Authors

Griffin Dunne’s memoir of growing up among larger-than-life characters in Hollywood and Manhattan finds wicked humor and glimmers of light in even the most painful of circumstances....

A Mystery of Mysteries is a brilliant biography of Edgar Allan Poe that examines the renowned author’s life through the prism of his mysterious death and its many possible causes....

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer’s craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have....

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic....

Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation....

David Sedaris' new collection of essays - including live recordings! - tells a most unconventional life story. It begins with a North Carolina childhood filled with speech-therapy classes...

An exquisite, genre-defying new book from the Booker Prize–winning author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, a reckoning with his life and family, and the role of fiction in our times.

She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone....

In 1971, Go Ask Alice reinvented the young adult genre with a blistering portrayal of sex, psychosis, and teenage self-destruction. The supposed diary of a middle-class addict, Go Ask Alice terrified adults and cemented LSD's fearsome reputation....

From Booker Prize winner Salman Rushdie, a searing, deeply personal account of enduring—and surviving—an attempt on his life thirty years after the fatwa that was ordered against him.

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life describes his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years....

For the very first time, Judi opens up about every Shakespearean role she has played throughout her seven-decade career, from Lady Macbeth and Titania to Ophelia and Cleopatra....

In this book, C.S. Lewis tells of his search for joy, a spiritual journey that led him from the Christianity of his early youth into atheism and then back to Christianity....

In the vein of The Glass Castle and Wild, Cea Sunrise Person's compelling memoir of a childhood spent with her dysfunctional counterculture family in the Canadian wilderness....

“Any story that starts will also end.” As a writer, Ann Patchett knows what the outcome of her fiction will be. Life, however, often takes turns we do not see coming. Patchett ponders this truth in these wise essays that afford a fresh and intimate look into her mind and heart....

The shocking untold story of Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway's secret life as a spy for both the Americans and the Soviets before and during World War II....

At the age of 24, Matt Haig's world caved in. He could see no way to go on living. This is the true story of how he came through crisis, triumphed over an illness that almost destroyed him and learned to live again.

A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers....

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works....

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Ron Chernow illuminates the full, fascinating, and complex life of the writer long celebrated as the father of American literature, Mark Twain.

The New York Times bestselling, hilarious tale of Mary Karr’s hardscrabble Texas childhood that Oprah.com calls the best memoir of a generation....

What Remains is a vivid and haunting memoir about a girl from a working-class town who becomes an award-winning television producer and marries a prince, Anthony Radziwill....

When Barbara Kingsolver and her family move from suburban Arizona to rural Appalachia, they take on a new challenge: to spend a year on a locally-produced diet....

Just before Christmas in 1843, a debt-ridden and dispirited Charles Dickens wrote a small book he hoped would keep his creditors at bay....

Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of being Anne Sexton) gave him away...

Across six revealing lectures, Professor Jessica Hooten Wilson will introduce you to one of the 20th century’s most fascinating and divisive writers in Flannery O’Connor and the Scandal of Faith. Beginning with an overview of her brief but remarkable life, Professor Wilson will then take you through an exploration of themes in O’Connor’s work and the hallmarks of her literary style. You’ll get a clearer picture of O’Connor’s historical and geographical context while digging into how her stories can transcend time and place.

Could you write what you write if you weren’t so tiny, Joan? —Eve Babitz, in a letter to Joan Didion, 1972. Joan Didion, revealed at last… Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin, and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world. This world turned for a certain number of years in the late sixties and early seventies, and centered on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood.

In January 2022, Bruce Eric Kaplan found himself confused and upset by the state of the world and the state of his life as a television writer in Los Angeles. He started a journal to keep from going mad, which eventually became They Went Another Way. The book’s through line traces his attempt to get a television project set up in the increasingly Byzantine world of Hollywood.

In Roman Year, André Aciman captures the period of his adolescence that began when he and his family first set foot in Rome, after being expelled from Egypt. Though Aciman’s family had been well-off in Alexandria, all vestiges of their status vanished when they fled, and the author, his younger brother, and his deaf mother moved into a rented apartment in Rome’s Via Clelia. Though dejected, Aciman’s mother and brother found their way into life in Rome, while Aciman, still unmoored, burrowed into his bedroom to read one book after the other.

