What happens to the father of a 13-year-old son, when he discovers that he has been infertile all his life? That intriguing question is the starting point of A Father's Affair. On his quest to discover the biological father of his son, the protagonist, Armin Minderhout, takes the reader on an extraordinary journey, one in which he is forced to reconsider everything he has ever believed in. With the page-turning suspense of a 'whodunnit', A Father's Affair probes the eternal question of how well we know the ones we love. Touching, at times extremely funny and erotically playful, it is a story of universal appeal - a stylish, acutely insightful and utterly captivating read.
Not long before her fiftieth birthday,Mackenzie Phillips walked into Los Angeles International Airport. She was on her way to a reunion for One Day at a Time, the hugely popular 70s sitcom on which she once starred as the lovable rebel Julie Cooper. Within minutes of entering the security checkpoint, Mackenzie was in handcuffs, arrested for possession of cocaine and heroin. Born into rock and roll royalty, flying in Learjets to the Virgin Islands at five, making pot brownies with her father's friends at eleven, Mackenzie grew up in an all-access kingdom of hippie freedom and heroin cool. It was a kingdom over which her father, the legendary John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, presided, often in absentia, as a spellbinding, visionary phantom. When Mackenzie was a teenager, Hollywood and the world took notice of the charming, talented, precocious child actor after her star-making turn in American Graffiti. As a young woman she joinedthe nonstop party in the hedonistic pleasure dome her father created for himself and his fellow revelers, and a rapt TV audience watched as Julie Cooper wasted away before their eyes. By the time Mackenzie discovered how deep and dark her father's trip was going, it was too late. And as an adult, she has paid dearly for a lifetime of excess, working tirelessly to reconcile a wonderful, terrible past in which she succumbed to the power of addiction and the pull of her magnetic father. As her astounding, outrageous, and often tender life story unfolds, the actor-musician-mother shares her lifelong battle with personal demons and near-fatal addictions. She overcomes seemingly impossible obstacles again and again and journeys toward redemption and peace. By exposing the shadows and secrets of the past to the light of day, the star who turned up High on Arrivalhas finally come back down to earth -- to stay.
Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life is a no-nonsense self-help guide for anyone who has ever been cheated on. Here's advice not based on saving your relationship after infidelity -- but saving your sanity. When it comes to cheating, a lot of the attention is focused on cheaters -- their unmet needs or their challenges with monogamy. But Tracy Schorn (aka Chump Lady) lampoons such blameshifting and puts the focus squarely on the-cheated-upon (chumps) and their needs. Combining solid advice that champions self-respect, along with hilarious cartoons satirizing the pomposity of cheaters, Leave a Cheater, Gain a Life offers a fresh voice for chumps who want (and need) a new message about infidelity. This book will offer advice on Stupid sh*t cheaters say and how to respond, Rookie mistakes of the recently chumped and how to disarm your fears, Why chumps take the blame and how to protect yourself, and more. Full of snark, sass, and real wisdom about how to bounce back after the gut blow of betrayal, Schorn is the friend who guides you through this nightmare and gives you hope for a better life ahead.
Nationally known psychologist Ana Ledwin Nogales addresses the affects of parental infidelity on childhood development—and on these children's relationships as adults Many books explore the affects of marital infidelity on a marriage, but Parents Who Cheat is the first book to examine not only how this behavior contributes to the breakdown of a family structure but how it directly affects the children in that family. With compassion and piercing insight, Dr. Ana Ledwin Nogales explains how adultery damages a child's understanding of love, marriage, and trust. As these children grow toward adulthood, their ability to have healthy relationships is compromised. Through stories of children struggling to understand their parents' adultery, as well as case histories of adult children coping with unresolved issues related to parental infidelity, Dr. Nogales shows how destructive habits are formed and points the way toward healing and the creation of healthier relationships with parents and partners.
In 1852, when prestigious Alabama plantation owner Cornelius Allen gives his daughter Clarissa's hand in marriage, she takes with her a gift: Sarah—her slave and her half-sister. Raised by an educated mother, Clarissa is not the proper Southern belle she appears to be, with ambitions of loving whom she chooses. Sarah equally hides behind the façade of being a docile house slave as she plots to escape. Both women bring these tumultuous secrets and desires with them to their new home, igniting events that spiral into a tale beyond what you ever imagined possible. Told through the alternating viewpoints of Sarah and Theodora Allen, Cornelius' wife, Marlen Suyapa Bodden's The Wedding Gift is an intimate portrait of slavery and the 19th Century South that will leave readers breathless.
