Autobiography: writers Books

Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell's searing account of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over timeOrwell's graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in his later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.Includes illustrations, explanatory footnotes, and an introduction by Richard Hoggart

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Book SynopsisThe iconic memoir from the Irish author of the legendary The Country Girls trilogy.''Get ready to applaud, ladies and gentlemen, because there is no one like her.'' Anne Enright''One of the last great lights of the golden age of Irish literature.'' Eimear McBride''Glittering energy.'' Colm TóibínI thought of life''s many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and slaughter ...Born in Ireland in 1930 and driven into exile after publication of her controversial first novel, The Country Girls, was burned in public, Edna O''Brien is now hailed as one of the most majestic writers of her era - and Country Girl is her fabulous memoir.Born in rural Ireland, O''Brien weaves the tale of her life from convent school to elopement, divorce, single-motherhood, moving on to the wild parties of 1960s bohemian in London, encounters with Hollywood giants, pop stars, and literary titans, love and unrequited love, and glamorous trips to America as a celebrity writer.Country Girl is a rich and heady accounting of the events, people, emotions, and landscape that have forged a legendary author. O''Brien recasts her life with the imaginative alchemy of a poet, and the result is a memoir of sparkling wisdom and honesty.

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Book SynopsisPeter Godwin is the author of Mukiwa, also published by Picador, an account of his childhood and early adulthood. He writes for various publications including the New York Times magazine, National Geographic, Time and Newsweek. He lives in Manhattan.

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.

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Book SynopsisAgatha Christie's personal memoirs about her travels to Syria and Iraq in the 1930s with her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan, where she worked on the digs and wrote some of her most evocative novels.Think you know Agatha Christie? Think again!To the world she was Agatha Christie, legendary author of bestselling whodunits. But in the 1930s she wore a different hat, travelling with her husband, renowned archaeologist Max Mallowan, as he investigated the buried ruins and ancient wonders of Syria and Iraq. When friends asked what this strange other life' was like, she decided to answer their questions by writing down her adventures in this eye-opening book.Described by the author as a meandering chronicle of life on an archaeological dig', Come, Tell Me How You Live is Agatha Christie''s very personal memoir of her time spent in this breathtaking corner of the globe, living among the working men in tents in the desert where recorded human history began. Acclaimed as a pure pleasure to rTrade Review‘Perfectly delightful… colourful, lively and occasionally touching and thought-provoking’Charles Osborne, Books & Bookmen ‘Good and enjoyable… she has a delightfully light touch’Marghanita Laski, Country Life ‘Agatha Christie has provided entertainment, suspense, and temporary relief from the anxieties and traumas of life both in peace and war for millions throughout the world.’P. D. James ‘Christie’s witty account of her yearly expeditions in Syria in the 1930s … is at once a captivating depiction of quotidian life at archaeological digs and a romantic portrait of adventurers and scholars in the interwar Middle East. Her relaxed narrative of the organization and effort in archaeological investigation and of the landscape and people in the region is engrossing—but what makes this book bewitching is the nostalgic glamour that infuses it.” The Atlantic (US)

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Book SynopsisHarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics.The flower bloomed and faded. The sun rose and sank. The lover loved and went. And what the poets said in rhyme, the young translated into practice.'Written for her lover Vita Sackville-West, Orlando' is Woolf's playfully subversive take on a biography, here tracing the fantastical life of Orlando. As the novel spans centuries and continents, gender and identity, we follow Orlando's adventures in love from being a lord in the Elizabethan court to a lady in 1920s London.First published in 1928, this tale of unrivalled imagination and wit quickly became the most famous work of women's fiction. Sexuality, destiny, independence and desire all come to the fore in this highly influential novel that heralded a new era in women's writing.Trade Review‘Undoubtedly one of the most singular novels of our era’Jorge Luis Borges

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Virginia Nicholson Saturday 2 February 1918. The first walk we've had for ever so long. Damp, mild vaporous day. Funeral bells tolling as we went out, & marriage as we came in. The streets lined with people waiting their meat. Aeroplanes droning invisible. Our usual evening, alone happily, knee deep in papers. This diary begins in January 1915. Virginia Woolf was about to publish her first novel, The Voyage Out. By the end of 1919 she had published many essays and reviews, as well as a second novel, Night and Day. Her diary was the counterpoint to that public writing: here she could record details of daily life, think about friends and reading, writing and her state of mind. This diary offers a unique insight into the life and mind of one of Britain's most influential writers, and the circle she was part of which came to be known as Bloomsbury. This new Granta edition includes Woolf's 'Asheham Diary' for the first time.

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Book SynopsisPRE-ORDER THE SPELLBINDING MEMOIR NOWOne of the world's bestselling storytellers, Lesley Pearse writes brilliantly about survivors. Why? Because she is one herself . . .Born during the Second World War, Lesley's innocence came to an abrupt end when a neighbour found her, aged 3, coatless in the snow. The mother she'd been unable to wake had been dead for days. Sent to an orphanage, Lesley soon learned adults couldn't always be trusted.As a teenager in the swinging sixties, she took herself to London. Here, the second great tragedy of her life occurred. Falling pregnant, she was sent to a mother and baby home, and watched helplessly as her newborn was taken from her.But like so many of her generation, Lesley had to carry on. She was, after all, a true survivor. Marriage and children followed and all the while she nurtured a dream: to be a writer. Yet it wasn't until at the age of 48 that her stories of women struggling in a difficult

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Book SynopsisOne of Time Magazine''s 100 Must-Read Books of 2020 and an FT Best Book of the YearThought-provoking and deeply consoling, a perfectly distilled set of essays on the strangest year many of us have experienced, from one of our wisest and most humane thinkers''As well as offering a new guide to living in a wild, messy and unfair world, Smith provides a reminder that we can use this crisis to imagine a better one'' Evening Standard Deeply personal and powerfully moving, a short and timely series of essays on the experience of lockdown, by one of the most clear-sighted and essential writers of our timeFrom the critically acclaimed author of Feel Free, Swing Time, White Teeth and many more''There will be many books written about the year 2020: historical, analytic, political and comprehensive accounts. This is not any of those - the year isn''t half-way done. What I''ve tried to do is organize some of the feelings and thoughts that events, so far, have provoked in me, in those scraps of time the year itself has allowed. These are above all personal essays: small by definition, short by necessity.'' Crafted with the sharp intelligence, wit and style that have won Zadie Smith millions of fans, and suffused with a profound intimacy and tenderness in response to these unprecedented times, Intimations is a vital work of art, a gesture of connection and an act of love - an essential book in extraordinary times. ''Zadie Smith is a marvel - her soulfulness, her sensitivity, her ability to write . . . She doesn''t try to make grand statements but just leaves you with the sense that you''re in the company of someone who can help you feel things deeply'' Tom Hollander in the GuardianTrade ReviewAs well as offering a new guide to living in a wild, messy and unfair world, Smith provides a reminder that we can use this crisis to imagine a better one * Evening Standard *Smith has the gift that she attributed to Nabokov, years ago, of making any reader of her work feel they are engaged in a creative act, discoveringthe felicities of her writing. * i *

