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The “highly entertaining” memoir of one woman’s “Holy Grail quest” to make a Cape Cod home—and the people, obstacles, and self-discoveries she encountered along the way ( Wall Street Journal ). When Kate Whouley saw the classified ad for an abandoned vacation cottage, she began to dream: Transport the cottage through four Cape Cod towns. Attach it to my three-room house. Create more space for my work and life.   Smart, single, and self-employed, Kate was used to fending for herself. But she wasn’t prepared for half the surprises, complications, and self-discoveries of her house-moving adventure.   Supported by friends and family and egged on by her bossy cat, Kate encountered a parade of town officials, a small convoy of State Police, and an eccentric band of house-movers, carpenters, and tradesmen. She found herself dancing on the edge of the gender divide—infatuated with trucks, cranes, tools, construction terms, and a dreamy mason who taught her the history of concrete. In one remarkable year, Whouley moved a cottage and created a home. |
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The wickedly candid New York Times bestesller that Ava Gardner dared not publish during her lifetime—“the heartbreaking memoir of the ultimate heartbreaker” (Philadelphia Inquirer). Ava Gardner was one of Hollywood’s biggest and brightest stars during the 1940s and 1950s, an Oscar Award–nominated leading lady who costarred with Clark Gable, Burt Lancaster, and Humphrey Bogart, among others. But this riveting account of her storied life, including her marriage to Frank Sinatra, and career had to wait for publication until after her death—because Gardner feared it was too revealing. “I either write the book or sell the jewels,” Gardner told coauthor Peter Evans, “and I’m kinda sentimental about the jewels.” The legendary actress serves up plenty of gems in these pages, reflecting with delicious humor and cutting wit on a life that took her from rural North Carolina to the heights of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Tell-all stories abound, especially when Gardner divulges on her three husbands: Mickey Rooney, a serial cheater so notorious that even his mother warned Gardner about him; bandleader Artie Shaw, whom Ava calls “a dominating son of a bitch…always putting me down;” and Frank Sinatra (“We were fighting all the time. Fighting and boozing. It was madness. But he was good in the feathers”). “Her story is a raw-nerved revelation....A vivid portrait” ( Chicago Tribune ). Witty, penetrating, unique in its voice, it is impossible to put down—“A complete delight” ( Philadelphia Inquirer ). |
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A “fun and colorful” biography of the accordion-toting comedy legend—with rare photos, lyrics, lists, tweets, and more from Al himself ( Publishers Weekly ).   The undisputed king of pop-culture parody, “Weird Al” Yankovic has sold more comedy recordings than any other artist in history, receiving three Grammy Awards (and fourteen nominations) in the process.   This is a comprehensive illustrated tribute to this icon of the American humor landscape, the man behind such classics as “Eat It,” “Amish Paradise,” and “White & Nerdy.” Covering more than three decades of hilarious songs, videos, and concert performances, and his life story in words and pictures—and featuring an introduction, lists, tweets, and photo captions from Yankovic himself— Weird Al: The Book is the ultimate companion piece to an extraordinary career.   “Part biography and part pop culture museum . . . a treat.” — Huffington Post |
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the indie rock sensation known as Japanese Breakfast, an unforgettable memoir about family, food, grief, love, and growing up Korean American—“in losing her mother and cooking to bring her back to life, Zauner became herself” (NPR). • CELEBRATING OVER ONE YEAR ON THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER LIST In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother's particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother's tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. As she grew up, moving to the East Coast for college, finding work in the restaurant industry, and performing gigs with her fledgling band--and meeting the man who would become her husband--her Koreanness began to feel ever more distant, even as she found the life she wanted to live. It was her mother's diagnosis of terminal cancer, when Michelle was twenty-five, that forced a reckoning with her identity and brought her to reclaim the gifts of taste, language, and history her mother had given her. Vivacious and plainspoken, lyrical and honest, Zauner's voice is as radiantly alive on the page as it is onstage. Rich with intimate anecdotes that will resonate widely, and complete with family photos, Crying in H Mart is a book to cherish, share, and reread. |
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The Emergency Teacher is Christina Asquith’s moving firsthand account of her year spent teaching in one of Philadelphia’s worst schools. Told with striking humor and honesty, her story begins when the School District of Philadelphia, faced with 1,500 teacherless classrooms, instituted a policy of hiring “emergency certified” teachers to fill the void. Asquith, a twenty-five-year-old reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer, joined their untrained ranks. Assigned to a classroom known as “the Badlands,” she was told to “sink or swim.” More challenging than the classroom are the trials she faces outside it, including the antics of an overwhelmed first-year principal, the politics that prevent a million-dollar grant from reaching her students, and the administration’s shocking insistence that teachers maintain the appearance of success in the face of utter defeat, even if it means falsifying test scores. Asquith tells a classic story of succeeding against insurmountable odds. With a foreword by bestselling author Mark Bowden and an introduction by award-winning educator Dr. Harry K. Wong, The Emergency Teacher will inspire every teacher—be they first-timers or experienced professionals—to make a difference. |
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The #1 national bestseller, now a major motion picture, 21 —the amazing inside story about a gambling ring of M.I.T. students who beat the system in Vegas—and lived to tell how. Robin Hood meets the Rat Pack when the best and the brightest of M.I.T.’s math students and engineers take up blackjack under the guidance of an eccentric mastermind. Their small blackjack club develops from an experiment in counting cards on M.I.T.’s campus into a ring of card savants with a system for playing large and winning big. In less than two years they take some of the world’s most sophisticated casinos for more than three million dollars. But their success also brings with it the formidable ire of casino owners and launches them into the seedy underworld of corporate Vegas with its private investigators and other violent heavies. |
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READY FOR MORE MONEY THAN YOU KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH? For too long, the subject of money has been shrouded in fear, secrecy, and anxiety. It's time to look behind the curtain at money, while stepping into the empowered financial reality that is available to you. Reading Rich As F*ck is sure to ignite an avalanche of change in the most important areas of your life. Once you finally see money for what it is and realize your power over your finances, life will never be the same. It's time you know the truth about money. It's time for you to have more money than you know what to do with. This is your blueprint. Whether you experience debilitating anxiety when thinking about your bills, are buried by debt, feel guilty for wanting more than you have, are stuck in a feast-or-famine cycle, if money has always been the problem for you and never a solution, or if you are simply seeking the next steps on your path of financial growth, this revolutionary book holds your answers. In Rich As F*ck, Amanda Frances demystifies the topic of money, cracking the code of financial liberation and abundance. Her magnetic words will open your heart and mind and help you see the truth about how money actually works. |
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***An Instant New York Times Bestseller*** From the woman who is credited for launching what we know as the celebrity focused, “brand” driven, social media obsessed popular culture of today, comes an honest and surprising memoir that reckons with that truth, and shows that there is so much more to Paris Hilton than you might believe. This extended edition includes a bonus chapter detailing her motherhood journey. I was born in New York City on February 17, 1981, three days after Valentine’s Day.  From the time I was a toddler, my brain skipped and flickered with the chemical imbalance of ADHD. Sometimes it was too much. I’m not bragging or complaining about it, just telling you: This is my brain. It has a lot to do with how this whole book thing is going to play out, because I love run-on sentences—and dashes. And sentence fragments. I’m probably going to jump around a lot while I tell the story. I came of age during the most turbulent pop culture period ever. The character I played—part Lucy, part Marilyn—was my steel-plated armor. People loved her. Or they loved to hate her, which was just as marketable. I leaned into that character, my ticket to financial freedom and a safe place to hide. I made sure I never had a quiet moment to figure out who I was without her. I was afraid of that moment because I didn’t know what I’d find. I wrote this book in an effort to understand my place in a watershed moment: the technology renaissance, the age of influencers. I also wrote this book so that the world could know who I am today. I focused on key aspects of my life that led to what I am most proud of--how my power was taken away from me and how I took it back, how I built a thriving business, a marriage and a family. There are so many young women who need to hear this story. I don’t want them to learn from my mistakes; I want them to stop hating themselves for their own mistakes. I want them to laugh and cry and embrace every aspect of who they are with fearlessness and pride. We all have our own brand of intelligence, and, girl, fuck fitting in. |
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«Juin 2018. J’effectue une entrevue sur les ondes de Radio-Canada avec l’écrivain Édouard Louis. On discute ensemble de son parcours de transfuge de classe. Mes parents sont à l’écoute. L’histoire de pauvreté économique, culturelle et politique des parents d’Édouard Louis les renverse tant elle ressemble à la leur. C’est un choc. Plus tard, ma mère m’écrit ce message : “Ce que ton père pis moi on a vécu, y’a plein de gens d’ici qui l’ont subi aussi, christie. Ça prendrait quelqu’un pour raconter ça un jour.”» Né d’un père analphabète et d’une mère peu scolarisée, Jean-Philippe Pleau a grandi à Drummondville, rue Duplessis, dans une famille ouvrière. Les circonstances de sa vie lui ont cependant permis de poursuivre des études universitaires en sociologie et de devenir animateur de radio. Il est aujourd’hui étranger au monde d’où il vient, sans vraiment appartenir à celui dans lequel il a abouti. Rue Duplessis est l’histoire de cette déchirure sociale. Un récit émouvant où Jean-Philippe Pleau raconte sa migration intérieure, parfois violente, souvent étonnante, jamais banale. Le roman d’une vie qui se lit comme une lettre d’amour adressée à ses parents: un amour séparé par une distance de classe. |
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“In this authoritative, unsparing history of the biggest rock group of the 1970s, Spitz delivers inside details and analysis with his well-known gift for storytelling.” — PEOPLE From the author of the iconic, bestselling history of The Beatles, the definitive account of arguable the greatest rock band of all time. Rock star. Whatever that term means to you, chances are it owes a debt to Led Zeppelin. No one before or since has lived the dream quite like Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. In Led Zeppelin , Bob Spitz takes their full measure, separating myth from reality with his trademark connoisseurship and storytelling flair. From the opening notes of their first album, the band announced itself as something different, a collision of grand artistic ambition and brute primal force, of English folk music and African American blues. Spitz’s account of their artistic journey, amid the fascinating ecosystem of popular music, is irresistible. But the music is only part of the legend: Led Zeppelin is also the story of how the sixties became the seventies, of how innocence became decadence, of how rock took over. Led Zeppelin wasn’t the first band to let loose on the road, but as with everything else, they took it to an entirely new level. Not all the legends are true, but in Spitz’s careful accounting, what is true is astonishing and sometimes disturbing. Led Zeppelin gave no quarter, and neither has Bob Spitz. Led Zeppelin is the long-awaited full reckoning the band richly deserves. |
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'Out of Africa' is Isak Dinesen's memoir of her years in Africa, from 1914 to 1931, on a four-thousand-acre coffee plantation in the hills near Nairobi. She had come to Kenya from Denmark with her husband, and when they separated she stayed on to manage the farm by herself, visited frequently by her lover, the big-game hunter Denys Finch-Hatton, for whom she would make up stories "like Scheherazade." In Africa, "I learned how to tell tales," she recalled many years later. "The natives have an ear still. I told stories constantly to them, all kinds." Her account of her African adventures, written after she had lost her beloved farm and returned to Denmark, is that of a master storyteller, a woman whom John Updike called "one of the most picturesque and flamboyant literary personalities of the century." Isak Dinesen (1885-1962_ was born Karen Christence Dinesen in Rungsted, Denmark. She wrote poems, plays, and stories from an early age, including 'Seven Gothic Tales', 'Winter's Tales', 'Last Tales', 'Anecdotes of Destiny', 'Shadows on the Grass' and 'Ebrengard'. 'Out of Africa' is considered her masterpiece. |
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER  |  #1  SUNDAY TIMES (UK) BESTSELLER   " The  must-read book of the summer" (Megyn Kelly) from   New York Times  bestseller Maureen Callahan: a "harrowing, incendiary" exposé of the real Kennedy Curse—the family’s generations-long legacy of misogyny, murder, and mayhem (Karen Abbott). The Kennedy name has long been synonymous with wealth, power, glamor, and—above all else— integrity . But this carefully constructed veneer hides a dark truth: the pattern of Kennedy men physically and psychologically abusing women and girls, leaving a trail of ruin and death in each generation’s wake. Through decades of scandal after scandal—from sexual assaults to reputational slander, suicides to manslaughter—the family and their defenders have kept the Kennedy brand intact. Now, in Ask Not , bestselling author and journalist Maureen Callahan reveals the Kennedys’ hidden history of violence and exploitation, laying bare their unrepentant sexism and rampant depravity while also restoring these women and girls to their rightful place at the center of the dynasty’s story: from Jacqueline Onassis and Marilyn Monroe to Carolyn Bessette, Martha Moxley, Mary Jo Kopechne, Rosemary Kennedy, and many others whose names aren’t nearly as well known but should be. Drawing on years of explosive reportage and written in electric prose, Ask Not is a long-overdue reckoning with this fabled family and a consequential part of American history that is still very much with us. At long last, Callahan redirects the spotlight to the women in the Kennedys’ orbit, paying homage to those who freed themselves and giving voice to those who, through no fault of their own, could not. One of Town & Country ’s Must-Read Books of Summer 2024 |
