Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs–including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow. In a stranger’s words, “Anything is possible: after all, it’s the Year of the Monkey.” For Smith–inveterately curious, always exploring, tracking thoughts, writing–the year evolves as one of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert; to a Kentucky farm as the amanuensis of a friend in crisis; to the hospital room of a valued mentor; and by turns to remembered and imagined places, this haunting memoir blends fact and fiction with poetic mastery. The unexpected happens; grief and disillusionment set in. But as Smith heads toward a new decade in her own life, she offers this balm to the reader: her wisdom, wit, gimlet eye, and above all, a rugged hope for a better world. Riveting, elegant, often humorous, illustrated by Smith’s signature Polaroids, Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times.

    Yet Cummings could also be difficult, truculent, opinionated, wrong-headed, emotional, bigoted and egotistical. Dubbed by Ezra Pound as "Whitman's one living descendant," Cummings sang of himself and of America in a unique voice, as resonant now as it was a half-century ago. Charismatic and famous among the famous, Cummings always seemed to be in the right place at the right time, and was a major presence wherever he resided, whether in Cambridge, Europe or New York. He counted some of the most important artists of his time as friends: Pound, Hemingway, Dylan Thomas and many more. "Sawyer-Lau�anno emphasizes the relation of the private man to his work, offering fresh insights into the grand optical arrangement of Cummings's books."--Starred Library Journal ReviewbrbrFor nearly half a century, the personal papers, journals and diaries of Edward Estlin Cummings were kept from public view. These documents reveal far more about the inner life of the famous poet and painter than has ever been known. Now, noted biographer Christopher Sawyer-Lau�anno presents the first, definitive, revelatory life story of E.E. Cummings (1894 1962), an American original. brbr"Well-researched, comprehensive, and essential to understanding the artist and the artistry."--Starred Kirkus ReviewsbrbrFor E.E. Cummings#58; A Biography, the author had unprecedented access toall of Cummings's papers-anguished diary entries, reflections on consultations with two psychoanalysts, an autobiographical novel, and a carefully prepared manuscript containing more than one hundred blatantly erotic poems. brbrIn the words of William Corbett, author of Boston Vermont and Don't Think Look, "E.E. Cummings, Yankee individualist and, rare for an American poet, satirist is here in full. This means warts and all, but Sawyer-Lau�anno has not come to judge. In this readable and absorbing life he has paid Cummings the honor of clear-eyed candor." Christopher Sawyer-Lau�anno paints a full and memorable portrait of this extraordinary American poet.

    alluring cultural world and someone whose life assumed an unbearably dramatic shape.

    From choreographed carpet figure skating routines to the unavoidable fact that he was Just. So. Gay., Jonathan was an easy target and endured years of judgement, ridicule and trauma—yet none of it crushed his uniquely effervescent spirit.Over the Top uncovers the pain and passion it took to end up becoming the model of self-love and acceptance that Jonathan is today. In this revelatory, raw, and rambunctious memoir, Jonathan shares never-before-told secrets and reveals sides of himself that the public has never seen. JVN fans may think they know the man behind the stiletto heels, the crop tops, and the iconic sayings, but there’s much more to him than meets the Queer Eye.You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and you’ll come away knowing that no matter how broken or lost you may be, you’re a Kelly Clarkson song, you’re strong, and you’ve got this.

    He also examines the life and legacy of his cousin, Lucy Partington, who was abducted and murdered by one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers. Experience also deconstructs the changing literary scene, including Amis' portraits of Saul Bellow, Salman Rushdie, Allan Bloom, Philip Larkin, and Robert Graves, among others.

    But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that's before the players even take the field.Nick Hornby has been a football fan since the moment he was conceived. Call it predestiny. Or call it preschool. Fever Pitch is his tribute to a lifelong obsession. Part autobiography, part comedy, part incisive analysis of insanity, Hornby's award-winning memoir captures the fever pitch of fandom — its agony and ecstasy, its community, its defining role in thousands of young mens' coming-of-age stories. Fever Pitch is one for the home team. But above all, it is one for everyone who knows what it really means to have a losing season.

    Fifteen years earlier, as the First World War ended, Idina Sackville shocked high society by leaving her son and his multimillionaire father to run off to Africa with a near penniless man.An inspiration for Nancy Mitford's character The Bolter, painted by William Orpen, and photographed by Cecil Beaton, Sackville went on to divorce a total of five times, yet died with a picture of her first love by her bed. Her struggle to reinvent her life with each new marriage left one husband murdered and branded her the 'high priestess' of White Mischief's bed-hopping Happy Valley in Kenya. Sackville's life was so scandalous that it was kept a secret from her great-granddaughter Frances Osborne. Now, Osborne tells the moving tale of betrayal and heartbreak behind Sackville's road to scandal and return, painting a dazzling portrait of high society in the early twentieth century.