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Book Synopsis "Absolutely fabulous!"  - Sir Ray Davies.The Kinks"We Danced On Our Desks offers a window on another lost world, a silver age of journalism when a magazine could please itself and celebrities would wait to be invited into its charmed circle. It''s also an unbeatable portrait of a writer finding his voice amid the distractions of a dementedly sybaritic decade." - The Observer"It''s wonderful. It intrigued and amused and delighted ... done with wit, verve, charm and self-deprecation." - bestselling author Anthony Quinn"A classic of its genre." - author David TaylorWE DANCED ON OUR DESKS is a compelling, entertaining and thrilling look at acclaimed journalist and writer Philip Norman''s experiences working on the Sunday Times Magazine at the height of its popularity in the 60s and 70s. From incredible interviews with the Beatles to Bob Dylan, Gaddafi to Indira Ghandi, and through seismic historical events such as the Vietnam War, Philip provides a vibrant cultural insight into the Swinging Sixties and uniquely documents key events in his own incredible life.  provides a unique front row seat to the seminal events and the people who defined a generation and continue to impact us today it''s a compelling story of an extraordinary life, as a young man moves from a provincial existence headfirst into the heady world of the Swinging Sixties in all its provocative glory gives an addictive first-hand account of work and life at The Sunday Times Magazine, one of the world''s most influential publications Includes interviews with many icons of the rock, film, political and media worlds, including Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, P.G. Wodehouse, J.R.R Tolkein, Truman Capote, David Hockney, Philip Roth, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, Johnny Cash, the Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, the Everly Brothers, King Hussein of Jordan, Indira Gandhi, and President Gadaffi. Philip has led - and is leading - an extraordinary life, full of drama, emotion, experience and positivity. His book is not simply a snapshot of a particular time in history, or remembrances of famous people and places, but a genuinely revealing and compelling account of a life lived and lived well.

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Book SynopsisTHE NEW YORK TIMES BESTELLER. A raw, honest, vivid memoir of one woman's struggle with addiction and recovery, for fans of Bryony Gordon, Cheryl Strayed and Daisy Buchanan.Trade ReviewAmerican journalist Sarah Hepola's extraordinary book describes her years of drinking... Writing with warmth and wit she explores reasons for her alcoholism * Independent *Simply extraordinary. Ms. Hepola's electric prose marks her as a flamingo among this genre's geese... As a form, addiction memoirs are permanently interesting because they're an excuse to crack open a life. Ms. Hepola's book moves to a top shelf in this arena... I'm glad, for herself and for us, that Ms. Hepola found A.A. and other varieties of help. "I had wanted alcohol to make me fearless," she writes. "But by the time I'd reached my mid-30s, I was scared all the time." It's a win-win. She got a better life. We have this book * New York Times *To say Blackout is a brutally honest memoir would be a bit of an understatement... It's a poignant and revealing look into the mind of an alcoholic that lets the reader experience all of the raw emotions the author feels during her struggles. It's a tale of friendships and how they evolve over the years... Blackout is one of the best memoirs I've read. Like Kristen Johnston's GUTS: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster, it treats a sensitive subject with unbridled honesty and humour. Yes, Blackout is a touching and, at times, heart-breaking story. It will likely make you cry. But it will also make you laugh out loud... a tour de force... Read this book. You won't be disappointed -- Dean Dauphinais * Huffington Post *This blew me away... Hepola is astonishingly and moving clear-sighted and honest about her drinking. She's also funny, and dry, and ever so clever * Bookseller (January 2016 preview) *Here's What People In Media Are Excited About In 2015... Sarah Hepola's Blackout, a dark, funny, honest-to-the-bone account of getting sober. * Buzzfeed *a memoir of her alcoholism but also an empathetic dissection of addiction and American drinking culture, and the blurry lines between the two. Hepola conveys both the horror in the mysteries left after a night smudged dark by drinking, and the draw of overdrinking that kept her carving out her memory with alcohol. * Atlantic *A memoir that's good and true is a work of art that stands the literary test of time and also serves a purpose in the present. It mines intimate, personal experiences to raise bigger questions, tell a bigger story, help readers understand themselves, their circumstances, their world. Like the best sermon, the best memoir comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable. Blackout, the debut memoir by Salon editor Sarah Hepola, is one such memoir. It's as lyrically written as a literary novel, as tightly wound as a thriller, as well-researched as a work of investigative journalism, and as impossible to put down as, well, a cold beer on a hot day. This book is a must-read redemption for everyone who has ever "craved something good for me" - which is to say, everyone. * Chicago Tribune *What's important about this book is that it treats alcohol as a symptom of the bigger issues we women deal with... Sarah writes it all with - dare I say? - sassiness and spunk. She's got a strong sense of where she came from, what she came through and where she's going - now that alcohol isn't along for the ride. I admire Sarah's honesty, I admire her anything-but-stereotypical stories and I admire her inventive, funny writing. But mostly, I admire Sarah herself. What she has accomplished - at such a young age - in regard to stepping up on behalf of her own well being. And what she has accomplished with the publication of this book - which has the potential to save the lives of so many other talented, spirited young women. Listen to Sarah Hepola. She's living proof of how fascinating a sober life can be. -- Sharon Grigsby * Dallas Morning News - Editorial Opinion Blog *a fucking stellar book... Here's what Blackout is about: body image, sexual consent while being an alcoholic, online dating as a late 30-something, dating while recently sober, the challenge of experiencing your first sober romantic kiss and sexual encounter as a 30-something, AA, feminism, friendship through alcohol and sobriety, the relationship between alcohol and writing, and more... The writing is incredibly smart and maintains a level of intensity you don't often find in long-form memoirs... Blackout is an enthralling interrogation of a life. Even the most banal moments are beautiful, elevated, and resonate across the human experience. * The Rumpus *Blackout is devoid of preachy admonitions. Instead, Hepola has woven together a compendium of hard facts (like that fragmentary blackouts start at a blood alcohol level of 0.2), personal reflections, and cultural implications; the result is a startlingly personal, in-depth exploration of a phenomenon that's still not completely understood, neither by the scientific world nor, certainly, by victims of recurrent alcohol-induced blackouts * Elle US *You don't need to be a reformed problem drinker to appreciate Hepola's gripping memoir about the years she lost yoo alcohol - and the self she rediscovered once she quit. * People *excellent * The Fix *The most anticipated pop cultural events of 2015... Hepola's dark, wise and often terrifically funny insights into her own toughest experiences are unfailingly riveting, and there's no doubt in our minds that her debut memoir, coming in June, will be a sensation * Salon *refreshingly honest, self-deprecating, and totally unselfish memoir... This is a must-read for recovering addicts; for women susceptible to the glamour of being modern and independent; for anyone who has had a difficult past, and who wants to heal, but who wants mostly to laugh at themselves. Basically, we should all be reading Blackout this summer (and wishing the incredibly smart and candid Hepola was our BFF) * Bustle (13 Of June 2015's Best Books That Are The Perfect Summer Escape) *Razor-sharp... modern, raw, and painfully real-and even hilarious... Hepola moves beyond the analysis of her addiction, making this the story of every woman's fight to be seen for who she really is. * Kirkus - Starred review *The best books we can't wait to read in 2015... Hepola has written some great essays about her drinking years. Now she's expanded them into a book * Chicago Reader *Sarah Hepola's Blackout is the best kind of memoir: fiercely funny, full of hard-won wisdom, marked by a writer with phenomenal gifts of observation and insight. The book engages universal questions -- Where do I belong? What fulfills me? -- that will engage any reader. * Emily Rapp, author of THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD *The story of a rising star's journey of self-destruction and realization, Blackout is gripping, alternately excruciating and funny, scary and hopeful, and beautifully written. I loved it. * Anne Lamott, author of SMALL VICTORIES *This is a book about welcoming yourself back from a long absence. It's a memoir, but its author is not its main character; she is a new person sprung from the ashes of another one whose alcoholic self-erasure she describes with painful honesty and charming humor. A book about freedom that will help set others free as well * Walter Kirn, author of UP IN THE AIR *Sarah Hepola is my favorite kind of memoirist. She is a reporter with a poet's instincts, an anthropologist of her own soul. Blackout is a book about drinking and eventual sobriety, but it's also an exploration of the fleeting nature of the comfort we all constantly seek - comfort with the self, with others, with the whole maddening, confusing, exhilarating world. What's more, Hepola's ability to bring such precise and evocative life to the blank spaces that were her drinking blackouts is downright stunning in places. I admire this book tremendously. * Meghan Daum, author of THE UNSPEAKABLE: AND OTHER SUBJECTS OF DISCUSSION *Excellent * Gretchen Rubin, bestselling author of BETTER THAN BEFORE *Hepola's account of her experience with alcohol gives a fresh edge to what is essentially a book on the influence booze has on the most precious moments of our lives. Never does she pretend her days of drinking were not as enjoyable as they were painful - both physically and mentally. There is a self-awareness to her writing that hits the right notes without feeling didactic. This is most poignant when Hepola describes how she dealt with the extreme feelings of vulnerability and exposure that came with finally giving up alcohol. Or the moments where she recounts the pressure her alcoholism put on her closest friends. Being an alcoholic, Hepola explains, is the easy part. Sobriety, that's where the challenge begins. Hepola makes for an endearing and entertaining authorand Blackout is an honest account of letting go of (and at times enjoying) alcohol. One that will surely endear and entertain the reader * We Love This Book *

