Biographies & True Stories Books

The first biography of Henry VIII's court fool William Somer, a legendary entertainer and one of the most intriguing figures of the Tudor age.In some portraits of Henry VIII there appears another, striking figure - a gaunt and morose-looking man with a...

Czesaw Miosz (19112004) was a giant of twentieth-century literature, not least because he lived through and wrote about many of the most extreme events of that extreme century, from the world wars and the Holocaust to the Cold War. Over a seven-decade...

Set in the author's homeland, Colombia, this is the heartbreaking story of Leonor, former child soldier of the FARC, a rural guerrilla group.Paula Delgado-Kling followed Leonor for nineteen years, from shortly after she was an active member of the FARC...

This is a memoiristic book and a dual portrait, built around intense friendships with two leading public intellectuals who achieved celebrity status-Susan Sontag on a global scale, George Steiner principally in Europe, though also for a time in the US...

We need community to live. But what does it look like? Why does it often feel like it's slipping away?We are all hinged to some definition of a community, be it as simple as where we live, complex as the beliefs we share, or as intentional as...

Nonfiction Book Awards Silver Winner IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award Silver Winner Nautilus Book Awards Silver Winner American Book Fest Awards Finalist Book Excellence Awards FinalistBrooklyn Goes Home is the true story of how one greyhound sparked a...

Confessions of a Gypsy Yogini is a tale of experience through mistakes, learning the hard way. It is a guidebook to help find ourselves, offering a fresh approach to traditional teachings in a non-adulterated way, adapted to modern characters. Presented...

Born in Greece and abandoned as a child, Lafcadio Hearn lived the life of an exile. He travelled the world and became a famous writer but always felt like an outsider in Dublin, London, Cincinnati, New Orleans, and French-speaking Martinique. To him,...

The New Year's Eve is more precious than a thousand pieces of gold. It is the Great Divide between winter and spring, which none can pass over without copper and silver.Ihara Saikaku is regarded as Japan's first popular writer. The...

A candid and revealing look at life in television, Hollywood, and work in the writer's room, from an insider who wrote for some of the most popular television shows in history - Friends, Desperate Housewives, and Breaking Bad.Ever since Patty...

Golden Lotus tells the story of Ximen Qing, a wealthy, unscrupulous merchant who takes the beautiful and ambitious widow Pan Jinlian as his fifth wife. Jinlian is not content to accept her position and schemes to dominate her husband and improve her...

The "f**k" count is just over sixty. The images are screenshots. The metal is mostly nu. And the grant money's gone. From the author of The Malevolent Volume and National Book Awardwinning Indecency comes a gory new mutation in the shape of nonfiction...

"Extraordinary storytelling about unfathomable horror."-Library Journal(starred review)"[A] worthy tribute to the extraordinary bravery of a remarkable woman."-Publishers WeeklyIn World War II's Poland, thirty year old Zofia Sterner and her husbandWacek...

IGNATZ AWARD Nomination for OUTSTANDING GRAPHIC NOVEL What prevents you from finishing your life's work?Josh Bayer finds a manuscript of an unfinished play inside his deceased father's desk. The play tells the story of Josh's mother's early death (age...

Pill Hill, Nicholas Breutzman's darkly funny and utterly heartbreaking memoir, plunges the reader into a world of horrifying Tinder dates, flea markets, lizard people, child protective services, black holes, time travel, and stress-induced psychosis.Nic...

Over 60 boxes full of notebooks, research, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches, to-do lists, hard drives and even poems...Welcome to the incredible archive of Douglas Adams.After his death in 2001, Douglas Adams's papers were loaned to his old...

Bardskull is the record of three journeys made by Martin Shaw, the celebrated storyteller and interpreter of myth, in the year before he turned fifty. It is unlike anything he has written before. This is not a book about myth or narrative: rather, it is...

This revealing memoir by the former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians describes the long journey towards resolution for the historic injustice that deprived Japanese Canadians of their basic human rights during and after World...

A lively and spontaneous interview with Etel Adnan about her absolute belief in the beauty of the world and the beauty of art.In these interviews with journalist and editor Laure Adler, conducted in the months before her death in November 2021, Etel...

A collected series of intertwined poetic essays written by acclaimed Japanese poet Hiromi Ito - part nature writing, part travelogue, part existential philosophy.Written between April 2012 and November 2013, Tree Spirits Grass Spirits adopts a non-linear...

The Smut Peddler library of high-end erotic anthologies is a critically acclaimed collection of impeccable pornoglyphics, but where did it all begin? The very first Smut Peddler mini-comics and anthology absolutely revolutionized erotica in comics,...

A surprising and exciting new collection of speculative and experimental stories that explore animal intelligences, gender, and the nature of stories. The Privilege of the Happy Ending collects award-winning writer Kij Johnson's speculative fiction from...

Home to fifty-eight author-selected poems and accompanying essays, Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That Matter Most is a far-reaching, essential touchstone for the art of poetry in the United States today.Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems That...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION THEGLOBE AND MAIL: BOOKS TO READ IN FALL 2023THEGLOBE AND MAILBEST 100 BOOKS OF 2023CBC BOOKS BEST CANADIAN NONFICTION OF 2023 Martha Baillie's richly layered response to her mother's...

