Literary Figures

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 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...

'This is the biography - truthful, sympathetic and thorough - that Coward deserves'DAILY TELEGRAPHThe voice, the dressing-gown, the cigarette in its holder, remain unmistakable. There is rarely a week when one of Private Lives, Hay Fever, and Blithe...

'Fascinating' The Times'Blakeian in its singularity' New Statesman'A wonderful adventure' Irish Times'Rich, complex and original' Tom Holland'A crisp, ambitious and thoroughly contemporary introduction' Times Literary SupplementPoet, artist, visionary...

Something extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing -...

In an age of emails, tweets and emojis, this beautiful selection of original love letters invites us into a privileged realm and reminds us why the written word is so expressive and revealing. The 30 handwritten notes included in this book span...

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...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781914198984Author Vivian GornickFormat PaperbackPage Count 184Imprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

From twice Booker-shortlisted author Deborah Levy, a moving and revelatory collection exploring the muses that have shaped her life and work as a writerIn The Position of Spoons, Deborah Levy invites the reader into the interiors of her world, sharing...

'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...

'Alcohol flows across families like water over a landscape. Sometimes it moves in torrents, sometimes in floods, sometimes in trickles. It always shapes the ground it covers in unmistakable ways.' In the Blood is a...

The classic evocative tale of an idyllic childhood in the English countryside ...

'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...

Take an intimate tour through the life and works of Stephen King, made vivid with rare photos and ephemera from King's personal collection.Even if you are a die-hard fan, you will find something new in this beautifully packaged Stephen King reference...

An autobiographical work that describes firsthand the great tectonic shifts in English society following the First World War, Robert Graves's Goodbye to All That is a matchless evocation of the Great War's haunting legacy, published in Penguin Modern...

'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...

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...

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...

How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love? How to live? This question obsessed Renaissance nobleman Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), who wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and...

David Riggs evokes the atmosphere and texture of Marlowe's life, from the stench and poverty of a childhood spent near Canterbury's abattoirs to the fanatical pursuit of classical learning at school. Marlowe won a place at Cambridge University, where...

'So bold and so vulnerable at the same time. I don't know how she did it' - Phoebe Waller-BridgeNow with an introduction from Dolly Alderton, author of Everything I Know About Love, revealing how a new generation of women can take inspiration from Nora's...

'Beautiful, deep, transfixing . . . it will burn a home in your heart' LEMN SISSAY'Essential reading, life-changing' SAMANTHA MORTON'An astonishing piece of work' NIALL GRIFFITHSThe government told a story about me before I was born.Jenni Fagan was...

George Orwell's vivid memoir of his time living among the desperately poor and destitute, Down and Out in Paris and London is a moving tour of the underworld of society.'You have talked so often of going to the dogs - and well, here are the dogs, and you...

Take a trip down memory lane and read about the life of Britain's most beloved vet, who charmed us all with his bestselling tales of veterinary life in Yorkshire.'A wonderful, glorious insight into the life of the man behind the books' 5***** Reader...

Agatha Christie's Complete Secret Notebooks brings together for the first time Secret Notebooks and Murder in the Making, two volumes that explore the fascinating contents of her 73 notebooks. This includes illustrations, deleted extracts, unused ideas,...

Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford PrizeThe Top Ten BestsellerA The Times Book of the YearWaterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month'If you want to read a book that moves you both at the level of sentence and the quality of language and with the...

The Works contains 120 of Pam Ayres' best-known poems, including 'The Battery Hen', 'Please Will You Take Your Children Home Before I Do Them In?', 'Sling Another Chair Leg on the Fire, Mother' and, of course, 'Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth'.This...

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...

'Speak, memory', said Vladimir Nabokov. And immediately there came flooding back to him a host of enchanting recollections - of his comfortable childhood and adolescence, of his rich, liberal-minded father, his beautiful mother, an army of relations and...

You put together two things that have not been put together before. And the world is changed... In Levels of Life Julian Barnes gives us Nadar, the pioneer balloonist and aerial photographer; he gives us Colonel Fred Burnaby, reluctant adorer of the...

A collection of insightful and uproariously funny non-fiction by the bestselling author of INFINITE JEST - one of the most acclaimed and adventurous writers of our time. A SUPPOSEDLY FUN THING... brings together Wallace's musings on a wide range of...

'A first-rate biography of the man, the writer and the lover' DAVID HOCKNEY'Bucknell's research is impressive and her judgements astute' GUARDIANAn engrossing new biography of the man whose writings about 1930s Berlin made him famous. From the editor of...

** Shortlisted for the @CrimeFest H.R.F. Keating Award **'A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse'- THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR'A riveting portrait' - GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR***'Christie lovers should read this biography...

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY BENJAMIN MARKOVITSIn 1845 Thoreau, a Harvard-educated 28-year-old, went to live by himself in the woods in Massachusetts. He stayed for over two years, living self-sufficiently in a small cabin built with his own hands. Walden is...

'Memories, aphorisms and stern good advice from America's favourite naughty aunt' Independent on Sunday'This book is as grown-up as a dirty martini' Sunday Times'Sharp as a knife' Daily Express___In her final book, Nora Ephron reflects on life, growing...

The original authorised biography, and the only one written by an author who actually met J.R.R. Tolkien, reissued to mark Tolkien's 125th Anniversary. In more than 40 years since Tolkien's death in September 1973, millions have read The...

'Moving, funny, remarkable' Richard EyreFrom Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia, a memoir about the accident that left him paralysed'A few days ago, a bomb went off in my life, but this bomb has also shattered the lives of those around me...

A powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain.'Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty' Bernardine Evaristo'Staggering... An absolute inspiration' Douglas Stewart, Herald'When every day of your life you have been told...

'I took it: - and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!' Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a...

Winner of the Baillie Gifford Prize and the Baillie Gifford 'Winner of Winners' award in 2023How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year we follow...