An Englishwoman writing a biography of her father, a famous novelist, discovers that as a young man he changed names, taking the name of a boy who died in infancy. She goes looking for the reason and discovers murder.

Samuel Johnson is famously known for single-handedly creating the first recognized dictionary of the English language, just one of many his many renowned accomplishments. The biography of this remarkable writer, dramatist, poet, and moralist was penned by his friend, James Boswell, in 1791. An immediate success upon its publication, this work has come to be considered the greatest biography produced in the English language, and has earned Boswell...

Regarded as one of the finest literary biographies ever published, this book reveals a man of outsized appetites and private vulnerabilities, and is the source of much of what we know about one of the towering figures of English literature. This edition collates and corrects the textual inaccuracies of previous versions, returning to the original manuscript in order to present a definitive edition of this landmark text.

"Margaret Cavendish, then Lucas, was born in 1623 to an aristocratic family. In 1644, as England descended into civil war, she joined the court of the formidable Queen Henrietta Maria at Oxford. With the rest of the court she went into self-imposed exile in France. Her family's wealth and lands were forfeited by Parliament. It was in France that she met her partner, William Cavendish, Marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a marriage that made her the Duchess...

"After sixteen novels, Jacqueline Winspear has taken the bold step of turning to memoir, revealing the hardships and joys of her family history. Both shockingly frank and deftly restrained, her memoir tackles such difficult, poignant, and fascinating family memories as her paternal grandfather's shellshock, her mother's evacuation from London during the Blitz; her soft-spoken animal-loving father's torturous assignment to an explosives team during...

British actor Sir Derek Jacobi narrates this portrait of author Graham Greene: a British spy, doubting Catholic, and manic-depressive who wrote critically acclaimed best-sellers including The quiet American, Brighton Rock, The end of the affair and The third man. Weaving Greene's novels and movies into the story of his life, Dangerous edge reveals an extraordinary and enigmatic man who traveled the globe to escape the boredom of ordinary existence....

Good-Bye to All That is the compelling autobiography of poet, novelist, and classicist Robert Graves, offering a candid account of his life, from his early years in England to his harrowing experiences as a soldier in World War I. Originally published in 1929, the memoir is celebrated for its frank and unflinching look at the trauma of war and the profound disillusionment it left in its wake. Graves provides readers with a vivid portrayal of trench...

"Will Self is one of Britain's best-known contemporary writers, a public intellectual whose novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into over twenty languages. In Will, his first ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self, and in particular his addictions as a young man. An addiction memoir like no other, Will echoes the best of Self's psychedelic fiction, and is one of the most eloquent depictions of the allure...

ECPA 2014 Christian Book Award Winner (Non-Fiction)! Fifty years after his death, C. S. Lewis continues to inspire and fascinate millions. His legacy remains varied and vast. He was a towering intellectual figure, a popular fiction author who inspired a global movie franchise around the world of Narnia, and an atheist-turned-Christian thinker. In C.S. Lewis-A Life, Alister McGrath, prolific author and respected professor at King's College of London,...

The Importance of Music to Girls is the story of the adventures that music leads us into-how it forms and transforms us. As a soundtrack, it's there in the background while we go about the thrilling and mortifying business of growing up: raging, falling in love, wanting to change the world. Lavinia Greenlaw turns the volume up loud, and in prose of pure fury and beauty makes us remember how the music came first. For Greenlaw, music-from bubblegum...