Literary Figures

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...

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...

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...

'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...

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 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...

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)...

'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...

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...

**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...

'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...

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 9780140144574Author John SteinbeckFormat PaperbackPage Count 240Imprint Penguin Books LtdPublisher Penguin Books LtdWeight(grams) 182gDimensions(mm) 194mm *...

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 *...

'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...

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 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...

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...

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...

Draft No. 4 is a master class on the writer's craft. In a series of playful, expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he has gathered over his career and has refined while teaching at Princeton University, where he has nurtured some of the...

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...

*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 Sunday Times top ten bestseller****Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award 2023****Shortlisted for the Duff Cooper Prize for Non-Fiction 2023****Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed First Biography Prize 2023**'Masterly.'...

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...

'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...

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...

A fresh portrait of the man behind James Bond, and his enduring impact, by an award-winning biographer with unprecedented access to the Fleming family papers.Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous and ongoing impact on our...

'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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780963818362Author Emily DickinsonFormat PaperbackPage Count 360Imprint Paris Press IncorporatedPublisher Paris Press Incorporated

'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...

Paul Foot was one of the most influential investigative reporters of his generation. For nearly fifty years, he was the scourge of corrupt politicians and dodgy businessmen, a champion of the underdog.In this, the first biography of Paul Foot, journalist...

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'...

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...

A superb autobiography by one of the great literary figures of the twentieth century, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780743277181Author Carole RadziwillFormat PaperbackPage Count 272Imprint Simon & SchusterPublisher Simon & SchusterWeight(grams) 249gDimensions(mm) 213mm *...

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...

In 1926, Tom Rolt who was then sixteen years old, abandoned his public school education. Having taken a job with a small firm of agricultural engineers, he realised that he had found his life’s calling. But the way ahead was neither smooth nor easy...

THE MULTI AWARD-WINNING #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER'Gripping' NEW YORK TIMES'At last, the Ripper's victims get a voice... An eloquent, stirring challenge to reject the prevailing Ripper myth' MAIL ON SUNDAY____________Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine...