subject results for "Biography & Autobiography"

Kitchen Confidential

Bourdain, Anthony — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Anthony Bourdain, host of Parts Unknown, reveals "twenty-five years of sex, drugs, bad behavior and haute cuisine" in his breakout New York Times bestseller Kitchen Confidential.
Bourdain spares no one's appetite when he told all about what happens behind the kitchen door. Bourdain uses the same "take-no-prisoners" attitude in his deliciously funny and shockingly delectable book, sure to delight gourmands and philistines alike. From Bourdain's first oyster in the Gironde, to his lowly position as dishwasher in a honky tonk fish restaurant in Provincetown (where he witnesses for the first time the real delights of being a chef); from the kitchen of the Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center, to drug dealers in the east village, from Tokyo to Paris and back to New York again, Bourdain's tales of the kitchen are as passionate as they are unpredictable.
Kitchen Confidential will make your mouth water while your belly aches with laughter. You'll beg the chef for more, please.

The Bridge Ladies

Lerner, Betsy — Sun, 31 Jan 2016 00:00:00 GMT

"A fifty-year-old Bridge game provides an unexpected way to cross the generational divide between a daughter and her mother. Betsy Lerner takes us on a powerfully personal literary journey, where we learn a little about Bridge and a lot about life.After a lifetime defining herself in contrast to her mother's "don't ask, don't tell" generation, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood home, not five miles from the mother she spent decades avoiding. When Roz needs help after surgery, it falls to Betsy to take care of her. She expected a week of tense civility; what she got instead were the Bridge Ladies. Impressed by their loyalty, she saw something her generation lacked. Facebook was great, but it wouldn't deliver a pot roast.Tentatively at first, Betsy becomes a regular at her mother's Monday Bridge club. Through her friendships with the ladies, she is finally able to face years of misunderstandings and family tragedy, the Bridge table becoming the common ground she and Roz never had.By turns darkly funny and deeply moving, The Bridge Ladies is the unforgettable story of a hard-won--but never-too-late--bond between mother and daughter"--

Nobody's Girl

Giuffre, Virginia Roberts — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The unforgettable memoir by the late Virginia Roberts Giuffre, the woman who dared to take on Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell
“Make no mistake: this is a book about power, corruption, industrial-scale sex abuse and the way in which institutions sided with the perpetrator over his victims. . . . But it is also a book about how a young woman becomes a hero. . . . Important [and] courageous.” —The Guardian
The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew catalyzed his fall from grace. But her story has never been told in full, in her own words—until now.
In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life. She left behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death and stated unequivocally that she wanted it published. Nobody’s Girl is the riveting and powerful story of an ordinary girl who would grow up to confront extraordinary adversity.
Here, Giuffre offers an unsparing and definitive account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She also details the molestation she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at nineteen. Giuffre remade her life from scratch and summoned the courage to not only hold her abusers to account but also advocate for other victims. The pages of Nobody’s Girl preserve her voice—and her legacy—forever.
Nobody’s Girl is an astonishing affirmation of Giuffre’s unshakable will—first, to claw her way out of victimhood, and then to shine light on wrongdoing and fight for a safer, fairer world. Equal parts intimate and fierce, it is a remarkable narrative of fortitude in the face of depravity and despair.

The Woman in Me

Spears, Britney — Tue, 31 Jan 2023 00:00:00 GMT

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
MORE THAN 3 MILLION COPIES SOLD!
GOODREADS CHOICE AWARD WINNER FOR BEST MEMOIR

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY PEOPLE

Named a Best Book of the Year by Elle, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, NPR, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, and more!

