Shortlisted for the 2022 Plutarch Award A Washington Post 2021 Non-Fiction Book of the Year New York Times Review of Books Editors' Choice Non-Fiction Title Longlisted for the 2022 PEN / Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography A Sunday Times Best Paperback of 2022 'Brilliant, heart-stopping ... reads like a thriller, a memoir and a provocative piece of literary fiction all at the same time ... magical and compelling' Washington Post 'How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,' Elizabeth Barrett Browning famously wrote, shortly before defying her family by running away to Italy with Robert Browning. But behind the romance of her extraordinary life stands a thoroughly modern figure, who remains an electrifying study in self-invention. Elizabeth was born in 1806, a time when women could neither attend university nor vote, and yet she achieved lasting literary fame. She remains Britain's greatest woman poet, whose work has inspired writers from Emily Dickinson to George Eliot and Virginia Woolf. This vividly written biography, the first full study for over thirty years, incorporates recent archival discoveries to reveal the woman herself: a literary giant and a high-profile activist for the abolition of slavery who believed herself to be of mixed heritage; and a writer who defied chronic illness and long-term disability to change the course of cultural history. It holds up a mirror to the woman, her art - and the art of biography itself.

To be a bookseller or librarian . . .

You have to play detective.

Be a treasure hunter. A matchmaker. A brilliant listener.

A person who creates a kind of magic by pulling a book from a shelf, handing it to someone and saying, 'You've got to read this. You're going to love it'.

In this love letter to the heroes of literacy, James Patterson uncovers true stories from booksellers and librarians. Prepare to enter a world where you can feed your curiosities, discover new voices, and find whatever you need.

Meet the smart and talented people who live between the shelves - and who can't wait to help you find your next great read.

John Updike's Early Years first examines his family, then places him in the context of the Depression and World War II. Relying upon interviews with former classmates, the next chapters examine Updike's early life and leisure activities, his athletic ability, social leadership, intellectual prowess, comical pranks, and his experience with girls. Two chapters explore Updike's cartooning and drawing, and the last chapter explains how he modeled his characters on his schoolmates. Lists of Updike's works treating Pennsylvania, and a compilation of contributions to his school paper are included, along with profiles of all students, faculty and administrators during his years at Shillington High School.

Spanning her entire life, the fully annotated selections in this volume include well known recollections of the great Victorian novelist plus a large assortment not found in her biographies. Altogether they provide a fresh, vivid, and sometimes startling portrait of a controversial genius.

Here is the essential reference for fans of Elisabeth Ogilvie's books -- and a wonderful introduction to one of Maine's most prolific writers.

"At the heart of this 'Literary Life' are fresh interpretations of Keats's most loved poems, alongside other neglected but rich poems. The readings are placed in the contexts of his letters to family and friends, his medical training, radical politics of the time, his love for Fanny Brawne, his coterie of literary figures and his tragic early death" --

Joy Davidman is known, if she is known at all, as the wife of C. S. Lewis. Their marriage was immortalized in the film Shadowlands and Lewis's memoir, A Grief Observed. Now, through extraordinary new documents as well as years of research and interviews, Abigail Santamaria brings Joy Davidman Gresham Lewis to the page in the fullness and depth she deserves. A poet and radical, Davidman was a frequent contributor to the communist vehicle New Masses and an active member of New York literary circles in the 1930s and 40s. After growing up Jewish in the Bronx, she was an atheist, then a practitioner of Dianetics; she converted to Christianity after experiencing a moment of transcendent grace. A mother, a novelist, a vibrant and difficult and intelligent woman, she set off for England in 1952, determined to captivate the man whose work had changed her life. Davidman became the intellectual and spiritual partner Lewis never expected but cherished. She helped him refine his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, and to write his novel Till We Have Faces. Their relationship-begun when Joy wrote to Lewis as a religious guide-grew from a dialogue about faith, writing, and poetry into a deep friendship and a timeless love story.

Longtime fans of Rich's writing will welcome this engaging and thoughtful biography of her life. There is also a wonderful section that includes many of Rich's essays and stories -- which were published in magazines but never appeared in book form -- as well as excerpts from her journal and letters.

In the late 1890s, Vartanoosh Tarzian escapes with her parents from Turkish massacres in their province of Erzeroum, Armenia, to Beirut, the little girl and her brother riding in saddlebags on a camel. Left in Syria in the care of a bachelor uncle while her mother emigrates to America and her father travels to England for medical treatment, she finally rejoins her mother in New York City in 1903. Vartanoosh is placed in The Sheltering Arms, an Episcopal home for "half-orphans" in what is now Harlem, where she learns to speak, write and read English and is taught American customs and hygiene. Returning to her parents' home, she comes to know Thomas Alva Edison while working in their tailor shop in Orange, New Jersey. Although her dream is to become a nurse, her parents insist that she marry, which she does in 1913, shepherding her family of six children through two World Wars and the Depression. "VARTANOOSH" is the true story of a remarkable, independent woman, told amidst a rich tapestry of Armenian customs and life in Armenia and America.

This long-awaited biography provides a fascinating and comprehensive picture of Garcia Marquez's life up to the publication of his classic "100 Years of Solitude." Based on nearly a decade of research, this biographical study sheds new light on the life and works of the Nobel Laureate, father of magical realism, and bestselling author in the history of the Spanish language. As Garcia Marquez's impact endures on well into his ninth decade, Stavans's keen insights constitute the definitive re-appraisal of the literary giant's life and corpus. The later part of his life will be covered in a second book.