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE The secret daughter of a French politician and a famous actress drops the startling revelation that will shatter her family in this beguiling debut novel of intrigue and betrayal. NAMED ONE OF SUMMER’S BEST BOOKS BY The Skimm • Marie Claire • LitHub • Subway Book Review • Paperback Paris Margot Louve is a secret: the child of a longstanding affair between an influential French politician with presidential ambitions and a prominent stage actress. This hidden family exists in stolen moments in a small Parisian apartment on the Left Bank. It is a house of cards that Margot—fueled by a longing to be seen and heard—decides to tumble. The summer of her seventeenth birthday, she meets the man who will set her plan in motion: a well-regarded journalist whose trust seems surprisingly easy to gain. But as Margot is drawn into an adult world she struggles to comprehend, she learns how one impulsive decision can threaten a family’s love with ruin, shattering the lives of those around her in ways she could never have imagined. Exposing the seams between private lives and public faces, The Margot Affair is a novel of deceit, desire, and transgression—and the exhilarating knife-edge upon which the danger of telling the truth outweighs the cost of keeping secrets.
On a hot July night on Cape Cod, at the age of 14, Brodeur became a confidante to her mother's affair with her husband's closest friend. Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help, but when the affair had calamitous consequences for everyone involved, Brodeau was driven into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. In her memoir she examines how the people close to us can break our hearts simply because they have access to them, and the lies we tell in order to justify the choices we make. -- adapted from jacket
A searing literary memoir of a disconnected childhood, a multigenerational upbringing and incest— from the daughter of legendary jazz pianist Stan Kenton Leslie Kenton was the only child of Violet, a stunning Hitchcock blonde, and the legendary jazz giant Stan Kenton. The story takes place on the road in 1950s America and in the mania of Hollywood—a world of jazz clubs, dance halls and onenighters, where lives were lived on a razor's edge. Love Affair takes us beyond the bright lights and glamour into an intense, claustrophobic world of a father and the only child of his troubled marriage. As Stanley grapples with alcohol and his personal demons, gradually his actions threaten to destroy the only real, untainted thing in his life: Leslie. A true story of obsession, tragedy and grace, Love Affair is Leslie Kenton's powerful memoir. At its heart is the complex, ultimately incestuous, relationship with her father–a union so powerful it defines all that came after. As their lives become increasingly entangled, so do the forces of darkness and light that exist within us all, leading to destruction for him and heartbreaking redemption for her. There have been memoirs about incest before, but Love Affair is a surprisingly moving and elegant treatment of a young life, shared passion, and boundaries crossed.
This intimate account offers a new, unexpected understanding of the artist’s work and of the vibrant 1930s surrealist scene. In 1938, just as she was leaving Mexico for her first solo exhibition in New York, Frida Kahlo was devastated to learn from her husband, Diego Rivera, that he intended to divorce her. This latest blow followed a long series of betrayals, most painful of all his affair with her beloved younger sister, Cristina, in 1934. In early 1939, anxious and adrift, Kahlo traveled from the United States to France—her only trip to Europe, and the beginning of a unique period of her life when she was enjoying success on her own. Now, for the first time, this previously overlooked part of her story is brought to light in exquisite detail. Marc Petitjean takes the reader to Paris, where Kahlo spends her days alongside luminaries such as Pablo Picasso, André Breton, Dora Maar, and Marcel Duchamp. Using Kahlo’s whirlwind romance with the author’s father, Michel Petitjean, as a jumping-off point, The Heart: Frida Kahlo in Paris provides a striking portrait of the artist and an inside look at the history of one of her most powerful, enigmatic paintings.
"Father's Affair" is a deeply personal and hauntingly real story of betrayal, family turmoil, and the devastating impact of infidelity. Written from the heart of someone who lived through it, this book explores the emotional scars left by a father’s affair, unearthing the hidden pain, anger, and sorrow it inflicted upon the family. Set against the backdrop of a tragic loss—when the author’s grandfather died under suspicious circumstances—this book weaves a powerful narrative of love, betrayal, and survival. It takes readers on a journey through the complexities of human relationships, the fragility of trust, and the struggle to hold a family together in the wake of unthinkable personal loss. As the family battles to heal, Father's Affair asks critical questions about loyalty, redemption, and whether a shattered family can ever truly be whole again. Heart-wrenching, raw, and utterly compelling, Father's Affair is a testament to the strength it takes to confront one’s past and the courage needed to tell the hardest truths.
