Winner of the National Book Award for Marcel Proust, a sweeping examination of Proust's life and works, Shattuck now offers a useful and eminently readable guidebook to Proust's epic masterpiece, and a contemplation of memory and consciousness throughout great literature. Here, Shattuck laments Proust's defenselessness against zealous editors, praises some translations, and presents Proust as a novelist whose philosophical gifts were matched only by his irrepressible comic sense. Proust's Way, the culmination of a lifetime of scholarship, will serve as the next generation's guide to one of the world's finest writers of fiction.

    Using their entire savings as a down payment, the couple embark on an adventure that brings them in contact with the charming countryside of Provence, its querulous personalities, petty bureaucracies, and extraordinary wildlife. From the glamour of Cannes and the Isles of Lérins to the charm of her own small plot of land—which she transforms from overgrown weeds into a thriving farm—Drinkwater triumphantly relates how she realized her dream of a peaceful, meaningful life. "A fantasy come true, as it will be for many of the readers who yearn to experience the magic of southern France." (Austin Chronicle) "Good-humored and well written." (The Washington Post Book World) "Following [Drinkwater's] engaging story is like driving the hairpin turns that climb the hills above the French Riviera: the views are breathtaking, the blind curves frightening, and the safe arrival to the top a joyous relief." (Library Journal)

    The crime writer was found 11 days later in a hotel in Harrogate,Yorkshire, claiming to be the victim of amnesia. Up till now none of her biographers has come up with conclusive evidence as to what Agatha Christie did in the first 24 hours after she disappeared or whether her memory loss was genuine. Although the notoriety made Agatha Christie famous, she never recovered from the intense press scrutiny, and the private anguish that surrounded the episode ensured that she made no reference to it in her memoirs. Illustrated with many hitherto unpublished photographs, Jared Cade's riveting book—on which a BBC television documentary has been based—provides all the answers, including startling accounts by the novelist's surviving relatives, that reveal for the first time why she staged the disappearance with the help of a co-conspiritor and how it all went terribly wrong.

    He managed to survive the war, spending most of it as cannon fodder on the Russian front. Available for the first time in English, this account of Seel's experiences provides an invaluable contribution to the literature of the Holocaust.

    In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work. Gradually, this gentle, persistent man's work comes to fruition: the region is transformed; life and hope return; the world is renewed.

    He lived a life stranger than most fictions, and the tale of his own adventures is his most compelling story, and one that remained unfinished at the time of his death. This new selection contains all the highlights of Casanova's life: his youth in Venice as a precocious ecclesiastic; his dabbling in the occult; his imprisonment and thrilling escape; and his amorous conquests, ranging from noblewomen to nuns.

    His crime? Taking on the highest powers in the land with his open letter "J'accuse"—and losing. Forced to leave Paris with nothing but the clothes he is standing in and a nightshirt wrapped in newspaper, Zola flees to England with no idea when he will return.This is the little-known story of Zola's time in exile. Rosen has traced Zola's footsteps from the Gare du Nord to London, examining the significance of this year. The Disappearance of Émile Zola offers an intriguing insight into the mind, the loves, and the politics of the great writer during this tumultuous era in his life.

    . . and soon became the most visible and glamorous madam the city had ever seen. As Xaviera Hollander, she published a shockingly candid account of her life behind the brothel door. The Happy Hooker shot straight to the top of the bestseller lists, sold more than fifteen million copies, and made this enterprising young woman an international phenomenon.Thirty years later, these delightfully explicit tales of the '60s and '70s swingers' scene -- including countless jaw-dropping stories of lesbianism, bondage, fetishism, and more -- remain as titillating as ever, charged with the mix of shrewd observation and uninhibited appetite that made Hollander an irresistible storyteller. The Happy Hooker is a classic: the world's greatest book on the world's oldest profession.

    She kept extensive diaries of her life and loves, written partly in code. Made up of Greek letters mingled with other symbols of her own devising, Anne referred to the code as her "crypthand," and the use of it allowed her the freedom to describe her intimate life in great detail. Her diaries have been edited by Helena Whitbread, who spent years decoding and transcribing them.

