Fiction Memoir

Academics, journalists, and popular historians agree: our greatest presidents are the ones who confronted a national crisis and mobilized the entire nation to face it. That’s the conventional wisdom. The chief executives who are celebrated in textbooks and placed in the top echelon of presidents in surveys of experts are the bold leaders - the Woodrow Wilsons and Franklin Roosevelts - who reshaped the United States in line with their grand “vision” for America. Unfortunately, along the way, these “great” presidents inevitably expanded government - and shrank our liberties.

Author Lucy-Anne Holmes has spoken to women from around the globe, ranging in age from 19-75, as they reveal their innermost thoughts and feelings during sex. The result is an incredible compendium of true disclosures that are funny and sad, shocking and tender. Women on Top of the World will be a provocative collection of female voices. It promises to contribute to the changing way women are now talking about their sexuality, and their journeys toward self-discovery.

The author writes with perfect pitch as she takes us through one woman's life - from childhood to marriage and beyond - and memorably captures the collision of youthful longing and the hard intransigencies of time and fate.

Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a bad neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing.

Inside this chilling true crime audiobook, you’ll peel back the curtain on one of the most twisted and psychopathic men to ever stalk America. Known as the Butcher of Plainfield and the Plainfield Ghoul, his gut-wrenching crimes have fascinated and terrified people ever since his shocking arrest.

Whitney Houston (1963-2012) was a superstar. Few in the world of show business reach the career heights that she attained with what seemed such ease. Her megastardom peaked in 1992 with the release of the hit movie The Bodyguard and the international number-one hit "I Will Always Love You". The movie soundtrack still stands as one of the best-selling albums of all time. She won six Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, thirty Billboard Music Awards, and twenty-two American Music Awards, and amassed a vast fortune. Her death has shocked the entertainment world and her fans.

Living On Air is a coming of age tale about a small town boy who makes it to the top of his profession in the world of radio and voice-over. It's a heart-warming, funny story filled with the ups and downs people face on the roller-coaster ride to success, including some laughable encounters with major celebrities. Living On Air is narrated by author, Joe Cipriano, considered one of the top voice-over talents in America. Instantly recognizable as the voice of TV networks, award shows, games shows and more.

This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent '60s and early '70s displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works. In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early consciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain - the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his return to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

A Real Emotional Girl tells the true story of young Tanya, growing up in the wonderland of her family’s summer camp. At 16, this idyllic life is interrupted when she must face her father’s sudden illness. Tanya, her mother, and two brothers find themselves cramped in a tiny cabin in a tiny town in northern Wisconsin in the dead of winter. There, they wait for her father to die of cancer. Separated from friends and civilization, Tanya has only her fears and uncertainty for company.

In the great tradition of the American almanac, The Areas of My Expertise is a brilliant and hilarious compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom on all topics large and small. Although best sellers such as Poor Richard's Almanack and The Book of Lists were certainly valuable, they also were largely true.

The understory is where I live, alongside these plants and creatures. I tend the forest, stand at the foot of trees and look up, gather what has fallen. This is the story of a tree-change, of escaping suburban Brisbane for a cottage on 10 acres in search of a quiet life. Of establishing a writers' retreat shortly before the global financial crisis hit, and of losing just about everything when it did. It is also the story of what the author found there: the beauty of nature and her own path as a writer.

Mad Women is a tell-all account of life in the New York advertising world of the 1960s and '70s from Jane Maas, a female copywriter who succeeded in the primarily male environment portrayed by the hit TV show Mad Men. Fans of the show are dying to know how accurate it is: did people really have that much sex in the office? Were there really three-martini lunches? Were women really second-class citizens? Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally yes....

Edwin Lefevre was a stockbroker and an independent investor, as well as a novelist and writer of short stories. This lightly fictionalized account of the career of stock speculator Jesse Livermore was first published in 1923. Now, nearly 100 years later, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator remains highly recommended for an understanding of investment. Lefevre’s trading advice and analyses of market price movements are as relevant today as in 1923.

Tara Moss has worn many labels in her time, including author, model, gold-digger, commentator, inspiration, dumb blonde, feminist, and mother, among many others.

Now, in her first work of nonfiction, she blends memoir and social analysis to examine the common fictions about women.

“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.

La nuit, chacun la voit, la vit, la sent, l'apprivoise à sa manière. De celle de Guyane, trouée d'un faible lampadaire sous la lueur duquel, enfant, à la faveur de la moiteur et du silence, elle allait lire en cachette, à celle qui lui permettait de régler ses comptes avec les péchés capitaux que les religieuses lui faisaient réciter dans la journée, la nuit a souvent été, pour Christiane Taubira, une complice, une alliée, une sorte de sœur intime, un moment particulier.

Rain in the Mountains brings together some of Ruskin Bond’s most beautiful works from his years spent in the foothills of the Himalayas in the town of Mussoorie. Through vivid images and lucid writing, Bond evokes the everyday sights and sounds, and captures the essence of mountain life. The musings on his natural habitat, in both prose and poetry, offer a view of that simple and affable world. Some of his writings featured in the book include: "Once Upon a Mountain Time", "Sounds I Like to Hear", "How Far Is the River" and "After the Monsoon".

Some Dance to Remember has been reviewed as the gay Gone with the Wind. But such popular praise does not do literary justice to this eyewitness classic of that first golden decade after Stonewall. This best-selling epic of San Francisco's Castro seethes with sex, drugs, panic, and passionate characters: a gay writer, a drop-dead gorgeous bodybuilder, a cabaret singer, a Vietnam vet, a Hollywood bitch, and a rough-trade porn mogul.

On May 22, 2010, at the age of 13, American teenager Jordan Romero became the youngest person to climb to the summit of Mount Everest. At 15, he became the youngest person to reach the summits of the tallest mountains on each of the seven continents. In this energizing memoir for young adults, Jordan recounts his experience, which started as a spark of an idea at the age of nine and, many years of training and hard work later, turned into a dream come true.

Richard Coles narrates this witty account of life as a parish priest and Radio 4 broadcaster. After a life of sex and drugs and the Communards - brilliantly recounted in the highly acclaimed first volume of his memoirs Fathomless Riches - the Reverend Richard Coles went on to devote his life to God and Christianity. He is also a much-loved broadcaster, presenting Saturday Live on Radio 4 and giving us regular reason to Pause for Thought on Radio 2.