Showing titles in Authors

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer...

'I loved this book . . . I’m so desperate for you all to share in its wonder' - Elizabeth Day, author of How To Fail. Dear Reader is a moving, funny and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of your life, packed with recommendations from one reader to another. For as long as...

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be. The theory that Shakespeare may...

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923-2014) wrote brilliant novels about what love can do to people, but in her own life the lasting relationship she sought so ardently always eluded her. She grew up yearning to be an actress; but when that ambition was thwarted by marriage and the war, she turned to...

In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.

After the horrors of the First World War, Oxford looked like an Arcadia - a dreamworld - from which pain could be shut out. Soldiers arrived with pictures of the university fully formed in their heads and women finally won the right to earn degrees. Freedom meant reading beneath the spires and punting down the river with champagne picnics. But all was not quite as it seemed. Boys fresh from school settled into lecture rooms alongside men who had returned from the trenches with the beginnings of shellshock. 

In ihrem Tagebuch erzählt Gabriele von Arnim ein Jahr lang über Abschiede, über Gegenwartsängste und das Ringen um Zukunftszuversicht, über Abschiede von sich selbst, von Lebenslust und über die Unausweichlichkeit des letzten Abschieds. Abschiede sind unsere täglichen Lebensgefährten und Lehrmeister. Aber Abschied ist nicht nur Verlust und Traurigkeit, Abschied ist auch befreiend.

On the surface, Julianna Glasse had it all: her husband was a huge sports star, she had three beautiful children and a career as a Christian pop singer. But in reality, Julianna's life was far from perfect. It was only when she began to read, and read widely, that she started to question the fundamentalist Christian community that she had spent her life inside. From Simone de Beauvoir to Ralph Waldo Emerson, Virginia Woolf to the Persian poet Rumi, she began to realise how shackled her mind had been. And when her husband tried to stop her from reading, it gave her every reason not to stop.

Brought to you by Penguin. Part deeply personal memoir, part masterclass in storytelling, Plot Twist is a refreshingly honest look at the life of a writer whose stories have thrilled us for decades. With 100 million books in print worldwide and over twenty blockbuster television and film...

Incisive, funny, and deeply-researched insights into the life, writing, and legacy of Jane Austen, by the preeminent scholar Devoney Looser. "[Narrator] Marisa Calin's pleasant British accent is perfect for this exploration of Regency-era social codes and wild-hearted women." — AudioFile...

From award-winning author and creative writing professor at Tulane University comes an intimate and powerful memoir exploring inherited trauma, family secrets, and the enduring bonds of love between mothers and daughters. On her second birthday in 1967, Bernice McFadden died in a car crash near...

A “dramatic [and] ingeniously crafted” (Los Angeles Times) memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl. “A beautiful portrait of a full life that has been buoyed by an...

The author of the award-winning Matisse: A Life gives us the definitive biography of writer Anthony Powell--and takes us deep into the heart of twentieth-century London's literary life. Insightful, lively, and enthralling, this biography is as much a brilliant tapestry of a seminal era in...

Intimate and illuminating, this is the story of American icon Ernest Hemingway's life, compiled by the steward of the Hemingway estate and featuring contributions by his son and grandson. For many people, Ernest Hemingway remains more a compilation of myths than a person: soldier, sportsman...

The legendary crime writer gives us a raw, brutally candid memoir—as high intensity and as riveting as any of his novels—about his obsessive search for “atonement in women.” The year was 1958. Jean Hilliker had divorced her fast-buck hustler husband and resurrected her maiden name. Her...

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region’s powerful influence on her life. The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes...

Unabridged, 8 hours Read by TBD Introducing a deeply funny, charismatic new voice: an entertaining memoir of a family haunted by its own mythsand its obsessive idolization of the literary life...

Translated by Marion Wiesel A profoundly and unexpectedly intimate, deeply affecting summing up of his life so far, from one of the most cherished moral voices of our time. Eighty-two years old, facing emergency heart surgery and his own mortality, Elie Wiesel reflects back on his life. Emotions...

In 2005, Anne Rice startled her readers with her novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, and by revealing that, after years as an atheist, she had returned to her Catholic faith. And now, in her powerful memoir, Rice tells the story of the spiritual transformation that produced a complete change in...

"Enthralling . . . A page-turner that can hold its own with any one of the many murder-minded podcasts out there." —Jezebel From the acclaimed biographer--the fascinating, little-known story of a Victorian-era murder that rocked literary London, leading Charles Dickens, William Thackeray, and...