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Book Synopsis''A deeply intelligent and searching book, one that makes you re-consider the narrative of your own life and reframe the story you tell yourself'' Hilary MantelA Guardian reader''s Best Book of 2018 There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims... Why, when I have had such an intense experience of forms of shame related to class ... why had it never occurred to me to take up this problem in a book?Returning to Reims is a breathtaking account of one man''s return to the town where he grew up after an absence of thirty years. It is a frank, fearlessly personal story of family, memory, identity and time lost. But it is also a sociologist''s view of what itmeans to grow up working class and then leave that class; of inequality and shifting political allegiances in an increasingly divided nation. A phenomenon in France and a huge bestseller in Germany, Didier Eribon has written the defining memoir of our times.''I was overwhelmed by this book. I felt I was reading the story of my life'' Edouard Louis, author of The End of Eddy''A book about self-invention and belonging'' Colm ToibinTrade ReviewA brilliant little book...a touching memoir of sexual awakening, and a gallery of philosophical ideas and characters -- Steven Poole * The Observer *A deeply intelligent and searching book, one that makes you re-consider the narrative of your own life and reframe the story you tell yourself... Didier Eribon understands how deep the roots of inequality go -- Hilary MantelReturning to Reims played a capital role in my life... I was overwhelmed by this book. I felt I was reading the story of my life. -- Edouard LouisThis is a self-excoriating memoir... [Eribon] writes as someone who has scrubbed hard at the markings of destiny -- Marina Benjamin * New Statesman *A stunning book -- vital and important -- Andrew McMillanHypnotic ... a gripping read * Daily Telegraph *Eribon's memoir is fascinating: full of fretful honesty, battling with shame around his background and shame at being ashamed -- The TimesEribon offers up a magnificent example of an enlightened life liberated by theory, written in a style that deftly moves between the intimate, the social and the political -- Annie ErnauxA powerful book and one that I enjoyed immensely -- Geoffrey Beattie * Irish Times *This is a beautiful book about suppression, losing touch with your roots, and regaining balance * Art in America *An honest and moving personal narrative that is skilfully threaded through sociological and political analysis. I was captivated from beginning to end -- Diane Reay * author of Miseducation: Inequality, Education and the Working Classes *This intensely personal account of Didier Eribon's family is a fascinating and compelling read...The book is beautifully written (and as beautifully translated). It is at once pleasureable and edifying to read * Joan W. Scott *Retour à Reims could be a novel. It has all the allure and attraction of one -- Claire Devarrieux * Libération *[a] particular favourite... thinks in this space with nuance and style -- Joanna Lee * White Review BOOKS OF THE YEAR *

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Book SynopsisDating from 1909 to 1923, Franz Kafka's Diaries contains a broad array of writing, including accounts of daily events, assorted reflections and observations, literary sketches, drafts of letters, records of dreams, and unrevised texts of stories. This volume makes available for the first time in English a comprehensive reconstruction of Kafka's handwritten diary entries and provides substantial new content, restoring all the material omitted from previous publications notably, names of people and undisguised details about them, a number of literary writings, and passages of a sexual nature, some of them with homoerotic overtones. By faithfully reproducing the diaries' distinctive and often surprisingly unpolished writing as it appeared in Kafka's notebooks, translator Ross Benjamin brings to light not only the author's use of the diaries for literary invention and unsparing self-examination but also their value as a work of genius in and of themselves.

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Book SynopsisFormer RAF pilot and investigative journalist, Frederick Forsyth defined the modern thriller when he wrote The Day of The Jackal, described by Lee Child as the book that broke the mould', with its lightning-paced storytelling, effortlessly cool reality and unique insider information. Since then he has written twelve novels which have been bestsellers around the world: The Odessa File, The Dogs of War, The Devil's Alternative, The Fourth Protocol, The Negotiator, The Deceiver, The Fist of God, Icon, Avenger, The Afghan, The Cobra and, most recently, The Kill List. He lives in Buckinghamshire, England.www.frederickforsyth.co.ukTrade ReviewForsyth insists that The Outsider is not an autobiography. So I will just say that this is one of the most exciting and enjoyable accounts of an author’s life, in vaguely chronological order and written by the author himself, that I have ever read. * The Sunday Times *The comparison with Bond is apt . . . it may well be the best book he has ever written. * Daily Mail *If there is one memoir to read this autumn, it's Frederick Forsyth's extraordinary life story, The Outsider, which reads like a James Bond novel. The author of The Day Of The Jackal tells his own story and it's clear where the inspiration for so many of his best-selling thrillers came from when you read about his own life, beginning as the RAF's youngest pilot at the age of 19 and carrying on through being captured by the Stasi and threatened by the IRA. * Irish Independent *Enjoyed Freddie Forsyth last night. Boy has he lived a full life! And a life so beyond anything most of us can imagine, full of coups, civil wars, spies, and most importantly, typewriters. Great stories. -- Simon Mayo * Radio 2 Drivetime blog *In this engaging level-headed memoir . . . he reminds me of Ian Fleming, a fellow Europhile (in the cultural rather than political sense_ who also honed his writing skills at Reuters. Fleming is more elegant, more playful; Forsyth has more balls. * Literary Review *There’s plenty of sex and subterfuge, with close shaves, hairy escapades and hints of involvement with the intelligence services . . . ultimately, The Outsider is as good a read as any of the thrillers. If you’re looking for thrills and spills, you’ll find them. * Country Life *

