Fiction Memoir

In this stunning debut collection, award-winning voice actor and cultural critic Tajja Isen explores the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through.

The Aeneid stands as a towering work of Classical Roman literature and a gripping dramatization of the best and worst of human nature. In the process of creating this epic poem, Vergil (70–19 BCE) became the world’s first media celebrity, a living legend. But the real Vergil is a shadowy figure. Sarah Ruden, widely praised for her translation of the Aeneid, uses evidence from Roman life and history alongside Vergil’s own writings to make careful deductions to reconstruct the life of Rome’s greatest poet.

Bringing his twin gifts of scientific speculation and scathing satire to bear on that hapless planet, Earth, Lem sends his unlucky cosmonaut, Ijon Tichy, to the Eighth Futurological Congress. Caught up in local revolution, Tichy is shot and so critically wounded that he is flashfrozen to await a future cure.

In these stories of her mother, her Aunt Bet, and other women who influenced her, author and storyteller Kathryn Tucker Windham reveals the complexity of Southern women in the days before feminism entered the common vocabulary. A legacy of independent women permeates these recollections: women who managed households, who became entrepreneurs, and who managed public facilities. The women she remembers may have been fair, but they certainly were not weak.

Kelly McMasters found herself in her mid-thirties living her fantasy: she'd moved with her husband, a painter, from New York City to rural Pennsylvania. The pastoral landscape and the bookshop they opened were restorative at first, for her and her marriage. But soon, she was quietly plotting her escape. In The Leaving Season, McMasters chronicles the heady rush of falling in love and carving out a life in the city, the slow dissolution of her relationship in an isolated farmhouse, and the complexities of making a new home for herself and her children as a single parent.

Until sophomore year of high school, 15-year-old Allison Britz lived a comfortable life in an idyllic town. She was a dedicated student with tons of extracurricular activities, friends, and loving parents at home. But after awakening from a vivid nightmare in which she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she was convinced the dream had been a warning. Allison believed that she must do something to stop the cancer in her dream from becoming a reality.

Sean was a seventh-grade drop-out, a dishwasher then a construction worker to help his mother and sister scrape by, and a self-described "nobody with a sad story behind him." Yet he cannot deny the glimmers of life's goodness even amid its rough edges. Such goodness becomes even harder to deny when Sean meets the love of his life at a fried chicken church potluck, and harder still when his lifelong love of storytelling leads him to stages across the southeast, where he is known and loved as "Sean of the South."

Considered by many to be the first autobiography/memoir ever written, Confessions is a retrospective view of a life challenged by uncertainty, doubt, human frailty, and earthly desires. Augustine discovers and cherishes a deeply personal relationship with his God, all while describing the day-to-day dealings of his life in the fading, corrupt days of the Roman Empire.

Marc Séguin revoit le garçon, l’adolescent puis le jeune adulte qu’il a été. Tous grugés par une incessante inquiétude, ils reviennent hanter l’homme mûr, le peintre reconnu qu’il est devenu. Il y a un train qui siffle au loin, des fissures multiples, un ravin qui se creuse. Et les seins de la belle Arielle. Il y aura des morts. Une amitié malmenée. Et un amour empêché. Comment aimer et se laisser aimer quand on est coupé de ses sentiments? Comment réparer l’irréparable?

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunström, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless island in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, where for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the visual artist, Tuulikki “Tooti” Pietilä, lived, painted, and wrote, energized by the solitude and shifting seascapes. The island's flora, fauna, and weather patterns provided deep inspiration which can be seen reflected in all of Jansson's work, most famously in her novel The Summer Book and her longstanding comic strip and novels for children, Moomin.

Pursued by one demon into the clutches of another, the ordinary life of Mary Ann "Polly" Nichols is made extraordinary by horrible, inhuman circumstance. Jack the Ripper's first victim comes to life in this sensitive and intimate fictionalized portrait, from humble beginnings, to building a family with an abusive husband, her escape into poverty and the workhouse, alcoholism, and finally abandoned on the streets of London where the Whitechapel Murderer found her.

Louise et Madeleine. Deux écrivaines, deux générations. L'une écrit pour fuguer, l'autre fugue pour écrire. L'une débute dans l'écriture, l'autre n'écrit plus. À travers une correspondance intime, elles partagent leurs doutes face à la création et à leurs vies de femmes artistes, d'épouses et de mères. Être prête à décevoir, à déplaire, à oser dire ce que l'on pense et à faire ce qui doit être fait pour devenir la personne que l'on devait être.

Actor David Suchet recalls his experience of playing Agatha Christie's world-famous detective, Hercule Poirot, for almost a quarter of a century. In the summer of 2013 David Suchet filmed his final scenes as Hercule Poirot. After 24 years in the role, he will have played the character in every story that Agatha Christie wrote about him (bar one, deemed unfilmable) and he will bid adieu to a role and a character that have changed his life.

Creep is “sharp, conversational cultural criticism” (Bustle), a blistering and slyly informal sociology of creeps (the individuals who deceive, exploit, and oppress) and creep culture (the systems, tacit rules, and institutions that feed them and allow them to grow and thrive). In eleven bold, electrifying pieces, Gurba mines her own life and the lives of others—some famous, some infamous, some you’ve never heard of but will likely never forget—to unearth the toxic traditions that have long plagued our culture and enabled the abusers who haunt our books, schools, and homes.

Thomas's recording of this holiday classic is considered the first official audiobook. You'll hear the author's recollection of a holiday in the seaside town of his youth as well as some of his most celebrated poems, including "Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night."

Circle of Treason is the first account written by CIA agents who were key members of the CIA team that conducted the intense "Ames Mole Hunt." Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille were two of the five principals of the CIA team tasked with hunting one of their own and were directly responsible for identifying Ames as the mole, leading to his arrest and conviction.

Deep down, Mark Cavendish thought he was finished. After illness, setbacks and clinical depression, the once fastest man in the world had been written off by most. And at the age of 36, even he believed his explosive cycling career would fade out with a whimper. The Manxman hadn't won a single Grand Tour stage in Italy, Spain or France since 2016. But then came his incredible resurrection at the 2021 Tour de France.

The Exceptional Crimes Unit stopped another criminal: Lucy Speckle. The brilliant FBI agent, Christian Windsor, pushed her to suicide....watching as she cut her own throat. It changed Christian, though, and those around him are starting to notice. He's darker. Harsher. Crueler. His partner, Luke Titan, couldn't be happier because he engineered the whole thing. If anyone knew Titan's true intentions, they'd call him a psychopath. They'd lock him up. They'd put him in the electric chair. Too bad his genius keeps him hidden in the shadows.

Plutarch’s Lives remains one of the world’s most profoundly influential literary works. Written at the beginning of the second century, it forms a brilliant social history of the ancient world. His “parallel lives” were originally presented in a series of books that gave an account of one Greek and one Roman life, followed by a comparison of the two. Volume 1 compares Theseus and Romulus, Alcibiades and Coriolanus, and Aristides and Marcus Cato, among others.

These letters between the pioneering environmentalist and her beloved friend reveal "a vibrant, caring woman behind the scientist" (Los Angeles Times). This very special collection of letters from Rachel Carson to her Maine summer neighbor Dorothy Freeman offers an intimate, spellbinding look at Carson's private life and thoughts.