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Man-Eaters of Kumaon is the best known of Corbett's books, one which offers ten fascinating and spine-tingling tales of pursuing and shooting tigers in the Indian Himalayas during the early years of this 19th Century. The stories also offer first-hand information about the exotic flora, fauna, and village life in this obscure and treacherous region of India, making it as interesting a travelogue as it is a compelling look at a bygone era of hunting. No one understood the ways of the Indian jungle better than Corbett. A skilled tracker, he preferred to hunt alone and on foot, sometimes accompanied by his small dog Robin. Corbett derived intense happiness from observing wildlife and he was a fervent conservationist as well as a tracker. He empathised with the impoverished people amongst whom he lived, in what is today Uttarakhand, and he established India's first tiger sanctuary there. Corbett's writing is as immediate and accessible today as it was when first published in 1944. |
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D’abord poète et dramaturge, Éva Circé-Côté s’est aussi fait connaître en signant la biographie Papineau, en hommage à son héros, patriote et incarnation des idées libérales. Au fil des ans, dans des centaines de chroniques publiées dans la presse radicale, Èva Circé-Côté a défendu, la plupart du temps en empruntant des pseudonymes masculins (dont Fantasio, Arthur Maheu, Paul S. Bédard, Julien Saint-Michel), des idées qui heurtaient les bien-pensants, notamment le droit au travail des femmes, la réglementation de la prostitution, l’instruction obligatoire et laïque, et surtout, la liberté de pensée. Ses combats contre l’ignorance et l’intolérance, elle les a aussi menés en fondant un lycée laïque pour les filles et en contribuant à mettre sur pied la Bibliothèque municipale de Montréal. En s’attachant au parcours de cette femme exceptionnelle et aux milieux avant-gardistes qu’elle a côtoyés, Andrée Lévesque nous fait revisiter l’histoire du Québec des premières décennies du XXe siècle, et nous trace le portrait d’un Québec moins noir qu’on ne l’a représenté, plus complexe et plus ouvert aux influences étrangères. |
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Walter Isaacson’s “enthralling” ( The New Yorker ) worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in 21st century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with the author, he asked for no control over what was written. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. Steve Jobs is the inspiration for the movie of the same name starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, and Jeff Daniels, directed by Danny Boyle with a screenplay by Aaron Sorkin. |
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Roger and Carolyn Perron purchased the home of their dreams and eventual nightmares in December of 1970. The Arnold Estate, located just beyond the village of Harrisville, Rhode Island seemed the idyllic setting in which to raise a family. The couple unwittingly moved their five young daughters into the ancient and mysterious farmhouse. Secrets were kept and then revealed within a space shared by mortal and immortal alike. Time suddenly became irrelevant; fractured by spirits making their presence known then dispersing into the ether. The house is a portal to the past and a passage to the future. This is a sacred story of spiritual enlightenment, told some thirty years hence. The family is now somewhat less reticent to divulge a closely-guarded experience. Their odyssey is chronicled by the eldest sibling and is an unabridged account of a supernatural excursion. Ed and Lorraine Warren investigated this haunting in a futile attempt to intervene on their behalf. They consider the Perron family saga to be one of the most compelling and significant of a famously ghost-storied career as paranormal researchers. During a séance gone horribly wrong, they unleashed an unholy hostess; the spirit called Bathsheba…a God-forsaken soul. Perceiving herself to be mistress of the house, she did not appreciate the competition. Carolyn had long been under siege; overt threats issued in the form of fire…a mother’s greatest fear. It transformed the woman in unimaginable ways. After nearly a decade the family left a once beloved home behind though it will never leave them, as each remains haunted by a memory. This tale is an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit on a pathway of discovery: an eternal journey for the living and the dead. |
