Author Biographies

Autobiography

Autobiography

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Back in print in the exclusive authorized edition, is the engaging and illuminating chronicle of the life of the "Queen of Mystery." Fans of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple and readers of John Curran's fascinating biographies Agatha Christie's Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making will be spellbound by the compelling, authoritative account of one of the world's most influential and fascinating novelists, told in her own words and inimitable style. The New York Times Book Review calls Christie's autobiography a "joyful adventure," saying, "she brings the sense of wonder...to her extraordinary career."

Autobiography:  Some  Notes  on  a  Nonentity

Autobiography: Some Notes on a Nonentity

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Printed for Arkham House: Publishers - Sauk City, Wisconsin 1963 by Villiers Publications, Ltd., London. Annotated by August Derleth. Small stapled pamphlet; clean and uncreased. VG
Beggars of Life

Beggars of Life

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Tully's breakthrough novel about life on the road

Jim Tully left his hometown of St. Marys, Ohio, in 1901, spending most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. Drifting across the country as a "road kid," he spent those years scrambling into boxcars, sleeping in hobo jungles, avoiding railroad cops, begging meals from back doors, and haunting public libraries. Tully crafted these memories into a dark and astonishing chronicle of the American underclass--especially in his second book, Beggars of Life, an autobiographical novel published in 1924. Tully saw it all, from a church baptism in the Mississippi River to election day in Chicago. And in Beggars of Life, he captures an America largely hidden from view.

This novelistic memoir impressed readers and reviewers with its remarkable vitality and honesty. Tully's devotion to Mark Twain and Jack London taught him the importance of giving the reader a sense of place, and this he does brilliantly, again and again, throughout Beggars of Life. From the opening conversation on a railroad trestle, Beggars of Life rattles along like the Fast Flyer Virginia that Tully boards midway through the book. This is the book that defined Tully's hard-boiled style and set the pattern for the twelve books that followed over the next two decades. Startling in its originality and intensity, Beggars of Life is a breakneck journey made while clinging to the lowest rungs of the social ladder.

Bowen's Court (USED)

Bowen's Court

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Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973) was an Irish-British novelist and short story writer, known for her depictions of life during wartime London. She spent her summers in her family’s country home, Bowens Court, which was built in the 1770's by Henry Cole Bowen and was located in Cork, Ireland. In this personal narrative, originally published in 1942, Bowen weaves together three centuries of Irish history with a chronicle of her family.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. 2nd edition in scarce dust jacket with photo by Pat English showing Elizabeth Bowen walking on the lawn at Bowen's Court in Ireland. Dust jacket in protective cover; price not clipped; spine edges lightly chipped; rear cover has light soiling near spine and along top edge; navy blue stamped cloth with gilt lettering and design on spine; endpapers clean; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG/VG-

Dinner With Tennessee Williams : Recipes and Stories Inspired by America's Southern Playwright

Dinner With Tennessee Williams : Recipes and Stories Inspired by America's Southern Playwright

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Like Hemingway to Cuba or Mark Twain to the Mississippi, certain writers are inextricably tied to their environments-the culture, the history, the people, the cuisine. The plays of Tennessee Williams evoke the ambiance and flavor of the South. Part food memoir and part cookbook, this fresh look at the world of this great American playwright-both in real life and in his plays-is the perfect book for literary lovers and food lovers alike.

Each chapter is based on one of Williams' plays and includes a short essay on food references within that play; highlighted food related quotes from the dialogue; a menu divined from the play; and archived photographs from Williams' life. With more than 80 recipes, fans will love the 50 full-color and black and white photos that showcase the recipes, locale, and history of this beloved American writer.

Enjoy recipes such as: Chop Suey Soup Pecan-crusted Sweet Potato Pone Baton Aubergines Pork Loin Franchese Smoked Corn and Grilled Pepper Bisque Grilled Ahi Tuna, Pinapple Relish Maw Maw Lola's Fig Preserves

Inspired by Tennessee William's Plays like: A Streetcar Named Desire Cat on a Hot Tin Roof The Glass Menagerie The Rose Tattoo Camino Real Night of the Iguana Battle of Angels

Troy Gilbert is a native of New Orleans and the author of New Orleans Kitchens.

Greg Picolo is a native of New Orleans and the chef of Bistro Maison de Ville, which offers sophisticated cuisine in the Louisiana Creole style.

