Biographies & True Stories Books

In August 1956 a young shepherd, his wife, two-year-old daughter and ten-day-old son sat huddled in a small boat on Loch Monar in Ross-shire as a storm raged around them. They were bound for a tiny, remote cottage at the western end of the loch which was...

At various stages of his life, the celebrated American writer William Faulkner (1897-1962) presented himself as a literary dandy, a shabby bohemian, a wounded war veteran, a humble farmer, a courtly lover, and a genteel but aloof Southerner. In private...

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, born on 30 November 1835 in Monroe County, Missouri, was never one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. A natural-born storyteller, Mark Twain freely adapted the incidents of his life and the stories he heard as a...

Leonard Bernstein (19181990) was one of twentieth-century music's most successful and recognisable figures. In a career spanning five decades he conducted many of the world's leading orchestras, and composed scores for landmark musicals such as Candide...

Ernest Miller Hemingway (21 July 1899 - 2 July 1961) enjoyed a life of literary triumph set against a backdrop of some of the grandest landscapes in the world. Verna Kale's new, narrative portrait of Hemingway challenges some of the long-held assumptions...

Few artists have exerted such an influence on modern art as Paul Cezanne (19 January 1839 - 22 October 1906). Picasso, Braque and Matisse all acknowledged a profound debt to his painting. This reassessment of Cezanne's life and art discusses the key...

In this biography of one of the twentieth century's most enigmatic personalities and idiosyncratic thinkers, David A. Shafer takes readers on a chronological voyage through Artaud's life. Yet, as Artaud navigated through the...

Traditional biographies of Watt have concentrated on the steam engine, but in this book Ben Russell tells a richer story, exploring the processes by which ephemeral ideas were transformed into tangible artefacts and the multifaceted world of production...

Yukio Mishima was the most internationally acclaimed Japanese author of the twentieth century: prodigiously talented, dazzlingly prolific and a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize. Yet in 1970 Mishima shocked the world with a bizarre attempt at a coup...

A guide to the music and multifaceted career of Canadian artists and songwriters Tegan and Sara.Through interviews with Tegan and Sara, their collaborators, journalists, and fans, this book explores the multifaceted career of one of music's most...

Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing meets Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep in this fascinating deep-dive into the science and history of sleep.In Search of Sleep is both a self-help manual for insomniacs, and a sweeping critique of the hustle culture that...

While exploring in the forbidden area near Old Mill Road, Bizzee Bear and Rascal and Rowdy Raccoon discover a worried Nester, after a fall maroons him in the woods. Nester is different from the other woodland animals. He has feathers but can't fly and he...

Indigenous Voices Award winner Cole Pauls returns with a robust collection of stories that celebrate the cultural practices and experiences of Dene and Arctic peoplesGathering Pauls's comics from magazines, comic festivals and zine making workshops,...

Weegee was a street photographer for New York's popular press in the 1940s. He was infamous for adjusting the position of dead bodies at crime scenes to make his photographs more pleasing to the eye. Wauter Mannaert and Max de Radigus have succeeded...

"Taaqtumi" is an Inuktitut word that means "in the dark"-and these spine-tingling horror stories by Northern writers show just how dangerous darkness can be. A family clinging to survival out on the tundra after a vicious zombie virus. A door that...

**One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2023****Esquire's August 2023 Book Club Pick** 'If books are important to you because you're a reader or a writer, then how books are sold should be important to you as well...

Contemporary themes: the search for meaning and for spirituality in a secular world; the art of attention; reconciliation with the Catholic Church; the meaning and value of art (and the humanities) in the 21st century, especially art from cultures and...

Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it.Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to...

Selected by editor Mireille Silcoff, the 2023 edition ofBest Canadian Essaysshowcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2021."Our current, tumultuous age" writes editor Mireille Silcoff, "is an important time for essayists, because in...

Nominated for the 2023 Heritage Toronto Book Award Finalist for the 2023 Ottawa Book Award in English Nonfiction Longlisted for the 2023 National Business Book Award The remarkable true story of the rise and fall of one of North America's most...

The bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it's because of books, what they are, what they release...

Shortlisted for the 2023 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby...

Reaching Mithymna describes the Syrian refugee crisis from a Canadian volunteer's perspective. Secondary theme of the search for identity, familial and ethnic or cultural: Heighton's mother emigrated from Greece.Will appeal to politically-minded readers...

Why do we read? What do we cherish in a book? What is the nature of a masterpiece? What do Alice Munro, Albert Camus, and the great Polish experimentalist Witold Gombrowicz have in common? In the tradition of Nabokov, Calvino, and Kundera, Douglas...

Shortlisted for the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction It's a tale as old as time. Girl meets boy. Boy wants girl. Girl says no. Boy takes what he wants anyway. After a violent sexual assault, Eden Boudreau was faced with a choice: call...