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The true story of Melody, aged 8, the last of five siblings to be taken from her drug dependent single mother and brought into care. When Cathy is told about Melody’s terrible childhood, she is sure she’s heard it all before. But it isn’t long before she feels there is more going on than she or the social services are aware of. Although Melody is angry at having to leave her mother, as many children coming into care are, she also worries about her obsessively – far more than is usual. Amanda, Melody’s mother, is also angry and takes it out on Cathy at contact, which again is something Cathy has experienced before. Yet there is a lost and vulnerable look about Amanda, and Cathy starts to see why Melody worries about her and feels she needs looking after. When Amanda misses contact, it is assumed she has forgotten, but nothing could have been further from the truth… About the author Cathy has been a foster carer for over 30 years, during which time she has looked after more than 150 children, of all ages and backgrounds. She has three teenage children of her own; one of whom was adopted after a long-term foster placement. The name Cathy Glass is a pseudonym. |
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In this marvelous anecdotal history, Justin Kaplan––Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of Mark Twain––vividly brings to life a glittering, bygone age. Endowed with the largest private fortunes of their day, cousins John Jacob Astor IV and William Waldorf Astor vied for primacy in New York society, producing the grandest hotels ever seen in a marriage of ostentation and efficiency that transformed American social behavior. Kaplan exposes it all in exquisite detail, taking readers from the 1890s to the Roaring Twenties in a combination of biography, history, architectural appreciation, and pure reading pleasure   |
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*The definitive biography of King Charles III, by Sunday Times bestselling author Robert Jobson, published on the eve of the Coronation* 'To Charles, being monarch has nothing to do with power - he believes his role is to lead. It is up to others whether they choose to follow.' When Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, it sent shockwaves around the world. The longest reigning and oldest monarch, at ninety-six years of age, she had just publicly celebrated her Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. The Queen's death meant the passing of the Crown to her son, HRH Charles, Prince of Wales, her controversial, earnest, and outspoken heir, who had long lived in the shadow of her mystique. King Charles III's own life has been marred by scandal and myth, but who is the real man behind the Crown? In this revelatory book, renowned royal correspondent and author Robert Jobson examines the life of our new King, and his passions, purpose, and motivations. On the eve of his landmark coronation, Our King considers the life of the man and the monarch, reflecting on how his values and beliefs will shape him as he takes on this monumental role. EditBuild |
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Discover the "important and inspiring" and never-before-told complete story of the remarkable relationship between country music icons Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn (Miranda Lambert). Loretta Lynn and the late Patsy Cline are legends—country icons and sisters of the heart. For the first time ever Loretta tells their story: a celebration of their music and their relationship up until Patsy's tragic and untimely death. Full of laughter and tears, this eye-opening, heartwarming memoir paints a picture of two stubborn, spirited country gals who'd be damned if they'd let men or convention tell them how to be. Set in the heady streets of the 1960s South, this nostalgia ride shows how Nashville blossomed into the city of music it is today. Tender and fierce, Me & Patsy Kickin' Up Dust is an up-close-and-personal portrait of a friendship that defined a generation and changed country music indelibly—and a meditation on love, loss and legacy. |
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An utterly fascinating read about an utterly fascinating star.  Grace Kelly was the incredibly beautiful, talented and elegant American movie star who became a real-life princess. In six short Hollywood years she starred in eleven films, eight of which are revered movie classics (like “Dial M for Murder,” “Rear Window” and “It Takes a Thief”).  She won the Oscar for Best Actress for her performance in “The Country Girl” and ALSO won the amorous attentions of legendary movie stars Gary Cooper, Bing Crosby, William Holden and Ray Milland. At the age of 26, she married the dashing Prince Ranier III and became Her Serene Highness The Princess of Monaco, an international figure whose generosity and kindness became synonymous with her name.  The ground-breaking biography and New York Times bestseller by James Spada, “Grace Kelly” has been revised and updated and is reissued in electronic form.  This illustrated biography was a bestseller in 6 countries.  “This is a well-crafted, rich read,” wrote Kirkus Reviews. “Sexy, gripping, and sure to be in demand.” This edition also includes interactive source notes. |
