Literary Biography

In her spare, stark style, Annie Ernaux documents the desires and indignities of a human heart ensnared in an all-consuming passion. Blurring the line between fact and fiction, an unnamed narrator attempts to plot the emotional and physical course of her two-year relationship with a married foreigner where every word, event, and person either provides a connection with her beloved or is subject to her cold indifference. With courage and exactitude, she seeks the truth behind an existence lived entirely for someone else, and, in the pieces of its aftermath, she is able to find it.

One of America's favorite African-American storytellers remembers her childhood in tender, unforgettable new stories. Jackie Torrence, a frequent headliner at the National Storytelling Festival, is known to audiences nationwide as The Story Lady.

The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" - the Chicanos of East Los Angeles. Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

Jack Kerouac’s archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work published in his lifetime there has been a rich stream of posthumous writing that is far from tapped. This collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archive, and as a companion to Paul Maher Jr.'s Becoming Kerouac, spans Kerouac’s adult life, from a journal written at age seventeen to autobiographical reflections a few years before his death.

Capturing everyday lives and exceptional dreams, Australian novels have held up a mirror to the nation, reflecting the good and the bad. Touching on colonial invasion, the bush myth, world wars, mass migration, the recognition of Indigenous sovereignty and the emergence of a modern global, multicultural nation, Carl examines how these pivotal events and persuasive ideas have shaped some of Australia's most influential novels and how these books, in turn, made us.

Through extensive research and interviews with those closest to Iverson, acclaimed Washington Post sportswriter Kent Babb gets behind the familiar, sanitized, and heroic version of the hard-changing, hard-partying athlete who played every game as if it were his last.

Explore the life and career of Newbery-award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson.

Explore the life and career of writer and poet Jerry Pinkney, author of Soapstone Signs.

Explore the life and career of award-winning author Nikki Grimes.

Explore the life and career of Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King-awarded author and illustrator Kadir Nelson.

Did you know Barbara Park wanted to be a teacher instead of a writer when she was growing up? Discover how a late-blooming writer used her talent for humor to become a best-selling children's author.

One of the most important patriots in post-Revolutionary times. Most people know Noah Webster for his dictionary masterpieces and his promotion of a living "American Language" that embraces words and idioms from all its immigrant peoples. But he was also the driving force behind universal education for all citizens, including slaves, females, and adult learners. Speaker of twenty languages, he developed the new country's curriculum, writing and publishing American literature, American history, and American geography. He published New York City's first daily newspaper.

The nice guy next door was hiding a dark secret - a homicidal obsession with young girls. It didn't end until his final victim, still bound in handcuffs, escaped while he slept. She recounted the details of a night of horror spent with an elusive serial killer. Neither family nor friends saw Richard Marc Evonitz's dark side - he saved that for his victims - until his double life came undone by a courageous, resourceful 15-year-old. The authorities had questions about many unsolved cold cases, but Evonitz had one more shocking surprise in store for everyone. Into the Water is a cautionary tale about the vulnerability of our children.

R. L. Stine has written hundreds of children's books, including the scary, creepy Goosebumps series. His books have inspired TV shows and movies. Learn more about Stine's life as a famous writer!

A collection of the journals, fiction, and letters of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Essays by family and friends will help to tell Esther’s story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her.

An inventive, unique, and extraordinarily moving literary debut that pieces together the fascinating story of one woman's family across 20th-century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany. Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. Her idea blossomed into this striking and highly original work of narrative nonfiction, an account of her search for meaning within the stories of her ancestors.

A haunting meditation on love, loss, companionship, and finding one’s way through the dark, Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love is one of the most important and influential short story collections in contemporary literature. In his entry in the esteemed Bookmarked series, acclaimed author Brian Evenson offers his personal and literary take on this classic Carver collection.

Look for heroes, far and near. Give your gifts to the world. Have compassion for all creatures. These are just a few of the lessons that Magic Tree House fans will learn on their magical journey through this book. With quotes from the series and classic art by Sal Murdocca, Mary Pope Osborne, beloved author of the number one best-selling Magic Tree House series, shares the wisdom she's gained from her own childhood and 30 years of whisking Jack and Annie away in the magic tree house.

Nikola Tesla was a man forever misunderstood. From his boyhood in what is present-day Croatia, where his father, a Serbian Orthodox priest, dismissed his talents, to his tumultuous years in New York City, where his heated rivalry with Thomas Edison yielded triumphs and failures, Tesla was both demonized and lionized. Tesla captures the whirlwind years of the dawn of the electrical age, when his flair for showmanship kept him in the public eye.

In 1914, Harry Colebourn, a veterinarian on his way to tend horses in World War I, followed his heart and rescued a baby bear. He named her Winnie, after his hometown of Winnipeg, and he took the bear to war. Harry Colebourn's real-life great-granddaughter tells the true story of a remarkable friendship and an even more remarkable journey - from the fields of Canada to a convoy across the ocean to an army base in England...and finally to the London Zoo, where Winnie made another new friend: a real boy named Christopher Robin.