Classic Biography

This letter is the closest that Kafka came to setting down his autobiography. He was driven to write it by his father's opposition to his engagement with Julie Wohryzek. The marriage did not take place; the letter was not delivered.

“Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between.” —Jennifer Egan From Dani Shapiro...

This science classic by Paul de Kruif chronicles the pioneering bacteriological work of the first scientists to see and learn from the microscopic world. Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters is a timeless dramatization of the scientists, bacteriologists, doctors, and medical technicians who discovered microbes and invented the vaccines to counter them.

A novel in The L.A. Quartet. Internationally acclaimed author James Ellroy presents another literary noir masterpiece of historical paranoia. Los Angeles, 1958. Killings, beatings, bribes, shakedowns—it's standard procedure for Lieutenant Dave Klein, LAPD. He's a slumlord, a bagman, an...

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.

Anne of Avonlea follows Anne Shirley from the age of 16 to 18, during the two years that she teaches at Avonlea School.

The book features many of the characters from Anne of Green Gables, including Marilla Cuthbert, Gilbert Blythe, and Diana Barry, and some new ones: Mr. Harrison, Miss Lavendar Lewis, Paul Irving, and the twins Dora and Davy. Anne matures slightly over time, even though she cannot avoid getting into a number of her familiar scrapes.

The Sound of Music is a classic film cherished in the hearts of millions. It won five Oscars, including Best Picture, upon its release in 1965. This tribute to a Hollywood classic is sure to thrill everyone who's ever sung along to "My Favorite Things" at one of the many screenings that still take place today. Through interviews with the cast and crew, in-depth access to memorabilia and personal scrapbooks, and archival research at Fox Studios, author Julia Antopol Hirsch reveals the lively human story behind the making of the von Trapp family film.

The Complete Writings of St. Francis Assisi is the only audiobook on the market to include the original writings of St. Francis, his own work, "The Prayers of St. Francis", "The Little Flowers of St. Francis" and a biography of the life and achievements of St. Francis. St. Francis was an extraordinary writer and poet whose writings are sure to move the young and seasoned writer on topics such as life, love, the environment, and animals all while keeping a close walk with your creator.

Moving between journal entry, memoir, and exposition, Audre Lorde fuses the personal and political as she reflects on her experience coping with breast cancer and a radical mastectomy. A Penguin Classic First published over forty years ago, The Cancer Journals is a startling, powerful account of...

The Story of a Soul is the autobiography of Thérèse of Lisieux. It was first published on September 30, 1898, a year to the day after her death from tuberculosis at the age of 24, on September 30, 1897. The book was a single volume formed from three distinct manuscripts - manuscripts of different length, written at different times, addressed to different people, and differing from one another in character. The work of unifying these disparate manuscripts was carried out by Pauline, the sister of Thérèse.

WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES CHRISTOPHER ISHERWOOD PRIZE A NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR: TIME, NEW YORKER, PITCHFORK, LITHUB, AND NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW From the New Yorker staff writer and acclaimed author of Future Sex comes a memoir about drugs, techno, and New York City "The first...

Joan Robinson Hill was a world-class equestrian, a glamorous member of Houston high society, and the wife of Dr. John Hill, a handsome and successful plastic surgeon. Her father, Ash Robinson, was a charismatic oil tycoon obsessed with making his daughter's every dream come true. Rich, attractive, and reckless, Joan was one of the most celebrated women in a town infatuated with money, power, and fame. Then one morning in 1969, she fell mysteriously ill. The sordid events that followed comprise "what may be the most compelling and complex case in crime annals" (Ann Rule, best-selling author of The Stranger Beside Me).

This New York Times bestseller intimately depicts urban life in a gripping book that slips behind cold statistics and sensationalism to reveal the true sagas lurking behind the headlines of gangsta glamour. One of The New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century In her extraordinary...

Keith Haring is synonymous with the downtown New York art scene of the 1980's. His artwork-with its simple, bold lines and dynamic figures in motion-filtered in to the world's consciousness and is still instantly recognizable, twenty years after his death. This Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition...

To all appearances, John Wilder has all the trappings of success, circa 1960: a promising career in advertising, a loving family, a beautiful apartment, even a country home. John's evenings are spent with associates at quiet Manhattan lounges and his weekends with friends at glittering cocktail parties. But something deep within this seemingly perfect life has long since gone wrong.

A masterful new translation of Suetonius' renowned biography of the twelve Caesars, bringing to life a portrait of the first Roman emperors in stunning detail A Penguin Classic The ancient Roman empire was the supreme arena, where emperors had no choice but to fight, to thrill, to dazzle. To...

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.

The year 1971 exists everywhere in Bangladesh-on its roads, in sculptures, in its museums and oral history projects, in its curriculum, in people's homes and their stories, and in political discourse. It marks the birth of the nation, it's liberation. More than 1000 miles away, in Pakistan too...

The twenty-fifth-anniversary edition of the groundbreaking classic, with a new introduction First published in 1993, on the one-year anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, Race Matters became a national best seller that has gone on to sell more than half a million copies. This classic treatise on...

Two Years Before the Mast is a book by the American author Richard Henry Dana, Jr., written after a two-year sea voyage starting in 1834 and published in 1840. While at Harvard College, Dana had an attack of the measles that affected his vision. Thinking it might help his sight, Dana, rather than going on a Grand Tour as most of his fellow classmates traditionally did (and unable to afford it anyway), and being something of a nonconformist, left Harvard to enlist as a common sailor.