Author Memoirs

Will Self is one of Britain's best-known contemporary writers, a public intellectual whose novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into over 20 languages. In Will, his first-ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self, and in particular his addictions as a young man. An addiction memoir like no other, Will echoes the best of Self's psychedelic fiction, and is one of the most eloquent depictions of the allure of hard drugs ever written.

In 2020, Tracy O’Neill began to rethink her ideas of comfort and safety. Just out of a ten-year relationship and thirtysomething, she was driven by an acute awareness that the mysterious mother she’d never met might be dying somewhere in South Korea. After contacting a grizzled private investigator, O’Neill took his suggested homework to heart when he disappeared before the job was done. Despite COVID-19, the promise of what she might discover—the possibility that her biological mother was her kind of outlaw, whose life could inspire her own—was too tempting.

A highly sensitive and intelligent child, Virginia Woolf grew up in a large family prone to psychological instability. Throughout her life, she was subject to periods of mental breakdown, yet when she was lucid she was capable of a uniquely perceptive and frank introspection. Under the influence of the Bloomsbury Group and their progressive social attitudes, she became experimental in her life and art, breaking with convention to produce some of the finest and most unique literary works of the 20th century.

Set against the lush backdrop of Crosswicks, her family's farmhouse in rural Connecticut, this deeply personal memoir details Madeleine L'Engle's journey to find balance between her career as a Newbery Medal-winning author and her responsibilities as a wife, mother, teacher, and Christian.

From renowned translators Richard Pevear and Lindsay Volokhonsky comes a new translation - certain to become the definitive version - of the first great prison memoir, a fictionalized account of Fyodor Dostoevsky's life-changing penal servitude in Siberia.

National Book Award-winning biographer Deirdre Bair explores her 15 remarkable years in Paris with Samuel Beckett and Simone de Beauvoir, painting intimate new portraits of two literary giants and revealing secrets of the biographical art. Drawing on Bair's extensive notes from the period, including never-before-told anecdotes and details considered impossible to publish at the time, Parisian Lives gives us an entirely new perspective on the all-too-human side of these legendary thinkers.

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted—thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the reverend. Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South.

This is the next installment in a six volume autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In A Song Flung Up to Heaven Maya Angelou describes her poignant encounters with Martin Luther King, Jr.; her work with the civil rights movement; and witnessing the Watts riots. Battered by the loss of revered black leaders, it takes writer James Baldwin to finally force her out of isolation with a dinner party that inspired her to write.

The definitive biography of Edward Gorey, the eccentric master of macabre nonsense. From The Gashlycrumb Tinies to The Doubtful Guest, Edward Gorey's wickedly funny and deliciously sinister little books have influenced our culture in innumerable ways, from the works of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman to Lemony Snicket. Some even call him the Grandfather of Goth. An eccentric, a gregarious recluse, an enigmatic auteur of whimsically morbid masterpieces, yes - but who was the real Edward Gorey behind the Oscar Wildean pose?

Joan Didion lived a life in the public and private eye with her late husband, writer John Gregory Dunne, whom she met while the two were working in New York City, when Didion was at Vogue and Dunne was writing for Time. They became wildly successful writing partners when they moved to Los Angeles and cowrote screenplays and adaptations together. Didion is well known for her literary journalistic style in both fiction and nonfiction.

Henry Ford et John D. Rockefeller sont deux américains qui ont fait fortune à partir de rien ! Le premier a donné son nom au modèle T, une voiture produite à plus de 16 millions d'exemplaires ! Comment ce fils d'agriculteur a fait pour en arriver là ? Quelles sont les étapes qui l'ont conduit à devenir le premier milliardaire des États-Unis ? Qu'est-ce qu'un entrepreneur moderne peut apprendre de lui aujourd'hui pour démarrer et développer un business ? Découvrez-le dans cet audiobook.

Filled with the twists, pathos, and unusual characters that sprang from this novelist’s extraordinary imagination, The Mystery of Charles Dickens looks back from the legendary writer’s death to recall the key events in his life. In doing so, he seeks to understand Dickens’ creative genius and enduring popularity. Following his life from cradle to grave, it becomes clear that Dickens’ fiction drew from his life - a fact he acknowledged.

You've eaten too much candy at Christmas...but have you ever eaten the face off a six-foot stuffed Santa? You've seen gingerbread houses...but have you ever made your own gingerbread tenement? You've woken up with a hangover...but have you ever woken up next to Kris Kringle himself? Augusten Burroughs has, and in this caustically funny, nostalgic, poignant, and moving collection he recounts Christmases past and present - as only he could.

Following the hugely successful memoir of his boyhood, An Hour Before Daylight, Jimmy Carter remembers Christmas in Plains. This very special day provides a source of spiritual inspiration, respite, family ties, friendship, vacation fun, and the simplicity of community.

Described as both “one of the most important novels ever written” and “the gospel of evil,” 120 Days of Sodom was written by the Marquis de Sade, a notorious eighteenth-century aristocrat who waged a campaign of mayhem and debauchery across France, evaded execution, and inspired the word “sadism,” which came to mean receiving pleasure from pain. Despite all his crimes, Sade considered this work to be his greatest transgression.

The companion to the bestselling The Heavenly Man, Living Water shares the vision of one of China's most dedicated, courageous, and intensely persecuted house church leaders. Brother Yun's dramatic life story and teachings offer a message that inspires and challenges Christians to live out a passionate commitment to serve Jesus Christ.

You'll be wincing in recognition and scratching your head in incredulity, but like Marian herself you won't be able to stop laughing at the sheer delightful absurdity that is modern life - because each and every one of us is clearly making it up as we go along. She has wonderful and tickling words of advice for those fast approaching 50.

John Hay, Lincoln's private secretary and later secretary of state under presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, and Samuel Langhorne Clemens, famous as "Mark Twain", grew up 50 miles apart on the banks of the Mississippi River in the same rural antebellum stew of race, class, and want. This shared history drew them together in the late 1860s, and their mutual admiration never waned in spite of sharp differences.

“I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.” Jane Austen at her witty, observant, intelligent, and sympathetic best, in this collection of her letters written to family and friends. Compiled by her niece Fanny Knight’s son Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen (the first Baron Brabourne), and edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey, this collection includes a preface written by the editor and notes from Lord Brabourne. It was originally published in 1892.

Everyone thinks about running away from home sometime. Most people don't venture that when they are 51. Sammi did. When the world got too small and being part of it got too unbearable she ran. Mostly west. On the way she bumped into her past and found some reconcile with her present. Filled with memories common to us all, too familiar demons, the longing, the searching, the betrayal and brokenness—the beauty of it all.