"In Britney Spears's memoir, she's stronger than ever." —The New York Times

Critically acclaimed as "a miracle" (The Guardian), "powerful" (Los Angeles Times), "radiant" (The New York Times), and "poignant" (Vogue), The Woman in Me reveals for the first time Britney Spears's incredible story.
"A genuine page-turner" (Financial Times), it's "presented so cleanly and candidly, The Woman in Me seems designed to be read in one sitting" (The New York Times). A "heartbreaking, jaw-dropping, but ultimately empowering story" (New York Post), this unforgettable memoir is "a testament to Spears's essential fortitude of spirit—something that burns off these pages" (The Telegraph).

Book of Lives

Atwood, Margaret — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR

A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR FROM NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, THE CHIGACO TRIBUNE, TIME MAGAZINE, PEOPLE, NEW YORK MAGAZINE, GOODREADS, LITHUB, AND MORE

How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story?
Raised by scientifically minded parents, Margaret Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forests of northern Quebec, where her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother created an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.
From this unconventional start, Margaret unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would inspire Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points, and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars, and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.
As she explores her past, Margaret reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our very greatest imaginations.

Wintering

May, Katherine — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
“Katherine May opens up exactly what I and so many need to hear but haven't known how to name.” —Krista Tippett, On Being
“Every bit as beautiful and healing as the season itself. . . . This is truly a beautiful book.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
"Proves that there is grace in letting go, stepping back and giving yourself time to repair in the dark...May is a clear-eyed observer and her language is steady, honest and accurate—capturing the sense, the beauty and the latent power of our resting landscapes." —Wall Street Journal
From the author of the New York Times bestseller Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age, this is an intimate, revelatory exploration of the ways we can care for and repair ourselves when life knocks us down.

Sometimes you slip through the cracks: unforeseen circumstances like an abrupt illness, the death of a loved one, a break up, or a job loss can derail a life. These periods of dislocation can be lonely and unexpected. For May, her husband fell ill, her son stopped attending school, and her own medical issues led her to leave a demanding job. Wintering explores how she not only endured this painful time, but embraced the singular opportunities it offered.
A moving personal narrative shot through with lessons from literature, mythology, and the natural world, May's story offers instruction on the transformative power of rest and retreat. Illumination emerges from many sources: solstice celebrations and dormice hibernation, C.S. Lewis and Sylvia Plath, swimming in icy waters and sailing arctic seas.
Ultimately Wintering invites us to change how we relate to our own fallow times. May models an active acceptance of sadness and finds nourishment in deep retreat, joy in the hushed beauty of winter, and encouragement in understanding life as cyclical, not linear. A secular mystic, May forms a guiding philosophy for transforming the hardships that arise before the ushering in of a new season.

Entitled

Lownie, Andrew — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

THE SUNDAY TIMES #1 BESTSELLER A Book of the Year for The Times, Financial Times and Waterstones 'This isn't a book; it's a case for revolution' CAMILLA LONG, SUNDAY TIMES 'A damning cannonball of truth through the York ramparts' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Surely has a claim to the title of book of the year, for its seismic impact' JANINE GIBSON, FINANCIAL TIMES The first joint biography of the Duke and Duchess of York and the first full biography of either of them, by renowned royal biographer and literary agent, Andrew Lownie. Drawing on four years of research, numerous FOI requests and interviews with over a hundred people who have never spoken before, the book traces the lives of the late Queen's second son and his ex-wife through their childhoods, courtship, marriage, divorce, careers, and royal and charitable activities. Still living in the same house, they claim to be "the happiest divorced couple in the world". The book investigates the reality of their relationship and their love lives. It charts Andrew's record in the Falklands, his business activities and reveals details of how the couple have been able financially to sustain their extravagant lifestyles. It also recounts the full story of the Yorks' links with Jeffrey Epstein. Chronicling their lives in parallel, the picture that emerges is of a spoilt prince unable to connect and a duchess pushed by her insecurities into a desperate need to maintain the attention her 'royal' status brought. Rigorously researched and packed full of revelations, this is eye-watering biography at its best. 'This isn't just a royal biography. It's a study in reputational collapse and the danger of unchecked power inside Britain's most protected institution' THE STANDARD 'A catalyst for Andrew's de-princing' THE TIMES

