Literary Biography

Comic Lorna Landvik gives Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon a feminine perspective with her story about Patty Jane and Harriet Dobbin, two wacky Minnesota sisters. Before she can say "annulment," Patty Jane's husband has gone and a baby is on the way, leaving Patty to rely on sister Harriet and the House of Curl, a beauty shop which evolves into a support group and community workshop over three tumultuous decades.

From the big woods of Wisconsin to the Indian country of the Great Plains, new adventures and landscapes filled the rich childhood of Laura Ingalls Wilder. On a frontier steeped in both danger and great possibility, Laura would grow up to witness firsthand the rapid transformation of the West as pioneers and covered wagons gave way to farms, towns, and railroads. A pioneer, teacher, farmer's wife, and storyteller, Laura Ingalls Wilder experienced one of the most exciting times in American history.

Jack Olsen's true account, traces the causes of the tragic night in August 1967 when two separate and unrelated campers, a distance apart, were savagely mangled and killed by enraged bears. The award-winning author of thirty-three books, Jack Olsen’s books have published in fifteen countries and eleven languages. Olsen's journalism earned the National Headliners Award, Chicago Newspaper Guild's Page One Award, commendations from Columbia and Indiana Universities, the Washington State Governor's Award, the Scripps-Howard Award and other honors.

On the night of June 19,1982 in suburban Houston, respected attorney James Campbell and his wife Virginia were shot to death in their luxurious home. The scene showed no signs of struggle or forced entry. Although the police eventually suspected James and Virginia Campbell’s daughter, Cindy Campbell Ray, was involved, for years there wasn’t enough evidence to make an arrest. When the truth was eventually discovered it was far more horrifying than anyone imagined.

In this Very Short Introduction Laura Marcus defines what we mean by "autobiography", and considers its relationship with similar literary forms such as memoirs, journals, letters, diaries, and essays. Analyzing the core themes in autobiographical writing, such as confession, conversion and testimony; romanticism and the journeying self; Marcus discusses the autobiographical consciousness (and the roles played by time, memory and identity), and considers the relationship between psychoanalysis and autobiography.

Joe Gere said he died on the afternoon his 12-year-old daughter Brenda disappeared. It was left to Brenda's mother Elaine to sustain her stricken family, search for her missing child, and pressure the authorities for justice. From the first minutes of the investigation, suspicion fell on Michael Kay Green, a steroid-abusing "Mr. Universe" hopeful, but there was no proof of a crime, leaving police and prosecutors stymied. Tips and sightings poured in as lawmen and volunteers combed the Cascades forest.

She Risked Everything to Become a Mother, Lover and Healer "....a brave adventurer who discovered her own life.” — Kirkus Reviews In her debut memoir, My Journey through War and Peace, Melissa Burch told the compelling story of how she braved a war zone as a young woman and found her voice as a filmmaker and feminist. Yearning for Magic continues Melissa’s adventures as she explores new horizons as a mother, lover and healer. She learned that while traveling with the Mujahadeen was hard, it took just as much courage to face down her fears on home soil, grapple with infertility and ...

With Burning Boy, celebrated novelist Paul Auster tells the extraordinary story of Stephen Crane, best known as the author of The Red Badge of Courage, who transformed American literature through an avalanche of original short stories, novellas, poems, journalism, and war reportage before his life was cut short by tuberculosis at age 28.

Muhammad Ali was born Cassius Clay in racially segregated Louisville, Kentucky, the son of a sign painter and a housekeeper. He went on to become a heavyweight boxer with a dazzling mix of power and speed, a warrior for racial pride, a comedian, a preacher, a poet, a draft resister, an actor, and a lover. Millions hated him when he changed his religion, changed his name, and refused to fight in the Vietnam War. Jonathan Eig sheds important new light on Ali’s politics, religion, personal life, and neurological condition through unprecedented access to all the key people in Ali’s life.

In this lyrical, coming-of-age memoir, Daisy Hernández chronicles what the women in her Cuban-Colombian family taught her about love, money, and race. Her mother warns her about envidia and men who seduce you with pastries, while one tía bemoans that her niece is turning out to be “una india” instead of an American. Another auntie instructs that when two people are close, they are bound to become like uña y mugre, fingernails and dirt, and that no, Daisy’s father is not godless. He’s simply praying to a candy dish that can be traced back to Africa.

What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?

In his own time (701-762), Li Bai's poems - shaped by Daoist thought and characterized by their passion, romance, and lust for life - were never given their proper due by the official literary gatekeepers. Nonetheless, his lines rang out on the lips of court entertainers, tavern singers, soldiers, and writers throughout the Tang dynasty. The Banished Immortal is an extraordinary portrait of a poet who both transcended his time and was shaped by it and whose ability to live, love, and mourn without reservation produced some of the most enduring verses.

Geneviève Halévy Bizet Straus; Laure de Sade, Comtesse de Adhéaume de Chevigné; and Élisabeth de Riquet de Caraman-Chimay, the Comtesse Greffulhe--these were the three superstars of fin-de-siècle Parisian high society who, as Caroline Weber says, "transformed themselves, and were transformed by those around them, into living legends: paragons of elegance, nobility, and style."

The further adventures of "Dr. Gonzo" as he defends the "cucarachas" - the Chicanos of East Los Angeles. Before his mysterious disappearance and probable death in 1971, Oscar Zeta Acosta was famous as a Robin Hood Chicano lawyer and notorious as the real-life model for Hunter S. Thompson's "Dr. Gonzo" a fat, pugnacious attorney with a gargantuan appetite for food, drugs, and life on the edge.

An Amazon Best Seller in Biographical Fiction and #1 Best Seller in Women's Action and Adventure Fiction "As the depth of truth of one's life can only be penned upon the pages of a diary, Jane Digby leads us through her passionate life . . . A wonderful piece of historical fiction that will delight your senses as well as your heart." - Peggy Lee Sprague, Author of The Truth Hunters series Based on a true story . . . Bright, beautiful, and bold, Jane Digby led a remarkable life. Born to privilege in 1807 at Dorset, England, she soon scandalized Europe with her reckless pursuit of freedom. ...

Did you know Jeff Kinney posted sections of Diary of a Wimpy Kid on a website long before it became a book? Discover how an aspiring cartoonist went on to become a best-selling children's author.

Before turning to her life of crime - running a one-woman forgery business out of a phone booth in a Greenwich Village bar and even dodging the FBI - Lee Israel had a legitimate career as an author of biographies. But by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side studio, Lee made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a letter she’d received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began to forge letters in the voices of literary greats.

In The Climb up to Hell, master storyteller Jack Olsen delivers a harrowing true tale of survival, obsession, and the brutal cost of ambition. Set on the treacherous North Face of the Eiger—the most feared peak in the Swiss Alps—this gripping account follows an ill-fated 1957 climb where courage clashed with the cold, and hope dangled by a rope.

Over his decade and a half with the New York Police Department, Edwin Raymond consistently exposed the dark underbelly of modern policing, becoming the highest-ranking whistleblower in the history of the force and one of the country’s leading voices against police injustice. Offering a rare, often shocking view of American policing, An Inconvenient Cop pulls back the curtain on the many flaws woven into the NYPD’s training, data, and practices, which have since been repackaged and repurposed by police departments across the country.

An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.