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Book SynopsisJulian Barnes is the author of thirteen novels, including The Sense of an Ending, which won the 2011 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, and Sunday Times bestsellers The Noise of Time and The Only Story. He has also written three books of short stories, four collections of essays and three books of non-fiction, including the Sunday Times number one bestseller Levels of Life and Nothing To Be Frightened Of, which won the 2021 Yasnaya Polyana Prize in Russia. In 2017 he was awarded the Légion d'honneur.Trade ReviewIt is extraordinary... [It] would seem to pull off the impossible: to recreate, on the page, what it is like to be alive in the world. -- Emma Brockes * Guardian *This is a book of rare intimacy and honesty about love and grief. To read it is a privilege. To have written it is astonishing. -- Ruth Scurr * The Times *It’s an unrestrained, affecting piece of writing, raw and honest and more truthful for its dignity and artistry... Anyone who has loved and suffered loss, or just suffered, should read this book, and re-read it, and re-read it. -- Martin Fletcher * Independent *Levels of Life is both a supremely crafted artefact and a desolating guidebook to the land of loss. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *While one might expect a Barnes book to impress, delight, move, disconcert or amuse, the last thing for which his work prepares us is the blast of paralysingly direct emotion that concludes Levels of Life. -- Tim Martin * Daily Telegraph *Levels of Life is, deep-down, a heartfelt attempt to chronicle the strange journey that follows the death of a loved one. -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *A Taj Mahal made of paper not white marble. -- Peter Conrad * Observer *A magnificent blast of unflinching prose. * Daily Telegraph *Powerful and well-articulated. -- Roger Lewis * Daily Mail *It is true that the private language of love doesn’t generally translate; yet how vividly Barnes invokes the power and delicacy of what is lost to him. -- Jane Shilling * Sunday Telegraph *Profoundly emotive. * Sunday Times *He writes with aphoristic simplicity and a calm profundity, without ever sounding self-pitying, maudlin or trite… Levels of Life is at times unbearably sad, but it is also exquisite: a paean of love, and on love, and a book unexpectedly full of life. -- Rosemary Goring * Herald *A grief-stricken, achingly precise and bravely unconsoling exploration into the inadequacy of words. * Metro *An impassioned, raw insight into a survivor’s grief. * Sport *A confession of grief so emotively described that it leaves the reader cold with awe. -- Billy O'Callaghan * Irish Examiner *

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Book SynopsisIn November 1929, Christopher Isherwood - determined to become a ''permanent foreigner'' - packed a rucksack and two suitcases and left England on a one-way ticket for Berlin. With incredible candour and wit, Isherwood recalls the decadence of Berlin''s night scene and his route to sexual liberation. As the Nazis rise to power, Isherwood describes his dramatic struggle to save his partner Heinz from persecution.Trade ReviewPepys of the bohemian quarter * New York Sun *The best prose writer in English -- Gore VidalIndispensable for admirers of this truly masterly writer * New York Times *Christopher and His Kind is written with the lucidity, the intelligence, and the wit that we have come to expect from Isherwood at his best * New Statesman *Christopher Isherwood is back in vogue * Independent *

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Book Synopsis''A brave, beautiful book that could double as a handbook to accompany anyone on their journey through cancer'' Jackie Kay, New StatesmanThe Cancer Journals is an intimate, poetic and invigorating account of the experience of breast cancer, from biopsy to mastectomy, told by the great feminist and activist Audre Lorde.Moving between journal entry, memoir, and essay, Lorde fuses the personal and political to reflect on the many questions breast cancer raises: questions of survival, sexuality, prosthesis and self-care. It is a journey of survival, friendship, and self-acceptance. ''Grief, terror, courage, the passion for survival and for more than survival, are here in the searchings of a great poet'' Adrienne Rich''This book teaches me that with one breast or none, I am still me'' Alice WalkerTrade ReviewLorde's big heart and fierce mind are at full strength on each page of this deeply personal and deeply political collection ... A raw reckoning with illness and death as well as a challenge to the conventional expectations of women with cancer. More universally, Lorde's rage and the clarity that follows offer us a blueprint for facing our mortality and living boldly in the time we have. This empowering compilation is heartbreaking, beautiful, and timeless. * Kirkus STARRED REVIEW *Radiates with rebellion, even decades later... she is both brave and right. Embracing her one-breasted self, Lorde refuses to render invisible her difference and the experience of pain that is somehow embarrassing to others... There is inspiration in Lorde's position, for me and for all women who have spent time in doctors' offices and surgeries... Making my way through the book's pages, I found a different model of feminist power - not a sidestepping of sickness, but a defiant avowal of the reality of pain and respect for the transformed self it leaves behind -- Rafia Zakaria * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisThe arc of literary giant John Updike's life emerges in these luminous daily letters to family, friends, editors, and lovers a remarkable outpouring over six decades, from his earliest consciousness as a writer to his final daysIn the words of his contemporary, Philip Roth, John Updike was Our time's greatest man of letters as brilliant a literary critic and essayist as he was a novelist and short-story writer'. Over the course of his long and immensely productive career, he also proved himself a brilliant correspondent, his letters filled with comic observations, opinions and personal news, told in his characteristically elegant and exquisitely fluid style. In this sparkling selection of his letters, edited by James Schiff, we can see Updike in real time, capturing every stage of his unspooling life, from Pennsylvania farm boy to Pulitzer prizewinner; and from young father negotiating his first book contract to the bestselling writer he became, following the international success of his novels Couples and the Rabbit sequence. Here are letters to family, friends, editors and lovers, a remarkable outpouring over six decades including, most movingly perhaps, the letters of his final year bidding farewell to children, colleagues and friends. Taken together, these missives make a page-turning life in letters' like no other an intimate testament to one of the greatest of all American writers. Nobody has a better understanding of the capriciousness of the human heart than John Updike' Daily TelegraphHe was the ideal son of a platonic union between John Cheever and J.D. Salinger, with Nabokov attending the christening as fairy godfather' James WoodJohn Updike mapped our desires, our wishes, our wise and unwise dreams, our uncertainties, with such elegant precision and for so many years' The Times

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Book Synopsis''An extraordinary writer of the female experience.'' Financial Times''Cusk is startlingly insightful.'' Independent on Sunday''Divorce has been a catastrophe for Cusk but Cusk the writer triumphs.'' MetroIn the winter of 2009, Rachel Cusk's marriage of ten years came to an end. Candid and revelatory, Aftermath chronicles the perilous journey as the author redefines herself and creates a new version of family life for her daughters.

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Book SynopsisAgatha Christie's most absorbing mystery' her own autobiography.Over the three decades since her death on 12 January 1976, many of Agatha Christie's readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life. From early childhood at the end of the 19th century, through two marriages and two World Wars, and her experiences both as a writer and on archaeological expeditions with her second husband, Max Mallowan, Agatha shares the details of her varied and sometimes complex life with real passion and openness.Trade Review‘Wonderfully easy to read and engrossing.’ The Times ‘The best thing she has ever written.’ Woman’s Own ‘Agatha Christie’s most absorbing mystery – the story of her own unusual life. She has put it all on record: her early romances; a broken (and a happy) marriage; strange events on the path to roaring success.’ Daily Mail ‘A wonderful book – written with a delight in the gradual unfolding of 75 years through the eyes of an exceptional old lady and writer.’ Financial Times

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Book SynopsisWords have power. Yet that power must be rooted in truth and justice. Words must never stand apart from those principles.'You end this collection…vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again' GuardianReaders who have long wondered where the mysterious novelist gets his ideas and what inspires his beautifully surreal worlds will be fascinated by this highly personal look at the craft of writing.In this engaging book, the internationally best-selling author shares with readers what he thinks about being a novelist; his own origins as a writer; and his musings on the sparks of creativity that inspire other writers, artists, and musicians.'Murakami is like a magician who explains what he's doing as he performs the trick and still makes you believe he has supernatural powers' New York Times Book Review'A fascinating glimpse of the peculiar writerly life' Sunday Times** A TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES and NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR**Trade Review[The] 11 essays here… deal with all the things that you’d like to ask [Murakami]…in the highly unlikely event that you were able to corner him at a book-signing session… You end this collection of beautiful essays vowing to never let life, or writing, get so complicated again * Guardian *

