Literary Figures

Twentieth Anniversary Edition with Contributions from Joe Hill and Owen King Part memoir, part masterclass by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic...

'I couldn't put this book down. Although harrowing at times, Lesley's indomitable spirit shines through. What an inspiration, what a book!' Katie Fforde'More extraordinary than any plot twist in Pearse's novels' Mail on SundayREAD THE SPELLBINDING MEMOIR...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780385720250Author Sylvia PlathFormat PaperbackPage Count 768Imprint Bantam Doubleday DellPublisher Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group IncWeight(grams)...

Longlisted for the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction (now the Bailie Gifford) 'A thrilling and complex book, enlarges our view of Homer ... There's something that hits the mark on every page'...

'Truly wonderful... Anna Funder has written another brilliant human portrait.' - Claire Tomalin A BLAZING, GENRE-BENDING MASTERPIECE FROM ONE OF THE MOST INVENTIVE WRITERS OF OUR TIMELooking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder...

The bestselling book that inspired the cult classic film, Girl, Interrupted, starring Winona Ryder and Angelina Jolie."Not since Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar has a personal account of life in a mental hospital achieved as much popularity and acclaim" TIME...

**SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024****WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE 2024 | NON-FICTION**A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean.'Brilliant'...

Poets must read and study, but also they must learn to tilt and whisper, shout, or dance, each in his or her own way, or we might just as well copy the old books. But, no, that would never do, for always the new self swimming around in the old world...

A TIME magazine Must-Read Book of the Year Ever wonder what your therapist is thinking? Now you can find out, as therapist and New York Times bestselling author Lori Gottlieb takes us behind the scenes of her practice - where her patients are looking...

'A MARVEL' PHILIP PULLMAN Can you remember the first time you fell in love with a book? The stories we read as children matter. The best ones are indelible in our memories; reaching far beyond our childhoods, they are a window into our deepest...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781681370606Author Leonora CarringtonFormat PaperbackPage Count 96Imprint The New York Review of Books, IncPublisher The New York Review of Books,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780593833315Author Griffin DunneFormat PaperbackPage Count 400Imprint The Penguin PressPublisher Penguin Putnam IncWeight(grams) 386gDimensions(mm) 233mm *...

Joan Didion's hugely influential collection of essays which defines, for many, the America which rose from the ashes of the Sixties. We tell ourselves stories in order to live. The princess is caged in...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780140144574Author John SteinbeckFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Penguin Books LtdPublisher Penguin Books LtdWeight(grams) 182gDimensions(mm) 194mm *...

'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional'A compelling mediation on the power of running and a fascinating insight into the life of this internationally bestselling writer. A perfect reading companion for runners.In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to...

'Extraordinarily powerful' Emma Thompson There are a million love stories, and a million stories of addiction. This one is transcendent. Louisa Young met Robert Lockhart when they were both 17. Their...

The BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Edna O'Brien's The Country Girls trilogy begins in August 2019.I thought of life's many bounties, to have known the extremities of joy and sorrow, love, crossed love and unrequited love, success and failure, fame and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781250181695Author Ellen UllmanFormat PaperbackPage Count 320Imprint St Martin's PressPublisher St Martin's PressWeight(grams) 318gDimensions(mm) 201mm *...

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'This is my kind of history: carefully researched but so vivid that you are convinced Lucy Worsley was actually there at the party - or the parsonage.' Antonia Fraser'A refreshingly unique perspective on Austen and her work and...

30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITIONWITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR'Girl, Interrupted is a beautiful, complex story that truly led the way on opening up a new, brave, nuanced approach to talking about women's mental health. It is an intense and personal story...

Beatrix Potter's books are adored by millions, but they were just one aspect of an extraordinary life. This captivating biography brings us the passionate, unconventional woman behind the beloved stories: a gifted artist and shrewd businesswoman; a...

Beatrix Potter's books are adored by millions, but they were just one aspect of an extraordinary life. This captivating biography brings us the passionate, unconventional woman behind the beloved stories: a gifted artist and shrewd businesswoman; a...

Edgar Mittelholzer’s autobiography, first published in 1963, which covers the first eighteen years of his life, was his first return in writing to about his native Guyana, of memory and imagination, for a good many years. Born into a household that...

'This book is just about my favourite book of all time ... I'm not entirely convinced I could like somebody who didn't like this book ... it's funny and moving and gives you an insight into this extraordinary moment as the war is about to begin ... it's...

'The story of Coleridge's life does undoubtedly echo that of his poem; this is a book that provides rewarding rereadings of both' - The Sunday TimesA new biography of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, shaped and structured around the story he himself tells in his...

With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible...

'Utterly, agonisingly compulsive ... a masterpiece' Liz Jensen, GuardianFollowing one woman's journey from a troubled girlhood in working-class Copenhagen through her struggle to live on her own terms, The Copenhagen Trilogy is a searingly honest,...

'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse'- THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A riveting portrait'- GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR***'Worsley's sparkling biography brings a fresh eye to Christie's life and work, firmly busting the myth...

"I am here alone for the first time in weeks," May Sarton begins this book, "to take up my 'real' life again at last. That is what is strange-that friends, even passionate love,are not my real life, unless there is time alone in which to explore what is...

In the bitter winds of autumn 1963, Tove Jansson, helped by Brunstroem, a maverick fisherman, raced to build a cabin on a treeless skerry in the Gulf of Finland. The island was Klovharun, and for thirty summers Tove and her beloved partner, the graphic...

'The book I've been waiting for my entire life' DOLLY ALDERTONIs it possible that life without romantic love isn't so bad?When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional...

_______________ 'One of the most inventive, original and disturbing writers of her generation' - Daily Telegraph 'Diski does not do linear, or normal, or boring ... In Gratitude amounts to the inner monologue of a highly intelligent, furiously...

"Hitchens presents a George Orwell fit for the twenty-first century." --Boston GlobeIn this widely acclaimed biographical essay, the masterful polemicist Christopher Hitchens assesses the life, the achievements, and the myth of the great political writer...

When Brian Doyle passed away at the age of sixty after a bout with brain cancer, he left behind a cult-like following of devoted readers who regard his writing as one of the best-kept secrets of the twenty- first century. Doyle writes with a delightful...

'Like Lorna Sage's Bad Blood ... A masterpiece.' Rachel Cusk Giving Up the Ghost is the shocking and beautiful memoir, from the author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and The Mirror & the Light ...

*BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* Benjamin Zephaniah, who has travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, now tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life. In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets...

A Guardian and Lit Hub most anticipated book of 2024An exhilarating biography of the iconic poet, essayist and activist Audre Lorde Read these chapters like a collection of poems that speak in chorus in all directions. Understand each word as an...

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard fixes her entrancing gaze and powerful sense of wonder on the natural world. Whether watching a sublime lunar eclipse or locking eyes with a wild weasel, Dillard captures the grand and miniature miracles of our...

Jeoffry was a real cat who lived 250 years ago, confined to an asylum with Christopher Smart, one of the most visionary poets of the age. In exchange for love and companionship, Smart rewarded Jeoffry with the greatest tribute to a feline ever written...

'In the first decade of the twentieth century, it was not a good time to be born black, or woman, in America.' So begins this stunning portrait of Vivian Baxter Johnson: the first black woman officer in the Merchant Marines, purveyor of a gambling...