New Biographies

"Little Seed is an experimental memoir that braids together the narrative of the author's relationship with her brother and family with a deeply personal field guide to ferns. The chapters move associatively, commenting on each other indirectly and drawing out questions of assimilation, race, class, gender, nature and the general problem of being and knowing. When the author's brother has a psychotic break, the rigid structure of the book itself breaks apart and the protagonist adventures to the

With emotions like fear, guilt and empathy eluding her, the author, trying to replace the nothingness with something, realizes, after connecting with an old flame, if she's capable of love, it must mean she isn't a monster and sets out to prove the millions of Americans who share her diagnosis aren't all monsters either.

"Anne grew up in an abusive home, leading to severe depression and a determination to do better as a mother. One of her sons wants a dog from the time he is a baby; Anne very much does not. For years she appeases him with creatures who live in cages and tanks, but on his tenth birthday she can no longer say no--and she proceeds to fall in love with their new four-legged family member, Mattie. Then Mattie dies a sudden and tragic death, and Anne feels herself begin to sink back into depression. T

"Jochen "Jack" Wurfl lived two lives. Jack was born in 1932 in Germany to his Jewish mother and Catholic father, and lived in Austria until 1936. Anticipating Hitler's invasion of Austria, his parents sent Jack and his brother, Peter, back to Germany to live with their Jewish grandparents in Berlin. As Hitler's persecution of the Jews intensified, Jack's grandfather sneaked the boys into hiding at a children's summer camp in the resort village of Dangast, 200 miles northwest of Berlin on the Nor