Author Memoirs

“A powerfully moving book . . . You will laugh, you will weep, you will be proud and you will rail.” —Charleston News and Courier Yamacraw Island was haunting, nearly deserted, and beautiful. Separated from the mainland of South Carolina by a wide tidal river, it was accessible only by...

Helen Garner has kept a diary for almost all her life. But until now, those exercise books filled with her thoughts, observations, frustrations and joys have been locked away, out of bounds, in a laundry cupboard. Finally, Garner has opened her diaries and invited readers into the world behind her novels and works of non-fiction. Yellow Notebook: Diaries Volume I spans a decade beginning in the late 1970s just after the publication of her first novel, Monkey Grip.

A searing confessional infused with the darkest humor, Permanent Midnight chronicles the opiated abyss of a Hollywood screenwriter and his formidable climb into sobriety. Made into a major motion picture starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Permanent Midnight is revered by critics and an ever-growing cult of devoted fans as one of the most compelling contemporary memoirs.

After 64 years, Mezzabotte Coletta, a retired truck driver for a Toronto macaroni factory, is retuning to his native Italia. In his native village of Supino is a rundown villa bought sight unseen by Mezzabotte Coletta 's daughter Maria - an olive branch after years of family struggle. While she and her husband breathe in the chatter of local tradesmen, the fragrant offerings of well-wishing neighbors, and the aroma of fine wine, her father awaits in Canada, anticipating the day he will again touch Italian soil.

Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life is the first work to explore the origins of Beatrix Potter's love of gardening and plants and show how this passion came to be reflected in her work.

This is a book about ten women over the past three hundred years who have found walking essential to their sense of themselves, as people and as writers. Wanderers traces their footsteps, from eighteenth-century parson's daughter Elizabeth Carter—who desired nothing more than to be taken for a vagabond in the wilds of southern England—to modern walker-writers such as Nan Shepherd and Cheryl Strayed.

On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for 40 years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.

From “national treasure” (Steve Harvey) Deion “Coach Prime” Sanders, the ultimate playbook of inspiring personal stories, winning strategies, and the motivation required to help us “elevate and dominate” in all aspects of our lives. A natural-born leader, Deion Sanders demands and...

Bee Quammie invites women and girls everywhere to embrace the power of possibility in this intimate and empowering collection. A successful Black woman in media, Bee Quammie often finds herself being cast as a role model for young women—and especially Black women and other women of colour. But...

“Practically every paragraph has a line or two that demands to be read aloud to the mirror, tattooed on foreheads, carved on tombstones.” –Rolling Stone “Morrissey is a pop star of unusual writing talent.” –The New York Times Autobiography covers Morrissey’s life from his birth...

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Kathy Griffin, an A-Z compendium of the celebrities she’s met over the years and the jaw-dropping, charming, and sometimes bizarre anecdotes only she can tell about them. Starting with Woody Allen, and making pit-stops with Demi Lovato, Leonardo...

Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong.

Mistakes to Run With chronicles the turbulent life of Yasuko Thanh, from early childhood in the closest thing Victoria, BC, has to a slum, to teen years as a sex worker and, finally, to her emergence as an award-winning author. As a child, Thanh embraced evangelical religion, only to rebel against it and her rigid parents, cutting herself, smoking, and shoplifting. At 15, the honour-roll runaway develops a taste for drugs and alcohol. After a stint in jail at 16, feeling utterly abandoned by her family, school, and society, Thanh meets the man who would become her pimp....

“Rachel beautifully illustrates that loving fiercely and grieving deeply are often two halves of the same whole. Her story will break you down and lift you up.” —Glennon Doyle, author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Love Warrior and founder of Together Rising While on her way to teach...

Confessions is the name of an autobiographical work, consisting of 13 books, by Saint Augustine of Hippo, written in Latin between 397 and 400 AD. The work outlines Saint Augustine's sinful youth and his conversion to Christianity. It is widely seen as the first Western autobiography ever written, and Professor Henry Chadwick wrote that Confessions will "always rank among the great masterpieces of western literature."

Draft No. 4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny.

In July 1973, Bob Tininenko, his wife Linda, and his brother in-law Jim Fisher set sail from Tacoma, Washington, on a 31-foot trimaran, down the West Coast to Costa Rica. The journey was expected to take a matter of weeks, but 10 days into the cruise, the party encountered a freak storm off the coast of Northern California. When gale-force winds and 50-foot waves capsized their boat, the voyage became a nightmare. For 72 days, the trio was lost at sea. Challenged by nature and compromised by a bitter rivalry, their courage and will to live was put to the ultimate test.

Randy Roth was handsome, hardworking, kind, and in top physical shape. But for all his charm and good looks, he was seemingly cursed with the ladies. His first marriage ended in divorce before the couple's fifth anniversary; his second wife plunged to her death during a hike; and his third wife left him after less than five months. But when Roth's fourth wife, Cynthia, drowned in an apparent speedboating accident in Washington State's Lake Sammamish just weeks after their first anniversary, a pattern of suspicious behavior finally caught up to him.

Depuis Les Fourmis : 30 romans, 30 ans, 30 traductions, 30 millions de lecteurs... Bernard Werber, c'est une vie à part et une œuvre mondialement reconnue où se croisent des anges, des dieux, des chats, des templiers, des fourmis et des abeilles..., où la science nous initie au "savoir relatif et absolu" du professeur Wells.

The heartfelt memoir from one of Canada's most beloved writers. Staring the modern world in the eye, Richard Wagamese confronts its snares and perils. He sees people coveting without knowing why, looking for roots without understanding what constitutes home, searching for acceptance without...