IN THIS LUMINOUS MEMOIR, LEGENDARY SINGER AND ACTRESS NATALIE COLE TELLS A REMARKABLE STORY OF LIFE-THREATENING ILLNESS AND RECOVERY, AND THE STORY OF A DEATH THAT BROUGHT NEW LIFE.
In 2009 Natalie Cole was on dialysis, her kidneys failing. Without a kidney transplant, her future was uncertain. Throughout Natalie's illness one of her biggest supporters was her beloved sister Cooke. But then Cooke herself became ill, with cancer. Astonishingly, as Cooke lay dying in a hospital, Natalie received a call that a kidney was available, but the surgery had to be performed immediately. Natalie couldn't leave her sister's side--but neither could she refuse the kidney that would save her own life.
This is a story of sisters, Natalie and Cooke, but also of the sisters who made the transplant possible, Patty and Jessica. It was Jessica's death that gave new life to Natalie, even as Natalie experienced the devastating loss of Cooke. Patty, too, suffered her own terrible loss, but when she met Natalie, she found that her sister's spirit still lived. Through the gift of life, Natalie and Patty became sisters in spirit.
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Love Brought Me Back "is a story of loss and recovery, sorrow and joy, success and despair--and, finally, success again. It will touch you as few memoirs ever have.

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Smoke poured under the door to my hotel suite. It was so thick that it was getting hard to breathe, but it was worse in the hallway. I was trapped in the room with my bodyguard.
"It looks bad-real bad. This is it," my bodyguard said. "Natalie, I love you. We ought to make love here and now, because it's the last chance we're going to get."
"No thanks," I said. "If I'm going to go, I'm not going straight." I fished my freebase kit out of my purse and started cooking cocaine

ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER

Sizzlingly talented, yet fragile...achieving, yet insecure...responsible, yet reckless-Natalie Cole has been there and done it all. Her comeback album won an unprecedented seven Grammys as her marriage collapsed into jealousy and abuse. She has known both glittering privilege as a member of one of Hollywood's most famous families-and poverty on the streets of Manhattan.

Now Natalie tells her uniquely insightful, deeply personal story. As the daughter of legendary singer Nat King Cole and an elegantly reserved, upwardly striving mother, Natalie was a tomboy who delighted in mischief and music. As a little girl, she unexpectedly wandered onstage during one of her father's performances and often sneaked into his casual jam sessions with Louis Armstrong and other celebrated artists. As she grew older and after her father died, her love of music and sense of adventure led her to risk a singing career of her own-even as unresolved grief helped drive her into heroin and cocaine addiction and homelessness.

Through sheer stubbornness and, in Natalie's words, "the grace of God," she managed to forge a career, marry, and have a son. But the roller-coaster ride was far from over. Divorce, a return to drugs, and a devastating career crash lay ahead. Then, after a six-year struggle to finally get clean, she released her smash comeback album, Unforgettable, made Grammy history, and reintroduced her father's music to a new generation. Yet amid her good fortune, life would hand her several more overwhelming challenges: another terrible family tragedy, another divorce, and a very public dispute with her mother over her father's estate.

Unsparingly honest and irreverent, ANGEL ON MY SHOULDER will both turn your head with its revelations and make you laugh out loud from Natalie's irrepressible sense of humor. It is a book that shows you the incredible life of an artist and addict, daughter and mother, lover and wife, singer and star-story of a woman always struggling to become the best she was meant to be.

Changes in public libraries, the communities they serve, children's lives, and educational research all demonstrate that traditional summer reading programs need to be reimagined. Working groups of librarians, in partnership with the California Library Association and the California State Library, have done just that, creating and implementing outcomes- and outreach-based summer reading programs that speak directly to diverse and changing communities. Drawing on case studies from several different libraries, this book shows how other libraries can transform their own summer programs. Offering a vision of change in action, the authors begin with an historical overview of summer programming in public libraries and a review of the research and conditions that have prompted recent changes in summer programs; discuss the principles, strategies, and evaluation framework that California librarians have created to transform their institutions; review a statewide campaign, Summer Matters, that is working to provide equitable summer learning opportunities for all children in California; and take an in-depth look at Lunch at the Library, a public library summer meal project, which brings underserved families to the library while providing learning opportunities for children, volunteer opportunities for teens, and resources for adults. Public library staff and educators will feel inspired and empowered by the positive examples put forth in this book.