The Fragrance of the Guava

Conversations with Kafka

Gustav Janouch

Tolkien: Man and Myth, a Literary Life

Joseph Pearce · 242 pages

J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings took first place in a recent national poll to find the greatest book of the century. He may be the most popular writer of our age, but Tolkien is often misunderstood. This major new study of his life, his character and his work reveals the facts and confronts the myths. It explores the background to the man and the culture in which he wrote. Tolkien: Man and

My Life in Middlemarch

Rebecca Mead · 293 pages

"A New Yorker writer revisits the seminal book of her youth--Middlemarch-- and fashions a singular, involving story of how a passionate attachment to a great work of literature can shape our lives and help us to read our own histories."--From publisher description. "Rebecca Mead was a young woman in an English coastal town when she first read George Eliot's Middlemarch, regarded by many as the gr

The Life of Charlotte Brontë

Elizabeth Gaskell · 448 pages

Intertwining fact and story, The Life of Charlotte Bronte takes the reader by one hand and Charlotte Bronte by the other to run rampant through the making of one of the greatest authoresses of all time. Follow Charlotte from her birthplace of Thornton as she sets off for school and later returns to teach her sisters, and come to know the “characteristic kindness of the Brontes.” This unsentimental

Virginia Woolf: A Biography

Quentin Bell · 314 pages

The Brontës: Wild Genius on the Moors: The Story of Three Sisters

Juliet Barker · 1,158 pages

A history of the Brontë family is based on years of research and correspondence by each family member, challenging traditionally accepted portraits of the patriarchal Patrick and revealing Charlotte's ruthless nature.

The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Anita Thompson · 112 pages

"In The Gonzo Way, Anita Thompson explores the legacy of her late husband and shares insights from his unique approach to writing, politics, and life. She pays tribute to him through her own words and through interviews with those who knew him best, including. Tom Wolfe, George McGovern, and Douglas Brinkley. With elegant prose and entertaining anecdotes, she reveals a Hunter S. Thompson who was m

Jane Austen: A Life

Carol Shields · 188 pages

With the same sensitivity and artfulness that are the trademarks of her award-winning novels, Carol Shields explores the life of a writer whose own novels have engaged and delighted readers for the past two hundred years. In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relat

The Private World of Georgette Heyer

Jane Aiken Hodge · 222 pages

The classic biography of Georgette Heyer is, finally, back in print and will delight Heyer fans everywhere. She wrote more than fifty novels, yet her private life was inaccessible to any but her nearest friends and relatives. Lavishly illustrated, and with extracts from her correspondence and references to her work, The Private World reveals a formidable and energetic woman with an impeccable s

Conversations With Capote

Lawrence Grobel · 244 pages

Hemingway in Love: His Own Story

A.E. Hotchner · 182 pages

"In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade. Hemingway divulged the details of the affair that des

Her Husband: Hughes and Plath - A Marriage

Diane Wood Middlebrook · 372 pages

Hemingway's Boat: Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, 1934-1961

Paul Hendrickson · 532 pages

Paul Hendrickson has delved into the life of Ernest Hemingway and done the seemingly impossible: present him to us in a whole new light. With poetic sensibility, tireless research, and dazzling writing, Hendrickson focuses on the period from 1934 to 1961, from the pinnacle of Hemingway's fame to his suicide.

Genet

Edmund White · 800 pages

A meticulously researched biography of Jean Genet, one of France's most notorious writers. Acclaimed novelist and essayist Edmund White illuminates Genet's experiences in the worlds of crime, homosexuality, politics, and high culture, and gives a compelling analysis of Genet's plays, novels, and essays. Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography.

Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi

Dean Faulkner Wells · 271 pages

In this book the author recounts the story of the Faulkners of Mississippi, whose legacy includes pioneers, noble and ignoble war veterans, three never convicted murderers, the builder of the first railroad in north Mississippi, the founding president of a bank, an FBI agent, four pilots (all brothers), and a Nobel prize winner arguably the most important American novelist of the twentieth century

Charlotte Brontë: A Fiery Heart

Claire Harman · 472 pages

"A groundbreaking biography that places an obsessive, unrequited love at the heart of the writer's life story, transforming her from the tragic figure we have previously known into a smoldering Jane Eyre. Famed for her beloved novels, Charlotte Brontë has been known as well for her insular, tragic family life. The genius of this biography is that it delves behind this image to reveal a life in whi

The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane

William Holtz · 448 pages

Literary Outlaw: The Life and Times of William S. Burroughs

Ted Morgan, William S. Burroughs · 659 pages

Describes the life of Burroughs, a renegade author who killed his wife, had his books banned, was educated at Harvard, came from an upper-middle-class family and lived his life as a gay man and heroin addict.

Rough Magic: A Biography of Sylvia Plath

Paul Alexander · 424 pages

Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor

Brad Gooch · 448 pages

The landscape of American literature was fundamentally changed when Flannery O'Connor stepped onto the scene with her first published book, Wise Blood, in 1952. Her fierce, sometimes comic novels and stories reflected the darkly funny, vibrant, and theologically sophisticated woman who wrote them. Brad Gooch brings to life O'Connor's significant friendships--with Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Hardwick,

J.D. Salinger: A Life

Kenneth Slawenski · 457 pages

One of the most popular and mysterious figures in American literary history, J.D. Salinger eluded fans and journalists for most of his life. Now comes a new biography. Filled with new information and revelations garnered from countless interviews, letters, and public records, this work presents his extraordinary life that spanned nearly the entire twentieth century. Kenneth Slawenski explores Sali

The Talented Miss Highsmith: The Secret Life and Serious Art of Patricia Highsmith

Joan Schenkar · 704 pages

Patricia Highsmith, one of the great writers of 20th Century American fiction, had a life as darkly compelling as that of her favorite "hero-criminal," talented Tom Ripley. In this revolutionary biography, Joan Schenkar paints a riveting portrait, from Highsmith's birth in Texas to Hitchcock's filming of her first novel, Strangers On a Train, to her long, strange, self-exile in Europe. We see he

Daughter Of Earth And Water: A Biography Of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Noel Bertram Gerson

Byron in Love

Edna O'Brien · 228 pages

Biographer Edna O'Brien has written an intimate biography that suits her fiery and charismatic subject. She follows Byron from the dissipations of Regency London to the wilds of Albania and the Socratic pleasures of Greece and Turkey, culminating in his meteoric rise to fame at the age of 24 on the publication of Childe Harold. With her prismatic eye and novelistic style, O'Brien captures the spir