Showing titles in Art & Literature

The explosive new book from Britain’s leading investigative biographer, Tom Bower As one of the most famous and influential couples in the world, David and Victoria Beckham have attained iconic status. The ultimate power couple have together built a multi-billion-dollar global brand. For...

The Hungover Games is the true story of one woman’s adventures in single-motherhood. It’s about what happens when Mr Right isn’t around, so you have a baby with Mr Wrong, a musician who tells you halfway through your pregnancy that he’s met someone else - just after you’ve given up your LA life and moved back to England to be with him, so you’re now six months up the duff and sleeping on a friend’s sofa in an art studio in Dalston.

A candid look at the who's who of the last 50 years of fashion and proof that fact is always devilishly more fascinating than fiction. André Leon Talley's engaging and detailed memoir is his story of surviving and thriving in the notoriously cutthroat fashion industry amidst racism, homophobia and other challenges to become one of the most legendary voices and faces in fashion journalism.

'Fluent and witty . . . confident . . . highly readable' Kathryn Hughes, GUARDIAN 'Brilliant - so vivid and so sharp, fantastically clever and consistently fascinating' KATHERINE RUNDELL, author of Super-Infinite Was Shakespeare gay? The answer is both simpler and more complex than you might...

Brought to you by Penguin. One of the world’s bestselling storytellers, Lesley Pearse writes brilliantly about survivors. Why? Because she is one herself . . . Born during the Second World War, Lesley’s innocence came to an abrupt end when a neighbour found her, aged 3, coatless in the snow...

'Dear Mama, I am having a lovely time here. We play football every day here. The beds have no springs . . .' So begins the first letter that a nine-year-old Roald Dahl penned to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, under the watchful eye of his boarding-school headmaster. For most of his life, Roald...

When Roxana Robinson’s definitive biography of O’Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author, setting O’Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O’Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. This book also relates the story of Robinson’s own encounter with the artist.

The definitive critical study of Tolkien’s greatest works by the respected and world renowned Tolkien scholar Professor T.A. Shippey. Following the unprecedented and universal acclaim for The Lord of the Rings, the respected academic and world-renowned Tolkien scholar, Professor Tom Shippey...

It is 1964 and Maya Angelou is on her way back home, leaving behind her beloved - and now seriously teenage son Guy, to finish university in Ghana. America is pulsing with the challenge of change, the civil rights movement is in full swing and that's where Maya Angelou wants to be, working alongside her friends Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. In this marvellous account, Maya Angelou provides, with her customary wisdom, compassion and wit, a first-hand record of an extraordinarily exciting and tragic political period.

Acerbic, wisecracking and hilarious, this is the definitive essay collection from New York legend and satirist, Fran Lebowitz, star of Martin Scorsese's hit Netflix series, Pretend It's a City. 'The gold standard for intelligence, efficiency and humour. Now and forever' DAVID SEDARIS 'She's...

Visionary Teachings to Explore the Landscape of the Heart Beloved poet and philosopher John O'Donohue created a remarkable body of work on the subjects of spirituality and Celtic mysticism. His gift was evoking hope, solace, and clarity—offering ancient wisdom that could provide desperately...

May Sarton's parrot chatters away as Sarton looks out the window at the rain and contemplates returning to her "real" life - not friends, not even love, but writing. In her bravest and most revealing memoir, Sarton casts her keenly observant eye on both the interior and exterior worlds. She shares insights about everyday life in the quiet New Hampshire village of Nelson, the desire for friends, and need for solitude - both an exhilarating and terrifying state.

Bloomsbury presents This Dark Night: The Life of Emily Brontë by Deborah Lutz, read by Christine Rendel The first comprehensive biography of Emily Brontë in over two decades. Emily Jane Brontë was just 27 when she started writing the wayward and electric novel Wuthering Heights. Three years...

Brought to you by Penguin. George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society. 'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached...

Born in 1894, Facey lived the rough frontier life of a sheep farmer, survived the gore of Gallipoli, raised a family through the Depression and spent 60 years with his beloved wife, Evelyn. Despite enduring hardships we can barely imagine today, Facey always saw his life as a "fortunate" one. A true classic of Australian literature, his simply written autobiography is an inspiration. It is the story of a life lived to the full - the extraordinary journey of an ordinary man.

Following the death of her beloved mother Jennifer Worth in 2011, Suzannah Worth discovered amongst her manuscripts a folder simply labelled 'Fifth Book'. Imagine her excitement when she sat down to read and her mother's distinctive voice came flooding back. This enchanting new collection from...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life, written and read by Rose Tremain. Rose Tremain grew up in post-war London, a city of grey austerity, still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. The girl known then as ‘Rosie’...

Miss Dior paints a portrait of the enigmatic woman behind the designer Christian Dior: his beloved younger sister, Catherine, who inspired his most famous perfume and shaped his vision of femininity. Justine Picardie's journey takes her to Occupied Paris, where Christian honed his couture skills while Catherine dedicated herself to the French Resistance, until she was captured by the Gestapo and deported to the German concentration camp of Ravensbrück.

With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz's brilliance of observation, Babitz's incisive intelligence and, most of all, Babitz's diary-like letters, as the key to unlocking Didion. Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression, her marriage to John Gregory Dunne as tortured as it was enduring. It was also the breaking and then the remaking - and thus the true making - of another great American writer: Eve Babitz.

Murdoch is an innovator who has re-shaped a media industry across continents, from Australia to the UK to the US. He is a disruptor who has changed the nature of our politics with a steadfast focus on giving the people what he believes they want. But to what extent has Murdoch shaped our modern world? Has he created new audiences, or given existing, under-served audiences a voice? And what motivates the media mogul? Money or power?