Biography & Autobiography

A gripping memoir of bravery and sacrifice by a young woman whose escape from her abusive family and an oppressive culture in Saudi Arabia captivated the world

In early 2019, after three years of careful planning, Rahaf Mohammed finally escaped her abusive family in Saudi Arabia—but made it only to Bangkok before being stripped of her passport. If forced to return home, she was sure she would be killed, like other rebel women in her country. As men pounded at the door of her barricaded hotel room, she opened a Twitter account. The teenager reached out to the world, and the world answered—she gained 45,000 followers in one day, and those followers helped her seek asylum in the West.

Now Rahaf Mohammed tells her remarkable story in her own words, revealing untold truths about life in the closed kingdom, where young women are brought up in a repressive system that puts them under the legal control of a male guardian. Raised with immense financial privilege but under the control of her male relatives—including her high-profile politician father—she endured an abusive childhood in which oppression and deceit were the norm.

Moving from Rahaf’s early days on the underground online network of Saudi runaways, who use coded entries to learn how to flee the brutalities of their homeland, to her solo escape to Canada, Rebel is a breathtaking and life-affirming memoir about one woman’s tenacious pursuit of freedom.

America’s most prominent Latino chef shares the story behind his food, his family, and his professional journey.

Before Chef Aarón Sánchez rose to fame on shows such as MasterChef and Chopped, he was a restless Mexican American son, raised by a fiercely determined and talented woman who was a successful chef and restaurateur in her own right—credited with bringing Mexican cuisine to the New York City dining scene. Aarón Sánchez was destined to follow in his mother’s footsteps. He spent nights as a child in his family’s dining room, surrounded by some of the most influential chefs and restaurateurs in New York. He lost his father at a young age, and at 16 he was sent to work for renowned chef Paul Prudhomme in New Orleans.

In this memoir, Sánchez delves into his formative years with remarkable candor, injecting his story with adrenaline and revealing how he fell in love with cooking and made a go of it in the fast-paced culinary world. Sánchez shares invaluable lessons he learned—both inside and outside the kitchen—and offers an intimate look into the chaotic and untraditional life of a professional chef and television personality. This is Sánchez’s highly personal account of a fatherless Latino kid whose talent and passion took him to the top of his profession.

Law school was never Anna Dorn’s dream. It was a profession pushed on her by her parents, teachers, society… whatever. It’s not the worst thing that can happen to a person; as Dorn says, law school was pretty “cushy” and mostly entailed wearing leggings every day to her classes at Berkeley and playing beer pong with her friends at night. The hardest part was imagining what it would be like to actually be a lawyer one day. But then she’d think of Glenn Close on Damages and Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde, and hoped for the best.

After graduation, however, Dorn realized that there was nothing sexy about being a lawyer. Between the unflattering suits, sucking up to old men, and spending her days sequestered in a soul-sucking cubicle, Dorn quickly learned that being a lawyer wasn’t everything Hollywood made it out to be. Oh, and she sucked at it. Not because she wasn’t smart enough, but because she couldn’t get herself to care enough to play by the rules.

Bad Lawyer is more than just a memoir of Dorn’s experiences as a less-than-stellar lawyer; it’s about the less-than-stellar legal reality that exists for all of us in this country, hidden just out of sight. It’s about prosecutors lying and filing inane briefs that lack any semblance of logic or reason; it’s about defense attorneys sworn to secrecy-until the drinks come out and the stories start flying; and it’s about judges who drink in their chambers, sexually harass the younger clerks, and shop on eBay instead of listening to homicide testimony. More than anything, this book aims to counteract the fetishization of the law as a universe based entirely on logic and reason. Exposing everything from law school to law in the media, and drawing on Dorn’s personal experiences as well as her journalistic research, Bad Lawyer ultimately provides us with a fresh perspective on our justice system and the people in it, and gives young lawyers advice going forward into the 21st century.

Since debuting as the host of Jeopardy! in 1984, Alex Trebek has been something like a family member to millions of television viewers, bringing entertainment and education into their homes five nights a week. Last year, he made the stunning announcement that he had been diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. What followed was an incredible outpouring of love and kindness. Social media was flooded with messages of support, and the Jeopardy! studio received boxes of cards and letters offering guidance, encouragement, and prayers.

For over three decades, Trebek had resisted countless appeals to write a book about his life. Yet he was moved so much by all the goodwill, he felt compelled to finally share his story. “I want people to know a little more about the person they have been cheering on for the past year,” he writes in The Answer Is…: Reflections on My Life.

The book combines illuminating personal anecdotes with Trebek’s thoughts on a range of topics, including marriage, parenthood, education, success, spirituality, and philanthropy. Trebek also addresses the questions he gets asked most often by Jeopardy! fans, such as what prompted him to shave his signature mustache, his insights on legendary players like Ken Jennings and James Holzhauer, and his opinion of Will Ferrell’s Saturday Night Live impersonation. The book uses a novel structure inspired by Jeopardy!, with each chapter title in the form of a question, and features dozens of never-before-seen photos that candidly capture Trebek over the years.

This wise, charming, and inspiring book is further evidence why Trebek has long been considered one of the most beloved and respected figures in entertainment.