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Book Synopsis''If ever there was a book calculated to make a man in love with its author, this appears to me to be the book.''William Godwin, the author''s future husband, was not alone in admiring Letters written during a short residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Wollstonecraft''s most popular book during her lifetime. Not easy to categorize, it is both an arresting travel book and a moving exploration of her personal and political selves. Wollstonecraft set out for Scandinavia just two weeks after her first suicide attempt, on a mission from the lover whose affections she doubted, to recover his silver on a ship that had gone missing. With her baby daughter and a nursemaid, she travelled across the dramatic landscape and wrote sublime descriptions of the natural world, and the events and people she encountered. What emerges most vividly is Wollstonecraft''s courage and ability to look beyond her own suffering to the turmoil around her in revolutionary Europe, and a better future.This editioTrade ReviewThis collection brings to life a radical writer. * Katie Toms, The Observer *

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Book SynopsisIt was truly the most breathless and in a way the most exhilarating time I have ever had in my life.This beautiful edition of Going Solo, part of The Roald Dahl Classic Collection, features official archive material from the Roald Dahl Museum and is perfect for Dahl fans old and new.So, enter a world where invention and mischief can be found on every page and where magic might be at the very tips of your fingers . . .The Roald Dahl Classic Collection reinstates the versions of Dahl's books that were published before the 2022 Puffin editions, aimed at newly independent young readers.Trade ReviewHis account of life as a fighter pilot in the Western Desert and in Greece has the thrilling intensity and the occasional grotesqueness of his fiction—Sunday TimesVery nearly as grotesque as his fiction. The same compulsive blend of wide-eyed innocence and fascination with danger and horror—Evening StandardA non-stop demonstration of expert raconteurship—The New York Times Book Review

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Book Synopsis''You think it will never happen to you, that it cannot happen to you, that you are the only person world to whom none of these things will ever happen, and then, one by one, they all begin to happen to you, in the same way they happen to everyone else.''In Winter Journal, Paul Auster moves through the events of his life in a series of memories grasped from the point of view of his life now: playing baseball as a teenager; participating in the anti-Vietnam demonstrations at Columbia University; seeking out prostitutes in Paris, almost killing his second wife and child in a car accident; falling in and out of live with his first wife; the ''scalding, epiphanic moment of clarity'' in 1978 that set him on a new course as a writer.Winter Journal is a poignant memoir of ageing and memory, written with all the characteristic subtlety, imagination and insight that readers of Paul Auster have come to cherish.''An examination of the emotions of a

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Book Synopsis''In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was not a good time to be born black, or woman, in America.'' So begins this stunning portrait of Vivian Baxter Johnson: the first black woman officer in the Merchant Marines, purveyor of a gambling business and rooming house, and mother to Maya Angelou, beloved and bestselling author of I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS.''A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman'' BARACK OBAMAAnyone who''s read the classic, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, knows Maya Angelou was raised by her paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. In Mom and Me and Mom, Angelou details what brought her mother to send her away and unearths the well of emotions Angelou experienced long afterward as a result. While Angelou''s first six autobiographies reveal about her out in the world, influencing and learning from statesmen and cultural icons, her final autobiography an

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Book Synopsis''So compellingly personal you feel you're looking over her shoulder as she sits down to write'' New York Times''Electrically entertaining ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind'' The TimesThis Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is an irresistible blend of literature and memoir revealing the big experiences and little moments that shaped Ann Patchett as a daughter, wife, friend and writer. Here, Ann Patchett shares entertaining and moving stories about her tumultuous childhood, her painful early divorce, the excitement of selling her first book, driving a Winnebago from Montana to Yellowstone Park, her joyous discovery of opera, scaling a six-foot wall in order to join the Los Angeles Police Department, the gradual loss of her beloved grandmother, starting her own bookshop in Nashville, her love for her very special dog and, of course, her eventual happy marriage. This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage is a memoir both wide rangingTrade ReviewI hope it will not sound disrespectful if I say that I read this book for fun … But when I got to the end of the book, I realised I hadn’t taken a single note. I had been so engaged by Ann Patchett’s multifaceted story, so lured in by her confiding voice, that I forgot I was on the job … So compellingly personal you feel you’re looking over her shoulder as she sits down to write * International New York Times *The pieces collected in This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage have exactly the tone of a good story told at a convivial dinner party, by someone who has told it often enough to have the timing down cold and who happily caters to her audience’s desire ... Patchett writes gracefully -- Laura Miller * Guardian *She has an authoritative, straightforward voice in exploring some of the milestones of her life ... A memoir about her friendship with the deeply tortured writer Lucy Grealy, form the most telling and moving selections ... Many of these selections reveal a candid, evolved self-reflection * Publishers Weekly *Witty, warm reflections on life, love and art of fiction ... she speaks about the love and happiness of her second and enduring marriage with immense beauty and insight, and without an iota of smugness -- Arifa Akbar * Independent *Electrically entertaining ... Each of these essays feels fresh and bright and, just as importantly, they seem to fit together to achieve a fascinating whole ... Funny, generous, spirited and kind * Julie Myerson, The Times *Patchett’s style at its best -- Matilda Bathurst * Spectator *A brilliant mix of moving memoir and deeply personal essays ... consoling, inspiring, but, above all, true -- Kathryn Hughes * Mail on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisCelebrating Fifty Years of Picador BooksYou think adoption is a story which has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. In a book remarkable for its warmth and candour, Kay discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.‘Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read’ – IndependentPart of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.Trade ReviewA clear-eyed, witty and unsentimental account of the push and pull between nature and nurture. Happiness shines through * Sunday Times *Wonderful, humane . . . This is a book with resolution, determination and honesty * Scotland on Sunday *It is Kay’s abundant wit that makes Red Dust Road such a moving, spirited work. This is a terrifically easy, evocative, and often amusing read . . . A remarkable, soul-searching journey * Sunday Herald *

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES TOP TEN BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE PENDERYN MUSIC BOOK PRIZE'Tender, wise and funny' Sunday Express'Beautifully observed, deadly funny' Max PorterBefore becoming an acclaimed musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.Returning to the scene of her childhood, Thorn takes us beyond the bus shelters, the pub car parks and the weekly discos, to the parents who wanted so much for their children and the children who wanted none of it. With great wit and insight, Thorn reconsiders the Green Belt post-war dream so many artists have mocked, and yet so many artists have come from.Trade ReviewA beautiful writer . . . Exceptional . . . Made me catch my breath . . . Her language is straightforward, chatty, easy-to-read. Musical. Though Thorn tells us sharp truths, we gobble them up because she delivers them in such a deceptively pretty, poignant way -- Miranda Sawyer * * Financial Times * *Hugely enjoyable, quirky and funny -- BERNARDINE EVARISTOWhen Thorn digs into her adolescence, the book sparks with wit and poignancy, helped by extracts from her teenage diaries that she smartly exploits for comedy and bathos * * Sunday Times * *Tender, wise and funny * * Sunday Express * *I adored this. Wise, tender, beautifully observed, deadly funny. A Green Belt memoir classic -- MAX PORTERReaders of Thorn's two previous memoirs will recognise the tone of this book, with its beautifully clean style, careful self-questioning and pervasive likability * * Guardian * *What a wise and funny book. Nostalgic but unsentimental, Thorn beautifully captures the aspirations, ennui and angst of suburban teenage life. I loved it -- DAVID NICHOLLSTracey Thorn's memoir of growing up in suburbia finds the extraordinary in the ordinary . . . Thorn is a writer who can "give the mundane its beautiful due" . . . [A] delightful, incisive memoir -- Frank Cottrell-Boyce * * New Statesman * *A book that dazzles with a quiet rebellion, resilience and hope -- ELIF SHAFAKAnother Planet is about being a teenager in suburbia in the 1970s, and revisiting one's own youth from middle age. It touches on class, culture, music, plum jam and parenting teens. It's wonderful. You'll read it in one go -- NINA STIBBE

