Literary Memoir

Frances Hodgson Burnett's favorite theme in her fiction was the reversal of fortune, and she herself knew extremes of poverty and wealth. Born in Manchester in 1849, she emigrated with her family to Tennessee because of the financial problems caused by the cotton famine. From a young age she published her stories to help the family make ends meet. Only after she married did she publish Little Lord Fauntleroy that shot her into literary stardom.

Viele Kinder lasen Enid Blyton oder Beatrix Potter - Carla Valentine war von klein auf verrückt nach Agatha Christie und rätselte mit, wer wohl der Mörder war. Diese frühe Faszination ließ Carla Valentine Forensik studieren, in Leichenhallen und in pathologischen Instituten arbeiten, doch von Agatha Christie ließ sie nie ab. Agatha Christie benutzte den Begriff "Forensik" noch nicht wie wir, doch auch sie beschreibt in ihren Krimis mit ihrer fachkundigen Beobachtung und viel Einfallsreichtum die Wendungen und Verwicklungen der einzelnen Fälle und überführt geschickt jeden einzelnen Mörder.

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the '40s, '50s and '60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel...twice.

Il primo atlante mondiale della grande criminalità. Le mafie sono cambiate immensamente negli ultimi decenni. Fanno meno morti, forse, ma sono molto più potenti, ramificate, ricche. Si sono internazionalizzate, spesso hanno lasciato gli affari «piccoli» (prostituzione, gioco d’azzardo ecc.) a organizzazioni minori per concentrarsi su più redditizi business (dal traffico d’armi a quello di organi ed esseri umani all’emigrazione al traffico delle scorie radioattive ecc.).

When Rebecca Barry and her husband moved to upstate New York to start their family, they wanted to be surrounded by natural beauty but close to a small urban center, doing work they loved, and plenty of time to spend with their kids. But living their dreams turned out not to be so simple.

The daughter of an Auschwitz survivor, author Bracha Horovitz spent her childhood surrounded by people who worked fervently to establish the fledgling nation of Israel after its 1948 independence. Inspired by their resilience and fortitude, Bracha set her heart on living a life that would honor her family, her community, and her heritage. At eighteen, Bracha joined the Israel Defense Forces. Alongside other female soldiers, she parachuted from planes, marched through hot deserts, and learned to shoot machine guns. Intense military training taught her that women, too, can be fierce fighters.

Imagine sitting with an esteemed writer on his or her front porch somewhere in the world and swapping life stories. Dr. Wayne Flynt got the opportunity to do just this with Nelle Harper Lee. In a friendship that blossomed over a dozen years starting when Lee relocated back to Alabama after having had a stroke, Flynt and his wife Dartie became regular visitors at the assisted living facility that was Lee's new home. And there the conversation began, with an invitation to "Come in, sit down, and stay a while."

The literary establishment tends to regard Bob Dylan as an intriguing, if baffling, outsider. That changed overnight when Dylan was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature, challenging us to think of him as an integral part of our national and international literary heritage. No One to Meet places Dylan the artist within a long tradition of literary production and offers an innovative way of understanding his unique, and often controversial, methods of composition.

Che cosa si prova a vivere con la morte come assidua compagna? Per piú di un anno Ilan Fernández, uno dei maggiori narcotrafficanti a livello internazionale, oggi imprenditore di successo, ha raccontato a Giulio Laurenti la sua vita rocambolesca e pericolosa: anzi, le sue due vite. Quelle confessioni sono diventate un romanzo, dalla voce inconfondibile e unica, col timbro della verità definitiva. E la cocaina ci appare sotto una luce che non avevamo mai considerato, frutto come è di uno smercio intriso di morte.

No sé si este audiolibro es una novela, un diario de no ficción o qué. Trata sobre el deseo de morir y de vivir. Sobre el amor y las preguntas que este despierta. Y sobre el dolor, sobre todo sobre el dolor: el de ella, mi esposa, que me pide la muerte, y el mío, que no se la puedo dar. Éste es el diario de un cobarde que superó un cáncer y ahora se enfrenta, escaso de fuerzas, al cáncer terminal de su mujer.

