The Diary of Losing Dad is the true story of a heartbroken woman trying to keep it together, and an intimate insight into what it is like to slowly, painfully lose someone you love. Actor and writer Emily Bevan recalls the surreal months leading up to her father's untimely death, during which she was filming a zombie series for television. Told from the perspective of a family who are stress-eating Percy Pigs, scrabbling around for change for the parking machine, and breaking down in the chemist because the pharmacist won't sell them two packets of cream, this moving account is interspersed with diary entries, poems and her daily scribblings. Here Emily renders scenes of hospital life - both devastating and life-affirming - together with anecdotes of her family rallying around this much-loved man, and the poignant memories of his constant and enduring presence. The book looks at how we each have our own unique response to tragedy: we all know that we are going to have to face death, yet we are so ill-equipped to deal with it.

From the editor of the celebrated anthology "Goodbye to All That"" Writers on Loving and Leaving New York," comes a new collection of original essays on what keeps writers tethered to New York City.
The "charming" ("The New York Times") first anthology" Goodbye to All That"--inspired by Joan Didion's classic essay about loving and leaving Manhattan--chronicled the difficulties and disappointments inherent in loving New York, while "Never Can Say Goodbye" is a celebration of the city that never sleeps, in the tradition of E.B. White's classic essay, "Here Is New York."
Featuring contributions from such luminaries as Elizabeth Gilbert, Susan Orlean, Nick Flynn, Adelle Waldman, Phillip Lopate, Owen King, Amy Sohn, and many others, this collection of essays is a must-have for every lover of New York--regardless of whether or not you call the Big Apple home.

'It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself' Wilde's celebrated witticisms on the dangers of sincerity, duplicitous biographers, the stupidity of the English - and his own genius. One of 46 new books in the bestselling Little Black Classics series, to celebrate the first ever Penguin Classic in 1946. Each book gives readers a taste of the Classics' huge range and diversity, with works from around the world and across the centuries - including fables, decadence, heartbreak, tall tales, satire, ghosts, battles and elephants.

April 2020: the country is deep in the first lockdown as a result of coronavirus. Young people are left rootless, without school or friends and isolated at home. In this enforced alienation a creative writing competition, 'Generation Lockdown Writes', was launched for young people from the ages of seven to 17. The only rule was that submissions to the competition had to provide an insight into what life was like for them in lockdown - to open up windows of homes and experiences across the UK. Some of Britain's finest authors for young people stepped in to judge the ten individual categories, and the entries flooded in. 'Generation Lockdown Writes' is the stunning final collection of the winning entries, chosen from over six thousand entries. The beautiful and varied pieces provide a unique insight into what life was really like for young people during this historical moment across Britain. We enter many different worlds, and are given a remarkable insight into the range of emotions that young people felt. From moments of fear to joy, this is a collection of writing that will linger in the memory for a long time. Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to BookTrust.

Kojo Baffoe embodies what it is to be a contemporary African man. Of Ghanaian and German heritage, he was raised in Lesotho and moved to South Africa at the age of 27. Forever curious, Kojo has the enviable ability to simultaneously experience moments intimately and engage people (and their views) sincerely, while remaining detached enough to think through his experiences critically. He has earned a reputation as a thinker, someone who lives outside the box and free of the labels that society seeks to place on us.

Listen to Your Footsteps is an honest and, at times, raw collection of essays from a son, a father, a husband, a brother and a man deeply committed to doing the internal work. Kojo reflects on losing his mother as a toddler, being raised by his father, forming an identity, living as an immigrant, his tussles with substance abuse, as well as his experiences of fatherhood, marriage and making a career in a fickle industry. He gives an extended glimpse into the experiences that make boys become men, and the battles that make men discover what they are made of, all the while questioning what it means to be ‘a man’.