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Book SynopsisLike Lorna Sage''s Bad Blood A masterpiece' RACHEL CUSKGiving up the Ghost' is award-winning novelist Hilary Mantel''s uniquely unusual five-part autobiography.Opening in 1995 with ''A Second Home'', Mantel describes the death of her stepfather which leaves her deeply troubled by the unresolved events of her childhood. In ''Now Geoffrey Don''t Torment Her'' Mantel takes the reader into the muffled consciousness of her early childhood, culminating in the birth of a younger brother and the strange candlelight ceremony of her mother''s ''churching''. In ''Smile'', an account of teenage perplexity, Mantel describes a household where the keeping of secrets has become a way of life. Finally, at the memoir''s conclusion, Mantel explains how through a series of medical misunderstandings and neglect she came to be childless and how the ghosts of the unborn like chances missed or pages unturned, have come to haunt her life as a writer.Trade Review'She is by turns facetious, matter-of-fact, visionary and comical but always totally riveting.' Daily Telegraph 'Simply astonishing - clear and true.' Guardian 'An extraordinary story, sometimes comic, often grim, but most importantly it is a story of survival.' Spectator 'A masterpiece of wit…[the] past, so thoroughly vanished, is made to live again here.' Rachel Cusk ‘What a remarkable writer she is. She is piercingly, even laceratingly observant … a very startling and daring memoir; the more I read it the more unsettling it becomes.’ Helen Dunmore ‘I was riveted. It’s raw, it’s distressing and it’s full of piercing insights into a first-rate novelist’s mind.’ Margaret Forster ‘A stunning evocation of an ill-fitting childhood and a womanhood blighted by medical ineptitude. Hilary Mantel’s frank and beautiful memoir is impossible to put down and impossible to forget.’ Clare Boylan

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Book SynopsisThe best poet in America' Jean GenetHe brought everybody down to earth, even the angels' Leonard CohenThe definitive collection from a writer whose transgressive legacy and raw, funny, acutely observant writing has left an enduring markHere is Bukowski eating walnuts and scratching his back, rolling a cigarette while listening to Brahms, showering with Linda in the mid-afternoon.Here is Bukowski knowing that the secret is beyond him, that people who never go crazy live truly horrible lives, that there's a bluebird in his heart that wants to get out.Here is Bukowski at his most hilarious and heart-breaking, his most raw and profound; here is Bukowski at his best.Trade Review‘The best poet in America’ Jean Genet ‘He brought everybody down to earth, even the angels’ Leonard Cohen

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Book Synopsis**Featured on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read** 'A profound meditation on language and loss and time, and on how we construct ourselves through stories. And it's painful. And it's beautiful. And I love it.' NATHAN FLIER Samantha Harvey's insomnia arrived, seemingly, from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She's tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping. What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? For Samantha Harvey, extreme sleep deprivation resulted in a raw clarity about life itself. Original and profound, The Shapeless Unease is a startlingly insightful exploration of memory, writing and influence, death and grief, and the will to survive. 'A delight to read... ineffably rewarding' OBSERVER 'Easily one of the truest and best books I've read about what it's like to be alive now, in this country' MAX PORTER 'How can a book about a sensual deprivation be so sensuous and so full? ... it seemed to give my sleep resonance and poetry. What a beautiful book.' TESSA HADLEYTrade Review[A] remarkable book… [The Shapeless Unease is] an extraordinary journey, but it’s also mesmerising. Harvey writes with hypnotic power and poetic precision about – well, about everything: grief, pain, memory, family, the night sky, a lake at sunset, what it means to dream and what it means to suffer and survive. -- Christina Patterson * Mail on Sunday *A delight to read… suffused with the sense of a timeless fable… ineffably rewarding. -- Colin Grant * Observer *Urgent and wild, but also dazzling in its precision. This is what it must be like to try to keep hold of a brilliant mind that is threatening to unspool… a dark, seductive book about fear and madness and their allure… Reading The Shapeless Unease can feel not unlike dipping into strange, unchartered waters: it is by turns bracing and soothing, with a dark undertow and glimmers of light at the surface, and one emerges from it with an altered perspective, a sense of time having slowed down. -- Sophie McBain * New Statesman *Samantha Harvey's dazzling, dizzying trip through the nightmare world of the sleepless...[is a] wondrous little book... a treasure trove of material… The Shapeless Unease is also one of the best books you will find about swimming. And its wonders. -- Roger Alton * Daily Mail *Intricately intriguing… astonishing… [The Shapeless Unease is] a particular joy. It moves between topics with ease, and yet at its heart it is an emotional book… I haven’t read a book which is quite as clear about being a writer. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *

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Book Synopsis''Everything food writing should be: funny, profound, inspiring and unaffected'' Nigella LawsonWeaving together memories, recipes, and wild tales of years spent in the kitchen, Home Cooking is Laurie Colwin''s manifesto on the joys of sharing food and entertaining. From the humble hot-plate of her one-room apartment to the crowded kitchens of bustling parties, Colwin regales us with tales of meals gone both magnificently well and disastrously wrong.Never before published in the UK, this is hilarious, personal and full of Colwin''s hard-won expertise. Home Cooking will speak to the heart (and stomach) of any amateur cook, professional chef, or food lover.''A feast . . . witty, no-nonsense. Home Cooking is a culinary companion as comfortable beside your bed as your cooker. It has an essay for everyone who loves to eat and demonstrates that home is where the heart is - and the stomacTrade ReviewLaurie Colwin writes about food with love, lightness and an elegant intimacy reminding us that cooking is about life not recipes. Her books are more than cookery books. They are the diaries of someone - who died young - with a huge appetite for life and the rare ability to convey it. She writes so movingly, too, about her daughter and I can't help thinking what a testimony of love she left her -- Nigella LawsonA feast . . . witty, no-nonsense . . . there are echoes of Nigella Lawson, one of Colwin's fans . . . Home Cooking is a culinary companion as comfortable beside your bed as your cooker. It has an essay for everyone who loves to eat and demonstrates that home is where the heart is - and the stomach happiest * Observer *Shrewd and witty essays on food . . . a consistently enjoyable bedtime read * Mail on Sunday *I have in my kitchen a book called Home Cooking. And, in between following the recipes for Extremely Easy Old-Fashioned Beef Stew or Estelle Colwin Snellenberg's Potato Pancakes, I would frequently sit down on a little stool in my kitchen and read through one of the essays in that book. I never read through Joy of Cooking, and I can read The Silver Palate Cookbook standing up, but I always sat down to read these. -- Anna QuindlenMemories, recipes and tantalising tales of the kitchen * Sunday Times Style *Shrewd and witty * You Magazine *Laurie Colwin's food thoughts are like phone calls from a dear friend * The New York Times *

