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...

A TRUE STORY THAT HAS TOUCHED THE HEARTS OF THOUSANDS'Unmitigated delight from cover to cover' DAILY TELEGRAPH 'A real-life love story . . . A timeless period piece. Do read it' WALL STREET JOURNAL 'Beguile an hour of your time and put you in tune with...

The Times Food Book of the Year. A soul-searching memoir for foodies everywhere. Let award-winning food writer Clare Finney take you on a passionate exploration of food and love. From family feasts to comfort food, first dates to office cake; how does...

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 -...

Based on thousands of pages of typed and handwritten notes, journal entries, letters, and story sketches, The Exegesis of Philip K. Dick is the magnificent and imaginative final work of an author who dedicated his life to questioning the nature of...

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 new edition of Primo Levi's classic memoir of the Holocaust, with an introduction by David Baddiel, author of Jews Don't Count'With the moral stamina and intellectual poise of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, dutiful, unassuming chemist...

Pronounced guilty of libel and sentenced to a year in prison, novelist Emile Zola went on the run. Zola's crime had been to defend a wrongly convicted man, in what became known as the Dreyfus Affair. Fleeing the French state with just hours to spare he...

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...

'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 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 9781914198984Author Vivian GornickFormat PaperbackPage Count 184Imprint Daunt BooksPublisher Daunt Books

'An intimate and insightful portrait of the peerless observer of rural life' RICHARD MABEY'Moving, candid, vivid, it is all that we could hope for in a memoir of this unique and treasured writer' ROWAN WILLIAMS'As a boy I dreamed of scholars and saints...

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...

**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'...

It is a moment shrouded in horror and mystery. Edgar Allan Poe died on October 7, 1849, at just forty, in a painful, utterly bizarre manner that would not have been out of place in one of his own tales of terror. What was the cause of his untimely death,...

Cancelled Confessions reveals Claude Cahun to be a major surrealist writer and pioneering queer theorist almost a century ahead of her time. 'The re-appearance of this glittering and dissenting semi-lost epic is a gift... Cahun's writing is stylish,...

Stefan Zweig's seminal memoir recalls the golden age of pre-war Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall. Through the story of his life and his relationships with the leading literary figures of the day, Zweig's fervent,...

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...

'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...

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...

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...

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...

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)...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780374533113Author Professor Roland BarthesFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Hill & WangPublisher Hill & WangWeight(grams) 249gDimensions(mm) 208mm *...

'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...

The comprehensive collection of letters spanning the adult life of one of the world's greatest storytellers, now revised and expanded to include more than 150 previously unseen letters, with revealing new insights into The Hobbit, The Lord...

'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...

'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...

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...

'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...

'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...

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,...

'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...

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...