A Marriage at Sea

Elmhirst, Sophie — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025
ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MORE
“This is nonfiction that reads like fiction – the best kind. Elmhirst’s retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves. You won’t be able to put it down.” – USA Today

“Remarkable… I found myself, alternately, holding my breath as I read at top speed, wandering rooms in search of someone to read aloud to, and placing the book facedown, arrested by quiet statements that left me reeling with their depth.” – The New York Times

“Such an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn’t fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? … So brilliantly depicted.” – Elle
“A beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book.” – Patrick Radden Keefe
“An enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit.” —Bill Bryson
An instant New York Times bestseller, this is the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits.

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He’s a loner, awkward and obsessive; she’s charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away?
Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves.
What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can’t run away from themselves.
Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Akkad, Omar El — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • PALESTINE BOOK AWARD WINNER • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR CRITICISM • From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.

"[A] bracing memoir and manifesto." —The New York Times

"I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it." —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There
On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.
This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

Akkad, Omar El — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION • Finalist for the 2025 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism • Finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction • Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • A New York Times Notable Book of 2025 • A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail, NPR, Book Riot

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in a West that betrays its fundamental values.
On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.
As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.
This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

Restaurant Kid

Phan, Rachel — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A warm and poignant narrative about finding one's self amidst the grind of restaurant life, the cross-generational immigrant experience, and a daughter's attempts to connect with parents who have always been just out of reach.

When she was three years old, Rachel Phan met her replacement. Instead of a new sibling, her mother and father's time and attention were suddenly devoted entirely to their new family restaurant. For her parents—whose own families fled China during Japanese occupation and then survived bombs and starvation during the war in Vietnam—it was a dream come true. For Phan, it was something quite different. Overnight, she became a restaurant kid, living on the periphery of her own family and trying her best to stay out of the way.

As Phan grew up, the restaurant was the most stalwart and suffocating member of her family. For decades, it's been both their crowning achievement and the origin of so much of their pain and suffering: screaming matches complete with smashed dishes; bodies worn down by long hours and repetitive strain; and tenuous relationships where the family loved one another deeply without ever really knowing each other.

In Restaurant Kid, Phan seeks to examine the way her life has been shaped by the rigid boxes placed around her. She had to be a "good daughter," never asking questions, always being grateful. She had to be a "real Canadian," watching hockey and speaking English so flawlessly that her tongue has since forgotten how to contort around Cantonese tones. As the only Chinese girl at school, she had to alternate between being the sidekick, geek, or Asian fetish, depending on whose gaze was on her.

Now, three decades after their restaurant first opened, Phan's parents are cautiously talking about retirement. As an adult, Phan's "good daughter" role demands something new of her—and a chance to get to know her parents away from the restaurant.

In Restaurant Kid, Phan deftly combines candour, wit and insight to craft a vibrant and important narrative on the strength and foibles of family, and how we come to understand ourselves.

Jennie's Boy

Johnston, Wayne — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CBC
WINNER OF THE 2023 LEACOCK MEDAL FOR HUMOUR
SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2025
Consummate storyteller and bestselling novelist Wayne Johnston reaches back into his past to bring us a sad, tender and at times extremely funny memoir of his Newfoundland boyhood.
For six months between 1966 and 1967, Wayne Johnston and his family lived in a wreck of a house across from his grandparents in Goulds, Newfoundland. At seven, Wayne was sickly and skinny, unable to keep food down, plagued with insomnia and a relentless cough that no doctor could diagnose, though they had already removed his tonsils, adenoids and appendix. To the neighbours, he was known as “Jennie’s boy,” a backhanded salute to his tiny, ferocious mother, who felt judged for Wayne’s condition at the same time as worried he might never grow up.
Unable to go to school, Wayne spent his days with his witty, religious, deeply eccentric maternal grandmother, Lucy. During these six months of Wayne’s childhood, he and Lucy faced two life-or-death crises, and only one of them lived to tell the tale.
Jennie’s Boy is Wayne’s tribute to a family and a community that were simultaneously fiercely protective of him and fed up with having to make allowances for him. His boyhood was full of pain, yes, but also tenderness and Newfoundland wit. By that wit, and through love—often expressed in the most unloving ways—Wayne survived.