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Book SynopsisMy Bondage and My Freedom is the second of Frederick Douglass's full-length autobiographies. An important slave autobiography, it is significant both for what it tells us about slave life and about its author.Table of ContentsIntroduction Note on the Text Select Bibliography A Chronology of Frederick Douglass My Bondage and My Freedom Appendix: The Heroic Slave Explanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisAn ardent steward of the land, fearless traveller and unrivalled observer of nature and culture, Barry Lopez died after a long illness on Christmas Day in 2020. The previous summer, a wildfire had consumed much of what was dear to him in his home and the community around it – a tragic reminder of the climate change of which he’d long warned. At once a cri de Coeur and a memoir of both pain and wonder, this remarkable collection of essays adds indelibly to Lopez’s legacy, and includes previously unpublished works, some written in the months before his death. They unspool memories, both personal and political, among them tender, sometimes painful stories of his childhood in New York and California, reports from expeditions to study animals and sea life, recollections of travels to Antarctica and other extraordinary places on earth, and mediations on finding oneself amid vast, dramatic landscapes. He reflects on those who taught him, including Indigenous elders and scientific mentors who sharpened his eye for the natural world. We witness poignant returns from his travels to the sanctuary of his Oregon backyard and in prose of searing candour, he reckons with the cycle of life, including own and – as he has done throughout his career – with the dangers the earth and its people are facing. With an introduction by Rebecca Solnit that speaks to Lopez’s keen attention to the world, including its spiritual dimensions, Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World opens our minds and sounds to the important of being wholly present to the beauty and complexity of life.Trade Review‘The world is vast, and so are the heart and the curiosity of Barry Lopez. His voice is incomparable and necessary.’ -- David Quammen

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Book Synopsis ''Hilarious, subversive, sharp without being lethal, and loving without an ounce of sentiment, Shirley Jackson''s more-or-less autobiographical account of life as a mother of four and faculty wife (and brilliant writer) is an eternal, comic joy'' Amy Bloom''Our new house was waiting for us, eager, expectant, and empty''Shirley Jackson skewered the trials of domestic life in 1950s America with wry wit and uncanny precision. In this sequel to Life Among the Savages, her four offspring have now grown into fully-fledged demons. As their house starts to burst at the seams, the Jackson clan somehow manage (without really planning it) to move into a larger home, only to take the chaos - absent furniture, vanishing children, misbehaving refrigerators, an avalanche of books - right along with them.Trade ReviewA housewife-mother's frustrations are transformed by a deft twist of the wrist into, not a grim account of disintegration and madness, still less the poisoning of her family, but light-hearted comedy. -- Joyce Carol Oates

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Book Synopsis''One day there is life . . . And then, suddenly, it happens there is death.''So begins Paul Auster''s moving and personal meditation on fatherhood, The Invention of Solitude. The first section, ''Portrait of an Invisible Man'', reveals Auster''s memories and feelings after the death of his father. In ''The Book of Memory'' the perspective shifts to Auster''s role as a father. The narrator, ''A.'', contemplates his separation from his son, his dying grandfather and the solitary nature of writing and story-telling. With all the keen literary intelligence familiar from The New York Trilogy or Sunset Park, Paul Auster crafts an intensely intimate work from a ground-breaking combination of introspection, meditation and biography.

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Book SynopsisFrom the beloved writer Nina Stibbe, a warm and funny story of a woman changing her life at 60.'A unique comic voice, endlessly funny' – David Nicholls, author of One Day'Painfully funny, but also deeply moving' – Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and BlissWhat does it mean to start again at sixty?Nina Stibbe is surprised to find herself asking this question as she leaves married life behind in Cornwall and heads back to London after twenty years away for what she calls ‘a year-long sabbatical’.She takes up lodgings at the house of writer Deborah Moggach, unprepared for how she, and the city, has changed and now wondering whether freedom is all it’s cracked up to be . . .As heard on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour'The true heir to Sue Townsend' – Caitlin Moran'An utter, UTTER treat! It was like spending time with my most cTrade ReviewVulnerable, sharp, funny, wise -- Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in ChemistryA unique comic voice, endlessly funny. Nina makes me laugh so much -- David NichollsNo one writes heartbreak more hilariously, or hilarity more heartbreakingly. No one does a better job of making the ordinary phenomenal -- Katherine Heiny, author of Early Morning RiserPainfully funny, but also deeply moving. I never wanted it to end -- Meg Mason, author of Sorrow and BlissAn absurdist chronicler of a world both baffling and extraordinary . . . [a] lovely, funny-sad book * Guardian *What an utter, UTTER treat! It was like spending time with my most clever, insightful, funny, FUNNY friend. I'm so sad it's over -- Marian Keyes[The] most reliably entertaining of comic writers . . . pure Victoria Wood . . . Stibbe might be sad and scared and have a bad back, but I’d rather read her sad than almost anyone else happy * The Spectator *So sharp and funny, blissfully gossipy, enviably well-observed — it’s like she has X-ray vision when it comes to human beings. I couldn’t stop reading it. I wish it were twice as long. I loved it -- India KnightI don’t think I’ve enjoyed a diary so much since I read Adrian Mole for the first time -- Daisy BuchananFunny, warm, enlightening. The reading equivalent of getting the giggles in the back row of a school assembly -- Santham Sanghera, author of EmpirelandI loved this book. Stibbe’s joyful midlife observations, her nods to the wonders and absurdities of the everyday, are so life-affirming. I started seeing pockets of humour in my own ordinary days - and actually felt bereft when I turned the last page -- Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie LaneStibbe turns out more perfect, sharp, unique sentences than anyone else -- Caitlin MoranOne of the most hilarious, insightful, addictive writers working today -- Jenny ColganLike spending an endless afternoon in the most sparkling company but without any pressure to sparkle back -- Frank Cottrell-BoyceNina Stibbe makes being funny look easy, but that's just because she's very, very good at it -- Clare ChambersOne of the great comic writers of our time * Irish Times *Stibbe is an unassuming comic genius * Independent *Breezy, sophisticated, hilarious, rude and aching with sweetness: Love, Nina might be the most charming book I've ever read -- Maria Semple, author of Where'd You Go, Bernadette

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Book Synopsis''Speak, memory'', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and family hangers-on and of grand old houses in St Petersburg and the surrounding countryside in pre-Revolutionary Russia. Young love, butterflies, tutors and a multitude of other themes thread together to weave an autobiography, which is itself a work of art.

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Book SynopsisOn the same day that his wife gave birth to twins, Anthony Doerr received the Rome Prize, an award that gave him a year-long stipend and studio in RomeFour Seasons in Rome' charts the repercussions of that day, describing Doerr''s varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world, and the first year of parenthood. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats the chroniclers of Rome who came before him and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighbourhood, whose clamour of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood and a fascinating account of the alchemy of writers.Trade Review‘Anthony Doerr is dazzling in this book, in the way he celebrates the joys as well as the pain of being a parent and in love, being a writer and being in Rome, reminding us that certain experiences never grow stale when they are expressed through the fresh eyes of a real writer.’ Azar Nafisi, author of Reading Lolita in Tehran ‘Anthony Doerr found himself in the perfect Eternal City with the eternal Paternal Problem: how to care for two beautiful newborn twins while still doing his work as a writer and student and observer. The result is a funny, precise, touching account of cultural barricades crossed and fatherly exhaustions overcome; a story of the universalities of parenting and the specificities of Roman life that will lift the heart of every parent and delight the mind of every lover of Italy.’ Adam Gopnik, author of ‘Through the Children's Gate and From Paris to the Moon’

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Book SynopsisGervase Phinn thinks he's heard just about everything in his two years as a school inspector, but a surprising enquiry from an angelic six-year-old reminds him never to take children for granted. His marriage to Christine Bentley, finding somewhere idyllic to live in the Yorkshire Dales, and chance of a promotion.