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“The only Lou Reed bio you need to read.” — The Washington Post A Rolling Stone best music book of 2023 | One of Pitchfork ’s ten best music books of 2023 | A Variety best music book of the year | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023 “There have been many biographies of Lou Reed, but Will Hermes has written the definitive life . . . He has brought to the assignment a sharp eye, a clear head, a lucid prose style, and a determination to let Lou be Lou, without judgment.” —Lucy Sante, author of Low Life The most complete and penetrating biography of the rock master, whose stature grows every year. Since his death in 2013, Lou Reed’s living presence has only grown. The great rock poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York , Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed’s life and legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, and contentious dialogue with fans, critics, fellow artists, and assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed’s complex partnerships with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson; track the deadpan wit, street-smart edge, and poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer and songwriter with the Velvet Underground and beyond; and explore the artistic ambition and gift for self-sabotage that he took from his mentor the poet Delmore Schwartz. As Hermes follows Reed from Lower East Side cold-water flats to the eminent status he later achieved, he also tells the story of New York City as a cultural capital. The first biographer to draw on the New York Public Library’s much-publicized Reed archive, Hermes employs the library collections, the release of previously unheard recordings, and a wealth of recent interviews with Reed’s contemporaries to give us a new Lou Reed—a pioneer in writing about nonbinary sexuality and gender identity, a committed artist who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervor, and a turbulent and sometimes truculent man whose emotional imprint endures. |
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Jane Austen is the definitive biography of one of Britain's best-loved novelists, from the acclaimed author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self , Charles Dickens: A Life and The Invisible Woman 'As near perfect a life of Austen as we are likely to get: intelligent, feeling, suggestive' Carmen Callil, Daily Telegraph 'Tomalin has written a biography that reflects Austen's own exacting standards, a book that radiates intelligence, wit and insight' Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times 'Of all the Austen biographies, this is the best ... leaves the reader with a much deeper appreciation of the circumstances and motivation behind the creation of those six perfect novels' Harpers & Queen 'I cannot think that a better life of Jane Austen then Claire Tomalin's will be written for many years.' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday 'A perfect biography: detailed, witty, warm. Tomalin involves us so deeply that Austen's final illness and death come almost as a personal tragedy to the reader' Dirk Bogarde, Daily Telegraph , Books of the Year |
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A look into the darker side of tycoon Armand Hammer. Dr. Hammer was a man skilled in bribing world leaders and collecting old masters and young mistresses. |
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A memoir of the rise and fall of one female screenwriter’s career during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Freddie Maas’s revealing memoir offers a unique perspective on the film industry and Hollywood culture in their early days and illuminates the plight of Hollywood writers working within the studio system. An ambitious twenty-three-year-old, Maas moved to Hollywood and launched her own writing career by drafting a screenplay of the bestselling novel The Plastic Age for “It” girl Clara Bow. With that script, she landed a staff position at powerhouse MGM studios. In the years to come, she worked with and befriended numerous actors and directors, including Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, and Eric von Stroheim, as well as such writers and producers as Thomas Mann and Louis B. Mayer. As a professional screenwriter, Frederica quickly learned that scripts and story ideas were frequently rewritten, and that screen credit was regularly given to the wrong person. Studio executives wanted well-worn plots, but it was the writer’s job to develop the innovative situations and scintillating dialogue that would bring to picture to life. For over twenty years, Freddie and her friends struggled to survive in this incredibly competitive environment. Through it all, Freddie remained a passionate, outspoken woman in an industry run by powerful men, and her provocative, nonconformist ways brought her success, failure, wisdom, and a wealth of stories, opinions, and insight into a fascinating period in screen history. Praise for The Shocking Miss Pilgrim “In this memorable tell-all, rise-and-fall memoir, Maas brings the gimlet hindsight of Julia Phillips’s You’ll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again to early Hollywood, and the results are thoroughly captivating.” — Publishers Weekly “A bittersweet, extraordinarily detailed recollection of Maas’s 30-year career in the motion picture industry. . . . Chockablock with anecdotes, and a blinding amount of star-wattage to boot.” —Salon.com |
