Cheryl Strayed recounts the impact of her mother's death on her life at age twenty-two and chronicles her experiences after she made the impulsive decision to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert all the way into Washington State.

The renowned biographer's definitive portrait of a literary titan. Appointed by Philip Roth and granted independence and complete access, Blake Bailey spent years poring over Roth's personal archive, interviewing his friends, lovers, and colleagues, and engaging Roth himself in breathtakingly candid conversations. The result is an indelible portrait of an American master and of the postwar literary scene. Bailey shows how Roth emerged from a lower-middle-class...

How did a boy from small-town New York become the world’s most successful writer? How does he do it? He has always wanted to write the kind of novel that would be read and reread so many times that the binding breaks and the book literally falls apart. As he says, “I’m still working on that one.”

Relates the author's personal narrative of the time she spent in Ghana with other Black American expatriates.

Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to an aristocratic family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford. With the rest of the court she went into self-imposed exile in France. Her family's wealth and lands were forfeited by Parliament. It was in France that she met her partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that made her the Duchess...

Half a life after he killed a girl riding her bike with his car as a teenager, the author delves into the meaning and consequences of that fateful day, and all the culpability, anguish, and regret that continue to penetrate his every thought.

"From her childhood in China to the moment she won her first National Book Award, literary icon Katherine Paterson shares the personal stories that inspired her children's books"--Amazon.com.

Newly Reissued New York Times Bestselling Author When Isabel Allende's daughter, Paula, became gravely ill and fell into a coma, the author began to write the story of her family for her unconscious child. In the telling, bizarre ancestors appear before our eyes; we hear both delightful and bitter childhood memories, amazing anecdotes of youthful years, the most intimate secrets passed along in whispers. With Paula, Allende has written a powerful...

Published posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast is Ernest Hemingway's memoir of Paris in the 1920s. It is filled with portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft.

Autobiography of one of the most widely read authors of mystery novels.