Author Memoirs

For nearly two centuries, the authorship of William Shakespeare's plays has been challenged by writers and artists as diverse as Sigmund Freud, Mark Twain, Henry James, Helen Keller, Orson Welles, Malcolm X, and Sir Derek Jacobi. How could a young man from rural Warwickshire, lacking a university education, write some of the greatest works in the English language?

Award-winning, best-selling author Edwidge Danticat taps her exceptional storytelling gifts for this memoir of the two men who raised her. When the author was only four years old, her parents emigrated from Haiti to New York in search of a better life, leaving their daughter in the care of her uncle Joseph. A peaceful pastor in Port-au-Prince, Joseph raised Edwidge with the love and devotion of a father, despite facing many hardships in politically turbulent Haiti.

Warned not to write—and certainly not to bite—these women put pen to paper anyway and wrote themselves into history. From the fourteenth century through to the present day, women who write have been understood as mad, undisciplined, or dangerous. Female writers have always had to find ways to overcome or challenge these beliefs. Some were cautious and discreet, some didn’t give a damn, but all lived complex, eventful, and often controversial lives.

Two days after the winter solstice in 2019, Kerri and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways 2020 was unlike any year we had seen before. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby.

In this coming-of-age memoir about a privileged, protected childhood in the exotic milieu of 1950’s Egypt, author Jean Naggar describes a magical time that seemed as if it would never end. But Egypt’s nationalizing of the Suez Canal would set in motion events that would change her life forever. An enchanted existence suddenly ended by international hostilities, her family is quickly scattered far and wide, and Naggar is eventually swept into adulthood and the challenge of new horizons in America.

This, the second of three volumes of Susan Sontag’s journals and notebooks, begins where the first volume left off, in the middle of the 1960s. It traces and documents Sontag’s evolution from fledgling participant in the artistic and intellectual world of New York City to world-renowned critic and dominant force in the world of ideas with the publication of the groundbreaking Against Interpretation in 1966.

Burns highlights the two facets of Rand's work that make her a perennial draw for those on the right: Her promotion of capitalism, and her defense of limited government. Both sprang from her early, bitter experience of life under Communism, and became among the most deeply enduring of her messages, attracting a diverse audience of college students and intellectuals, business people and Republican Party activists, libertarians and conservatives.

Before he runs out of time, Irish bon vivant Malachy McCourt shares his views on death - sometimes hilarious and often poignant - and on what will or won't happen after his last breath is drawn. During the course of his life, Malachy McCourt practically invented the single's bar; was a pioneer...

From the star of Peacock’s Queer as Folk and the Netflix series Special comes a “funny, tender, and beautiful” (Gary Janetti, New York Times bestselling author) novel following a gay TV writer with cerebral palsy as he fights addiction and searches for acceptance in an overwhelmingly...

Mark Twain's complete, uncensored Autobiography was an instant best seller when the first volume was published in 2010, on the centennial of the author's death, as he requested. Published to rave reviews, the Autobiography was hailed as the capstone of Twain's career. It captures his authentic and unsuppressed voice, speaking clearly from the grave and brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions. The eagerly awaited second volume delves deeper into Twain's life, uncovering the many roles he played in his private and public worlds.

A leading voice for social justice reveals how he stopped arguing with white people who deny the ongoing legacy of racism—and offers a proven path forward for Black people and people of color based on the history of nonviolent struggle. “A moving personal journey that lends practical insight...

One of the most famous of all literary dogs, Flush was the golden cocker spaniel belonging to Elizabeth Barrett. In this charming and heartfelt biography, Viginia Woolf tells his story: his early days as Miss Mitford's puppy running across the fields in wild abandon and fathering another, then the years spent in his invalid mistress' bedroom in Wimpole Street.

¿Cómo Juan Carlos I, un rey con una fuerza icónica única en Europa, con un país a sus pies, con ciertos políticos cómplices, con dinero y con las mujeres más guapas del mundo, pudo jugárselo todo? En su carrera hacia el abismo fue dejando atrás familia, amigos, prestigio, honorabilidad… ¿Fue por una mujer? ¿Por amor al dinero? ¿Por inconsciencia o por arrogancia?

The Gilded Razor is the true story of a double life. By the age of seventeen, Sam Lansky was an all-star student with Ivy League aspirations in his final year at an elite New York City prep school. But a nasty addiction to prescription pills spiraled rapidly out of control, compounded by a string of reckless affairs with older men, leaving his bright future in jeopardy. After a terrifying overdose, he tried to straighten out.

Un bouleversant ode à la mère. Roukiata est née au Burkina-Faso. De sa plume, légère et nostalgique, elle raconte avec tendresse et humour ses années d'enfance, son pays, ses écrasantes sécheresses et ses pluies diluviennes, la chaleur de ses habitants, la corruption et la misère. Elle raconte sa famille, sa fratrie, ses parents, l'injustice qui les frappe avec l'arrestation de son père.

New York Times best-selling author and biographer Charles J. Shields crafts this fascinating portrait of literary icon Kurt Vonnegut. The first authorized biography of the influential American writer, And So It Goes examines Vonnegut’s life, from his childhood to his death in 2007, and explores how the author changed the conversation of American literature.

Au début des années soixante, Thompson, alors journaliste à San Francisco, est fasciné par les Hell's Angels. Son article sur ces seigneurs de la route fait sensation, il se lance dans la version longue : un an passé à rouler et à écrire à leurs côtés. Mais l'équipée se termine sauvagement : parce qu'il refuse de partager ses royalties, les Angels abandonnent l'homme de lettres sur une route, à moitié mort et le crâne défoncé à coups de pierres.

Spotlighting an extraordinary career, this autobiography reviews the author’s accomplishments working and playing alongside some of Canada’s greatest writers. These humorous chronicles relate the projects he brainstormed for writer Barry Broadfoot, how he convinced eventual Nobel Prize contender Alice Munro to keep writing short stories, his early morning phone call from a former Prime Minister, and his recollection of yanking a manuscript right out of Alistair MacLeod’s own reluctant hands....

Wie kann man über Thomas Mann heute schreiben? So: geistreich, komisch und mit lässigem Ernst. SAA STANII. Los Angeles in den 1940er-Jahren: Die Westküste ist ein Traumort, die Exilanten aus Europa trauen ihren Sinnen nicht, das Farbenspiel, das Licht, das Meer. Hier sind sie alle gestrandet, die im Deutschland der Nationalsozialisten keine Heimat mehr haben oder haben wollen: Arnold Schönberg, Vicki Baum, Theodor W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchtwanger, Helene Weigel, Max Horkheimer, Hanns Eisler, Franz und Alma Werfel und allen voran: Thomas Mann.

"J'ai voulu l'oublier cette fille. L'oublier vraiment, c'est-à-dire ne plus avoir envie d'écrire sur elle. Ne plus penser que je dois écrire sur elle, son désir, sa folie, son idiotie et son orgueil, sa faim et son sang tari. Je n'y suis jamais parvenue." Dans "Mémoire de fille", Annie Ernaux replonge dans l'été 1958, celui de sa première nuit avec un homme, à la colonie de S dans l'Orne. Nuit dont l'onde de choc s'est propagée violemment dans son corps et sur son existence durant deux années.