They opened up new worlds and cast light on all the complexities she encountered in this one.She was whisked away to Narnia – and Kirrin Island – and Wonderland. She ventured down rabbit holes and womble burrows into midnight gardens and chocolate factories. She wandered the countryside with Milly-Molly-Mandy, and played by the tracks with the Railway Children. With Charlotte’s Web she discovered Death and with Judy Blume it was Boys. No wonder she only left the house for her weekly trip to the library or to spend her pocket money on amassing her own at home.In Bookworm, Lucy revisits her childhood reading with wit, love and gratitude. She relives our best-beloved books, their extraordinary creators, and looks at the thousand subtle ways they shape our lives. She also disinters a few forgotten treasures to inspire the next generation of bookworms and set them on their way.Lucy brings the favourite characters of our collective childhoods back to life – prompting endless re-readings, rediscoveries, and, inevitably, fierce debate – and brilliantly uses them to tell her own story, that of a born, and unrepentant, bookworm.

    How is an achievement of this magnitude to be explained? Stephen Greenblatt brings us down to earth to see, hear, and feel how an acutely sensitive and talented boy, surrounded by the rich tapestry of Elizabethan life, could have become the world’s greatest playwright.

    Barbellion has an extraordinary lust for life. As Zeppelins loomed above the streets of South Kensington, the humour and beauty he found in the world around him - in music, friendship, nature and love - deepens not just the tragedy of his own life, but the millions of lives lost during the First World War.

    Imagining he could complete the job in three years, Johnson in fact took more than eight, and the dictionary itself turned out to be as much a work of literature as it was an invaluable reference. In alphabetized chapters, from "Adventurous" to "Zootomy," Henry Hitchings tells of Johnson's toil and triumph and offers a closer look at the definitions themselves, which were alive with invention, poetry, erudition, and, at times, hilarious imprecision. The story of Johnson's adventure into the essence of words is an entertainment that "sparkles on every page" (The Philadelphia Inquirer).

    K. Rowling wrote her first story at age six. From then on, writing was her passion. In 1990, an idea popped into her head that changed her life. She envisioned an orphaned Harry Potter, who learns he is a wizard. Rowling began to write amazing tales and became one of the world's most famous authors.

    Little did she know that this was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship that would last for seventeen years. In "The Diana I Knew," Mary portrays a gentle, unassuming teenager who blossomed into an assured, world-class beauty. She describes a private side to a woman few people knew intimately. This is an American woman's personal account of her unexpected and touching friendship with Diana. Mary's unique memories of this remarkable woman include Diana's nonchalant reaction to Mary's discovery of her nanny's aristocratic background and the day-to-day building of a trusting, affectionate relationship, which developed into a true friendship. As Diana's life dramatically changed when the royal courtship began, she turned to Mary for guidance. Even after the Robertsons returned to the United States just before the engagement, Diana wrote frequently, wishing to continue the friendship. From receiving the gilt-edged invitation to the Royal Wedding to being charmed by Prince Charles at the glamorous pre-nuptial ball at Buckingham Palace, Mary captures the magic of the wedding of the century. Despite the unimaginable demands of her life and the unraveling of the fairy tale, Diana made time to see Mary and her family. From the Robertsons' private meeting with the Prince and Princess in Washington to an intimate family luncheon at her home in Kensington Palace, Diana's generosity of spirit and appreciation of simpler times always shone through.

    With characteristic narrative panache, Ackroyd immerses us in sixteenth-century Stratford and the rural landscape–the industry, the animals, even the flowers–that would appear in Shakespeare’s plays. He takes us through Shakespeare’s London neighborhood and the fertile, competitive theater world where he worked as actor and writer. He shows us Shakespeare as a businessman, and as a constant reviser of his writing. In joining these intimate details with profound intuitions about the playwright and his work, Ackroyd has produced an altogether engaging masterpiece.

    S. Trow's brilliant exposition on the state of American culture and twentieth-century life. Published to widespread acclaim, Within the Context of No Context became an immediate classic and is, to this day, a favorite work of writers and critics alike. Both a chilling commentary on the times in which it was written and an eerie premonition of the future, Trow's work locates and traces, describes and analyzes the components of change in contemporary America -- a culture increasingly determined by the shallow worlds of consumer products, daytime television, and celebrity heroes. "This elegant little book is essential reading for anyone interested in the demise, the terminal silliness, of our culture." -- John Irving, The New York Times Book Review; "In this elegant, poignant essay, written with the grace of a master stylist, George Trow articulates the accelerated impermanence of American culture with a precision that is both flaunting and devastating." -- Rudy Wurlitrer; "Within the Context of No Context is a masterpiece of the century that belongs on a shelf next to Theodore Adorno's Minima Moralia and Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle." -- Michael Tolkin; "Within the Context of No Context may appear to be a book of the mind, for it is suffused with such a keen intelligence, but it is actually a book of the heart -- passionate, brave, and stirring." -- Sue Halpern.

    For the next ten years, Hornby’s incandescently funny "Stuff I’ve Been Reading” chronicled a singular reading life — one that is measured not just in "books bought” and "books read,” as each column begins, but in the way our feelings toward Celine Dion say a lot about who we are, the way Body Shop Vanilla Shower Gel can add excitement to our days, and the way John Updike might ruin our sex lives. Hornby’s column is both an impeccable, wide-ranging reading list and an indispensable reminder of why we read.

