Showing results by publisher "-emdashery books-" in Art & Literature

Simon Russell Beale is one of Britain's most recognisable and well-loved actors. He has played many roles on stage, film, television and radio - ranging from Winston Churchill to Stalin, George Smiley to King Arthur. But ever since his appearance at school as a glamorous Desdemona, complete with false eyelashes that rendered him half-blind, he has been captivated by Shakespeare.

Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, forsaking new purchases in order to get to know her own collection again. A book which is left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing, but it is also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life.

The Memoir of my Aunt, Jane Austen, has been received with more favor than I had ventured to expect.

The first full-length biography of the Nobel laureate to appear in a quarter century, Mad at the World illuminates what has made the work of John Steinbeck an enduring part of the literary canon: his capacity for empathy. Angered by the plight of the Dust Bowl migrants who were starving even as they toiled to harvest California's limitless bounty and appalled by the country's refusal to recognize the humanity common to all of its citizens, Steinbeck took a stand against social injustice - paradoxically given his inherent misanthropy.

Hisham Matar was 19 when his father was kidnapped and taken to prison in Libya. He would never see him again. Twenty-two years later, after the fall of Gaddafi, Hisham was finally able to return to his homeland for the first time. In this heartbreaking, illuminating memoir, he describes his return to a country and a family he thought he would never see again. The Return is at once a universal and an intensely personal tale of loss. It is an exquisite meditation on history, politics and art.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of Mark Twain's 5 most inventive and humorous travel monologues.

Alessandro Barbero segue Dante nella sua adolescenza di figlio d'un usuraio che sogna di appartenere al mondo dei nobili e dei letterati; nei corridoi oscuri della politica, dove gli ideali si infrangono davanti alla realtà meschina degli odi di partito e della corruzione dilagante; nei vagabondaggi dell'esiliato che scopre l'incredibile varietà dell'Italia del Trecento, fra metropoli commerciali e corti cavalleresche.

On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready" - and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home" (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson's life through 10 decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet.

What does it mean to mourn today, in a culture that has largely set aside rituals that acknowledge grief? After her mother died of cancer at the age of 55, Meghan O'Rourke found that nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her sorrow. In the first anguished days, she began to create a record of her interior life as a mourner, trying to capture the paradox of grief - an endeavor that ultimately bloomed into a profound look at how caring for her mother during her illness changed and strengthened their bond.

An insightful exploration that unveils the lesser-known dimensions of this legendary writer and her legacy, revealing the cultural icon’s profound impact as a visionary editor who helped define an important period in American publishing and literature.

Picoult, born in New York, has published more than 26 novels and short stories, not including the several issues of Wonder Woman she wrote for DC Comics. Picoult has 40 million copies of her books in print, and they have been translated into 34 languages - to say she is a prolific writer would be an understatement, and she was awarded the New England Bookseller Award for fiction in 2003.

When Roxana Robinson’s definitive biography of O’Keeffe was first published in 1989, it received rave reviews and was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. This new edition features a new foreword by the author, setting O’Keefe in an artistic context over the last thirty years since the book was first published, as well as previously unpublished letters of the young O’Keeffe to her lover, Arthur MacMahon. This book also relates the story of Robinson’s own encounter with the artist.

Bewegend, ehrlich und packend: der Schriftsteller Peter Härtling blickt in seiner Autobiografie auf einen turbulenten Lebensweg zurück. In seinem einzigartigen Prosastil lässt Härtling den Leser an einer Geschichte über Flucht, Verlust und Neubeginn teilhaben und erzählt, wie ihm nach Ende des zweiten Weltkriegs der Aufstieg zu einem der bedeutendsten deutschen Schriftsteller der Gegenwart gelang. Erfolgsautor Härtling liefert mit dieser Biografie eine fesselnde Mischung aus Zeitzeugenbericht und Liebeserklärung an die Literatur.

Miranda Seymour’s biography reveals a proud and fiercely independent artist, one who experienced tragedy and extreme poverty, alcohol and drug dependency, romantic and sexual turmoil—and yet was never a victim. I Used to Live Here Once enables one of our most excitingly intuitive biographers to uncover the hidden truth about a fascinatingly elusive woman. Persuasive, surprising and compassionate, this unforgettable biography brings Jean Rhys to life as never before.

Una Marson was a true trailblazer: she made history by becoming the first Black female broadcaster at the BBC and paved the way for Black women and the amplification of Black voices in the media. Despite all this, though, her story has been all but forgotten by history. Marson was a fierce political activist throughout her life, and in this rigorously researched and deeply personal biography, the life and achievements of this extraordinary, complex and multifaceted person will be told in full for the first time.

A moving and illuminating memoir about the life of world-famous author and historian Iris ChangIris Chang's best-selling book, The Rape of Nanking, forever changed the way we view the Second World War in Asia. It all began with a photo of a river choked with the bodies of hundreds of Chinese civilians that shock Iris to her core. Who were these people? Why had this happened and how could their story have been lost to history? She could not shake that image from her head.

When Peter Schjeldahl, The New Yorker’s art critic and the leading art writer of his generation, published his eye-opening autobiographical essay, “The Art of Dying,” in December 2019, he reported that he had lung cancer and had been given six months of life. Fortunately, his treatment was showing some improvement, and so, he wrote, “These extra months are a luxury that I hope to have put to good use.”

Samuel Pepys kept a diary in which he wrote with astonishing candour about the life he saw around him in London in the 1660s, and about his private desires and ambitions. The diary was kept for fewer than 10 years of his long life: Claire Tomalin tells the whole story of the Fleet Street tailor's son who made himself rich and powerful, an MP and adviser to royalty.

Author and business mogul Rolf Dobelli brings Audible the release of his latest audiobook, The Art of the Good Life: Clear Thinking for Business and a Better Life. Split into 52 sections with advice on how to live better, The Art of the Good Life offers guidance on how to approach the many issues we're faced with in our daily lives. We talk to Rolf about his audiobook and about what a 'good life' really looks like and ask him for some of his top tips to get there.

Tune in, turn on, drop out. So said Timothy Leary, global figurehead for '60s psychedelic culture and 'the most dangerous man in America' according to President Nixon. A psychologist at Harvard, Leary was forced to leave when he started to dedicate his efforts to researching LSD and other psychedelic drugs, a vocation which changed an entire generation. John Higgs' incredible biography reveals the stranger-than-fiction true story of one of the most divisive figures of the twentieth century.