For Glory Edim, that "friend of my mind" is books. Edim, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants growing up in Virginia, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age 30, but her love of books stretches far back: to public libraries alongside her little brothers after elementary school while her mother was working; to high school libraries where she discovered books she wasn't being taught in class; to dorm rooms and airplanes and subway rides—and, eventually, to a community of half a million other listeners.

What kind of mother abandons her child? During the pandemic, trapped at home with young children and struggling to find creative space to write, journalist Begoña Gómez Urzaiz became fixated on artistic women who overcame both society’s condemnation and their own maternal guilt to leave their children—at will or due to economic or other circumstances. The Abandoners is sharp, at times slyly humorous, and always deeply empathetic.

Designing Terry Pratchett’s Discworld is a celebration of Discworld art and a brilliant homage to the decades-long collaboration between artist Paul Kidby and Sir Terry Pratchett that takes listeners behind the scenes of one of the great creative partnerships. It shows how the Discworld was brought to visual life—from the earliest sketches to the final magnificent masterpieces—and how Pratchett and Kidby were influenced by art and pop culture, fusing them into the Discworld universe.

Deborah Levy’s vital literary voice speaks about many things. On footwear: “It has always been very clear to me that people who wear shoes without socks are destined to become my friends and lovers.” On public parks: “A civic garden square gentles the pace of the city that surrounds it, holding a thought before it scrambles.” Levy shares with us her most tender thoughts as she traces and measures her life against the backdrop of different literary imaginations.

In October of 1949, a few months after publication of George Orwell‘s masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four, he received a letter from fellow author Aldous Huxley, a man who, 17 years previous, had seen his own nightmarish vision of society published in the form of the classic, Brave New World. What begins as a letter of praise soon becomes a brief comparison of the two novels, and an explanation as to why Huxley believes his own earlier work to be a more realistic prediction

Un fascinante paseo por La Habana con un guía de lujo, el propio Leonardo Padura. Los buenos novelistas siempre cuentan en sus historias con un personaje que acaba siendo tan importante como el protagonista: la ciudad donde trascurren los hechos. Por eso no hay mejor guía para conocer La Habana que Leonardo Padura, el autor que mejor le ha tomado el pulso, a lo largo de diferentes épocas, en cada una de sus novelas. Este libro ofrece un paseo por los barrios de La Habana en forma de historia autobiográfica del propio novelista, que va desde Mantilla hasta los diferentes barrios de la ciudad.

¿Cómo contar la historia de uno mismo? Y, en ese ejercicio, ¿hasta qué punto se construye o se reconstruye la identidad? En este libro autobiográfico, Piedad Bonnett parte de sus vivencias para reflexionar sobre los factores que definen nuestra cotidianidad. Nos habla, con sensibilidad y lucidez, de aquello que determina la experiencia de las mujeres -la educación, el matrimonio, la maternidad, los tabúes asociados al cuerpo y la violencia de género- y también de la ansiedad, el miedo, la rebeldía, las ansias de libertad y las obsesiones que impulsan el proceso de la escritura.

Confessions by Leo Tolstoy, narrated by Gary Middleton, is a deeply introspective and philosophical work that chronicles Tolstoy’s spiritual journey and existential search for meaning. In this profound and honest memoir, Tolstoy confronts life's most difficult questions—regarding faith, purpose, and the human condition. This timeless work captures his struggle to reconcile the reality of life and death, eventually leading to a spiritual awakening.

Ernest Hemingway's passion was writing, and he was inspired by a lifetime of daring adventures and encouraged by the many women in his life. His masculine, adventurous spirit appealed to women of all ages, including four wives and a long list of legendary actresses, and he frequently transformed the women in his life into memorable fictional characters.

Herzzerreißend, mutmachend, witzig und zärtlich: ein autobiografischer Kurztext von Bestsellerautorin Sophie Kinsella Als Eve eines Morgens im Krankenhaus aufwacht, hat sie keinerlei Erinnerung, wie sie dort hingekommen ist. Ihr Mann Nick, der stets an ihrer Seite wacht, erklärt ihr, dass ihr ein bösartiger Hirntumor entfernt wurde. Von nun an muss Eve, eine gefeierte Bestsellerautorin, alles neu lernen – das Laufen, das Sprechen, das Schreiben. Und sie muss sich mit der Diagnose auseinandersetzen, womöglich nie wieder gesund zu werden.