    "Ocean Star" is the story of how God found her in the midst of an abusive childhood, became the loving parent she never had, and revealed himself in tangible ways through her amazing life journey. Filled with insightful symbolism, "Ocean Star" will help Christians and non-Christians find hope, humor, and healing in a powerful true story of a broken life made new.

    Once married, however, she acquired a persistent pain that led to destructive drugs and patronizing psychiatry, ending in an ineffective but irrevocable surgery. There would be no children; in herself she found instead one novel, and then another.

    His writing resonated with many Alabamians, in particular three sisters: Louise, Alice, and Nelle Harper Lee. Beginning with their first meeting in 1983, a mutual respect and affection for the state’s history and literature matured into a deep friendship between two families who can trace their roots there back more than five generations.Flynt and Nelle Harper Lee began writing to one other while she was living in New York—heartfelt, insightful, and humorous letters in which they swapped stories, information, and opinions on topics both personal and professional: their families, books, Alabama history and social values, health concerns, and even their fears and accomplishments. Though their earliest missives began formally—"Dear Dr. Flynt"—as the years passed and their mutual admiration grew, their exchanges became more intimate and emotional, opening with "Dear Friend" and closing with "I love you, Nelle." Through their enduring correspondence, the Lees and the Flynts became completely immersed in each other’s lives.Beautifully written, intelligent, and telling, this remarkable compendium of their letters—a correspondence that lasted for a quarter century, from 1992 until Harper Lee’s death in February 2016—offers an incisive and compelling look into the mind, heart, and work of one of the most beloved authors in modern literary history.

    Logan is continually thwarted and threatened on his journey. But no matter how bad his travels, his arrival onto the island brings much worse trouble. Carnglass is under the control of evil genius Dr. Edmund Jackman, a Soviet-educated political revolutionary convinced that Logan is a spy who must die. Will Jackman's plot be thwarted? Will Logan be able to rescue the lovely niece of the noble owner of Old House? Will anyone get off the island alive? Debuting in the 1960s, Old House of Fear was Russell Kirk's most popular book, selling more than all his other books combined. Yet this Gothic tale is more than just a fascinating work of fiction. As in all of Kirk's stories, a deeper meaning emerges -- in this case, a satirization of Marxism and liberalism -- demonstrating the acute sense of the moral that sets Kirk apart from other genre writers.

    Lee was a public relations executive and Bob had just been named co-anchor of ABC’s World News Tonight. Then, while Bob was embedded with the military in Iraq, an improvised explosive device went off near the tank he was riding in. He and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, were hit, and Bob suffered a traumatic brain injury that nearly killed him.In an Instant is the frank and compelling account of how Bob and Lee’s lives came together, were blown apart, and then were miraculously put together again–and how they persevered, with grit but also with humor, through intense trauma and fear. Here are Lee’s heartfelt memories of their courtship, their travels as Bob left a law practice behind and pursued his news career and Lee her freelance business, the glorious births of her children and the challenges of motherhood.Bob in turn recalls the moment he caught the journalism “bug” while covering Tiananmen Square for CBS News, his love of overseas assignments and his guilt about long separations from his family, and his pride at attaining the brass ring of television news–being chosen to fill the seat of the late Peter Jennings.And, for the first time, the Woodruffs reveal the agonizing details of Bob’s terrible injuries and his remarkable recovery. We learn that Bob’s return home was not an end to the journey but the first step into a future they have learned not to fear but to be grateful for.In an Instant is much more than the dual memoir of love and courage. It is an important, wise, and inspiring guide to coping with tragedy–and an extraordinary drama of marriage, family, war, and nation.A percentage of the proceeds from this book will be donated to the Bob Woodruff Family Fund for Traumatic Brain Injury.From the Hardcover edition.

    His writing exposes and illumines the wounds that Nazi destructiveness left on language. John Felstiner's sensitive and accessible book is the first critical biography of Celan in any language. It offers new translations of well-known and little-known poems—including a chapter on Celan's famous "Deathfugue"—plus his speeches, prose fiction, and letters. The book also presents hitherto unpublished photos of the poet and his circle.Drawing on interviews with Celan's family and friends and his personal library in Normandy and Paris, as well as voluminous German commentary, Felstiner tells the poet's gripping story: his birth in 1920 in Romania, the overnight loss of his parents in a Nazi deportation, his experience of forced labor and Soviet occupation during the war, and then his difficult exile in Paris. The life's work of Paul Celan emerges through readings of his poems within their personal and historical matrix. At the same time, Felstiner finds fresh insights by opening up the very process of translating Celan's poems.To present this poetry and the strain of Jewishness it displays, Felstiner uncovers Celan's sources in the Bible and Judaic mysticism, his affinities with Kafka, Heine, Hölderlin, Rilke, and Nelly Sachs, his fascination with Heidegger and Buber, his piercing translations of Shakespeare, Dickinson, Mandelshtam, and Apollinaire. First and last, Felstiner explores the achievement of a poet surviving in his mother tongue, the German language that had passed, Celan said, "through the thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech."