Letters Literature

“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.

En este divertidísimo, muy serio y excepcionalmente original libro, C. S. Lewis comparte con nosotros la correspondencia entre el viejo diablo y su sobrino Orugario, un novato demonio encargado de asegurarse de la condenación de un joven hombre. Cartas del Diablo a Su Sobrino es la historia más atractiva acerca de la tentación -- y el triunfo sobre ella -- jamás escrita.

This audiobook, read by Audie award-winning narrators, includes unabridged recordings of Fyodor Dostotevsky's two finest works of non-fiction.

In the 1980s, Nina Stibbe wrote letters home to her sister in Leicester describing her trials and triumphs as a nanny to a London family. There’s a cat nobody likes, a visiting dog called Ted Hughes (Ted for short) and suppertime visits from a local playwright. Not to mention the two boys, their favourite football teams, and rude words, a very broad-minded mother and assorted nice chairs.

When Victoria Davies was pushed off her stately home's roof in 2001, all evidence pointed to her husband Michael. But now, 20 years later a letter has appeared, written by Victoria before her death; a letter that was never received, and a letter that brings new suspects into the fray; Labor MPs Shaun Donnal, Andrew MacIntyre, and Charles Baker.

When shy and bookish Gavin Hartford is sent to London, he is prepared to be very bored and very lonely. But after he accidentally forms an acquaintance with dashing man-about-town Charles Kentworthy, his life is turned completely upside down. As Gavin opens up to Mr. Kentworthy - discussing poetry and magic, confessing his fears about marriage, and expanding his social circle to shocking proportions - he finds himself far outside his comfort zone. Will he have the courage to face his own growing feelings for his new friend?

Rifka knows nothing about America when she flees from Russia with her family in 1919. But she dreams that in the new country she will at last be safe from the Russian soldiers and their harsh treatment of the Jews. Throughout her journey, Rifka carries with her a cherished volume of poetry by Alexander Pushkin. In it, she records her observations and experiences in the form of letters to Tovah, the beloved cousin she has left behind.

For the past 29 years, Kay Bright’s days have had a familiar rhythm: she works in her husband’s stationery shop hoping to finally sell the legendary gold pen, cooks for her family, tries to remember to practice yoga, and every other month she writes to her best friend, Ursula. Kay could set her calendar by their letters: her heart lifts when the blue airmail envelope, addressed in Ursula’s slanting handwriting, falls gently onto the mat. But now Ursula has stopped writing and everything is a little bit worse. Ursula is the only one who knows Kay’s deepest secret....

Kiran Mathur knows firsthand how dangerous love can be. After all, her sister's marriage in India nearly destroyed Kiran's family. So she's decided to redeem romance herself - by not falling for anyone who might disappoint her parents. That is, that was her plan right up until she met her new neighbor, Nash Hawthorne. Nash is a dedicated psychologist and committed to being alone. His family life has taught him the inevitability of abandonment, and he isn't ready to question his beliefs. But spending time with Kiran makes him start to experience emotions he's never felt before.

Sol has disappeared. Their Earth-born wife Lumi sets out to find them but it is no simple feat: each clue uncovers another enigma. Their disappearance leads back to underground environmental groups and a web of mystery that spans the space between the planets themselves. Told through letters and extracts, the course of Lumi’s journey takes her not only from the affluent colonies of Mars to the devastated remnants of Earth, but into the hidden depths of Sol’s past and the long-forgotten secrets of her own.

Millie Ashton thinks London society is full of empty headed, arrogant fools, but when she meets Alex Radley she falls desperately in love with him. Fearing humiliation and rejection, she decides the only sensible thing to do is take her pride and go home to India. Men like Alex do not fall for girls like her, whereas every girl loses her heart to Alexander the Great. Alex Radley, Marquess of Brooke rules the ton like a god, but even gods are known to fall for mere mortals.

1828, the London countryside. For years, Marietta Stone has harbored a secret infatuation for the handsome Frederick Finch and has poured out her deepest feelings in a series of passionate love letters that she keeps in a locked drawer. But when Marietta’s private letters are accidentally delivered to Frederick’s house, she must retrieve them immediately before they fall into the wrong hands. If the letters were read by anyone else, the resulting scandal could jeopardize her reputation.

At the time of her death in 2004, Lucia Berlin was known as a brilliant writer of short stories, beloved by other writers but never achieving wide readership or acclaim. That changed in 2015 with the publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women, a collection of some of her best work. Almost overnight, Lucia Berlin became an international bestseller. Love, Loosha is the extraordinary collection of letters between Lucia Berlin and her dear friend, the poet and Broadway lyricist Kenward Elmslie.

London, 1940. When nurse Elsie offers to send a reassuring letter to the family of a patient, she has an idea. She begins a book of last letters: messages to be sent on to wounded soldiers’ loved ones should the very worst come to pass so that no one is left without a final goodbye. London, present day. Stephanie has a lot of people she’d like to speak to: her estranged brother, to whom her last words were in anger; her nan, whose dementia means she is only occasionally lucid enough to talk.

Powerful, haunting, and unforgettable, this remarkable gathering of original documents, including never-before-published letters and papers, creates a day-by-day eyewitness account of the monumental collision at Gettysburg, in the words of the commanders, soldiers, politicians, and civilians from both the North and the South who experienced firsthand the changing course of the Civil War. New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian and author Allen C. Guelzo delivers an invaluable and sobering firsthand perspective of the Civil War’s turning point.

For as long as Bridget Northcott can remember, she has loved her brother's closest friend, Colin Foster. She loved him long before he grew up, became Captain Foster, and long before he left her behind for a life at sea. Although she knows her feelings will never be returned, Bridget cannot help but turn away every suitor in the hopes that one day Colin will come back to Larkhall and see her for what she has grown up to be—refined, elegant, and the precise opposite of the silly girl he once knew.

Mary has been nursing a secret. Forty years ago, she made a choice that would change her world for ever, and alter the path of someone she holds dear. Beth is searching for answers. She has never known the truth about her parentage, but finding out could be the lifeline her sick child so desperately needs. When Beth finds a faded newspaper cutting amongst her mother's things, she realises the key to her son's future lies in her own past. She must go back to where it all began to unlock...the Secret.

Ann Workman is smart but naïve, a misfit who’s traveled from rural Kentucky to graduate school in the transformative years of the late 1960s. While Ann fervently seeks higher learning, she wants what all girls yearn for—a boyfriend. But not any boy. She wants the “Real Thing,” to be in love with someone who loves her equally. Then Jimmy appears, as if by magic. Although he comes from a very different place, upper-middle class suburban Chicago, he is a misfit too, a rebel who rejects his upbringing and questions everything.

Barbara Taylor Bradford delivers an evocative new novel of family secrets and betrayals that stretch from the streets of World War II Berlin to the winding alleys of Istanbul to the present day. Justine Nolan is a documentary film maker who lost her beloved grandmother a decade ago. Her own mother, Deborah, had always been distant and uninvolved. But when Justine inadvertently opens a letter addressed to her mother, she discovers that not only is her grandmother alive, but that Deborah has deliberately estranged the family from her for all these years.

It begins as an assignment for English class: Write a letter to a dead person. Laurel chooses Kurt Cobain because her sister, May, loved him. And he died young, just like May. Soon, Laurel has a notebook full of letters to the dead - to people like Janis Joplin, Heath Ledger, Amelia Earhart, and Amy Winehouse - though she never gives a single one of them to her teacher. She writes about starting high school, navigating the choppy waters of new friendships, learning to live with her splintering family, falling in love for the first time, and, most important, trying to grieve for May.