Sisters

Telgemeier, Raina — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Raina Telgemeier's #1 New York Times bestselling, Eisner Award-winning companion to Smile!

Raina can't wait to be a big sister. But once Amara is born, things aren't quite how she expected them to be. Amara is cute, but she's also a cranky, grouchy baby, and mostly prefers to play by herself. Their relationship doesn't improve much over the years, but when a baby brother enters the picture and later, something doesn't seem right between their parents, they realize they must figure out how to get along. They are sisters, after all.Raina uses her signature humor and charm in both present-day narrative and perfectly placed flashbacks to tell the story of her relationship with her sister, which unfolds during the course of a road trip from their home in San Francisco to a family reunion in Colorado.

The House of My Mother

Franke, Shari — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

"Heart-wrenchingly personal...dizzying." —Rolling Stone

From eldest daughter Shari Franke, the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog—now the subject of a new Hulu docuseries—and the hidden abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.
Shari Franke's childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface—Ruby's wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.

As the family's YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby's delusions of righteousness. Fueled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.

Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: "Finally."

For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family's devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt's cultish life coaching program, "ConneXions." No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother's cruelty.

A Truce That Is Not Peace

Toews, Miriam — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • FINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS’ TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTION • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR AUTOBIOGRAPHY • TIME’s 10 Best Books of 2025 • Named a Best Book of 2025 by The Globe and Mail • CBC • The New Yorker • The Guardian • Lit Hub • The Irish Times • The Hill Times • Brooklyn Public Library

In this breathtaking memoir of stunning emotional force and electrifying honesty, one of Canada's most iconic writers tells her own story for the first time.
“Why do you write?” the organizer of a literary event in Mexico City asks Miriam Toews. Each attempt at an answer from Toews—all unsatisfactory to the organizer—surfaces new layers of grief, guilt, and futility connected to her sister’s suicide more than fifteen years ago. She has been keeping up, she realizes, an internal correspondence with her beloved sibling, attempting to fill a silence she can barely comprehend. As Toews turns to face that silence, we come to see that the question “why I write” is as impossible to answer as deciding whether to live life as a comedy or a tragedy.
A masterwork of non-fiction, A Truce That Is Not Peace explores the uneasy pact every creative person makes with memory. Wildly original yet intimately, powerfully precise; momentous, hilarious, wrenching, and joyful—this is Miriam Toews at her dazzling best, remaking her personal world and inventing a brilliant literary form to hold it.

Angela's Ashes

McCourt, Frank — Sat, 31 Jan 1998 00:00:00 GMT

A Pulitzer Prize–winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, Angela's Ashes is Frank McCourt's masterful memoir of his childhood in Ireland—now with a new introduction by Patrick Radden Keefe.
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood."

So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy—exasperating, irresponsible, and beguiling—does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies.

Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors—yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance, and remarkable forgiveness.

Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.

The Splendid and the Vile

Larson, Erik — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis

“One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters
On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end.
In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments.

The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.

