"The internationally bestselling author of the Guido Brunetti mysteries tells her own adventurous life story as she enters her eighties. In a series of vignettes full of affection, irony, and good humor, Donna Leon narrates a remarkable life she feels has rather more happened to her than been planned. From a childhood in the company of her New Jersey family, with frequent visits to her grandfather's farm and its beloved animals, and summers spent...

In March 1986, while living in Brooklyn, Chris Bohjalian and his wife were cab-napped on a Saturday night and taken on a forty-five-minute joy ride in which the driver ignored all traffic lights and stop signs. Around midnight he deposited the young couple on a near-deserted street, where police officers were about to storm a crack house. Bohjalian and his wife were told to hit the ground for their own protection. While lying on the pavement, Bohjalian's...

“I present to you . . . the truth about this man’s death and my life.”
Baltimore, 1849. The body of Edgar Allan Poe has been buried in an unmarked grave. The public, the press, and even Poe’s own family and friends accept the conclusion that Poe was a second-rate writer who met a disgraceful end as a drunkard. Everyone, in fact, seems to believe this except a young Baltimore lawyer named Quentin Clark, an ardent admirer...

An account of the 1963 death of the author's father describes how her mother, three sisters, and she were financially dependent on her father's wages and how their loss and Catholic faith resonated the experiences of the nation.

In Chicago in 1920, 28-year-old Hadley Richardson meets Ernest Hemingway. Following a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for Paris and become the golden couple in a lively group of expatriots, including Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, and Gerald and Sara Murphy. But as Hadley struggles with self-doubt and jealousy, Ernest wrestles with his burgeoning writing career and both must confront a deception that could...

"You fall down. You get hurt. You get up again. You know Jennifer Weiner as many things: a bestselling author, a Twitter phenomenon, and 'an unlikely feminist enforcer' (The New Yorker). She's also a mom, a daughter, and a sister; a former rower and current runner; a best friend and a reality TV junkie. Here, in her first foray into nonfiction, she takes the raw stuff of her personal life and spins it into a collection of essays on womanhood as uproariously...

Facing his sixty-third winter, novelist Auster sits down to write a history of his body and its sensations. He takes us from childhood to the brink of old age as he summons a universe of physical sensation, of pleasures and pains, moving from the awakening of sexual desire to the ever deepening bonds of married love; from meditations on eating and sleeping to an account of his mother's sudden death.

A compilation of short fiction includes the tales of Imogene, the legendary ghost of the Rosebud theater, and Francis, an unhappy, hopeless human turned giant locust seeking revenge on his Nevada hometown.

Presents Mark Twain's authentic and unsuppressed voice, brimming with humor, ideas, and opinions, and speaking clearly from the grave as he intended.

A candid, hilarious look at women who are getting older and dealing with the tribulations of maintenance, menopause, empty nests and life itself.