Classical Memoirs

In this Notorious USA collection, Death of a Cheerleader, New York Times best-selling author Gregg Olsen and true crime journalist Kevin M. Sullivan write about notorious crimes in the Bluegrass State. In a scene right out of Hitchcock's "Rear Window", a young woman vanishes from a beach on a summer day and a neighbor views the abduction through his telescope. A newlywed disposes of his bride but doesn't know what to do with her head. Selling tickets at a drive-in movie theater proves deadly.

Even those who take no interest in the field of dragon naturalism have heard of Lady Trent's expedition to the inhospitable deserts of Akhia. Here Lady Trent relates how she acquired her position with the Royal Scirling Army, how foreign saboteurs imperilled both her work and her well-being and how her determined pursuit of knowledge took her into the deepest reaches of the Labyrinth of Drakes, where the chance actions of a dragon sets the stage for her greatest achievement yet....

As a young man growing up in Asheville, North Carolina, Robert Morgan was a fast-driving party boy - a hell-raiser. But when his mother committed suicide upon learning she had inoperable brain cancer, Morgan's life changed dramatically. He was no longer a carefree playboy; he was a man searching for meaning. He found that meaning at the controls of an airplane, and in the flak-and fighter-filled skies over Occupied France and Nazi Germany.

The extant letters of Pliny, written between AD 97 and 112, give us a unique insight into Imperial Rome under the early Antonine emperors. Organised into 10 books, the letters reflect a wide range of topics, mirroring Pliny’s own public and private interests. Among many other subjects, the letters also include an eye-witness account of the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, with the final book containing the exchange of letters between the writer (whose career culminated as Governor of Bithynia) and the emperor Trajan.

The remarkably honest and brilliantly entertaining memoir of one of our finest acting Dames whose long and celebrated career includes her much-loved performance as Livia in I, Claudius and who was married for 20 years to the hell-raising Hollywood star Peter O'Toole. Siân Phillips has a long and celebrated career on both stage and screen. For the first time, her two best-selling volumes of memoir Private Faces and Public Places will be available as a single volume with a brand new foreword by the author.

Three years after her journey through Vystrana, the illustrious (and occasionally scandalous) Lady Trent defies convention to embark on an expedition to the war-torn continent of Eriga, home of the legendary swamp-wyrm. Accompanied by an old associate and a runaway heiress, Isabella must brave oppressive heat and other hazards in order to satisfy her fascination with all things draconian. Her courage, resourcefulness, and scientific curiosity will be tested as never before.

One of the most influential and respected entertainers of Hollywood's golden age, Gene Kelly revolutionized film musicals with his innovative and timeless choreography. A would-be baseball player and one-time law student, Kelly captured the nation's imagination in films such as Anchors Aweigh (1945), On the Town (1949), An American in Paris (1951), and Singin' in the Rain (1952). In the first comprehensive biography written since the legendary star's death, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson disclose new details of Kelly's complex life.

Ray Bradbury was one of the best-known writers and creative dreamers of our time. The many honors he received, which included an Emmy and Academy Award nomination for adaptations of his work, culminated in the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, a 2004 National Medal of Arts, and a 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation. For many years NASA and the Disney Studio felt the impact of Ray Bradbury’s creativity, and his fiction has found its way into hundreds of anthologies, textbooks, and the National Endowment for the Arts’ Big Read program.

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.

In the public imagination, Ernest Hemingway looms larger than life. But the actual person behind the legend has long remained elusive. Now, his son Patrick shares the letters they exchanged over two decades, offering a glimpse into how one of America’s most iconic writers interacted with his children. These letters reveal a father who wished for his children to share his interests—hunting, fishing, travel—and a son who was receptive to the experiences his father offered.

From Scirland to the farthest reaches of Eriga, Isabella, Lady Trent is known to be the world’s preeminent dragon naturalist. Here at last, in her own words, is the true story of a pioneering spirit who risked her reputation and her prospects to satisfy her scientific curiosity; of how she sought true love and happiness despite her lamentable eccentricities; and how she made the first of many historic discoveries that would change the world forever.

A través de un personaje ficticio (el viejo marinero "Marlow"), Conrad describe una travesía por el río Congo en busca del señor "Kurtz" que es el jefe de una explotación de marfil. El encuentro con Kurtz, será la confirmación de la hipócrita actitud colonialista y pone en tela de juicio su carácter de cruzada moral y comercial. El director de cine Francis Ford Coppola se basó en este breve relato para su película Apocalypse Now, que si bien estaba ambientada en la guerra de Vietnam, mantenía el espíritu del relato de Conrad.

The Beatles left an indelible mark not only on music, but on the culture in which they created it. In a time of great and sudden change, they led a generation into new territory, redefining the social landscape as a place where men and women could try on new roles. They led this change through their music, their public personae, and - under scrutiny - their example. The Beatles Guide to Love & Sex examines all three - the songs, the parts they played in public, and the way they led their lives, for better or worse. John, Paul, George and Ringo began their journey as typical working-class ...

On Cats offers Bukowski's musings on these beloved animals and their toughness and resiliency. He honors them as fighters, hunters, survivors who command awe and respect as they grip tightly on to the world around them: "A cat is only ITSELF, representative of the strong forces of life that won't let go."

As he was composing what was to become his most enduring and popular book, E. B. White was obeying that oft-repeated maxim: "Write what you know." Helpless pigs, silly geese, clever spiders, greedy rats - White knew all of these characters in the barns and stables where he spent his favorite hours. In The Story of Charlotte's Web, Michael Sims shows how White solved what critic Clifton Fadiman once called "the standing problem of the juvenile-fantasy writer: how to find, not another Alice, but another rabbit hole."

Thomas Horn Jr. was an infamous figure in the 19th-century American Old West. Cowboy, soldier, government scout, translator, and gunman, Horn’s storied life has become an important part of western folklore. In 1902, he was convicted for murdering a 14-year-old boy after a run-in during a feud with a cattle rancher. The Life of Tom Horn is his life story in his own words, written from prison before he met his fate at the gallows the following year.

The attraction of opera is in its scale, in the fact that it is larger than real life in actions and emotions, more magnificent in sound and in sight. And in the world of opera, no figure in our time loomed larger than the late Luciano Pavarotti. Especially in his triumphant collaborations with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, he captured the imagination of an audience breadth and depth is remarkable even in the grand context of classical opera.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson continue their astounding adventures in this second chronicle of short-story mysteries. Notable are two characters here introduced that prove themselves invaluable to the Sherlock Holmes canon: Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock's older brother) and the nefarious Professor Moriarty.

Journey of a Thousand Miles documents the remarkable, dramatic story of a family who sacrificed almost everything - his parents' marriage, financial security, Lang Lang's childhood, and their reputation in China's insular classical music world - for the belief in a young boy's talent. And it reveals the devastating and intense relationship between a boy and his father, who was willing to go to any length to make his son a star.

Best-selling authors Gregg Olsen and Kathryn Casey take a new look at some of the Southwest's most heinous crimes, including drag queen Cliff Youens (who went by the name Brandi West on stage), convicted of stabbing his/her girlfriend 39 times; Hurley Fontenot, a junior high school principal accused of killing his rival, the football coach, over the love of a school secretary; and Tanya Reid, the first Munchhausen Syndrome By Proxy mother most Americans ever heard of.