Dylan Thomas: No Man More Magical

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Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker

Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker

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"It's shocking to learn that this is McBride's first book...Eat Your Mind does everything a good biography should and more" --Los Angeles Times

The first full-scale authorized biography of the pioneering experimental novelist Kathy Acker, one of the most original and controversial figures in 20th-century American literature.

Kathy Acker (1947-1997) was a rare and almost inconceivable thing: a celebrity experimental writer. Twenty-five years after her death, she remains one of the most original, shocking, and controversial artists of her era. The author of visionary, transgressive novels like Blood and Guts in High School; Empire of the Senses; and Pussy, King of Pirates, Acker wrote obsessively about the treachery of love, the limitations of language, and the possibility of revolution.

She was notorious for her methods--collaging together texts stolen from other writers with her own diaries, sexual fantasies, and blunt political critique--as well as her appearance. With her punkish hairstyles, tattoos, and couture outfits, she looked like no other writer before or after. Her work was exceptionally prescient, taking up complicated conversations about gender, sex, capitalism, and colonialism that continue today.

Acker's life was as unruly and radical as her writing. Raised in a privileged but oppressive Upper East Side Jewish family, she turned her back on that world as soon as she could, seeking a life of romantic and intellectual adventure that led her to, and through, many of the most thrilling avant-garde and countercultural moments in America: the births of conceptual art and experimental music; the poetry wars of the 60s and 70s; the mainstreaming of hardcore porn; No Wave cinema and New Narrative writing; Riot grrrls, biker chicks, cyberpunks. As this definitive, "sympathetic, studious" (Edmund White, winner of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters) biography shows, Acker was not just a singular writer, she was also a titanic cultural force who tied together disparate movements in literature, art, music, theatre, and film.

A feat of literary biography, Eat Your Mind draws on exclusive interviews with hundreds of Acker's intimates as well as her private journals, correspondence, and early drafts of her work, acclaimed journalist and critic Jason McBride, offers a thrilling account and a long-overdue reassessment of a misunderstood genius and revolutionary artist.

Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Furious Hours : Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

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ONE OF PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2019

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2019 BY Time, LitHub, Vulture, Glamour, O Magazine, Town and Country, Suspense Magazine, Inside Hook

New York Times

Best Seller


"Compelling . . . at once a true-crime thriller, courtroom drama, and miniature biography of Harper Lee. If To Kill a Mockingbird was one of your favorite books growing up, you should add Furious Hours to your reading list today." --Southern Living

Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the 1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted--thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend.

Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more years working on her own version of the case.

Now Casey Cep brings this story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

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Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art.

As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as "masterful" by Roxane Gay, "incendiary" by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he's sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well.

How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author's manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation's history, including his father's death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing ​-- ​Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley ​-- ​the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump.

By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack.

Named a Best Book by: Time, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Boston Globe, Paris Review, Mother Jones, The A.V. Club, Out Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bitch, Library Journal, Flavorwire, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, Shelf Awareness, Tor.com, Entertainment Cheat Sheet, Roads and Kingdoms, Chicago Public Library, Hyphen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Coil, iBooks, and Washington Independent Review of Books

Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction * Recipient of the Lambda Literary Trustees' Award *
Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography

Hundred White Daffodils : Essays, the Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, Notes, Interviews, and One Poem (Used)

Hundred White Daffodils : Essays, the Akhmatova Translations, Newspaper Columns, Notes, Interviews, and One Poem (Used)

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"There is something in me that will not be snuffed out," Jane Kenyon told Bill Moyers in an interview. And there is no better proof of that than the overwhelming response her poetry generates. Kenyon's last collection, Otherwise: New & Selected Poems, remains a phenomenon: a best-seller that testifies to the impact Kenyon has had on the poetic landscape.

A Hundred White Daffodils is a companion volume that sheds illumination on a poet, and a woman, of great presence. It offers glimpses into a life cut too short and traces the influences that created Kenyon's poetic voice. The book includes Kenyon's translations of the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, and insights into how Kenyon chose her as a muse. It presents a variety of Kenyon's prose pieces about the writing life, her spiritual life, her country community, her gardens-- themes that readers will well remember from her poems. Transcripts of interviews provide further understanding as Kenyon faces her struggle with depression and the losses wrought by illness. Finally, there is an unfinished, visionary poem that makes one wonder what might have been if Kenyon had been given the chance to create more poetry.

Including an introduction by Kenyon's husband and fellow poet, Donald Hall, and a bibliography of her publications, A Hundred White Daffodils is a gift to all those devoted to Kenyon's poetry.