoia. On May 18 he detonated a set of rigged explosives with the sole purpose of destroying the school and everyone in it.

In April 2014, Deputy Editorial Director at BuzzFeed Lara Parker opened up to the world in an article on the website: She suffers from endometriosis. And beyond that? She let the whole world know that she wasn’t having any sex, as sex was excruciatingly painful. Less than a year before, she received not only the diagnosis of endometriosis, but also a diagnosis of pelvic floor dysfunction, vulvodynia, vaginismus, and vulvar vestibulitis.

Fueled by a powerful curiosity - and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up - Michael Crichton's journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling - swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels - an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world, a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world.