Felder, Leonard, When Difficult Relatives Happen to Good People: Surviving Your Family and Keeping Your Sanity, Rodale Press, 2005.

Felder’s analysis of family dynamics, especially in relationship to extended families that span several generations, apply aptly to the interactions that take place between Aunt Helen Beck, Ford and Chris, and Mercury.

Ford, Charles V., Lies! Lies!! Lies!!! The Psychology of Deceit, American Psychiatric Publishing, 1999.

Despite its overexcited title, this is actually a very scholarly work on what makes people like Aunt Helen Beck live their lives deliberately trying to mislead others. Even so, it is written with a tinge of humor that renders its lessons in a way that anyone can appreciate and understand.

Gaines, Stephen, Marjoe: The Life and Times of Marjoe Gortner, Harper & Rowe, 1973.

This is the biography of a man who became an ordained Pentecostal preacher at the age of four...