From the acclaimed author of Foreskin's Lament, a memoir of the author's attempt to escape the biblical story he'd been raised on and his struggle to construct a new story for himself and his family.

Shalom Auslander was raised like a veal in a dysfunctional family in the Orthodox community of Monsey, New York: the son of an alcoholic father; a guilt-wielding mother; and a violent, overbearing God. Now, as he reaches middle age, Auslander begins to suspect that what plagues him is something worse, something he can't so easily escape: a story. The story. One indelibly implanted in him at an early age, a story that told him he is fallen, broken, shameful, disgusting, a story we have all been told for thousands of years, and continue to be told by the religious and secular alike, a story called "Feh."

Yiddish for "Yuck."

FEH follows Auslander's midlife journey to rewrite that story, a journey that involves Phillip Seymour Hoffman, a Pulitzer-winning poet, Job, Arthur Schopenhauer, GHB, Wolf Blitzer, Yuval Noah Harari, and a pastor named Steve in a now-defunct church in Los Angeles.

Can he move from feh to merely meh? Can he even dream of moving beyond that? Auslander's recounting of his attempt to exorcize the story he was raised with-before he implants it onto his children and/or possibly poisons the relationship of the one woman who loves him-isn't sacred. It is more-than-occasionally profane. And like all his work, it is also relentlessly funny, subversively heartfelt, and fearlessly provocative.

The title of this book, Derivative Lives, alludes to the challenge of finding one's way within the contemporary market of virtually limitless information and claims to veracity. Amid this profusion of options, it is easy to feel lost in spaces of uncertainty where biographical truth teeters between the real and the imaginative. The title thus also points to the prolific market of biographical novels that openly and intentionally play in the speculative space between the real and the fictional. Drawing on theories of risk and uncertainty, Derivative Lives considers the surge in biofiction in Spain and globally, relating literary expression to concepts such as circumstantiality, derivatives, speculation, and game studies.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) lived a richly imaginative life that he expressed in his poems. The Whole Harmonium presents Stevens within the living context of his times and as the creator of a poetry that continues to shape how we understand and define ourselves. A lawyer who rose to become an insurance-company vice president, Stevens composed brilliant poems on long walks to work and at other stolen moments. His first book of poems, Harmonium, published when he was forty-four, drew on his profound understanding of Modernism to create a distinctive and inimitable American idiom. Over time he became acquainted with peers such as Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams, but his personal style remained unique. The complexity of Stevens's poetry rests on emotional, philosophical, and linguistic tensions that thread their way intricately through his poems. And while he can be challenging to understand, Stevens has proven time and again to be one of the most richly rewarding poets to read.

Jane Austen is one of the most extensively read writers in English literature, renowned around the world for her much-loved romantic novels. Little is often known about this brilliant author, yet in this absorbing collection of stories and trivia readers will find answers to the amazing and extraordinary aspects of Austen's life, work and legacy. From her development as a world-class author from unassuming origins and the secrets of her own life and loves, through insights into her novels and their characters along with the changing reception to them over the years, to intriguing stories behind the screen and stage adaptations of her works and her continued legacy, there is something for every enthusiast to relish. This authoritative and absorbing book is published to coincide with the 200th Anniversary of Austen's death in 2017.

Katherine Mansfield is New Zealands most famous author and was arguably the finest short-story writer of her day. This chronology provides a synopsis of her first years in New Zealand and then England and, from 1906, a more detailed account of her last months in her native country, her coming to Europe, meeting Middleton Murry, publishing her stories and finally (before her death at the age of 34) desperately seeeking a cure for her tuberculosis as she continued to write.

This is an imaginative work of literary criticism. Thirteen scholars have selected a wide variety of Joseph Brodsky's poems written between 1970 and 1994 for detailed discussion in the context of his whole output. The choice of poems reflects Brodsky's diversity of themes and devices. Together they offer a perspective on one of the most original and profound modern poets. This collection should fulfil the often-expressed need for a comprehensive approach to the study of Brodsky's poetry, which is linguistically as well as intellectually demanding.

"Island Dreams" is a true story of the wonders of British Columbia's northern Gulf Islands. Swimming in the middle of the Strait of Georgia, these enchanting isles are serenaded by whales and surrounded by crushing depths; caressed by languorous calms and brutalized by terrifying storms.

"Island Dreams" tells of one family's move to Olsen Island, one of the uninhabited gems nestled close by the isle of Lasqueti. Their story tacks through the wild beauty of these islands and dives on glass sponge reefs shimmering in the surrounding depths. It's an exploration of earthquake faults deep below Vancouver Island and the birth of Qualicum winds.

"Island Dreams" also chronicles the natural and anthropological history of the islands-their formation, the glaciers that scoured them, and the first plants and animals that appeared there. It follows the first migrating Asians who skiffed down the coast, and explores the First Nations villages their ancestors founded. The robust cast of characters includes Sisters Islands light keepers and depression-era fishermen who beach-combed lumber for their island fishing shacks.

"Island Dreams" is also a tale of Lasqueti Island, held out of time by the special folks who make it their home. It is a story of islanders, and of the wind and waves that forge them into believers in the redemptive power of a wild environment.