    They give an incomparable view of French life before World War II.

    In 1942 a young Frenchwoman living in Somerset with her three little girls answered a broadcast appeal for holiday photographs to be sent to the War Office. She was invited to London for an interview, and a startling proposition was put to her. Reluctantly she accepted it. In a few months she had been trained as a British agent and, under the name "Céline", infiltrated into Southern France. Her run there was short but lively. She worked with the Resistance Movement, organising sabotage and the reception of parachuted agents and supplies. After six months the Germans arrested her with her Commanding Officer, known as "Raoul". So began her long ordeal in prison and concentration-camp. The Gestapo put certain questions to her; she had nothing to say, even after they had pulled out all her toenails. But her replies on other matters were such as to draw suspicion from her Commanding Officer to herself. The Gestapo condemned her to death, but did not kill her. After a year in a Parisian prison she was moved to the infamous concentration-camp for women at Ravensbrück. There she was buried for three months in total darkness, and witnessed the mass execution of her fellow-prisoners in the spring of 1945. To save his skin, the Camp Commandant took her with him to meet the advancing Americans. So Odette Sanson lived to receive the George Cross, the highest British decoration for gallantry that can be awarded to a woman. She also holds the M.B.E. and the French Légion d'Honneur. In 1947 she became the wife of her 'chief', Captain Peter Churchill, D.S.O., M.C.Jerrard Tickell - the distinguished author of such widely popular novels as Appointment with Venus, Soldier from the Wars Returning and The Hero of Saint Roger - has told Odette's story with practised skill. His description of her last two years is particularly impressive for its attempt to suggest how a woman who had no hope to escape death could yet preserve her mind in peace. Odette has been filmed with Anna Neagle in the title-role.

    Kafka's Czech translator, she was uniquely able to recognize his complex genius and his even more complex character. For the thirty-six-year-old Kafka, she was "a living fire, such as I have never seen." It was to her that he revealed his most intimate self. It was to her that, after the end of the affair, he entrusted the safekeeping of his diaries.Newly translated, revised, and expanded, this edition contains material previously omitted because of its extreme sensitivity. Also included for the first time are letters and essays by Milena Jesenská, herself a talented writer as well as the recipient of these documents of Kafka's love, anxiety, and despair.

    Geoffrey Chaucer, who died in 1400, lived a surprisingly eventful life. He served with the Duke of Clarence and with Edward III, and in 1359 was taken prisoner in France and ransomed. Through his wife, Philippa, he gained the patronage of John of Gaunt, which helped him carve out a career at Court. His posts included Controller of Customs at the Port of London, Knight of the Shire for Kent, and King's Forester. He went on numerous adventurous diplomatic missions to France and Italy. Yet he was also indicted for rape, sued for debt, and captured in battle.He began to write in the 1360s, and is now known as the father of English poetry. His Troilus and Criseyde is the first example of modern English literature, and his masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, the forerunner of the English novel, dominated the last part of his life. In his lively style, Peter Ackroyd, one of the most acclaimed biographers and novelists writing today, brings us an eye-opening portrait, rich in drama and colorful historical detail, of a prolific, multifaceted genius.

    Placed by the parents of a 15-year-old Jewish girl, Dora Bruder, who had run away from her Catholic boarding school, the ad sets Modiano off on a quest to find out everything he can about Dora and why, at the height of German reprisals, she ran away on a bitterly cold day from the people hiding her. He finds only one other official mention of her name on a list of Jews deported from Paris to Auschwitz in September 1942. With no knowledge of Dora Bruder aside from these two records, Modiano continues to dig for fragments from Dora's past. What little he discovers in official records and through remaining family members, becomes a meditation on the immense losses of the period—lost people, lost stories, and lost history. Modiano delivers a moving account of the ten-year investigation that took him back to the sights and sounds of Paris under the Nazi Occupation, and the paranoia of the Pétain regime as he tries to find connections to Dora. In his efforts to exhume her from the past, Modiano realizes that he must come to terms with the specters of his own troubled adolescence. The result, a montage of creative and historical material, is Modiano's personal rumination on loss, both memoir and memorial.