Cowboy erotica meets Kathy Acker in this smart, raunchy look at a queer sexual awakening Steacy Easton grew up Mormon, queer, and Autistic in the West. This book traces the people and spaces that made them who they are: the Mormon church, an Anglican...

REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK * NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"A beautiful love letter to nature and the world around us."-Reese Witherspoon (Reese's Book Club September '24 Pick) THE PERFECT GIFT FOR NATURE LOVERS, BIRDERS, AND GARDENERS, WITH ORIGINAL COLOR ART...

Novelist, playwright, essayist, and master of the short story. Artist and engaged working-class intellectual; husband, father, and grandfather as well as committed revolutionary activist.From his first publication (a short story collection An Old Pub...

John, Paul, George, and Ringo were more than great musicians: they were the quintessential fashion icons of one of the most exciting and memorable fashion eras of all time. From their starts in black leather through Sergeant Pepper to Nehru collars and...

After a normal, healthy, full-term pregnancy, Margaret Moore's parents Anne and Terrence were shocked as a prolapsed umbilical cord left their daughter unable to breathe on her own. Margaret, nicknamed Meg, was not expected to live through the night and...

Katya Cengel became patient number 090 71 51 at the Roth Psychosomatic Unit at Children's Hospital at Stanford in 1986. She was 10 years old. Overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment, worthlessness and anger at having to care for her depressed father, she...

'An ode to storytelling itself...A gorgeous and heart-rending story of survival.' - Melissa Febos, author of GirlhoodA moving and essential exploration of what it takes to find your voice as a woman, a survivor, an artist, and an icon...

Ask Uncle Jack is a heartwarming book about a centenarian who shares his wisdom about the importance of nature and kindness. Uncle Jack was born in 1923 and reminds us that no matter where we are in the world, nature is always nearby and has the power to...

One of the world' s most well-known and respected athletes, Roger Federer has had a career that ranks among the most celebrated and successful in all of tennis history. This entertaining and illuminating chronicle of Federer' s trophy-laden journey is...

James VI and I, the first monarch to reign over Scotland, England and Ireland, has long endured a mixed reputation. To many, he is simply the homosexual King, the inveterate witch-roaster, the smelly sovereign who never washed, the colourless man behind...

Prince Rogers Nelson aka Prince was a complete artist, all at once author, composer, performer, multi-instrumentalist and producer. A real showman on stage, songs like " 1999" or " Purple Rain," made him an international star. With his tormented life,...

Crosby, Holiday, Sinatra, Fitzgerald, Garland, and Streisand were the major interpreters of the American songbook, and this is the interlocking story of their lives and careers. Here is the epic tale of how these artists dominated American popular music...

When Kenny Albert was growing up, family gatherings sounded a lot like a dispatch from the first all-sports radio station. There was his father, Marv, whose voice shaped the sound of modern basketball, and there too were his uncles Al and Steve-a trio of...

Although humankind today can peer far deeper into the universe than ever before, we still find ourselves surrounded by the unknown and perhaps the unknowable. All great science fiction has used the human imagination to explore that realm beyond the...

Whether investigating a gruesome triple-murder, a fairy tale marriage gone horribly wrong, or a brilliant con artist, Michael Lista has proven himself one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation. In his belief that crime reporting thrives the...

What happens when, in the middle of a happy heterosexual marriage, a woman falls in love with another woman?The Swift Dark Tide is a story of selfhood and desire, of careful listening to an ungovernable heart.Part memoir, part love letter, The Swift Dark...

Vanguard continues their trademark Definitive Reference series with Frazetta: World's Best Comics Cover Artist, a sister book to 2022's hit, Frazetta Book Cover Art.While the prior book by illustration and cartooning historian J. David...

The Mahogany Pod is a moving portrayal of a joyful love affair that was cut short by a terminal illness after just one exhilarating year and an inspirational account of vulnerability, reconciliation and learning to live fully after loss."Gorgeous ... her...

Rescued from a puppy mill in 2010, Freddie was a bright light in lives of his human companions and the ultimate muse for biographer Grant Hayter-Menzies to explore the human-animal bond in his books. As Grant helped Freddie overcome the fears and traumas...

An intimate portrait of the life and work of one of photography's most renowned and celebrated artists. Throughout his more than sixty-year-long obsession with the medium, Josef Koudelka considers a remarkable range of photographic subjects - from his...

An island is a world out of time and place, separated by literal and figurative oceans, where the confines of reality are tenuous and magic may be possible. Iceland-with its relative isolation, enchanting mythologies, creative people, and the...

Rebel Music: Bob Marley & Roots Reggae is a tribute to the leading icon in music, Bob Marley. In 1975, after meeting Marley in London, photographer Kate Simon gained unique access to the Wailers, capturing intensely personal moments and momentous...

Six years ago, Jo Caulfield was about to go on stage when she found out that her big sister Annie had cancer. Not the best way to start a nationwide comedy tour. But the tour turns out to be a welcome distraction for both sisters. As Jo reports back from...

In 2007, at the age of thirty-four, Mike Tomlin was hired as the head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Replacing Hall of Famer Bill Cowher-and two years removed from the team's Super Bowl XL victory-there was immense pressure on the first-year head...