From Solzhenitsyn to Laura Zigman, Catherine M. to Captain Underpants, the result is a personal chronicle of insight, wit, and enough infectious enthusiasm to make a passionate reader out of anybody.

    She felt herself to be at a crossroads: “I shall be miserable, or happy; a wordy sentimental creature, or a writer of such English as shall one day burn the pages.”Today her prose is still blazing; perhaps it burns brighter than ever. This is the story of how a determined young woman with a notebook became one of the greatest writers of all time. It is a story that sparkles with wit and friendship, language and love, wicked jokes and passionate appreciation of ordinary things.In this illuminating new account, Alexandra Harris uses vivid flashes of detail to evoke Woolf’s changing backgrounds and preoccupations. We move from the close-packed rhythms of a Victorian childhood to the experiments of Bloomsbury and Woolf’s trial-and-error answers to the pressing question of how to live. We see her tackling challenging forms of writing, trying out different voices, following flights of fancy, and returning to earth. Above all, we see her making conscious decisions about what to do next.The book considers each of the novels in context, gives due prominence to a range of Woolf’s dazzlingly inventive essays, traces the contentious course of her “afterlife,” and shows why, seventy years after her death, Virginia Woolf continues to haunt and inspire us.

    He can be elegant as a slow blues." The Nick Tosches Reader is the author's own selection of his best work over the past thirty years, including fiction, poetry, interviews, rock writing, investigative journalism, and criticism. First published in major magazines, obscure underground periodicals, and his own best-selling books, many of these selections deal with rock 'n' roll and cultural icons—but there are also pieces on everything from William Faulkner to organized crime to heavyweight boxing, including the Vanity Fair feature that gave rise to Tosches's major new book on Sonny Liston, published by Little, Brown. Here is "a unique and darkly impressionistic cultural history" of the last three decades as only Nick Tosches could write it.

    You could say we're the #1 nation at being the best at greatness.But as perfect as America is in every single way, America is broken! And we can't exchange it because we're 236 years past the 30-day return window. Look around--we don't make anything anymore, we've mortgaged our future to China, and the Apologist-in-Chief goes on world tours just to bow before foreign leaders. Worse, the L.A. Four Seasons Hotel doesn't even have a dedicated phone button for the Spa. You have to dial an extension! Where did we lose our way?!It's high time we restored America to the greatness it never lost!Luckily, AMERICA AGAIN will singlebookedly pull this country back from the brink. It features everything from chapters, to page numbers, to fonts. Covering subject's ranging from healthcare ("I shudder to think where we'd be without the wide variety of prescription drugs to treat our maladies, such as think-shuddering") to the economy ("Life is giving us lemons, and we're shipping them to the Chinese to make our lemon-flavored leadonade") to food ("Feel free to deep fry this book—it's a rich source of fiber"), Stephen gives America the dose of truth it needs to get back on track.

    This is not the face I know so well. I am looking at the handiwork of a mountain lion; he ambushed me while I was biking in Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park on January 8th, 2004. My neck sustained more than ten deep bite wounds and my mangled face was pieced together using more than 200 stitches and staples.' - Anne Hjelle. 'Skin Deep' tells the incredible true story of one woman's battle for survival following a vicious mountain lion attack and the daunting emotional and physical challenges she faced during her recovery. In moving detail, Anne Hjelle's describes her transformation from a wounded victim to a survivor, a woman who managed to come to terms with her new identity, and learned to live by the words ‘feed your faith, not your fear’. From her first surgery, to the day she went back to Cactus Hill Trail- the scene of her near death experience, Anne tells all in this captivating and evocative personal account which will both move and terrify you from the first page to the last. 'Skin Deep' is an inspiring personal story of tragedy and renewal, a book about what is important in life and about the nature of beauty. There are more details at www.annehjelle.com. Anne Hjelle is originally from Apple Valley, Minn., but came to live in California while serving in the United States Marine Corps as a helicopter mechanic. Anne has worked in the fitness industry as a personal trainer for the past 16 years. She is a regular public speaker telling the story of surviving the mountain lion attack, and of her life journey thereafter.Damien Lewis is an award winning and internationally best-selling British author, published in some thirty-six languages worldwide. He has co-authored several powerful and compelling memoirs with women, including the acclaimed international number one best-seller 'Slave' co-written with Mende NazerGreg Hardesty is a well-known journalist, trail runner and outdoor enthusiast in Orange County, California. He has been an award-winning reporter for nearly 25 years, covering general news, crime and business for the Orange County Register for the last 13 years. Endeavour Press is the UK's leading independent digital publisher.

