Classic Biography

Kendall Taylor examines the dalliance between the southern belle and the French pilot from a fresh perspective. Drawing on conversations and correspondence with Jozan's daughter, as well as materials from the Jozan family archives, Taylor sheds new light on this romantic triangle. More than just a casual fling, Zelda's tryst with Edouard affected Scott as much as it did his wife - and ultimately influenced the author's most famous creation, Jay Gatsby. Were it not for Zelda's affair with the pilot, Scott's novel might be less about betrayal and more about lost illusions.

A book that explores the great American novelist and playwright Edna Ferber, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Ficton, whose work was made into many Academy Award-winning movies; the writing of her controversial, international best-selling novel about Texas, and the making of George Stevens’ Academy Award winning epic film of the same name, Giant.

Orlando: A Biography is a groundbreaking English novel by Virginia Woolf that explores English history, gender roles, and sexual politics in a way few books have before or since. Inspired by the life of Woolf's friend and lover Vita Sackville-West—herself an accomplished poet and novelist—the story follows the life of an aristocratic nobleman who changes from man to woman and goes on to live for centuries, meeting all of the most influential and powerful figures in English history.

Considering herself unsuitable for any other contribution to the war effort, Monica Dickens opts for nursing, imagining herself gliding through the wards, serene in a pure white halo cap. On enrolment, however, she is promptly stripped of all illusions. Intelligent and headstrong, Monica struggles to submit to the iron rule of the Matron and toils over the mountains of menial work that are a trainee's lot. But there are friends among the staff and patients, night-time escapades to dances with dashing army men and her secret writing project to keep her going.

The Virginia Woolf Complete Collection brings together all of her most iconic works, including all 9 of her published novels, a selection of her best short stories, as well as some of her most influential non-fiction writing. From the enduring importance of her ideas of female independence in A Room of One's Own to the modern masterpieces of Mrs Dalloway and To the Lighthouse, alongside many more of her novels, criticism, and essays, this collection takes you across the broad breadth of Woolf's ever-inventive and timeless writings.

As if recovering from a raucous dream of the 1960s, Gerry Beckley, Dewey Bunnell, and Dan Peek arrived on 1970s American radio with a sound that echoed disenchanted hearts of young people everywhere. The three American boys had named their band after a country they'd watched and dreamt of from their London childhood Air Force base homes. What was this country? This new band? Celebrating the band's 50th anniversary, Gerry Beckley and Dewey Bunnell share stories of growing up, growing together, and growing older.

Fifty years ago, a little boy was cast in a movie with some of Hollywood's brightest stars. The movie: It's a Wonderful Life; the boy: Jimmy Hawkins; today, he tells his story. Through personal recollection, careful research, and interviews with cast and crew, actor Jimmy Hawkins, who played four-year-old Tommy Bailey, takes you behind the scenes for a first-hand look at the American movie classic It's a Wonderful Life.

Who is Allah? What does he ask of those who submit to his teachings? Pulitzer Prize-winner Jack Miles gives us a deeply probing, revelatory portrait of the world’s second largest, fastest-growing, and perhaps most tragically misunderstood religion. In doing so, Miles illuminates what is unique about Allah, his teachings, and his resolutely merciful temperament, and he thereby reveals that which is false, distorted, or simply absent from the popular conception of the heart of Islam.

In the public imagination, Ernest Hemingway looms larger than life. But the actual person behind the legend has long remained elusive. Now, his son Patrick shares the letters they exchanged over two decades, offering a glimpse into how one of America’s most iconic writers interacted with his children. These letters reveal a father who wished for his children to share his interests—hunting, fishing, travel—and a son who was receptive to the experiences his father offered.

The audiobook version of The Prince, is prefaced with a biography of the author and a background of the work itself, shedding some light on the mind that produced it, and the era which shaped his perspective. Also included are an overview, synopsis, and analysis of the work. The summary is capped with a brief look at the historical context of Machiavelli's work, as well as the criticisms it has evoked, and the impact he has had on society.

Written when Orwell was a struggling writer in his 20s, it documents his 'first contact with poverty'. Here, he painstakingly documents a world of unrelenting drudgery and squalor - sleeping in bug-infested hostels and doss houses of last resort, working as a dishwasher in Paris's vile 'Hôtel X', surviving on scraps and cigarette butts, living alongside tramps, a star-gazing pavement artist and a starving Russian ex-army captain.

Steinbeck’s vision is grounded in place—first in Central California, where he was born and lived until he was 41, and in his later life when he became a troubadour of the Americas, traversing the U.S. and Mexico. Throughout his long writing life—his work spans the years 1929 to 1966—his vision as a writer was fundamentally holistic and ecological: he believed that to understand people, you had to know something about the places they occupied, their landscapes, their histories, their spirits.

A girl uses her wits to survive a maniacal killer who wipes out her family. A woman is condemned for the "final betrayal of motherhood" for killing her children. A grieving mother becomes convinced that the man convicted of murdering her beautiful teenage daughter is innocent.

Andy Griffith and Don Knotts met on Broadway in the 1950s. When Andy went to Hollywood to film a TV pilot about a small-town sheriff, Don called to ask if the sheriff could use a deputy. The comedic synergy between Sheriff Andy Taylor and Deputy Barney Fife ignited The Andy Griffith Show, elevating a folksy sitcom into a timeless study of human friendship, as potent off the screen as on.

This audiobook chronicles the entire history of this legendary Christian metal band, covering just about everything there is to know about Stryper - not just the fluff. Such questions as, "How did Stryper evolve?" and "What really happened during the Against the Law time period?" are all answered here. The answers, derived from countless hours of interviews, come directly from the band members themselves and many others.

Henry David Thoreau was a naturalist, essayist, poet, philosopher, and a leading transcendentalist. In Cape Cod (1865), Thoreau recounts his walking trips along a stretch of Massachusetts coastline, including Cape Cod, in the 1850s. The narrative is filled with his reflections on the elemental forces of the sea and the shore. Sleeping in lighthouses and fishing huts, and on isolated farms, Thoreau spent his days wandering the beaches to observe the drama of life and death unfolding on the coastline. Nature comes alive through Thoreau’s unique insights and descriptive prose.

The book begins in 1521 at the great turning point in the life of St Ignatius, when he was wounded at the battle of Pamplona. It then covers the next 17 years up to the arrival of Ignatius and his early companions in Rome. Those were the years of pilgrimage, travel and searching, and of preparation for the establishment of the great religious order he would found.

In Ted W. Lawson’s classic Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, Lawson gives a vivid eyewitness account of the unorthodox assignment that 85 intrepid volunteer airmen - the “Tokyo Raiders” - under the command of celebrated flier James H. Doolittle executed in April 1942. The plan called for 16 B-25 twin-engine medium bombers of the Army Air Corps to take off from the aircraft carrier Hornet, bomb industrial targets in Japan, and land at airfields in China.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the town for the country. Beside the lake of Walden, he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect, while surviving on $8 a year. From this experience emerged one of the great classics of American literature, a deeply personal reaction against the commercialism and materialism that he saw as the main impulses of mid-19th century America.

Just as Anne had to use a male pseudonym in order to publish, Helen Graham, the novel's protagonist and a battered wife, must assume an alias in order to gain freedom from her suffering. With her young child, Helen takes up residence at Wildfell Hall, shrouding her past in secrecy, yet earning the attentions of a young, unmarried country gentlemen.