Fern had recently entered her 60s when a series of life-altering events threw her into the eye of the storm. Both her parents passed away, her 20-year marriage ended, and the pandemic was looming. Faced with an uncertain future, Fern decided that if she wanted to start over, now was the time. In The Older I Get, join Fern as she candidly shares her experiences of grief and loss, rebuilding confidence and exploring new passions, as well as the importance of finding friends you can put the world to rights with over a couple of Cosmos.

Por primera vez, el Premio Nacional de Literatura se arroja a rescatar sus recuerdos de infancia, haciendo un emocionante e impresionante recorrido por sus primeros años de vida y la historia de su familia, dando paso también al retrato de un mundo, el de las minas salitreras en el momento de su ocaso. Cuarto hijo de una pareja evangélica, su madre se dedicaba a cocinar para los mineros y el padre trabajaba sin descanso en los trabajos más duros de las minas.

Esta biografia traça o percurso de uma personalidade única da cultura portuguesa, debruçando-se tanto sobre a sua intensa atividade criativa como sobre a sua atribulada vida privada.

Addict, thief, pimp, pusher, player—and most notably, groundbreaking writer. Donald Goines was all of these. As a kid, Donald Goines was the product of a middle-class family. After high school, he joined the Air Force—and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and he wrote of its people. Goines's success was immediate and exciting. But eventually those same streets claimed him.

While perhaps best remembered today as the beloved, iconic character Glinda the Good Witch in the 1939 film "The Wizard of Oz", Billie Burke enjoyed a long theatrical and film career in the early 20th century. Popular, red-haired comedienne Burke was the daughter of a woman possessing an indomitable spirit and a well-known circus clown from whom she took her name.

Heinrich Breloer hat mit seinem TV-Mehrteiler Die Manns unser Bild von Thomas Mann geprägt wie niemand sonst. Marcel Reich-Ranicki bezeichnete die Filme als "Glanzstück" und "Höhepunkt der deutschen Filmkunst". In Ein tadelloses Glück erzählt Breloer nun die ereignisreiche Vorgeschichte: Vom Aufstieg Thomas Manns, seiner Liebe zu Männern, seinem Werben um Katia Pringsheim und dem deutsch-jüdischen Bündnis ihrer Familien in den entscheidenden Jahren vor Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs.

"La peine de mort est le signe spécial et éternel de la barbarie". La vie, les écrits et les actes d'un des plus célèbres abolitionnistes : Victor Hugo.

Finding The Christmas Spirit And Other Essays is a collection of five critical and satirical essays by the English writer Michael Lieber. Collection Includes: Finding the Christmas Spirit, The great British Sunday roast, Lieber on Shakespeare, The Heart of Britannia and The London Riots of 2011.

Ирина Михайловна Пивоварова (1939–1986) — одна из самых лучших отечественных детских писателей. Маленькие читатели как самые чуткие, бесхитростные ценители детской книги с радостью принимают её искренний, светлый, жизнеутверждающий талант. В книгу вошла захватывающая и смешная повесть "Старичок в клетчатых брюках". Для среднего школьного возраста.

Книга записок, своего рода дневник о времени, написанный автором знаменитых гариков: "Это дневник, хотя все виденное и слышанное я пишу в него с запозданием — спохватился уже год спустя после ареста. Впрочем, нет — оправдывается вполне и в моем случае эта давняя усмешливая констатация: появилась возможность — вот он и сел писать. А что еще не выйдя на свободу — это детали, частности. Когда опомнился тогда и начал". Размышления и наблюдения Губермана о лагере, лишенном драматичных сюжетов и преувеличений.

Известный писатель, кинодраматург, мастер детективного жанра Эдуард Анатольевич Хруцкий родился и всю жизнь прожил в Москве, поэтому практически все его детективные произведения так или иначе связаны с любимым городом, в котором каждый переулок, каждая улочка и подворотня хранят свои загадки и тайны. В этой аудиокниге вас ждут воспоминания писателя о детстве и юности, проведенных им в родном городе, о важных вехах его жизни начиная с Великой отечественной войны и заканчивая серединой девяностых годов прошлого столетия.