Fiction Memoir

The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon is a fascinating, detailed account of Japanese court life in the closing years of the 10th century. Written by a lady of the court at the height of Heian culture, this book enthrals with its lively gossip, witty observations and subtle impressions. Lady Shōnagon was an erstwhile rival of Lady Murasaki, whose novel, The Tale of Genji, fictionalized the elite world Lady Shōnagon so eloquently relates.

Billy Graham was born on a dairy farm in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1918 just days after the signing of the armistice that ended World War I. At the age of 16, Graham came to Christ during a Christian revival meeting, and it wasn't long before he felt the call to preach. With the help of his wife, Ruth, and many other friends and colleagues, Billy Graham set out to preach to the world. The Billy Graham Evangelistic Association was founded, and since that day, Graham preached to more than 80 million people in more than 185 countries.

Meant to be a last-minute anniversary gift for her then boyfriend (and now husband), the highly energetic and loud-mouthed Vizla puppy named Harlow turns out to be the best snap decision twenty-year-old Taylor ever makes—and the beginning of the most epic friendship she ever has. As Wolfe’s resistance to 9-5’s and traditional adulthood grows, Harlow becomes the perfect companion for her eccentricities in a world that thrives on conformity.

Published in their entirety, Sylvia Plath's journals provide an intimate portrait of the writer who was to produce in the last seven months of her life some of the most extraordinary poems of the 20th century. Faithfully transcribed from the 23 journals and journal fragments owned by Smith College, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath includes two journals that Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, unsealed just before his death in 1998.

In the 1930s, Germany was a hotbed of scientific thought. But after the Nazis took power, Jewish and female citizens were forced out of their academic positions. Hedwig Kohn, Lise Meitner, Hertha Sponer and Hildegard Stücklen were eminent in their fields, but they had no choice but to flee due to their Jewish ancestry or anti-Nazi sentiments. Their harrowing journey out of Germany became a life-and-death situation that required Herculean efforts of friends and other prominent scientists.

Although T. E. Lawrence, commonly known as "Lawrence of Arabia’, died in 1935, the story of his life has captured the imagination of succeeding generations. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is a monumental work in which he chronicles his role in leading the Arab Revolt against the Turks during the First World War. A reluctant leader, and wracked by guilt at the duplicity of the British, Lawrence nevertheless threw himself into his role, suffering the blistering desert conditions and masterminding military campaigns which culminated in the triumphant march of the Arabs into Damascus.

Michael Palin's diaries begin when he was newly married and struggling to make a name for himself in the world of television comedy. But Monty Python was just around the corner...Enjoying an unlikely cult status early on, the Pythons then proceeded to tour the USA and Canada. As their popularity grew, so Palin relates how the group went their separate ways, later to re-form for stage shows and the celebrated films The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.

The long-awaited memoir of her tumultuous year in office, A Woman First: First Woman is an intimate first-person account of the public and private lives of Selina Meyer, America's first woman president.

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.

As a transnational and transracial adoptee, Jenny Heijun Wills has spent her life navigating the fraught spaces of ethnicity and belonging. As a pan-polyam individual, she lives between types of family—adopted, biological, chosen—and "community"; heternormativity and queerness; commitment and a constellation of love. Everything and Nothing At All weaves together a lifetime of literary criticism, cultural study, and a personal history into a staggering tapestry of knowledge.

Zecharia Sitchin’s best-selling series The Earth Chronicles provided humanity’s side of the story concerning our origins at the hands of the Anunnaki, “those who from heaven to earth came.” In The Lost Book of Enki we now view this saga from the perspective of Lord Enki, an Anunnaki leader revered in antiquity as a god, who tells the story of these extraterrestrials’ arrival on Earth from the planet Nibiru.

On the edge of the remote salt flats of Australia, a young woman blows in from nowhere and disturbs the precarious equilibrium of a family farm. The boy is fascinated by her, his mother despises her, and the brutish farmhand wants to possess her. When the woman mysteriously disappears, the only trace of her a bloodied dress, the boy sets out in search of an Indian hawker who may or may not have the answers. As he journeys through the broken landscape, accompanied only by his horse and his dog, the boy becomes aware of another party converging murderously on his destination.

More than 20 years ago, Frances Mayes - widely published poet, gourmet cook, and travel writer - introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys.

In Dad is Fat, stand-up comedian Jim Gaffigan, who’s best known for his legendary riffs on Hot Pockets, bacon, manatees, and McDonald's, expresses all the joys and horrors of life with five young children - everything from cousins ("celebrities for little kids") to toddlers’ communication skills ("they always sound like they have traveled by horseback for hours to deliver important news"), to the eating habits of four-year-olds ("there is no difference between a four-year-old eating a taco and throwing a taco on the floor").

On July 17, 1939, Eileen Alexander, a bright young woman recently graduated from Girton College, Cambridge, begins a brilliant correspondence with fellow Cambridge student Gershon Ellenbogen that lasts five years and spans many hundreds of letters. But as Eileen and Gershon's relationship flourishes from friendship and admiration into passion and love, the tensions between Germany, Russia, and the rest of Europe reach a crescendo. When war is declared, Gershon heads for Cairo and Eileen forgoes her studies to work in the Air Ministry.

À trente et un ans, Elizabeth Gilbert possède tout ce dont une femme ambitieuse peut rêver : un mari dévoué, une belle maison, une carrière prometteuse. Elle devrait nager dans le bonheur, pourtant elle est rongée par l'angoisse, le doute, l'insatisfaction... S'ensuivent un divorce, une dépression et une liaison désastreuse qui la laissent exsangue et encore plus désemparée. Elle décide de tout plaquer pour partir seule à travers le monde. À elle de se construire la vie qu'elle s'est choisie !

There is absolutely no logical reason why I am here. The life trajectory my nationality and class and circumstances portended for me was not even remotely close to the one I now navigate. But logic is a science and living is an art. The release I felt in writing my first memoir, Not My Father’s Son, was matched only by how my speaking out empowered so many to engage with their own trauma. I was reminded of the power of my words and the absolute duty of authenticity.

You, dear listener, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart - no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments - even at the risk of one's life - is a delight that, once experienced, can never be forgotten….All the world, from Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, know Isabella, Lady Trent, to be the world's preeminent dragon naturalist.

Born in Chicago in 1897, 'Chips' Channon settled in England after the Great War, married into the immensely wealthy Guinness family, and served as Conservative MP for Southend-on-Sea from 1935 until his death in 1958. His career was unremarkable. His diaries are quite the opposite. Elegant, gossipy and bitchy by turns, they are the unfettered observations of a man who went everywhere and who knew everybody.

After a decade spent in isolation in the Ugandan jungles thinking about stuff, David Cross has written his first book. Known for roles on the small screen such as "never-nude" Tobias Funke on Arrested Development and the role of "David" in Mr. Show with Bob and David, as well as a hugely successful stand-up routine full of sharp-tongued rants and rages, Cross has carved out his place in American comedy.