Fiction Memoir

A meditative and inspiring diary of Derek Jarman's famous garden at Dungeness. In 1986 Derek Jarman discovered he was HIV positive and decided to make a garden at his cottage on the barren coast of Dungeness. Facing an uncertain future, he nevertheless found solace in nature, growing all manner of plants. While some perished beneath wind and sea-spray, others flourished, creating brilliant, unexpected beauty in the wilderness. Modern Nature is both a diary of the garden and a meditation by Jarman on his own life.

Relegated during her lifetime to the pulpy genre of mystery, Patricia Highsmith has emerged since her death in 1995 as one of “our greatest modernist writers” (Gore Vidal). Presented for the first time, this one-volume assemblage of her diaries and notebooks posthumously discovered behind Highsmith’s linens and culled from more than 8,000 pages by her devoted editor, Anna von Planta—traces the mesmerizing double-life of an artist who “[worked] like mad to be something”.

Essence best-selling author Victoria Christopher Murray thrills audiences with her trademark twists and unforgettable voice. Scandalous gives listeners an early look at one of Murray’s most notorious characters. Exotic dancer Jasmine Cox is engaged and ready to settle down. But then a bachelorette-party roll in the hay ignites a torrid affair that threatens to drown out the sound of wedding bells.

La dernière guerre, Marguerite Duras l'a vécue tout à la fois comme femme dont le mari avait été déporté, comme résistante, mais aussi comme écrivain. Lucide, étonnée, désespérée parfois, elle a pendant ces années tenu un journal, écrit des textes que lui inspiraient tout ce qu'elle voyait, ce qu'elle vivait, les gens qu'elle rencontrait ou affrontait. Ce sont des extraits de son journal, que Marguerite Duras a réunis dans un recueil de nouvelles, "La douleur". La première d'entre elles porte le même titre. Adeline d'Hermy a choisi de la lire.

No matter what was happening in Jennifer Weiner's life - whether good, bad, or very, very ugly - her mother, Fran, would say the same thing: It's all material. Now the number-one New York Times best-selling author and "one of the biggest names in popular fiction" ( USA Today), beloved on Twitter and hailed as "an unlikely feminist enforcer" ( The New Yorker), takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins it into a collection of personal essays as uproariously funny and heartfelt as the best of Tina Fey and Nora Ephron.

What made FDR a more successful leader during the Depression crisis than Hoover? Why was Eisenhower more effective as supreme commander during World War II than he was as president? Why was Grant one of the best presidents of his day, if not in all of American history? What drove Bobby Kennedy into the scrum of electoral politics? Find the surprising and revelatory answers to these questions and more in this collection of new essays by great historians.

In her fiction, Claire Messud "has specialized in creating unusual female characters with ferocious, imaginative inner lives" (Ruth Franklin, New York Times Magazine). Kant’s Little Prussian Head & Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud’s own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature.

Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

At the young age of 16, Andy Adams left his San Antonio home to follow his dream of becoming a cowboy. Going on long drives with some of the 19th century's hardiest cowboys, he learned his trade through many adventurous years of trial and error. This account of his true experiences includes dusty cattle drives, brandings, stampedes, dangerous river crossings, and remarkable encounters with the Blackfoot, Oglala, and Platte Indian tribes.

On the surface, this is a biography of an accomplished seeker who mastered the practices of yoga and brought a system for understanding the mysteries of body, mind, and spirit to students in the West. But, like the life of Swami Rama, this audiobook offers more than a sequence of astonishing events. As you read the stories of authentic guru-disciple relationships Swami Rama had both with his master and with his own students, you will see how the spiritual wisdom is transmitted through generations. This book also serves as a guide to advanced practices of yoga and tantra not commonly understood in modern times.

Lambda Award and American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award-winning author Dorothy Allison is known for her bold and insightful writing on issues of class and sexuality. In Skin, she approaches these topics through 23 impassioned essays that explore her identity - from her childhood in a poor family in South Carolina to her adult life as a lesbian in the suburbs of New York - and her sexuality.

In this recorded account of near-death experiences, we learn about the miracles of the millennium, the return of the Ten Tribes, the building of the New Jerusalem and temple, and many other astonishing events long prophesied in scripture but never before described in such vivid detail. Visions of Glory is a mesmerizing and fascinating read that you will not be able to put down.

No matter how hard she tries, Ellen Burns will never be Scarlett O'Hara. As a little girl in South Carolina, she prefers playing Tarzan to playing Jane. As a teenage beauty queen, she spikes her Cokes with spirits of ammonia and baffles her elders with her Freedom Riding sympathies. As a young woman in the 1960s and '70s, she hypnotizes her way to Harvard, finds herself as a lesbian, then very nearly loses herself to booze and shamans.

Le 19 mars 1944, Albert Camus et Maria Casarès se croisent chez Michel Leiris. L'ancienne élève du Conservatoire, originaire de La Corogne et fille d'un républicain espagnol en exil, n'a que vingt et un ans. L'écrivain vit alors seul à Paris, la guerre l'ayant tenu éloigné de son épouse Francine, enseignante à Oran. Sensible au talent de l'actrice, Albert Camus lui confie le rôle de Martha pour la création du Malentendu en juin 1944. Et durant la nuit du Débarquement, Albert Camus et Maria Casarès deviennent amants.

The Armies of the Night chronicles the famed October 1967 March on the Pentagon, in which all of the old and new Left - hippies, yuppies, Weathermen, Quakers, Christians, feminists, and intellectuals - came together to protest the Vietnam War. Alongside his contemporaries, Mailer went, witnessed, participated, suffered, and then wrote one of the most stark and intelligent appraisals of the 1960s.

Susie King Taylor, born a slave in 1848, would learn to read at secret schools and go on to teach countless others to read and write. Follow the course of the Civil War in her own words as she remembers her work as a nurse and teacher with an Army troop of African-American soldiers.

In President Me, Carolla shares his vision for a different, better America free from big issues like big government down to small problems like hotel alarm clock placement. Running on an anti-narcissism platform, President Carolla calls for a return to the values of an earlier time when stew and casserole were on every dinner table and there were no “service dogs” on airplanes. President Me hits right at the heart of what makes our country really annoying, and offers a plan to make all of our lives, but mostly Adam’s, much better.

A wide range of women—actors, athletes, academics, CEOs, writers, small-business owners, birth workers, physicians, and activists—share their experiences of becoming mothers in this multifaceted, moving, and revealing collection.

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

Ranier Maria Rilke challenges you, "...to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answers." Rilke's ability to combine the sensual and the spiritual into an inspired vision of the art of living is brought to vivid life in his letters. Through his eyes, the everyday difficulties of love, sex, solitude, sadness, and doubt are seen as the archetypal elements of the drama called life.