Washoe County Library System

An autobiographical portrait of marriage and motherhood by the acclaimed author details her struggle to come to terms with life and death, illness, sanity, personal upheaval, and grief. ""Life changes fast. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends." These were among the first words Joan Didion wrote in January 2004. Her daughter was lying unconscious in an intensive care unit, a victim of pneumonia and septic shock. Her husband, John Gregory...

Jennifer Kroot's documentary about the creator of Tales of the City moves nimbly between playful and poignant and laugh-out-loud funny. Maupin offers a disarmingly frank look at the journey that took him from the jungles of Vietnam to the bathhouses of '70's San Francisco to the front line of the American culture war.

A homebody writer begins to live her stories when her sister is kidnapped in South America. Douglas is a rugged jungle hunter who comes to her aid. A romance writer sets off to Colombia to pay the ransom of her kidnapped sister, and soon finds herself in the middle of a dangerous adventure. Thrown into a jungle full of gunfire, mud slides and poisonous snakes, Joan's only hope lies with Jack Colton, a rugged wanderer straight out of her novels. Together,...

"It all began at a cocktail party at Wallace Stegner's for the Stanford writing class of 1958. Ken Kesey and Ken Babbs became cronies, embarking on a frolicking, rambunctious adventure that lasted over 40 years. Babbs calls the 70 stories of this book "burlesques" because, after 85 years of living, much of it in the wide friendly center of an evolving, at times psychedelic culture, memory no longer can, or even should include an exact retelling, but...