The experience of motherhood is monumental, yet rarely discussed in connection with literary or creative life. How do we navigate the twin devotions of love and art? How does motherhood disrupt the creative process? How does it enhance it?Good Mom on...

A radiant, unforgettable memoir of one woman's 450 days spent in captivity, and her defiant refusal to have her humanity stripped away.When Edith meets Luca in a small Northern town, the two connect instantly. Under the Northern Lights, they develop a...

"The powerful origin story of one of Yellowstone's greatest and most famous wolves."-Washington Post"[The Rise of Wolf 8] is a goldmine for information on all aspects of wolf behavior and clearly shows they are clever, smart, and emotional beings...

"[Daniel Pauly] is an iconoclastic fisheries scientist ... who is so decidedly global in his life and outlook that he is nearly a man without a country."-NEW YORK TIMES"Daniel Pauly is a friend whose work has inspired me for years."-TED DANSONDaniel...

'Exciting, funny, and occasionally heart-stopping...readers can stay home and dry, but feel like they are on the high seas.' BOOKLISTA man and his chicken sail 45,000 nautical miles in this powerful story of following your dreams no...

From the acclaimed author of In Praise of Paths comes a humorous and modest Walden for modern times.As nature becomes ever more precious, we all want to spend more time appreciating it. But time is often hard to come by. And how do we appreciate nature...

In this engrossing book, a father and son ascend a mountain together, retracing the steps of a boy who went missing there a century earlier - a quest that spawns a tender meditation on nature, family, and the joy of discovery.Six-year-old Hans Torske...

The first-ever biography of Mozhdah Jamalzadah: refugee, pop singer, and champion of women's rights.Many have tried to silence her, but Mozhdah Jamalzadah remains the most powerful female voice of her generation in Afghanistan, boldly speaking out about...

A powerful, intimate look at the life of a beloved folk icon and activist.Folk hero. Songwriter icon. Living legend. Buffy Sainte-Marie is all of these things and more. In this, Sainte-Marie's first and only authorized biography, music critic Andrea...

A definitive biography of an iconic Canadian architect-and a social portraitof the midcentury design world he lived in.Ron Thom came of age in the mid-20th century, just as the modern movement and an impending building boom were about to reshape the...

Forty influential and diverse Canadians with expertise in subjects such as Indigenous rights, climate change, social justice and race, gun control, higher education and poetry reflect on everything Canada is getting right-and what still needs to change...

Disability, death and divorce are part of a string of losses that leave this award-winning musician fundamentally changed as she learns to navigate her grief and find a way forward.Christa Couture lost a piece of herself-in more ways than one. She lost a...

Chasing Africa delicately explores the loss of identity, the gift of health and adventure, and the courage to put oneself first despite guilt, fear, and the pull of family.As a teenager, Lisa couldn't wait to escape suburbia and travel the world. Years...

An inspiring travel adventure memoir that explores a young woman's quest to live life on the front lines, chasing adventure, and confronting the harsh realities of crisis work in Asia and Africa.In 1975, a time of new freedom for women, Ella Harvey lived...

Experience the quirky missteps, humorous adventures, and professional development of a renowned Canadian photographer in this entertaining memoir.Join Canadian photographer, explorer, Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, father, and writer...

This debut memoir is at once a captivating travelogue and an introspective look at what it takes to navigate the unfamiliar and find your way back home.Meghan J. Ward was 21 years old when she journeyed across the country for a summer job in the Canadian...

Through the pages of Casting Back Peter McMullan takes the reader from his youthful Irish beginnings in the 1940s to his time as a young journalist in Northern Ireland during the mid-1950s, through the 1960s and into today's western Canada and a totally...

Lucky Dog is a hilarious and heartwarming memoir by a renowned veterinary oncologist who tells us what we can learn about health care and ourselves from our most beloved pets.What happens when a veterinary surgical oncologist (laymen's term: cancer...

** Shortlisted, 2023 NSW Premier's History Awards, NSW Community & Regional History Prize ** For lovers of natural history, this is the first book to explore Allan Riverstone McCulloch's scientific genius, artistic talents and his crucial...

** Shortlisted, The Age Book of the Year Award 2023, Non-fiction **** Shortlisted, The Danger Awards 2023, Non-fiction **Nothing in the post-war decades reveals the underbelly of Australian life the way police records do.Small time heists. Failed...

What can a microbial gravesite on a moon teach us? Why is a group of scientists risking their lives to safeguard a seed bank? How does a virus detective story show us why we need to be vigilant about the next disease outbreak?Great science writing has...

'Genuine radicalism provides hope. It provokes through a scandalous insistence that life can be otherwise, that we aren't doomed to economic and environmental decline, and that we can make our future better than our past.'Why did politicians think an...

'I know it's a daring suggestion, but I'll make it anyway.'Charmian Clift was a writer ahead of her time. Lyrical and fearless, her essays seamlessly blended the personal and the political.In 1964, Charmian Clift and her husband George Johnston returned...