    In this, one of the very first celebrity memoirs, Chaplin displays all the charms, peculiarities and deeply-held beliefs that made him such an endearing and lasting character.Re-issued as part of Melville House’s Neversink Library, My Autobiography offers dedicated Chaplin fans and casual admirers alike an astonishing glimpse into the the heart and the mind of Hollywood’s original genius maverick.Take this unforgettable journey with the man George Bernard Shaw called “the only genius to come out of the movie industry” as he moves from his impoverished South London childhood to the heights of Hollywood wealth and fame; from the McCarthy-era investigations to his founding of United Artists to his “reverse migration” back to Europe, My Autobiography is a reading experience not to be missed.

    In Jane Austen, Shields follows this superb and beloved novelist from her early family life in Steventown to her later years in Bath, her broken engagement, and her intense relationship with her sister Cassandra. She reveals both the very private woman and the acclaimed author behind the enduring classics Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, and Emma. With its fascinating insights into the writing process from an award–winning novelist, Carol Shields’s magnificent biography of Jane Austen is also a compelling meditation on how great fiction is created.

    His journals reveal an artist who loved music, who knew the history of rock, and who was determined to define his place in that history. Here is a mesmerizing, incomparable portrait of the most influential musician of his time.

    As editor Charlotte Mosley notes, not since the Brontës have the members of a single family written so much about themselves, or have been so written about. The Mitfords offers an unparalleled look at these privileged sisters: Nancy, the scalding wit who transformed her family life into bestselling novels; Pamela, who craved nothing more than a quiet country life; Diana, the fascist jailed with her husband, Oswald Mosley, during World War II; Unity, a suicide, torn by her worship of Hitler and her loyalty to home; Jessica, the runaway Communist and fighter for social change; and Deborah, the genial socialite who found herself Duchess of Devonshire. Spanning the twentieth century, the magically vivid letters of the legendary Mitford sisters constitute not just a superb social and historical chronicle; they also provide an intimate portrait of the stormy but enduring relationships between six beautiful, gifted and radically different women who wrote to one another to confide, commiserate, tease, rage and gossip -- and above all, to amuse.

    Anne Lister was a Regency landowner, an intrepid world traveller ... and an unabashed lover of other women. In this bold new biography, prizewinning author Angela Steidele uses the diaries to create a portrait of Anne Lister as we've never seen her before: a woman in some ways very much of her time and in others far ahead of it. Anne Lister recorded everything from the most intimate details of her numerous liaisons through to her plans to make her fortune by exploiting the coal seams under her family estate in Halifax and her reaction to the Peterloo massacre. She conducted a love life of labyrinthine complexity, all while searching for a girlfriend who could provide her with both financial security and true love.Anne Lister's rich and unconventional life is now the subject of the major BBC TV drama series Gentleman Jack.

    Powell first arrived at the servants' entrance of one of those great houses in the 1920s. As a kitchen maid - the lowest of the low - she entered an entirely new world; one of stoves to be blacked, vegetables to be scrubbed, mistresses to be appeased, and bootlaces to be ironed. Work started at 5:30am and went on until after dark. It was a far cry from her childhood on the beaches of Hove, where money and food were scarce, but warmth and laughter never were. Yet from the gentleman with a penchant for stroking the housemaids' curlers, to raucous tea-dances with errand boys, to the heartbreaking story of Agnes the pregnant under-parlormaid, fired for being seduced by her mistress's nephew, Margaret's tales of her time in service are told with wit, warmth, and a sharp eye for the prejudices of her situation. Margaret Powell's true story of a life spent in service is a fascinating "downstairs" portrait of the glittering, long-gone worlds behind the closed doors of Downton Abbey and 165 Eaton Place.

    Including interviews from Freddie Mercury's closest friends in the last years of his life, along with personal photographs, Somebody to Love is an authoritative biography of the great man.Here are previously unknown and startling facts about the singer and his life, moving detail on his lifelong search for love and personal fulfilment, and of course his tragic contraction of a then killer disease in the mid-1980s. Woven throughout Freddie's life is the shocking story of how the HIV virus came to hold the world in its grip, was cruelly labelled 'The Gay Plague' and the unwitting few who indirectly infected thousands of men, women and children - Freddie Mercury himself being one of the most famous. The death of this vibrant and spectacularly talented rock star, shook the world of medicine as well as the world of music. Somebody to Love finally puts the record straight and pays detailed tribute to the man himself.

    Growing up, his dad would drive him up and down to London for auditions, sometimes three or four times a week, only to be met with constant rejections. Even the teenage distractions of girls, forming his own pop group, attempted (and failed) shoplifting, or the endless detentions he'd get from exasperated teachers didn't put him off. He knew where he wanted to be and he'd keep on trying until he got there, and here is the story of how he did it. From his time as one of the founding players of his school's first ever rugby team to nationwide fame as the loveably loud Smithy in the award-winning Gavin and Stacey, this is a tenderly—and very funnily—told story of what it’s like to try, try, and try again and get there in the end.