Andy Griffith (1926-2012) is one of North Carolina's most beloved exports, capturing America's heart as Sheriff Andy Taylor. Evan Dalton Smith was born in the North Carolina Piedmont over four decades after Andy, just an hour south of Griffith's hometown of Mount Airy. Both were small-town boys who grew up in similar places, where the counties were dry and the churches plentiful. But for both, there was darkness, crushed hopes, and tragedy, hidden just below the surface.

In the last years of his life, the writer Amos Oz talked regularly with Shira Hadad, who worked closely with him as the editor of his final novel, Judas. These candid, uninhibited dialogues show a side of Oz that few ever saw. What Makes an Apple? presents the most revealing of these conversations in English for the first time, painting an illuminating and disarmingly intimate portrait of a towering literary figure.

Selma Lagerlöf hade hunnit bli 33 år när hon debuterade med ”Gösta Berlings Saga”, och efter det levde hon sitt liv som en mycket produktiv författare som skrev flertalet välkända romaner och noveller. Idag räknas Lagerlöf som en av Sveriges främsta författare någonsin. Men vem var hon egentligen? Och vilka uppoffringar tvingades hon att göra för att tillslut bli den första kvinnliga ledamoten i Svenska Akademien? Litteraturvetaren och författaren Vivi Edström skildrar en av våra mest berömda och inflytelserika författares liv genom tiderna.

In a series of fascinating conversations with eighteen American poets, and in dozens of poems, The Language of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to recreate the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, losing faith, finding God.

The life of Letitita Elizabeth Landon - pen name L.E.L. - was one lived in a blaze of scandal and worship, one of the most famous women of her time, the Romantic Age in London's 1820s, her life and writing on the ascendency as Byron's came to an end. Lucasta Miller tells the full story and recreates the literary London of her time.

C'è un mondo oscuro che si muove fra potere, politica e business. Un mondo che si costruisce sulla pelle non dei più deboli, ma di persone che vivono momenti di difficoltà. Alla violazione psicologica si affianca spesso una violenza ancora più devastante, profonda e sconosciuta. A vivere in questo mondo sotterraneo sono quattro milioni di italiani. Sono il vostro edicolante, la ragazza che vi prepara il cappuccino al bar la mattina, la signora simpatica che incontrate sull'autobus andando al lavoro o il vostro odiatissimo vicino.

A blockbuster illustrated book that captures what Americans love to read, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is the gorgeously-produced companion book to PBS's ambitious summer 2018 series.

What are America's best-loved novels? PBS will launch The Great American Read series with a two-hour special in May 2018 revealing America's 100 best-loved novels, determined by a rigorous national survey. Subsequent episodes will air in September and October. Celebrities and everyday Americans will champion their favorite novel and in the finale in late October, America's number one best-loved novel will be revealed.

The Great American Read: The Book of Books will present all 100 novels with fascinating information about each book, author profiles, a snapshot of the novel's social relevance, film or television adaptations, other books and writings by the author, and little-known facts. Also included are themed articles about banned books, the most influential book illustrators, reading recommendations, the best first-lines in literature, and more.

Beautifully designed with rare images of the original manuscripts, first-edition covers, rejection letters, and other ephemera, The Great American Read: The Book of Books is a must-have book for all book lovers.

A collection of magazine writer Jon Bradshaw’s essential writings, The Ocean Is Closed rediscovers a memorable talent, and offers us a shadow reality to the established literary canon of the mid-century. With droll wit and keen intelligence, Bradshaw’s cinematic prose brings the ’70s to vibrant life.

The year 2021 marks the 700th anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri. His, like ours, was a world of moral uncertainty and political violence, all of which made not only for the agony of exile but for an ever deeper meditation on the nature of human happiness. In Why Dante Matters, John Took offers - by way of three of Dante’s works in particular - an account, not merely of Dante’s development as a poet and philosopher, but of his continuing presence to us as a guide to man’s wellbeing as man.

James Tully's father is dead, like "Jesus dead and door nailed". His fiancée has moved out, and his world is as rootless as a fallen tree. He will travel home along the river that bound him and that bound his father to the constant rain and the residue of his past, to the last days of his father’s life long suicide, what seemed to kill them both. James is a product of his past, of his parents’ push and pull.