The award-winning actress and best-selling author of Down Came the Rain explores her relationship with her tough single mom, detailing her role in shaping Shields' career, her fierce protectiveness and her struggles with alcohol.

"In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother?s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother?s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother?s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks...

"A daughter's tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity"--

"The heartbreaking, never-before-told story of Hollywood icon Natalie Wood's glamorous life, sudden death, and lasting legacy, written by her daughter, Natasha Gregson Wagner"--

"A mother-daughter memoir exploring loss, love, and healing, told in two alternating voices, from the critically acclaimed novelist and her teenage daughter"--

"When Consuelo's grandfather died, he was the richest man in America. Her father soon started to spend the family fortune, enthusiastically supported by Consuelo's mother, Alva, who was determined to attain the top of New York society. She was adamant that her daughter should make a grand marriage to the underfunded Duke of Marlborough--it didn't matter that Consuelo loved someone else. However, the story of Consuelo and Alva is not simply one of...

"Millions of families are affected by eating disorders, which usually strike young women between the ages of fourteen and twenty. But current medical practice ties these families' hands when it comes to helping their children recover. Conventional medical wisdom dictates separating the patient from the family and insists that "it's not about the food," even as a family watches a child waste away before their eyes. Harriet Brown shows how counterproductive--and...

The only child of MacLaine and her husband of thirty years, Steve Parker, Sachi's surreal childhood began when she was sent to Japan at the age of two to live with her mercurial father and his mistress. She divides her time being raised by a Japanese governess and going back and forth to L.A. to be with her mother, hamming it up on movie sets, in photo shoots, and Hollywood parties. As she gets older and becomes involved in a series of abusive relationships...

"Marcia Gay Harden knew at a young age that her life would be anything but ordinary. One of five lively children born to two Texas natives-Beverly, a proper Dallas lady, and Thad, a young naval officer-she always had a knack for storytelling, role-playing, and adventure. As a military family, the Hardens moved often, and their travels eventually took them to Yokohama, off the coast of Japan, during the Vietnam War era. It was here that Beverly, amid...