A picaresque novel of the remarkable life of a liberated 19th-century woman.

A novel of art and obsession in eighteenth-century New England.

A novel of grief and uncertainty in the face of war.

Neither celebrity-gawk, “misery memoir,” nor confessional melodrama, A Berkshire Boyhood is more reminiscent of such memoirs as Tobias Wolff’s This Boy’s Life and Emily Fox Gordon’s Are You Happy? In fact, A Berkshire Boyhood will strike readers as a parallel universe to Gordon’s book, her own story of growing up in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a privileged faculty brat and young girl in the 1950s. Berkshire Boyhood is a boy’s story of growing up from working class roots in that same place and time. It explores family troubles arising out of the wounds and separations of World War II, ethnic religiosity, and adolescent sexuality (1950s variety). Its deeper appeal comes from our curiosity about the 1950s and the Boomer generation, from the fraught relations between that generation and their parents, who fought WWII, from our interest in the influence of landscape on human development, and from a vision of post-war years as a decade seething with the anger and dissent of an incipient counterculture that would explode the sixties.

Memoirs, autobiographies, and diaries represent the most personal and most intimate of genres, as well as one of the most abundant and popular. Gain new understanding and better serve your readers with this detailed genre guide to nearly 700 titles that also includes notes on more than 2,800 read-alike and other related titles. The popularity of this body of literature has grown in recent years, and it has also diversified in terms of the types of stories being told—and persons telling them. In the past, readers' advisors have depended on access by names or Dewey classifications and subjects to help readers find autobiographies they will enjoy. This guide offers an alternative, organizing the literature according to popular genres, subgenres, and themes that reflect common reading interests. Describing titles that range from travel and adventure classics and celebrity autobiographies to foodie memoirs and environmental reads, Life Stories: A Guide to Reading Interests in Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Diaries presents a unique overview of the genre that specifically addresses the needs of readers' advisors and others who work with readers in finding books.

By identifying similarities in various books, this annual selection guide helps readers to independently choose titles of interest published in the last year.Each entry describes a separate book, listing everything readers need to know to make selections. Arranged by author within six genre sections, detailed entries provide: Title Publisher and publication dateSeriesNames and descriptions of charactersTime period and geographical settingReview citationsStory typesBrief plot summarySelected other books by the authorSimilar books by different authorsAuthor, title, series, character name, character description, time period, geographic setting and genre/sub-genre indexes are included to facilitate research.