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Book Synopsis''Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh''s warmth and humanity. Essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over'' John le CarréIn the early 1950s, teenage Seymour Hersh was finishing high school and university - while running the family''s struggling dry cleaning store in a Southside Chicago ghetto. Today, he is one of America''s premier investigative journalists, whose fearless reporting has earned him fame, front-page bylines in virtually every newspaper in the world, a staggering collection of awards, and no small amount of controversy.Reporter is the story of how he did it. It is a story of slog, ingenuity and defiance, following Hersh from his first job as a crime reporter for the Chicago City News Bureau, through his Pulitzer Prize-winning freelance investigative exposes, to the heights of his reportinTrade ReviewOne of America's greatest investigative reporters. * New York Times Magazine *In a city and culture where screeching talk shows and preening columnists have largely supplanted old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting, and most 'investigative reporting' consists of the collection of carefully dispensed leaks, Hersh stands virtually alone. -- Rupert Cornwell * The Independent *The most feared investigative reporter in Washington. * Guardian *If there is a smoking gun lying around the White House, the reporter most likely to find it is Seymour M. Hersh. -- Scott Sherman * Columbia Journalism Review *A whip-smart, preternaturally energetic outsider who . . . assembled a body of work that helps to radically revise the way Americans see their government. -- Bob Thomson * The Washington Post *A groundbreaking journalist who has revealed some of America's darkest secrets. -- David Jackson * The Chicago Tribune *The last great American reporter. * Financial Times *Hersh's exposés of gross abuses by members of the US military in Vietnam and Iraq have earned him worldwide fame and high journalistic honors. * Foreign Policy *Quite simply, the greatest investigative journalist of his era. -- David Remnick, Editor-in-Chief * New Yorker *Hersh is necessary reading for anyone remotely interested in what went wrong and continues to go wrong in Iraq -- Praise for CHAIN OF COMMAND * The New York Times *I've long admired the skill and independence with which Hersh has brought important and concealed information to light -- Ahmed Rashid, Praise for THE KILLING OF OSAMA BIN LADEN * New York Review of Books *One of the most skilled investigative journalists in American history shares his saga in compelling detail ... Hersh takes readers behind the scenes as he exposes corrupt U.S. foreign policy, Defense Department bumbling in numerous wars, political coverups during Watergate, private sector corporate scandals, and torture tactics used by the U.S. government against alleged terrorists after 9/11. The author shares insightful (and sometimes searing) anecdotes about fellow journalists, presidents and their cronies, military generals, and numerous celebrities. Readers interested in a primer about investigative techniques will find Hersh a generous teacher. Candor is the driving force in this outstanding book. Rarely has a journalist's memoir come together so well, with admirable measures of self-deprecation, transparent pride, readable prose style, and honesty. * Starred Kirkus Review *Powerful . . . There's gripping journalistic intrigue aplenty as [Hersh] susses out sources and documents, fences with officials, and fields death threats. . . . Hersh himself is brash and direct, but never cynical, and his memoir is as riveting as the great journalistic exposés he produced. * Publishers Weekly *Candid and revelatory . . . Compared to the contemporary field of blogs, bots, and opinion-driven reportage, the last half of the twentieth-century can look like the heyday of honest and critical journalism. But even now, Hersh remains at the vanguard of tenacious and purposeful writers who speak truth to power, and surely he's inspiring the best at work now. Journalism junkies will devour this insider's account of a distinguished career. * Booklist *Reporter is just wonderful. Truly a great life, and what shines out of the book, amid the low cunning and tireless legwork, is Hersh's warmth and humanity. Essential reading for every journalist and aspiring journalist the world over -- John le Carré

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Book SynopsisHomage to Catalonia remains one of the most famous accounts of the Spanish Civil War. With characteristic scrutiny, Orwell questions the actions and motives of all sides whilst retaining his firm beliefs in human courage and the need for radical social change.Part of the Macmillan Collector’s Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful books make perfect gifts or a treat for any book lover. This edition is introduced by Helen Graham, a leading historian on the Spanish Civil War.When George Orwell arrived in Spain in 1936, he signed up to fight with the Republican army against Fascism. Homage to Catalonia is his bracing personal account of his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. From the front line he describes, with brutal honesty, the frustrations and inefficiencies of battle; he is caught up in vicious street fighting in Barcelona and must flee for his life when Republican factions turn on each other.Trade ReviewHomage to Catalonia belongs in any list of important books on the Spanish civil war -- Paul Preston * Observer *[Homage to Catalonia] has become, in the years and for generations that have followed, a landmark text of the 20th century and an indispensable read . . . Few stories of conflict manage to stir together such a moving admixture of horror, grace, brutality and, yes, even humor. * NPR *With his commitment to honesty in the face of lies and treachery; with his moral and intellectual integrity in the face of cynicism and euphemism; and with his willingness to face down bullies of all stripes, Orwell bequeaths to us in his writings the tools we could well do with ourselves. * Mancunian *Orwell's report is as exciting as it is meditative. With his quiet exactitude the midnight skirmishes, the political issues, and the utter futility of war come clearly into focus. * Kirkus Reviews *

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Siri Hustvedt Friday 30 October 1936. I do not wish, for reasons I cannot now develop, to analyse that extraordinary summer. It will be more helpful & healthy for me to write scenes; to take up my pen & describe actual events: good practice too for my stumbling & doubting pen. Can I still 'write'? That is the question, you see. And now I will try to prove if the gift is dead, or dormant. The concluding volume of Virginia Woolf's diary covers the last five years of her life, ending four days before she committed suicide at the age of 59. These final years were overshadowed by the untimely death of her nephew Julian Bell in the Spanish Civil War, and her own intermittent mental fragility. As another World War began to seem inevitable, writing itself often felt like a battle. Nevertheless, this period saw the publication of her novel The Years, the polemical essay Three Guineas, the biography of her friend Roger Fry, and the writing of Between the Acts. This volume stands as a monument to Woolf's life and the enduring friendships of the Bloomsbury group. This Granta edition of Volume 5 contains the unexpurgated text for the first time.

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Book SynopsisA lavish gift edition of David Sedaris's best stories, spanning his spectacular bestselling career. Hand-picked by David himself, these are stories that will make you laugh and cry, sometimes at the same time, from "the funniest man alive" (Time Out New York).Trade ReviewFor the past couple of decades, David Sedaris has more or less created his own genre, with his confessional stories that reveal both the absurdity and the emotion of everyday life. His funniest and most incisive work is now brought together in one volume * BBC *A whirlwind tour of this genius writer's greatest hits * Stylist *The ideal introduction for anyone not yet acquainted with the American master of deadpan autobiographical comedy. Sedaris selects highlights from his three decades of making readers and listeners laugh, wince and sob at the weirdness and wonder of other people * Guardian *Dipping into David Sedaris's mind in his wonderful collected works The Best of Me has been a balm and a joy * i newapaper *

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