Art Biography

She was born Lula Carson Smith in Columbus, Georgia. Her dream was to become a concert pianist, though she’d been writing since she was sixteen and the influence of music was evident throughout her work. Her first novel—The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter—was published in 1940 when she was twenty-three and overnight, Carson McCullers became the most widely talked-about writer of the time. Mary Dearborn gives us the first full picture of one of America’s greatest writers, a complex artist who was decades ahead of her time, a writer who understood—and captured, the heart and longing of the outcast.

In this new audiobook, broadcaster and music writer Alan Cross narrates the definitive history of Oasis. Cross succeeds once again in revealing the fascinating history behind the music in the same compelling way we've come to expect from his long broadcasting career.

Rita Hayworth was the epitome of 1940s glamour. A legendary "Love Goddess", she was a huge box-office star, and her sultry beauty and sensational figure made her into one of Hollywood's greatest sex-symbols: a pin-up so incendiary that GIs pasted it on to the first atom bomb ever detonated.

There was a time when Ralphie May was one of the biggest stand-up comedians in the country, both by ticket sales and by tonnage. While some things changed - Ralphie lost half his body weight - others did not: He will be remembered as one of the most successful comics of his time. Completed just months before his untimely passing, in This Might Get a Little Heavy, Ralphie takes listeners on a behind-the-scenes tour of his life and career, one that winds across the country, over obstacles, beyond heartbreak, and through the golden age of stand-up.

In Good Day!: The Paul Harvey Story, author Paul J. Batura follows the remarkable life of one of the founding fathers of the news media. Paul Harvey started his career during the Great Depression and narrated America's story day by day, through wars and peace, the threat of communism and the crumbling of old colonial powers, consumer booms and eventual busts.

In I'll Have What She's Having, entertainment journalist Erin Carlson tells the story of the real Nora Ephron and how she reinvented the romcom through her trio of instant classics. With a cast of famous faces including Reiner, Hanks, Ryan, and Crystal, Carlson takes listeners on a rollicking, revelatory trip to Ephron's New York City, where reality took a backseat to romance and Ephron - who always knew what she wanted and how she wanted it - ruled the set with an attention to detail that made her actors feel safe but sometimes exasperated crew members.

Mel Brooks' own words telling all about the players, the filming, and studio antics during the production of this great comedy classic. The audiobook is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary. Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema-and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This audiobook will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman, and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff.

Marina Abramovic, the legendary performance artist, is legendary for a reason. She has spent four decades making traumatic and transcendent artworks using her own body as a material, breaking through the boundaries of the acceptable in visual art. In the early 1970s alone, she lost consciousness while lying in the center of a burning five-pointed star (symbol of the communism of her native Yugoslavia), took pills to induce hyperactivity and then catatonia, and remained determinedly passive as an audience member pushed a loaded gun to her neck.

When Sharon Butala's husband, Peter, died unexpectedly, she found herself with no place to call home. Torn by grief and loss, she fled the ranchlands of southwest Saskatchewan and moved to the city, leaving almost everything behind. A lifetime of possessions was reduced to a few boxes of books, clothes, and keepsakes. But a lifetime of experience went with her, and a limitless well of memory - of personal failures, of a marriage that everybody said would not last but did, of the unbreakable bonds of family.

Leslie Odom Jr. burst on the scene in 2015, originating the role of Aaron Burr in the Broadway musical phenomenon Hamilton. Since then he has performed for sold-out audiences, sung for the Obamas at the White House, and won a Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. But before he landed the role of a lifetime in one of the biggest musicals of all time, Odom put in years of hard work as a singer and an actor.

From the mean streets of Depression-era New York City to recipient of the National Medal of Arts, Lee's life has been almost as remarkable as the thrilling adventures he spun for decades. From millions of comic books fans of the 1960s through billions of moviegoers around the globe, Stan Lee has touched more people than almost any person in the history of popular culture. In Stan Lee: The Man behind Marvel, Bob Batchelor offers an eye-opening look at this iconic visionary, a man who created (with talented artists) many of history's most legendary characters.

When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of 60 after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted listeners who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the 21st century. Doyle writes with a delightful sense of wonder about the sanctity of everyday things, and about love and connection in all their forms: spiritual love, brotherly love, romantic love, and even the love of a nine-foot sturgeon.

In this intimate dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, offer distinct perspectives as a 50-something and a 20-something, each on a quest to redefine herself and to rediscover each other. Between 1998 and 2000, Sue and Ann travel throughout Greece and France. Sue, coming to grips with aging, caught in a creative vacuum, longing to reconnect with her grown daughter, struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel.

As a child, Andy loved to draw. He took classes at the Carnegie Museum of art, where his teacher told the class,"everything you look at has art." In college many teachers didn't appreciate Andy's understanding of art. He annoyed them by doing things his own way - like by cutting a painting into four parts and submitting it as separate assignments. But later, his unique approach would lead to people everywhere reevaluating their ideas.

In this groundbreaking audiobook, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her.

If F. Scott Fitzgerald was the hero of the Jazz Age, Edna St. Vincent Millay, as flamboyant in her love affairs as she was in her art, was its heroine. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Millay was dazzling in the performance of herself. Her voice was likened to an instrument of seduction, and her impact on crowds and on men was legendary. Yet beneath her studied act, all was not well.

There is no doubt that Yolanda Saldívar pulled the trigger and killed Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Pérez on March 31, 1995. But does anyone know what really happened in room 158 of the Days Inn moments before the crime took place? María Celeste Arrarás has many answers, and her unrivaled coverage of the murder, trial, and aftermath made her the undisputed expert on the Selena case.

Rembrandt's life has always been an enigma. How did a miller's son from a provincial Dutch town become the greatest artist in the world? To find out, Onno Blom immersed himself in the world, the country, the city, and the house in which Rembrandt was born in 1606 and where he spent the first 25 years of his life. The result is a fascinating portrait of the artist as a young man, rich in local and biographical detail, and restless in its efforts to seek out the roots of his genius.

Little black dresses. Fake pearls. Jersey knit. Blazers. Ballet flats. Today - and for nearly the last hundred years - we all see some version of Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel every time we pass a woman on the street. But few among us realize that Chanel’s role in the events of the twentieth century was as pervasive as her influence on fashion, or how deeply she absorbed and then brilliantly reimagined the historical currents around her.

In unforgettable tales of innocence lost under African skies, we follow Godwin's awakening to the often savage struggle between Whites and Blacks, his horror when he is forced to fight in a civil war he detests, and his experiences as a journalist covering the country's violent transition to Black rule as Rhodesia's colonial era comes to an end and the new state of Zimbabwe is born from its bloody ashes. Mukiwa is a poignant, compelling memoir and an invaluable addition to the literature of southern Africa.