Showing titles in Authors

The American writer Charles Bukowski (1920-94) developed a cult following for his simple and vivid poems, stories and novels based on his experiences as a hard-drinking postal worker in Los Angeles. His classic books include Post Office, Women and Love Is a Dog from Hell. In this engrossing biography, studded with excerpts from Bukowski's writing, Howard Sounes tells the true story of Bukowski's life in the same punchy style as his subject.

'I relished every page … This is the best book on Jane Austen I have ever read’ Spectator 'Compelling … a delightful and engrossing book … Byrne’s passion is nothing if not persuasive’ Sunday Times Was Jane Austen a woman of prim manners and genteel calm? Or someone who behaved...

The Real Beatrix Potter is a fascinating and revealing biography of one of the world's most cherished children's authors. Beatrix Potter's famous little white books have enchanted generations of young admirers who adored the characters she created and, of course, her own distinctive illustrations.

Initially published in 1775, A Journey to the Western Isles recounts a three-month trip to upper Scotland that Samuel Johnson undertook with James Boswell a couple of years previously. During their adventure, they discover a novel culture, stunning landscapes and welcoming locals – all described in Johnson's captivating prose.

A book about finding a creative voice and becoming an artist via a scintillating new discovery in Edmund de Waal’s family archives – letters between his grandmother and the great poet Rainer Maria Rilke ** With letters translated from the German by prizewinning translator, Karen Leeder **...

Als Jean-Paul Sartre mit Simone de Beauvoir im Kranzler-Eck in Berlin Käsekuchen isst, Henry Miller und Anaïs Nin wilde Nächte in Paris erleben, F. Scott Fitzgerald und Frida Kahlo sich in leidenschaftliche Affären stürzen, fliehen Bertolt Brecht und Helene Weigel ins Exil. Genau das ist die Zeit, in der die Nazis die Macht in Deutschland ergreifen, Bücher verbrennen und die Gewalt gegen die Juden beginnt. 1933 enden die "Goldenen Zwanziger" mit einer Vollbremsung.

In George Orwell: The Man and the Mind Behind 1984, Professor Michael Shelden will show you how 1984 presents a plausible reality of thought control and totalitarian power that feels contemporary even as it reflects its own time.

Ernest Hemingway’s classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, now available in a restored edition, includes the original manuscript along with insightful recollections and unfinished sketches. Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway’s most enduring works...

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. 

El estudio definitivo sobre el intelectual más influyente del siglo XX La literatura de George Orwell se ha convertido en un fenómeno de masas mundial. Hay pocas estanterías en las que falten sus dos clásicos intemporales: la parábola de la revolución bolchevique Rebelión en la granja y...

“Powers brings to vivid life Twain's America...No biography of Mark Twain could do him full justice. Powers' comes as close as you can imagine." —Los Angeles Times A magnificent and insightful biography of legendary writer Mark Twain and a great American story. Samuel Clemens, the man known...

Novelists, poets and playwrights live double lives, sharing the real world with everyone else while spending a good deal of time in a universe of their own making. When they fall out with each other, they are able to kindle feuds and antagonisms as passionate and public as workers in any trade. Richard Bradford’s highly entertaining audiobook looks at some of the closest and most complex relationships in literary history, examining their dramatic effects on literature itself.

This is the story of an independent woman who is a model for our time—photographer Toby Molenaar. It begins in Holland during World War II, when her country is decimated by the occupying German army and she is literally left to starve. As a little girl, she learns to be self-sufficient—survival is the order of the day. Courage, indomitable spirit, an open mind, and accountability only to herself are the stuff of this fascinating and inspirational story.

They were the Mitford sisters: Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica and Deborah. Born into country-house privilege, they became prominent as 'bright young things' in the high society of interwar London. Then, as the shadows crept over 1930s Europe, the stark – and very public – differences in their outlooks came to symbolise the political polarities of a dangerous decade.

While 1858 in London may have been noteworthy for its broiling summer months and the related stench of the sewage-filled Thames River, the year is otherwise little remembered. And yet, historian Rosemary Ashton reveals in this compelling microhistory, 1858 was marked by significant, if unrecognized, turning points. For ordinary people, and also for the rich, famous, and powerful, the months from May to August turned out to be a summer of consequence.

Joining us at the Audible Studios are Greg James and Chris Smith, authors of the Kid Normal books and famous as BBC Radio 1 presenters. They have taken their collaboration on air to the world of writing and audiobook narration to bring us the joys of protagonist Murph Cooper, aka Kid Normal, and the Super Zeroes. They are now on the third installment in the series: Kid Normal and the Shadow Machine, in which Kid Normal and the Super Zeroes lead the charge as supervillain Magpie declares all-out war.

This narrative charts Annie Ernaux's teenage awakening and then the parallel progression of her desire to be desirable and her ambition to fulfill herself in her chosen profession - with the inevitable conflict between the two. And then she is 30 years old, a teacher married to an executive, a mother of two infant sons.

The year is 1851. It's a time of radical change in Britain, when industrial miracles and artistic innovations rub shoulders with political unrest, poverty and disease. It's also a turbulent time in the private life of Charles Dickens, as he copes with a double bereavement and early signs that his marriage is falling apart. But this formative year will become perhaps the greatest turning point in Dickens' career, as he embraces his calling as a chronicler of ordinary people's lives and develops a new form of writing that will reveal just how interconnected the world is becoming.

“Still Writing offers up a cornucopia of wisdom, insights, and practical lessons gleaned from Dani Shapiro's long experience as a celebrated writer and teacher of writing. The beneficiaries are beginning writers, veteran writers and everyone in between.” —Jennifer Egan From Dani Shapiro...

Drawing on a vast quantity of unexplored archival materials, Deborah reconstructs the texture of Emily Brontë's days, bringing us closer to one of the greatest and fiercest writers we have, by showing us her creative process and her confidence in her strange art. This book has much to reveal to readers of Wuthering Heights, as we accompany Emily around the wild moorlands she loved so much.