The Glass Castle

While Jeannette Walls was living on Park Avenue, covering the Academy Awards and attending black-tie parties at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her parents were living in an abandoned building on the Lower East Side. She told no one about her past.

Rex Walls, her father was an ingenious adventurer and a hopeless alcoholic. Her mother was an artist who abhorred domestic routine and the chores of motherhood: 'Why should I cook a meal that will be gone in an hour when I can do a painting that will last forever?'

Funny, sad, quirky and loving, 'The Glass Castle' is an astonishing account of Jeannette Walls' nomadic childhood in the American Southwest.