    By the band’s side from the very beginning, he beheld the inception and growth of the most extraordinary musical phenomenon of the last century. But he was also there when things started to go wrong—when George Harrison quit the band at the height of their success and when it all started to spiral out of control. And he reveals for the first time exactly what caused their break-up. As Brian Epstein’s right-hand man, Alistair Taylor was with the charismatic manager when he first saw The Beatles perform at The Cavern. Taylor later became the band’s ever-present Mr. Fix-it. He bought islands, handled paternity cases, and became a close and trusted friend. It was he who found Epstein’s body after his suicide and, in the reorganization that followed, Taylor went on to become General Manager of Apple, The Beatles’ record company.

    Also available to read online.‘You will have heard of my friend the once celebrated novelist Jocelyn Tarbet, but I suspect his memory is beginning to fade…You’d never heard of me, the once obscure novelist Parker Sparrow, until my name was publicly connected with his. To a knowing few, our names remain rigidly attached, like the two ends of a seesaw. His rise coincided with, though did not cause, my decline… I don’t deny there was wrongdoing. I stole a life, and I don’t intend to give it back. You may treat these few pages as a confession.’A jewel of a book: a brand new short story from the author of Atonement. My Purple Scented Novel follows the perfect crime of literary betrayal, scrupulously wrought yet unscrupulously executed, published to celebrate Ian McEwan’s 70th birthday.

    But Charlie wasn't lighting fires alone: he had an accomplice, his girlfriend Tonya Bundick. Through her depiction of the dangerous shift that happened in their passionate relationship, Hesse brilliantly brings to life the once-thriving coastal community and its distressed inhabitants, who had already been decimated by a punishing economy before they were terrified by a string of fires they could not explain. Incorporating this drama into the long-overlooked history of arson in the United States, American Fire re-creates the anguished nights that this quiet county spent lit up in flames, mesmerizingly evoking a microcosm of rural America - a land half gutted before the fires even began.

    Shapland recognizes herself in the letters’ language―but does not see Carson as history has portrayed her.And so, Shapland is compelled to undertake a recovery of the full narrative and language of Carson's life: She wades through the therapy transcripts; she stays at Carson’s childhood home, where she lounges in her bathtub and eats delivery pizza; she relives Carson’s days at her beloved Yaddo. As Shapland reckons with the expanding and collapsing distance between her and Carson, she see the way Carson’s story has become a way to articulate something about herself. The results articulate something entirely new not only about this one remarkable, walleyed life, but about the way we tell queer love stories.In genre-defying vignettes, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are. In genre-defying vignettes, Jenn Shapland interweaves her own story with Carson McCullers’s to create a vital new portrait of one of America’s most beloved writers, and shows us how the writers we love and the stories we tell about ourselves make us who we are.

    Over four years, her encounters with the sea and all its weathers, the friendships she made, the wild creatures she encountered, combined to transform her life. This book is a love letter, to the beach where she swims regularly and its microcosmic world, to the ever-changing cold waters where the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean meet, and to the seals, her constant companions.

    Topics cover civil rights, road trips in Baja, and Elvis' s visits to his aging mother. Also tributes by authors such as Donna Tartt and Ron Rosenbaum.

    "I Married Wyatt Earp will not be the last word on the subject, but it ranks at the top or very near the top of the importatnt books on the Tombstone story and probably the best on the key figure of Wyatt."--Arizona Highways"For anyone remotely interested in this era and the events that punctuated it, this book is an invaluable source."--Remark"A sympathetic recollection of life with Wyatt Earp which reveals as much about "Josie" as Wyatt."--The Journal of San Diego History

    Thompson. Born a rebel in Louisville, Kentucky, Thompson spent a lifetime channeling his energy and insight into such landmark works as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - and his singular and provocative style challenged and revolutionized writing.Now, for the first time ever, Jann Wenner and Corey Seymour have interviewed the Good Doctor's friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues and woven their memories into a brilliant oral biography. From Hell's Angels leader Sonny Barger to Ralph Steadman to Jack Nicholson to Jimmy Buffett to Pat Buchanan to Marilyn Manson and Thompson's two wives, son, and longtime personal assistant, more than 100 members of Thompson's inner circle bring into vivid focus the life of a man who was even more complicated, tormented, and talented than any previous portrait has shown. It's all here in its uncensored glory: the creative frenzies, the love affairs, the drugs and booze and guns and explosives and, ultimately, the tragic suicide. As Thompson was fond of saying, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

    The result is both a defense of freedom of speech and a critique of the likeability factor that can impede it.

    The complete book about the life of Academy Award nominee River Phoenix, from his parents beginning, his birth, member of a cult religion, to his TV acting, activism, veganism and movie career.