Letters Literature

The war was ending for Captain Eugene Stewart. He and the rest of the 85th Illinois would soon be mustered out and he’d return home to Peoria. After he entered his tent, he found a thick envelope from his mother sitting on his cot. When he unfolded the pages, another envelope fell to the ground. He picked it up and noticed the heavy hand that had written the address. It hadn’t been sent to him with the army but was forwarded by his mother. After reading his mother’s letter, he stared at the sealed envelope and thought about tossing it into the fire rather than reading it.

Stargirl has moved and left everything behind: Arizona, Mica High, enchanted desert places, and Leo. He's all she can think about, and her life begins to feel like a parade of unhappy anniversaries. Then Stargirl meets her wonderfully bizarre new neighbors: Dootsie, the curly-headed five-year-old "human bean"; Betty Lou, who hasn't stepped outside her house for nine years; Charlie, who sits among the tombstones; hot-tempered Alvina, with that one glittery nail....

Writer and performer Ivan Coyote has spent decades on the road, telling stories around the world. For years, Ivan has kept a file of the most special communications received from readers and audience members—letters, Facebook messages, emails, soggy handwritten notes tucked under the windshield wiper of their truck after a gig.

Here are some of the best of Churchill’s letters, many of a more personal and intimate nature, presented in chronological order, with a preface to each letter explaining the context. The recipients include a vast range of people, including his schoolmaster, his American grandmother and former President Eisenhower. They are taken from within the Churchill Archive in Cambridge, where there is a mass of Churchill’s correspondence. Several of the letters included have never appeared in book form before.

To eager students of human sexuality in all its wild and amazing forms: Welcome to Penthouse University, the premier center of higher learning in carnal knowledge. It's a place to explore - from making love in the library to steamy oral exams behind closed classroom doors. A place to experiment - with bi-curious coeds in the dorm and nubile sorority sisters at sex toy parties. A place to graduate - to shower room liaisons with the curvy phys ed teacher and thrilling threesomes with the seductive housesitter.

As the Second World War rages on, nurse Kitty Pattison’s life takes a nomadic turn as her work with the Red Cross sees her traversing the country, moving from post to post. With her best friends Jo and Trixie also scattered across the UK, and her soldier sweetheart Michael off on the continent undertaking medical missions he can’t discuss, the war takes its toll and long days are followed by sleepless nights interrupted only by nightmares of what she’s seen on the wards.

Here is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America's most influential and incisive journalists - Hunter S.Thompson. In letters to a who's who of luminaries, from Norman Mailer toCharles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez - not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors - Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through hisown razor-sharp perspective.

When words of love do not come to you on their own, then listen to these letters. Complete, actual love letters of great men like Lord Byron, John Keats, and Voltaire. Leaders like Henry VIII, George Washington, and Napoléon, who wrote to his beloved Joséphine, "I awake consumed with thoughts of you...." Artists like van Gogh, Mozart, and Beethoven, who famously penned, "Though still in bed, my thoughts go out to you, my Immortal Beloved...."

Meet Maggie, Eva, and Lisa, founders of The Scarlet Letter Society. Named as such due to their various infidelities, both physical and emotional, the SLS is their refusal to be shamed like Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's classic tale of forbidden longing. Maggie is twice divorced and juggling three lovers - one of whom is her first ex-husband. Eva is trapped in a loveless marriage and has turned to her young intern and a seductive French chef for satisfaction.

When Helene Hanff makes an innocent inquiry about the possibility of purchasing hard-to-find books through Marks and Co., Booksellers, she begins a 20-year love affair with Frank Doel, the proper English bookseller who answers her letter and sends along her first order in the fall of 1949. They are two very unlikely correspondents.

It's crazy how fast the buzz comes back after you've been sober for so long. Whiskey stood there, on my doorstep, just like he had one year before. Except this time, there was no rain, no anger, no wedding invitation - it was just us. >It was just him - the old friend, the easy smile, the twisted solace wrapped in a glittering bottle. It was just me - the alcoholic, pretending like I didn't want to taste him, realizing too quickly that months of being clean didn't make me crave him any less.

The day Patrick is to leave for Florida to meet up with Eve and baby Colleen for Christmas, he receives a shocking telephone call from one of Eve's cousins. Sobbing, she tells him a terrible tragedy has occurred. His life shattered, Patrick knows he must use the time travel lantern to return to the past in order to prevent the current tragedy. But once again, the time travel lantern has a mind of its own....

Unable to catch a break in life or love as she approaches thirty, Charli Thurman sees red lights at every crossroads. And given the Thurman family’s tumultuous history, she knows things will only get worse, unless she can break the cycle and figure out where—and when—it all went wrong. Charli is skeptical when her best friend introduces her to a “soul reader” who specializes in generational trauma. But during family constellation therapy with the guru, Charli experiences an inexplicable memory of terrible violence.

It is in this house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, that Kate Harding, 52, faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. Her children, now grown, are living away, and Kate is truly on her own. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters and other ghostly ephemera, recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents’ 18th-century Connecticut house. Their sweet mustiness tinges the air and makes Kate dream of her childhood and of her beloved grandparents.

Bella can’t wait to be married to her fiancée Sidney, and dreams of the day she will walk up the aisle to be given away by her widowed father, with her bookish sister Alice as her bridesmaid. Their lives are disturbed when they receive a letter from their fourteen-year-old cousin Millie. Taken in by her austere aunt and uncle when her parents were killed in an accident, Millie says she is being badly treated and pleads to be rescued. When the two sisters take a trip to find out the truth, things take a troubling turn.

Lady Ludmilla Windmere is mortified. The spinster extraordinaire has fallen in love with her best friend, and that cannot be. The problem? She hasn't met him. Not once. For they have only ever corresponded by letter. When she sets out to uncover his identity, her world shatters. For Addy turns out to be none other but London's worst rake. Adrian St. Addington is perturbed. The rakehell extraordinaire is developing a marked tendre for a spinster, and that cannot be. The problem? She might be mistaking him for someone he is not. Or, what is worse, know precisely who he is.

The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, are collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors, and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humor, generosity, and wit—a side of him many listeners have not previously seen.

Letters from your favorite leading men, addressed to your deepest fantasies. This audio-only anthology features love letters from some of your favorite book boyfriends, speaking directly to you - performed by voices you already love. Sometimes the letters are sweet, sometimes they're emotional, sometimes they're just plain filthy. This sultry collection of audio-only shorts is written by best-selling contemporary romance writers and performed by audiobook stars.

"Lorsque j'ai reçu votre première lettre, chère amie, je vous ai répondu immédiatement. Avoir de vos nouvelles plus de trente ans après m'a procuré une telle émotion que ma réaction ne pouvait être qu'un cri instantané. Votre deuxième lettre, que j'ai sous les yeux, je l'ai gardée longtemps avec moi, c'est seulement aujourd'hui que je tente de vous donner une réponse. La raison de ce retard, vous l'avez sans doute devinée, puisque votre missive contient une singulière requête : 'Parlez-moi de l'âme'..."

A work that has inspired generations, this new edition of Letters to a Young Poet features a fresh translation of Rilke's 10 classic letters, along with the missing letters from the young poet himself.