Empty Mansions

Dedman, Bill, Newell, Paul Clark — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 00:00:00 GMT

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY
Janet Maslin, The New York Times • St. Louis Post-Dispatch
When Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Bill Dedman noticed in 2009 a grand home for sale, unoccupied for nearly sixty years, he stumbled through a surprising portal into American history. Empty Mansions is a rich mystery of wealth and loss, connecting the Gilded Age opulence of the nineteenth century with a twenty-first-century battle over a $300 million inheritance. At its heart is a reclusive heiress named Huguette Clark, a woman so secretive that, at the time of her death at age 104, no new photograph of her had been seen in decades. Though she owned palatial homes in California, New York, and Connecticut, why had she lived for twenty years in a simple hospital room, despite being in excellent health? Why were her valuables being sold off? Was she in control of her fortune, or controlled by those managing her money?
Dedman has collaborated with Huguette Clark’s cousin, Paul Clark Newell, Jr., one of the few relatives to have frequent conversations with her. Dedman and Newell tell a fairy tale in reverse: the bright, talented daughter, born into a family of extreme wealth and privilege, who secrets herself away from the outside world.
Huguette was the daughter of self-made copper industrialist W. A. Clark, nearly as rich as Rockefeller in his day, a controversial senator, railroad builder, and founder of Las Vegas. She grew up in the largest house in New York City, a remarkable dwelling with 121 rooms for a family of four. She owned paintings by Degas and Renoir, a world-renowned Stradivarius violin, a vast collection of antique dolls. But wanting more than treasures, she devoted her wealth to buying gifts for friends and strangers alike, to quietly pursuing her own work as an artist, and to guarding the privacy she valued above all else.
The Clark family story spans nearly all of American history in three generations, from a log cabin in Pennsylvania to mining camps in the Montana gold rush, from backdoor politics in Washington to a distress call from an elegant Fifth Avenue apartment. The same Huguette who was touched by the terror attacks of 9/11 held a ticket nine decades earlier for a first-class stateroom on the second voyage of the Titanic.
Empty Mansions reveals a complex portrait of the mysterious Huguette and her intimate circle. We meet her extravagant father, her publicity-shy mother, her star-crossed sister, her French boyfriend, her nurse who received more than $30 million in gifts, and the relatives fighting to inherit Huguette’s copper fortune. Richly illustrated with more than seventy photographs, Empty Mansions is an enthralling story of an eccentric of the highest order, a last jewel of the Gilded Age who lived life on her own terms.

The Finest Hotel in Kabul

Doucet, Lyse — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION
The story of a hotel. The story of a nation.
When the Inter-Continental Kabul opened in 1969, Afghanistan’s first luxury hotel symbolised a dream of a modernising country connected to the world.
More than fifty years on, the Inter-Continental is still standing. It has endured Soviet occupation, multiple coups, a grievous civil war, a US invasion and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. History lives within its scarred windows and walls.
Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been checking into the Inter-Continental since 1988. And here, she uses its story to craft a richly immersive history of modern Afghanistan.
It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper who still holds fast to his Inter-Continental training from the hotel’s 1970s glory days—an era of haute cuisine and high fashion, when Afghanistan was a kingdom and Kabul was the ‘Paris of Asia’. It is the story of Abida, who became the first female chef to cook in the Inter-Con’s famous kitchen after the fall of the Taliban in 2001. And it is the story of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-something staff who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy—only to witness the Taliban roaring back in 2021.
The result is a remarkably vivid history of how Afghans have survived a half century of destruction and disruption. It is the story of a hotel but also the story of a people.

Smile

Telgemeier, Raina — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Raina Telgemeier's #1 New York Times bestselling, Eisner Award-winning graphic memoir based on her childhood!

Raina just wants to be a normal sixth grader. But one night after Girl Scouts she trips and falls, severely injuring her two front teeth. What follows is a long and frustrating journey with on-again, off-again braces, surgery, embarrassing headgear, and even a retainer with fake teeth attached. And on top of all that, there's still more to deal with: a major earthquake, boy confusion, and friends who turn out to be not so friendly.

