Didion's journalistic skills are displayed as never before in this story of a year in her life that began with her daughter in a medically induced coma and her husband unexpectedly dead due to a heart attack. This powerful and moving work is Didion's "attempt to make sense of the weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I ever had about death about illness . . . about marriage and children and memory . . . about the shallowness of sanity...

A wise and involving book about feminine thresholds, spiritual growth, and renewal, "Traveling with Pomegranates" is a revealing self-portrait by the beloved author of "The Secret Life of Bees" and her daughter, a writer in the making.

The author tells the story of her and her mother's escape from an abusive, fanatical Iranian father when she was six, as well as how she lived her subsequent life under the shadow of fear of her menacing father, and eventually was healed by her faith in God.

"Jennette McCurdy was six years old when she had her first acting audition. Her mother's dream was for her only daughter to become a star, and Jennette would do anything to make her mother happy. So she went along with what Mom called "calorie restriction," eating little and weighing herself five times a day. She endured extensive at-home makeovers while Mom chided, "Your eyelashes are invisible, okay? You think Dakota Fanning doesn't tint hers?"...

"If you think Joan Rivers said funny, outrageous, and ridiculous things ONSTAGE, wait 'til you read the funny, outrageous, and ridiculous things she said OFFSTAGE...things that will make you laugh out loud...and keep Melissa in therapy for the foreseeable future. The only thing my mother loved more than making people laugh was lying...or as she'd say, "embellishing." Her motto was: "Why let the truth ruin a good story?" This book contains some of...