Literary Biography

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, USA TODAY, AND CHICAGO TRIBUNE A masterly work of literary journalism about a senseless murder, a relentless detective, and the great plague of homicide in America NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS...

'A schoolteacher who killed multiple paramours with cyanide; a mother who trained her daughters to kill children; a thug from the 1800s who slaughtered more than 900 people, a manservant who killed girls and devoured their body parts. If you thought serial killers was a Western phenomenon, think...

This program includes archival recordings of Ernest Hemingway Hemingway's deeply reflective account of his destructive Paris affair and how it affected the legendary life he rebuilt after, as told to his best friend, the writer A.E. Hotchner. In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend...

How to Be a Writer is peppered with nuggets of practical advice for every person who is aspiring to write and be published, all told in Ruskin Bond's characteristic understated, tongue-in-cheek, humorous style. So, what is it that a person requires the most to become a writer? A love of books, of language, of life, an observant eye and a good memory, along with enthusiasm, optimism, and persistence. This book is an exclusive glimpse into the writing credo of Ruskin Bond, an author who has had an incredibly successful writing career spanning over 70 years.

Sylvia Plath is an object of enduring cultural fascination―the troubled patron saint of confessional poetry, a writer whose genius is buried under the weight of her status as the quintessential literary sad girl. Emily Van Duyne―a superfan and scholar―radically reimagines the last years of Plath’s life, confronts her suicide and the construction of her legacy.

A collection of reported stories that explore the relationship between mothers and daughters, by the award-winning author of Strangers to Ourselves. You Won't Get Free of It tells the stories of mothers and daughters searching for each other (and for themselves). With uncanny depth of perception...

Young Mary Oliver was enthralled by nature. In the forest, she wondered about the birds and the lilies and the water in the stream—about all the things that cannot speak yet somehow spoke to Mary. She wondered, too, about poetry, about how words pieced together filled her with light and how some poems felt like they were written just for her. How could this be?

Frantz Fanon (1925 - 1961) fought to free Algeria from French rule and rallied against the oppressive grip of colonialism. In this fictionalized view of the revolutionary's life, an African-American writer travels the world to do research for a biography of Fanon. In a tale that is part love story, mystery, and biography, Fanon examines how a political radical's views apply in a post-9/11 world.

Before he won stunning acclaim as one of today's most gifted southern writers, Larry Brown was a firefighter with the Oxford, Mississippi, Fire Department. On Fire, his powerful and unflinching account of this experience, catapults listeners into the daily trauma all firefighters face, from the blistering heat of burning homes to the crunch of broken glass at crash scenes.

In Literary Life, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Larry McMurtry opens up about the triumphs and trials of his abundant literary career. From his early interest in writing, which began with a creative writing class at Rice University, to a career that boasts over 40 novels and an Academy Award-winning screenplay, this intimate portrait of the author offers a glimpse into an intelligent, honest, and undeniably profound voice in contemporary American Literature.

This haunting, harrowing, gloriously moving recollection of a life on the American margin is the story of Rick Bragg, who grew up dirt-poor in northeastern Alabama, seemingly destined for either the cotton mills or the penitentiary, and instead became a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The...

Not heard of Paul Sykes? Mentioned in the book Legends by Charles Bronson, an A to Z guide of the men Bronson had regarded to be the toughest in Britain. Referring to "Sykesy", Bronson describes him as "a Legend, Born and Bred" and writing: "I first met Sykes in Liverpool in the early 70s and at that time he was probably the fittest Con in Britain. A notorious hard man from Yorkshire, a fighting man in every sense. A lot of people never liked him, perhaps they even feared him but I respected the man for what he stood for."

“A wise, mild and enviably lucid book about a chaotic scene.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times “Memoirs of fatherhood are rarely so honest or so blunt.” —Daniel Engber, The Atlantic “An instant classic.” —M. C. Mah, Romper NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2022 BY LIT HUB &...

In the fall of 1948 Hemingway and his fourth wife traveled for the first time to Venice, which Hemingway called "a goddam wonderful city." He was a year shy of his 50th birthday and hadn't published a novel in nearly a decade. At a duck shoot in the lagoon he met and fell in love with Adriana Ivancich, a striking Venetian girl just out of finishing school. Di Robilant - whose great-uncle moved in Hemingway's revolving circle of bon vivants, aristocrats, and artists - re-creates with sparkling clarity this surprising, years-long relationship.

This is an ideal introduction to the ideas of a man whom many regard as the greatest thinker of our time. Here we encounter the stages in the development of his unique philosophy of consciousness, his key intellectual breakthroughs, his theory of history, and his diagnosis of the political ills of the modern age. The book provides a veritable catalog of the thinkers who created the intellectual foundation of the twentieth century.

A dazzling journey into the hidden lives of synanthropes, the wild animals who've found ingenious ways to survive and thrive in human communities—from award-winning writer and epidemiologist Dan Werb Synanthropes have always been an immutable part of the tapestry of our lives. They are the...

Jane Austen is famous for such books as Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. Now learn about the author’s journey through a life spent making up stories that touched the lives of millions. Jane Austen is now what she never was in life, and what she would have been horrified to become--a...

Before the Soviet invasion of 1980, Enjeela Ahmadi remembers her home - Kabul, Afghanistan - as peaceful, prosperous, and filled with people from all walks of life. But after her mother, unsettled by growing political unrest, leaves for medical treatment in India, the civil war intensifies, changing young Enjeela’s life forever. Amid the rumble of invading Soviet tanks, Enjeela and her family are thrust into chaos and fear when it becomes clear that her mother will not be coming home.

Mary Jumbelic has been obsessed with death since the loss of her father when she was 13. The sudden departure of her dad, the mother left behind, and her position as an only child led her to grow up quickly. Yet the why and how of her father's death plagued her. She chose to view an autopsy at the age of 15 and discovered a science that explained the process. College, medical school and becoming a forensic pathologist wasn't a given. She struggled before ultimately deciding on a career as a medical examiner.

Elle a été enlevée à sept ans dans son village du Darfour et a connu toutes les horreurs et les souffrances de l'esclavage. Rachetée à l'adolescence par le consul d'Italie, elle découvre un pays d'inégalités, de pauvreté et d'exclusion. Affranchie à la suite d'un procès retentissant à Venise, elle entre dans les ordres et traverse le tumulte des deux guerres mondiales et du fascisme en vouant sa vie aux enfants pauvres.