An expansion of the author's controversial "Up Front" column in Vogue magazine describes her family's efforts to help her clinically obese, seven-year-old daughter to lose weight, recounting how their progress was challenged by judgmental and conflictingdetractors.

The award-winning actress and best-selling author of Down Came the Rain explores her relationship with her tough single mom, detailing her role in shaping Shields' career, her fierce protectiveness and her struggles with alcohol.

"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?'...

"A daughter's tale of living in the thrall of her magnetic, complicated mother, and the chilling consequences of her complicity"--

"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...

The autobiolgraphy of a mother who lost two daughters, one killed by a drunk driver and the other died of cervical cancer

An acclaimed writer recalls her relationship with her alcoholic mother--particularly in the aftermath of the death of her father, novelist James Jones--in a memoir that explores the addictions of both mother and daughter

Joan Rivers was known all over the world--from the Palace Theater to Buckingham Palace, from the bright lights of Las Vegas to the footlights of Broadway, from the days of talkies to hosting talk shows. But there was only one person who knew Joan intimately, one person who the authorities would call when she got a little out of hand. Her daughter and best friend, Melissa. Jo an and Melissa Rivers had one of the most celebrated mother-daughter relationships...

The founder of the Heritage Home Foundation nonprofit documents her secret abuse-marked childhood in and out of foster care and what she discovered while investigating the story of her mother's own harrowing past