Walden is one of the best-known non-fiction books ever written by an American. It details Thoreau's sojourn in a cabin near Walden Pond, amidst woodland owned by his friend and mentor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Walden was written with expressed seasonal divisions. Thoreau hoped to isolate himself from society in order to gain a more objective understanding of it. Simplicity and self-reliance were Thoreau's other goals, and the whole project was inspired by Transcendentalist philosophy. This book is full of fascinating musings and reflections. As pertinent and relevant today as it was when it was first written.

I have been a fan of the Sherlock Holmes tales since I was given The Long Stories and The Short Stories in 1961. So when I retired twelve years ago I decided that I would compile a book on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. The majority of the content is taken from newspaper and magazine articles from 1998-2011 and some book forewords, the greater part containing information which I had never seen or read before.

From the celebrated author of Square Haunting comes a biography as unconventional and surprising as the life it tells.

'Think of the Bible and Homer, think of Shakespeare and think of me,' wrote Gertrude Stein in 1936. Admirers called her a genius, sceptics a charlatan: she remains one of the most confounding - and contested - writers of the twentieth century.

In this literary detective story, Francesca Wade delves into the creation of the Stein myth. We see her posing for Picasso's portrait; at the centre of Bohemian Parisian life hosting the likes of Matisse and Hemingway; racing through the French countryside with her enigmatic companion Alice B. Toklas; dazzling American crowds on her sell-out tour for her sensational Autobiography - a veritable celebrity.

Yet Stein hoped to be remembered not for her personality but for her work. From her deathbed, she charged her partner with securing her place in literary history. How would her legend shift once it was Toklas's turn to tell the stories - especially when uncomfortable aspects of their past emerged from the archive? Using astonishing never-before-seen material, Wade uncovers the origins of Stein's radical writing, and reveals new depths to the storied relationship which made it possible.

This is Gertrude Stein as she was when nobody was watching: captivating, complex and human.

Edmund Curll was a notorious figure among the publishers of the early eighteenth century: for his boldness, his lack of scruple, his publication of work without author's consent, and his taste for erotic and scandalous publications. He was in legal trouble on several occasions for piracy and copyright infringement, unauthorized publication of the works of peers, and for seditious, blasphemous, and obscene publications. He stood in the pillory in 1728 for seditious libel. Above all, he was the constant target of the greatest poet and satirist of his age, Alexander Pope, whose work he pirated whenever he could and who responded with direct physical revenge (an emetic slipped into a drink) and persistent malign caricature. The war between Pope and Curll typifies some of the main cultural battles being waged between creativity and business. The story has normally been told from the poet's point of view, though more recently Curll has been celebrated as a kind of literary freedom-fighter; this book, the first full biography of Curll since Ralph Straus's The Unspeakable Curll (1927), seeks to give a balanced and thoroughly-researched account of Curll's career in publishing between 1706 and 1747, untangling the mistakes and misrepresentations that have accrued over the years and restoring a clear sense of perspective to Curll's dealings in the literary marketplace. It examines the full range of Curll's output, including his notable antiquarian series, and uses extensive archive material to detail Curll's legal and other troubles. For the first time, what is known about this strange, interesting, and awkward figure is authoritatively told.

Here at last in paperback is Frank McCourt's critically acclaimed and bestselling book about how his thirty-year teaching career shaped his second act as a writer. "Teacher Man" is also an urgent tribute to teachers everywhere. In bold and spirited prose featuring his irreverent wit and heartbreaking honesty, McCourt records the trials, triumphs and surprises of teaching in public high schools. "Teacher Man" shows McCourt developing his unparalleled ability to tell a great story as, five days a week, five periods per day, he works to gain the attention and respect of unruly, hormonally charged or indifferent adolescents.

For McCourt, storytelling itself is the source of salvation, and in "Teacher Man" the journey to redemption--and literary fame--is an exhilarating adventure.

Drawing on private and published sources, Roger Fagge takes an in-depth look at J.B. Priestley's work, seeking to reclaim him as an important English thinker. Priestley grew up in Bradford, and served on the front line in the First World War, before attending Cambridge and embarking on a career as a writer. A committed radical, he wrote widely for the press, as well as producing autobiographies, social criticism and plays. This work revealed a growing interest in the meaning of Englishness and the start of a long-running relationship with America. Priestley achieved even greater influence during the early years of World War II via his popular BBC radio 'postscripts'. His later career, however, saw his faith in the people give way to a disillusionment with the spread of the Americanised mass society, although his critical response to the latter maintained a perceptive engagement with world. The Vision of J.B. Priestley charts the continuities, strengths and weaknesses in the author's long career, and his vision of an outward looking radical Englishness.

In The Identities of Catherine de' Medici, Susan Broomhall provides an innovative analysis of the representational strategies that constructed Catherine de' Medici and sought to explain her behaviour and motivations. Through her detailed exploration of the identities that the queen, her allies, supporters, and clients sought to project, and how contemporaries responded to them, Broomhall establishes a new vision of this important sixteenth-century protagonist, a clearer understanding of the dialogic and dynamic nature of identity construction and reception, and its consequences for Catherine de' Medici's legacy, memory, and historiography.