They Left Us Everything

Johnson, Plum — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:00:00 GMT

Winner of the 2015 RBC Taylor Prize
Winner of the 2016 Forest of Reading® Evergreen Award™
After almost twenty years of caring for elderly parents—first for their senile father, and then for their cantankerous ninety-three-year-old mother—author Plum Johnson and her three younger brothers experience conflicted feelings of grief and relief when their mother, the surviving parent, dies. Now they must empty and sell the beloved family home, which hasn’t been de-cluttered in more than half a century. Twenty-three rooms bulge with history, antiques, and oxygen tanks. Plum remembers her loving but difficult parents who could not have been more different: the British father, a handsome, disciplined patriarch who nonetheless could not control his opinionated, extroverted Southern-belle wife who loved tennis and gin gimlets. The task consumes her, becoming more rewarding than she ever imagined. Items from childhood trigger memories of her eccentric family growing up in a small town on the shores of Lake Ontario in the 1950s and 60s. But unearthing new facts about her parents helps her reconcile those relationships with a more accepting perspective about who they were and what they valued.

They Left Us Everything is a funny, touching memoir about the importance of preserving family history to make sense of the past and nurturing family bonds to safeguard the future.

Baldwin

Boggs, Nicholas — Fri, 31 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMT

A TIME TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025
AN ATLANTIC TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025
A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2025
AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
AN AMAZON BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
FINALIST FOR THE NBCC JOHN LEONARD PRIZE
Drawing on new archival material, original research, and interviews, this spellbinding book is the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, revealing how profoundly his personal relationships shaped his life and work.
Baldwin: A Love Story, the first major biography of James Baldwin in three decades, reveals how profoundly the writer's personal relationships shaped his life and work. Drawing on newly uncovered archival material and original research and interviews, this spellbinding book tells the overlapping stories of Baldwin's most sustaining intimate and artistic relationships: with his mentor, the Black American painter Beauford Delaney; with his lover and muse, the Swiss painter Lucien Happersberger; and with his collaborators, the famed Turkish actor Engin Cezzar and the iconoclastic French artist Yoran Cazac, whose long-overlooked significance as Baldwin's last great love is explored in these pages for the first time.
Nicholas Boggs shows how Baldwin drew on all the complex forces within these relationships—geographical, cultural, political, artistic, and erotic—and alchemized them into novels, essays, and plays that speak truth to power and had an indelible impact on the civil rights movement and on Black and queer literary history. Richly immersive, Baldwin: A Love Story follows the writer's creative journey between Harlem, Paris, Switzerland, the southern United States, Istanbul, Africa, the South of France, and beyond. In so doing, it magnifies our understanding of the public and private lives of one of the major literary figures of the twentieth century, whose contributions only continue to grow in influence.

Path Lit by Lightning

Maraniss, David — Mon, 31 Jan 2022 00:00:00 GMT

A biography of America's greatest all-around athlete that "goes beyond the myth and into the guts of Thorpe's life, using extensive research, historical nuance, and bittersweet honesty" (Los Angeles Times), by the bestselling author of the classic biography When Pride Still Mattered.
Jim Thorpe rose to world fame as a mythic talent who excelled at every sport. Most famously, he won gold medals in the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. A member of the Sac and Fox Nation, he was an All-American football player at the Carlisle Indian School, the star of the first class of the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and played major league baseball for John McGraw's New York Giants. Even in a golden age of sports celebrities, he was one of a kind.

But despite his awesome talent, Thorpe's life was a struggle against the odds. At Carlisle, he faced the racist assimilationist philosophy "Kill the Indian, Save the Man." His gold medals were unfairly rescinded because he had played minor league baseball, and his supposed allies turned away from him when their own reputations were at risk. His later life was troubled by alcohol, broken marriages, and financial distress. He roamed from state to state and took bit parts in Hollywood, but even the film of his own life failed to improve his fortunes. But for all his travails, Thorpe survived, determined to shape his own destiny, his perseverance becoming another mark of his mythic stature.

Path Lit by Lightning "[reveals] Thorpe as a man in full, whose life was characterized by both soaring triumph and grievous loss" (The Wall Street Journal).

