Letters Literature

Kat Bristol always had a love affair with the ocean. As a child, the beach and the warm waters of the Indian Ocean were her sanctuary, but when she and her family moved to the US, she had to redefine herself. It was a strange man on a Pacific Ocean beach, who showed her that she was powerful and important to those around her. But she had to outsmart those who were trying to bring her down. A near death experience made her choose what was important and taught her how to access the internal being that is her true self.

Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who’s traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for—a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the “Real Thing,” to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears, as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything.

The Letter, the final book of the Christmas Box collection is, most simply stated, the love story of David and MaryAnne Parkin. But it is also everyone's love story, for it is about the storms that all relationships must face when the blissful state of romance vanishes into one of real-life challenges and difficulties. We often forget that it is in the hard times that we truly see what is best in love as well as in life.

When famous writer Victor Esposito falls into a coma, the memories of a 10-year-old love affair come roaring back to Eva Abram's mind, uprooting her quiet Long Island life. Victor Esposito mysteriously dedicates every novel he's ever written to one woman. His trademark protagonist fits the description of Eva Abrams, the bright-eyed and blonde Long Island housewife. Tragedy suddenly strikes Victor's life when a courageous act leaves him in a coma. Hearing the news from a television broadcast, Eva finds herself suddenly overcome with the memories of a love affair she'd left behind.

John Keats' letters paint an unforgettably vivid and moving picture of the richly productive but also tragic final years of the poet's life. As he ponders on the nature of the writer's craft, he must first confront his brother's death from tuberculosis and then the imminent prospect of his own, tormented by the fear that he will not live to consummate his relationship with Fanny Brawne.

Orphaned and alone in antebellum New Orleans, Fiona Riley promises a dying friend she will raise the woman's child as her own. But without a job and a roof over their heads, Fiona fears for their lives. When a letter arrives announcing that relatives in a bayou town are searching for their long-lost cousin, Fiona finds the answer to her prayers, even if it means deceiving others to survive. Emile Dugas knew she was lying the moment he set eyes on Fiona Riley, an Irish immigrant trying to pose as his distant Cajun cousin. But how could he resist?

Is there any mystery greater than those we love the most? In this remarkable collaboration, New York Times best-selling author Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger combine their unique talents to create a powerfully moving novel of an estranged husband and wife through a series of searching, intimate letters. By way of a correspondence so achingly real you’ll forget it’s fiction, they trace the history of a love affair and of a family before, and after, the moment that changed the course of two people’s journey forever.

From sickly child to pioneering Victorian explorer, Isabella Bird defied convention. After back surgery in 1850 and the recommendation of life in the open air, she finally looked her malaise and her pain in the eye and set off across the world completely alone. In Colorado she covered 800 miles on horseback, climbing mountains, wrangling cattle, sleeping in snow and finding herself drawn to a violent, one-eyed outlaw with a soft spot for poetry, known as ‘Mountain Jim’.

On 16 August 1952, Ian Fleming wrote to his wife, Ann, "My love, This is only a tiny letter to try out my new typewriter and to see if it will write golden words since it is made of gold". And he did write golden words: 14 best-selling James Bond books and an equally energetic flow of letters to his wife, publisher, editors, fans, friends and critics, charting 007's progress....

Thirty-five Letters is a compilation of found letters written by a mother to her absent son. Spanning from 1972 to the spring of 1980, these letters offer insight into the world of a wife and mother who is trying desperately to keep her life on track and family intact.

Phoebe Kimball grew up believing in love, but after failing to find a gentleman capable of capturing her heart, she has turned more practical than romantic. She is determined to find a husband in London this season. If only the annoying Mr. Fenwick would stop appearing every time she sets her cap at someone! When an anonymous letter arrives warning her that her current target is unsuitable marital material, Phoebe begins a relationship with the letter writer that promises something more than a practical alliance.

Chicago, 1944. Liz Stephens has little interest in attending a USO club dance with her friends Betty and Julia. She doesn't need a flirtation with a lonely serviceman when she's set to marry her childhood sweetheart. Yet something happens the moment Liz glimpses Morgan McClain. They share only a brief exchange - cut short by the soldier's evident interest in Betty - but Liz can't forget him. Thus, when Betty asks her to ghostwrite a letter to Morgan, stationed overseas, Liz reluctantly agrees.

After Lucille Ball’s death in 1989, dozens of private letters between Lucy and Desi Arnaz were discovered. Now, for the first time, daughter Lucie Arnaz shares the complete collection in this remarkable volume that reveals the romance of one of the most famous couples in history more intimately than anything that has ever been written about them. At turns the letters disclose longing, ambition, jealousy, humor, and, above all, a passionate love affair that has claimed the world’s interest for more than half a century.

As James Schiff writes in the introduction to this volume, of the writer who would eventually express himself in written form as fully as any American writer since Henry James, "Updike needed to write the way the rest of us need to breathe or eat." With his stunning rhetorical gifts—allowing him to thrive in both fiction and nonfiction, in criticism as well as poetry—he was also a consummate letter writer.

Sabrina never intended to fall in love with Tucker McCabe, the man she serves coffee to every morning at a Nantucket cafe—especially since he's unwittingly tied to a past she deeply regrets. A past that is so riddled with mistakes, it has separated her from God. But she's fallen hard and isn't sure how long she can hide her feelings.

It's the holidays and Marc and his friends are ready to celebrate! But more importantly, they’ve decided to give back to those in need. While searching through his house for things he can donate to the local Holiday donation drive, Marc comes across his treasured collection of letters from his Navy SEAL Uncle Jake. Each letter contains a story from Uncle Jake’s childhood that teaches a valuable lesson, shows how to overcome life’s challenges, face one’s fears—or all of the above!

In the sleepy college town of Zenobia, New York, the only supernatural trace on display is the name of Gwen Engel’s business - Abracadabra Odd Job Service. But Gwen’s family has some unusual abilities they’ve been keeping under wraps - until one little letter spells big trouble....

This Nathaniel Hawthorne Collection includes Nathaniel Hawthorne's most notable works: The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, and The Birthmark. Get your copy today!

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose journalism, and life, were widely influential at the time and cleared a path for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. She is most famous, to her enduring exasperation, as Ernest Hemingway's third wife. Long after their divorce, her short tenure as "Mrs. Hemingway" from 1940 to 1945 invariably eclipsed her writing and, consequently, she never received her full due.

In the summer of 1905, Katherine Arthur's mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget. When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted, but she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie's husband, Frank, it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank.