Fiction Memoir

Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 BC-AD 65), also known as Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist from the Silver Age of Latin literature. This edition of Seneca's Epistles includes all 124 of the letters in a single volume, with explanatory notes, an appendix, and an index of the names occurring in the text. The letters were written by Seneca during his retirement and sent to his friend Lucilius Junior, a procurator of Sicily.

Lady Philippa Knolles has loved Captain Thomas "Dash" Dashwell since he first stole a kiss from her on a smuggler's beach near Hastings. Now after what seems like a lifetime of waiting, Pippin is offered a chance to renew her scandalous affair with Dash. But the man from that first heady kiss and the man she rediscovers all these years later are hardly the same. Tucked away in the back of her closet is a red dress, the one she wore long ago to win his heart....Could it have enough memories left inside it to rekindle a passion she's never forgotten?

The original collection of these stories, published in 1994 in England, did not include "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box" because it was considered "too shocking." It was later added to the first American edition.

This memoir of James Stavridis' two years in command of the destroyer USS Barry (DDG-52) reveals the human side of what it is like to be in charge of a warship for the first time and in the midst of international crisis. From Haiti to the Balkans to the Arabian Gulf, the Barry was involved in operations throughout the world during his 1993-1995 tour. Drawing on daily journals he kept for the entire period, the author reveals the complex nature of those deployments in a 'real time' context and describes life on board the Barry and liberty ashore for sailors and officers alike.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Personal Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope and depth of his interior life. Grappling with an indifferent mother and an impoverished childhood in Algeria, an ever-present sense of exile, and an ongoing search for equilibrium, Camus's personal essays shed new light on the emotional and experiential foundations of his philosophical thought....

"Je voulais, écrit Jean-Philippe Toussaint, que ce livre traite autant des ouvertures que des fins de partie, je voulais que ce livre me raconte, m’invente, me recrée, m’établisse et me prolonge. Je voulais dire ma jeunesse et mon adolescence dans ce livre, je voulais débobiner, depuis ses origines, mes relations avec le jeu d’échecs, je voulais faire du jeu d’échecs le fil d’Ariane de ce livre et remonter ce fil jusqu’aux temps les plus reculés de mon enfance, je voulais qu’il y ait soixante-quatre chapitres dans ce livre, comme les soixante-quatre cases d’un échiquier." J.-P. T.

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent '60s and early '70s displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain - the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

"J'ai vécu puisque tu voulais que je vive. Mais vécu comme je l'ai appris là-bas, en prenant les jours les uns après les autres. Il y en eut de beaux tout de même. T'écrire m'a fait du bien. En te parlant, je ne me console pas. Je détends juste ce qui m'enserre le cœur. Je voudrais fuir l'histoire du monde, du siècle, revenir à la mienne, celle de Shloïme et sa chère petite fille." M.L.-I.

From the internationally acclaimed Booker Prize-winning author of The Sea comes "a delicious memoir" (New York Times) that unfolds around the author's recollections, experiences, and imaginings of Dublin. As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city...

Science fiction dwells mostly in the realm of possibility, where mysteries proliferate nevertheless, meaning is never static, and “time and history have convinced us that things are not as they seem”. So, too, does all language, argues Samuel Delany, in his vigorous justification for the writing life. Chronicling his struggle with dyslexia, the evolution of his gay and Black identity during the AIDS crisis, and his experiences and relationships through five decades as a writer of fiction and nonfiction, Delany is a longtime observer of language’s inner workings.

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.

If you like to use your drive time for education by audiobook, consider this book for widening and deepening your view of an event you studied briefly in school - the Spanish conquest of the Americas. Conquistador Voices, which relies more heavily than most works of this kind on first-person accounts, neither glamorizes nor condemns the conquistadors. Somewhat in the manner of a modern film documentary, it treats the so-called conquest as an historical event that’s worth learning about for its own sake, with most of the moralizing left to the listener.

Learn more about The Great Detective Sherlock Holmes in The West End Horror. Illustration by David K. Stone...

Dashiell Hammett changed the face of crime fiction. In five novels published over five years as well as a string of stories, he transformed the mystery genre into literature and left us with the figure of the hard-boiled detective, from the Continental Op to Sam Spade - immortalized on film by Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon - and the more glamorous Thin Man, also made iconic with the aid of Hollywood.

A través de un personaje ficticio (el viejo marinero "Marlow"), Conrad describe una travesía por el río Congo en busca del señor "Kurtz" que es el jefe de una explotación de marfil. El encuentro con Kurtz, será la confirmación de la hipócrita actitud colonialista y pone en tela de juicio su carácter de cruzada moral y comercial. El director de cine Francis Ford Coppola se basó en este breve relato para su película Apocalypse Now, que si bien estaba ambientada en la guerra de Vietnam, mantenía el espíritu del relato de Conrad.

Michael Palin journeys to a vast country of unimaginable contrasts - Brazil. An economic powerhouse, it is host to a staggering variety of peoples. He starts his journey in the north, in the remote mountains and forests on the border with Venezuela, and finishes in the south at the legendary Iguaçu Falls. He travels by river-boat, float-plane and foot to visit tribes deep in the jungle, samples life in the agricultural and mining heartland of Brazil, experiences the modernism of Brasília and the heady mix of Rio de Janeiro, and ventures into the favelas.

On our life's journey, there are major turning points. Falling, fracturing her hip, and then having surgery were experiences that forced Barbara Sinor to travel an unknown path. These experiences took her beyond her normal life to exploring emotions and thoughts in foreign regions. While Barbara was confined to a rehabilitation facility to recover, her inner journey took her through territories of fear, doubt, pain, guilt, and down other emotional paths.

Clay's life has reached a standstill. Recently divorced, he spends his days drifting from his drab apartment to his equally lackluster job as an editor for a small Boston press and back again. His dreary routine has left him mired in a seemingly meaningless existence, until the night he meets Lucian - a demon - and everything changes. With the simple words, "I'm going to tell you my story, and you're going to write it down and publish it", Lucian catapults Clay's mundane life into turmoil.

Jeya was only four years old and was terrified as she tried to peer about the dark and gloomy temple. Between the pillars was a huge stone body. She shivered when she saw its face. This, she knew, was Kali, the goddess of death and destruction. Why was Jeya there? Who would leave a little girl in the dark like that? Certainly not the God of love - he sent a woman to rescue these children from destruction - Amy Carmichael. And she had been a little girl herself once a little girl with long dark hair, and deep brown eyes.

Joanne’s husband Zack is the leading progressive candidate in a neck-and-neck race, with the existing mayor, for Regina’s top job. The tough campaigning is well underway when a disturbing threat disrupts the celebration for the opening of the Racette-Hunter Centre — a project Zack has been spearheading, intended to benefit the impoverished community of North Central Regina. Joanne soon realizes that sinister interests are working behind the scenes of the election, and another savage act makes clear that someone will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo.