Passionate, freethinking existentialist philosopher-writers Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre are one of the world's legendary couples. Their committed but notoriously open union generated no end of controversy in their day. Biographer Hazel Rowley offers the first dual portrait of these two colossal figures and their intense, often embattled relationship. Through original interviews and access to new primary sources, Rowley portrays Sartre and Beauvoir up close.

"Tete-a-Tete" magnificently details the passion, daring, humor, and contradictions of a remarkably unorthodox relationship.

Consistently an outsider - a child of the fundamentalist South with an eighth-grade education, a self-taught intellectual, a black man married to a white woman - Richard Wright nonetheless became the unparalleled voice of his time. The first full-scale biography of the author best known for his searing novels Black Boy and Native Son, Richard Wright: The Life and Times brings the man and his work - in all their complexity and distinction - to vibrant life. Acclaimed biographer Hazel Rowley chronicles Wright's unprecedented journey from a sharecropper's shack in Mississippi to Chicago's South Side to international renown as a writer and outspoken critic of racism.Drawing on journals, letters, and eyewitness accounts, Richard Wright probes the author's relationships with Langston Hughes and Ralph Ellison, his attraction to Communism, and his so-called exile in France. Skillfully interweaving quotes from Wright's own writings, Rowley deftly portrays a passionate, courageous, and flawed man who would become one of our most enduring literary figures.

This new edition of Hazel Rowley's highly acclaimed biography of Christina Stead brings to life one of the most important literary figures of her age. Christina Stead left Australia in 1928, aged twenty-six, for Europe, not to return to Australia until she was seventy-two. An intensely private person, Stead lived a life that was stormy, eccentric and brave. Stead's fiction was large and passionate, original and challenging, as was her life. Hazel Rowley's compelling biography is a vigorous, penetrating and sympathetic chronicle of Stead's life and times.

Franklin Delano and Eleanor Roosevelt's marriage is one of the most celebrated and scrutinized partnerships in presidential history. It raised eyebrows in their lifetimes and has only become more controversial since their deaths. From FDR's lifelong romance with Lucy Mercer to Eleanor's purported lesbianism - and many scandals in between - the American public has never tired of speculating about the ties that bound these two headstrong individuals. Some claim that Eleanor sacrificed her personal happiness to accommodate FDR's needs; others claim that the marriage was nothing more than a gracious facade for political convenience. No one has told the full story until now. Franklin, especially, knew what he owed to Eleanor, who was not so much behind the scenes as heavily engaged in them. Their relationship was the product of FDR and Eleanor's conscious efforts - a partnership that they created according to their own ambitions and needs. In this dramatic and vivid narrative, set against the great upheavals of the Depression and World War II, Rowley paints a portrait of a tender lifelong companionship, born of mutual admiration and compassion.