Showing titles in Authors

When Mark Twain was growing up, all he wanted to be was a steamboat man. And so Twain ran away in pursuit of his dream. Life on the mighty river for Twain consisted of paddleboats and history, poker games and gamblers, larger-than-life characters and outlandish festivals like Mardi Gras. Twain recorded it all with his keen eye for detail and biting wit.

'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains an electrifying study in self-invention. This vividly written biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself.

Brought to you by Penguin. **ONE OF THE GUARDIAN'S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21st CENTURY** In this remarkable work of autobiography, the son of the great comic novelist Kingsley Amis explores his relationship with his father and writes about the various crises of Kingsley's life, including the...

Taylor Sheridan is often spoken about in terms that feel larger than the man himself. He is framed as a rescuer, a restorer, a figure who rode into a fading landscape and brought something old back to life. The Western, once a dominant force in American storytelling, had for years drifted into the margins, surviving in fragments but rarely commanding attention at scale. Then came Sheridan, and suddenly the genre was not only visible again, but central. His name became synonymous with its revival, and his work began to define how modern audiences understood the American frontier.

Charles M. Schulz, the most widely syndicated and beloved cartoonist of all time, is also one of the least understood figures in American culture. Now acclaimed biographer David Michaelis gives us an in-depth biography of the brilliant, unseen man behind Peanuts. It is the most American of...

Throughout John Mortimer's career, he established profound friendships with people accused of various crimes. He also indulged his passion for writing, penning Paradise Postponed and a series of stories about Rumpole, for whom he was often mistaken. With wit, wisdom and tenderness, he has written the story of his life.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. Honoré de Balzac worked himself to death at fifty-one, producing ninety-plus novels documenting nineteenth-century French society. He earned enormous sums yet died deeply in debt. He observed human psychology with unprecedented accuracy yet was blind...

The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell offers a wide-ranging reconsideration of Orwell's life and work, focusing on the extensive connections between his novels, essays, diaries, columns, letters, and reviews. Sections on Orwell's professional activities, his main literary influences, his politics, his intellectual fixations, his literary contemporaries, and his legacies structure the book, which moves thematically and topically through the full scope of his output.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Deepen your insight into and appreciation for the writings J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis as you explore the untold story of how the First World War shaped their lives, faith, and writings. Had there been no Great War, there would have been no Hobbit, no Lord of the...

Margery Allingham, already a successful crime writer, was living quietly in the Essex village of Tolleshunt D’Arcy ("Auburn") when the Second World War broke out. Her house became an Air Raid Wardens’ post and a First Aid centre, and Allingham herself became responsible for 275 East London evacuees in a rural community of just over 600.

Bloomsbury presents In Other Words written and read by Jhumpa Lahiri _______________ 'A passionate love letter to language and to Italy ... a bold and quirkily engaging self-portrait' - Lee Langley, Spectator 'A writer of uncommon elegance and poise' - New York Times 'A fascinating account of...

Born in Liverpool, Malik was taken into care at the age of nine after his seafaring father became paralysed. He would spend his adolescence in a system that proved violent, neglectful, exploitative, traumatising and mired in abuse. Aged 18, he emerged semi-literate, penniless with no connections or sense of where he was going - until a chance meeting with Gil Scott-Heron. Letters to Gil will tell the story of Malik’s empowerment and awakening while mentored by Gil, from his introduction to the legacy of Black history to the development of his voice through poetry and music.

"From the first moments of Natalie Goldberg's recording of Writing Down the Bones, her classic work on writing and life, listeners know they are hearing something wonderful" —AudioFile on Writing Down the Bones This program is read by the author. Bestselling author and teacher Natalie Goldberg...

Philip K. Dick was a visionary writer. From post-apocalyptic San Francisco to Nazi-occupied America, his strange alternative futures have transfixed the world. But his life was every bit as unusual as his fiction. A Life of Philip K Dick opens a window into PKD's unique mind. Written with close cooperation with two of his ex-wives and a number of his friends, we are taken through his five marriages, his periods living in squalor, and his souring literary success. We are also given unparalleled insight into his transcendental experiences.

Brought to you by Penguin. FROM THE BEST SELLING AUTHOR OF THE EMPTY RAINCOAT AND UNDERSTANDING ORGANISATIONS. Over a span of seven decades, Charles Handy was, variously, a businessman, a writer, a philanthropist and a philosopher. Not even a stroke as he approached the age of 90 dimmed his...

Nominated for the 2009 Audiobook of the Year "As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we'd ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike...

Brought to you by Penguin. The essential companion to Toni Morrison’s work, written by Namwali Serpell, ‘one of the most innovative and intelligent writers today’ (Financial Times) Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and most beloved of writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her...

Soldiers Don't Go Mad tells for the first time the story of the soldiers and doctors who struggled with the effects of industrial warfare on the psyche. As he investigates the roots of what we now know as PTSD, Charles Glass brings historical bearing to how we must consider war's ravaging effects on mental health, and the ways in which creative work helps us come to terms with even the darkest of times.

A witty and beautifully written account of the lives of Gertrude Stein and her wife Alice B. Toklas and a fascinating look into early 20th century Paris and the development of modernist culture.

In this innovative biography, Ruth Franklin explores the transformation of Anne Frank (1929–1945) from ordinary teenager to icon, shedding new light on the young woman whose diary of her years in hiding, now translated into more than seventy languages, is the most widely read work of literature to arise from the Holocaust. Comprehensively researched but experimental in spirit, this book chronicles and interprets Anne’s life as a Jew in Amsterdam during World War II while also telling the story of the diary—its multiple drafts, its discovery, its reception, and its message for today’s world.