The Compton Cowboys

Thompson-Hernandez, Walter — Fri, 31 Jan 2020 00:00:00 GMT

"Thompson-Hernández's
portrayal of Compton's black cowboys broadens our perception of Compton's young
black residents, and connects the Compton Cowboys to the historical legacy of
African Americans in the west. An eye-opening, moving book."— Margot Lee Shetterly, New
York Times bestselling author of Hidden Figures

"Walter Thompson-Hernández has written a book for the ages: a profound and moving account of what it means to be black in America that is awe inspiring in its truth-telling and limitless in its empathy. Here is an American epic of black survival and creativity, of terrible misfortune and everyday resilience, of grace, redemption and, yes, cowboys."— Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize-winning author of This is How You Lose Her

A rising New York Times reporter tells the compelling story of The Compton Cowboys, a group of African-American men and women who defy stereotypes and continue the proud, centuries-old tradition of black cowboys in the heart of one of America's most notorious cities.

In Compton, California, ten black riders on horseback cut an unusual profile, their cowboy hats tilted against the hot Los Angeles sun. They are the Compton Cowboys, their small ranch one of the very last in a formerly semirural area of the city that has been home to African-American horse riders for decades. To most people, Compton is known only as the home of rap greats NWA and Kendrick Lamar, hyped in the media for its seemingly intractable gang violence. But in 1988 Mayisha Akbar founded The Compton Jr. Posse to provide local youth with a safe alternative to the streets, one that connected them with the rich legacy of black cowboys in American culture. From Mayisha's youth organization came the Cowboys of today: black men and women from Compton for whom the ranch and the horses provide camaraderie, respite from violence, healing from trauma, and recovery from incarceration.

The Cowboys include Randy, Mayisha's nephew, faced with the daunting task of remaking the Cowboys for a new generation; Anthony, former drug dealer and inmate, now a family man and mentor, Keiara, a single mother pursuing her dream of winning a national rodeo championship, and a tight clan of twentysomethings—Kenneth, Keenan, Charles, and Tre—for whom horses bring the freedom, protection, and status that often elude the young black men of Compton.

The Compton Cowboys is a story about trauma and transformation, race and identity, compassion, and ultimately, belonging. Walter Thompson-Hernández paints a unique and unexpected portrait of this city, pushing back against stereotypes to reveal an urban community in all its complexity, tragedy, and triumph.

The Compton Cowboys is illustrated with 10-15 photographs.

Meghan

Morton, Andrew — Wed, 31 Jan 2018 00:00:00 GMT

The New York Times bestselling biography of Meghan Markle, the American actress who won Prince Harry's heart.
Women who smash the royal mold have always fascinated the public, from Grace Kelly to Princess Diana. Now acclaimed royal biographer Andrew Morton, the New York Times bestselling author of Diana: Her True Story, brings us a revealing, juicy, and inspiring look at Meghan Markle, the confident and charismatic duchess whose warm and affectionate engagement interview won the hearts of the world.
When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry were set up by a mutual friend on a blind date in July 2016, little did they know that the resulting whirlwind romance would lead to their engagement in November 2017 and marriage in May 2018.
Morton goes back to Meghan's roots to uncover the story of her childhood growing up in The Valley in Los Angeles, her studies at an all-girls Catholic school, and her fraught family life-a painful experience mirrored by Harry's own background. Morton also delves into her previous marriage and divorce in 2013, her struggles in Hollywood as her mixed heritage was used against her, her big break in the hit TV show Suits, and her work for a humanitarian ambassador-the latter so reminiscent of Princess Diana's passions. Finally, we see how the royal romance played out across two continents but was kept fiercely secret, before the news finally broke and Meghan was thrust into the global media's spotlight.
Drawing on exclusive interviews with her family members and closest friends, and including never-before-seen photographs, Morton introduces us to the real Meghan as he reflects on the impact that she has already had on the rigid traditions of the House of Windsor, as well as what the future might hold.