Now in paperback, a “refreshing. . . . accessible, engaging, and genuinely hilarious” (Buzzfeed) series of essays―part memoir, part manifesto―that explore coming-of-age and coming out as bisexual while moving toward embracing and celebrating sex without shame

As a boy, Zachary Zane sensed that all was not right when images of his therapist naked popped into his head. He sometimes imagined other people naked, too, and without an explanation why, a deep sense of shame pervaded these thoughts. Though his therapist assured him a little imagination was nothing to be ashamed of, over the years, society told him otherwise.

Boyslut is a memoir-manifesto in which Zane articulates that, even today, we live in a world that shames people for the sex that they have and the sexualities that they inhabit. Through the lens of his bisexuality and much self-described sluttiness, Zane breaks down exactly how this sexual shame negatively impacts the sex and relationships in our lives, and through personal experience, shares how we can unlearn the harmful, entrenched messages that society imparts to us.

From stories of play sessions with a neighbor at age six to the first explorations of Zane’s bisexuality in college, as well as sex-dungeon parties, orgies, and fun with butt plugs, Boyslutis reassuring and often painfully funny, and most potently, it is a testimony that we can all learn to live healthier lives unburdened by stigma.

A citizen in The Galacterian Alignment of Space Peoples and Planets, Thyron is an ExtraTerrestrial Titan with a highly evolved soul, but born with a duality disorder. In this parable of the soul's journey towards perfection and rebirth, Thyron must merge his Light and Dark to evolve into a Being spiritually strong enough to lead others towards the Light. Archangel Michael, the Universal Sovereign, orders him into The Shadow Chamber, to force him to look deep into the Darkness within himself. Once he has conquered his own Shadow Self, Michael sends Thyron to meet with the imprisoned Rebel Archangel Lucifer to take down his statement before his Tribunal. What happens next in Thyron's story will leave you wondering not only about your very own existence, but what's secretly happening on Earth right now. It's time to finally reveal the secrets hidden inside the vaults of Universal Magic. Get ready Star Trek and Star Wars fans for the next phase of entertainment, for you are about to meet the extraterrestrials--your cosmic family "Speaking not only as an author, but an avid reader, I haven't had any book hold my attention like Craig's book has. If you liked or loved Avatar, you'll be ecstatic about this book. I can also see this as a great movie. Kudos to you, Craig, for this marvelous book and good luck with its success, although we don't need luck when something is great and this is." -From Foreword by Sylvia Browne www.AutobiographyOfAnET.com

In this book John Radner examines the fluctuating, close, and complex friendship enjoyed by Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, from the day they met in 1763 to the day when Boswell published his monumental Life of Johnson. Drawing on everything Johnson and Boswell wrote to and about the other, this book charts the psychological currents that flowed between them as they scripted and directed their time together, questioned and advised, confided and held back. It explores the key longings and shifting tensions that distinguished this from each man's other long-term friendships, while it tracks in detail how Johnson and Boswell brought each other to life, challenged and confirmed each other, and used their deepening friendship to define and assess themselves. It tells a story that reaches through its specificity into the dynamics of most sustained friendships, with their breaks and reconnections, their silences and fresh intimacies, their continuities and transformations.

Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) was an English writer, physician, and philosopher whose work has inspired everyone from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf to Stephen Jay Gould. In an intellectual adventure like Sarah Bakewell's book about Montaigne, How to Live, Hugh Aldersey-Williams sets off not just to tell the story of Browne's life but to champion his skeptical nature and inquiring mind. Mixing botany, etymology, medicine, and literary history, Aldersey-Williams journeys in his hero's footsteps to introduce us to witches, zealots, natural wonders, and fabulous creatures of Browne's time and ours. We meet Browne the master prose stylist, responsible for introducing hundreds of words into English, including electricity, hallucination, and suicide. Aldersey-Williams reveals how Browne's preoccupations-how to disabuse the credulous of their foolish beliefs, what to make of order in nature, how to unite science and religion-are relevant today. In Search of Sir Thomas Browne is more than just a biography-it is a cabinet of wonders and an argument that Browne, standing at the very gates of modern science, remains an inquiring mind for our own time. As Stephen Greenblatt has written, Browne is "unnervingly one of our most adventurous contemporaries."

How could William Shaksper of Stratford, who was illiterate, be the author of plays that have dazzled the world for centuries? Answer: he wasn't. His authorship is a remarkably successful hoax.

It was not until 1920 that J. Thomas Looney plucked Edward de Vere out of historical obscurity and introduced him as the real Shakespeare. In the next fifty years, powerful articles and books validated his authorship claim but much of this evidence has been neglected.

The first five volumes of this book series salvage this early research which makes Edward de Vere by far the likeliest candidate for being the great playwright, William Shakespeare.

In Volume One, you'll learn:

● Why Shakespeare's breadth of knowledge and intimate familiarity with England's Royal Court exclude Shaksper of Stratford as the true Bard;
● Why Francis Bacon is an unlikely Shakespeare authorship candidate;
● Why Edward de Vere fulfills all criteria to be the great playwright;
● And much more

Stop blindly accepting what the textbooks say. Take a logical, analytical approach to one of history's most important questions. Start Building the Case for Edward de Vere as Shakespeare with Volume 1: The Great Shakespeare Hoax.

A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life, and his father’s dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny.

On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all. Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.

Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive.

My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.