Charles D'Ambrosio's essay collection "Orphans" spawned something of a cult following. In the decade since the tiny limited-edition volume sold out its print run, its devotees have pressed it upon their friends, students, and colleagues, only to find themselves begging for their copy's safe return. For anyone familiar with D'Ambrosio's writing, this enthusiasm should come as no surprise. His work is exacting and emotionally generous, often as funny as it is devastating. "Loitering" gathers those eleven original essays with new and previously uncollected work so that a broader audience might discover one of our great living essayists. No matter his subject -- Native American whaling, a Pentecostal "hell house," Mary Kay Letourneau, the work of J. D. Salinger, or, most often, his own family -- D'Ambrosio approaches each piece with a singular voice and point of view; each essay, while unique and surprising, is unmistakably his own.

The essays collected in Samuel Johnson Among the Modernists frame this major writer in an unfamiliar milieu and company: high modernism and its aftermath. By bringing Johnson to bear on the various authors and topics gathered here, the book foregrounds some aspects of modernism and its practitioners that would otherwise remain hidden and elusive, even as it sheds new light on Johnson. Writers discussed include T. S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Ezra Pound, Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov. Chapter contributors include major scholars in their field, including Melvyn New, Jack Lynch, Thomas M. Curley, Greg Clingham and Clement Hawes. These ground-breaking essays offer a vital and exciting interrogation of Modernism from a wholly fresh perspective.

In the 1970s and 1980s, before he earned national acclaim for his award-winning novels, Pete Dexter was a newspaper columnist. Every week, in a few hundred words, Dexter cut directly to the heart of the American character at a time of national turmoil and crucial change. With haunting urgency, his columns laid bare the violence, hypocrisy, and desperation he saw on the streets of Philadelphia and in the places he visited across the country. But he reveled, too, in the lighter side of his own life, sharing scenes with the indefatigable Mrs. Dexter, their young daughter, and a series of unforgettable creatures who strayed into their lives. No matter what caught Dexter's eye, it was illuminated by his dark, brilliant humor.

Collected here for the first time are eighty-two of the best of those spellbinding, finely wrought pieces-- with a new introduction by the author-- assembled by Rob Fleder, editor of the bestselling "Sports Illustrated 50th Anniversary Book," "Paper Trails" is searing, heart-breaking, and irresistibly funny, sometimes all at once. As Pete Hamill says in his foreword, these essays "are as good as it ever gets."

For the first time, the speeches of His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales are being made available in a two-volume set in a collaborative effort by the University of Wales and the University of Maryland. Professors Suheil Bushrui and David Cadman have brought together a selection of speeches and articles by The Prince of Wales covering a period of over forty years, gathered together under headings that cover his principal interests and activities: the natural environment, expressed both as farming, forestry and fisheries, and then as climate change; architecture and the built environment; integrated medicine and health; society, religion and tradition; education, The Prince's Trust and Business in the Community. These volumes, intended as a work of reference, show The Prince of Wales as his ideas, knowledge and experience develop, from his first speech at the age of twenty in 1968 to his more recent speeches in 2012. What is most noteworthy, however, is that though the style of the speeches and articles have changed over the years, the overall message has remained consistent - not only in terms of environmental degradation and climate change, but also in matters relating to healthcare, urban form, organic farming and the need for greater respect and understanding between religions - all of which speaks volumes for The Prince's passion for and commitment to what he believes, even in times when his ideas were unconventional.

An absorbing, original, and ambitious work of reportage from the acclaimed New Yorker correspondent

During the past decade, Peter Hessler has persistently illuminated worlds both foreign and familiar--ranging from China, where he served as The New Yorker's correspondent from 2000 to 2007, to southwestern Colorado, where he lived for four years. Strange Stones is an engaging, thought-provoking collection of Hessler's best pieces, showcasing his range as a storyteller and his gift for writing as both native and knowledgeable outsider. From a taste test between two rat restaurants in South China to a profile of Yao Ming to the moving story of a small-town pharmacist, these pieces are bound by subtle but meaningful ideas: the strength of local traditions, the surprising overlap between cultures, and the powerful lessons drawn from individuals who straddle different worlds.

Full of unforgettable figures and an unrelenting spirit of adventure, Strange Stones is a dazzling display of the powerful storytelling, shrewd cultural insight, and warm sense of humor that are the trademarks of Peter Hessler's work.