This winter, take the time to reflect on an extraordinary year with this perfectly distilled set of essays from one of our wisest and most humane thinkersFrom the critically acclaimed author of Feel Free, Swing Time, White Teeth and many more'There will be many books written about the year 2020: historical, analytic, political and comprehensive accounts.
'Hilarious, subversive, sharp without being lethal, and loving without an ounce of sentiment, Shirley Jackson's more-or-less autobiographical account of life as a mother of four and faculty wife (and brilliant writer) is an eternal, comic joy' Amy Bloom'Our new house was waiting for us, eager, expectant, and empty'Shirley Jackson skewered the trials of domestic life in 1950s America with wry wit and uncanny precision.
A moving portrait of the landscape that shaped the life of Laurie Lee, the beloved author of Cider With Rosie 'Before I left the valley I thought everywhere was like this.
From the acclaimed philosopher and author of One-Dimensional Woman, a bold, playful and open-minded exploration of the role of men in the twenty-first centurySomething is definitely up with men.
From pre-First World War Warsaw to the New York of the 1930s, Nobel Prize-winner Isaac Bashevis Singer traces the early years of his life in this autobiographical trilogy.
'Some of the more heart-shaking writing about love and grief I've ever read' Kamila Shamsie, from the introductionMeatless Days is a searing memoir of life in the newly-created country of Pakistan.
Advertisements for Myself is a comprehensive collection of the best of Norman Mailer's essays, stories, interviews and journalism from the Forties and Fifties, linked by anarchic and riotous autobiographical commentary.
A brilliant companion piece to Wide Sargasso Sea, this is Jean Rhys's beautifully written, bitter-sweet autobiography, covering her chequered early years in Dominica, England and Paris.
'A landmark biography' The Times, Books of the YearThe long-awaited portrait of a literary master from one of our generation's greatest biographersAnthony Powell: the literary genius who gave us A Dance to the Music of Time, an undisputed classic of English literature.
'Magical' Daily Mail'I finished it with an ache in my heart and a tear in my eye' SpectatorFrom the author of Cider With Rosie, Village Christmas is a moving, lyrical portrait of England through the changing years and seasons.
Born Cicely Fairfield in 1892, as a young woman - and a budding actress - Rebecca West changed her name to that of the feminist heroine in Ibsen's play, Rosmersholm .
Born in London in 1879 and raised in the Cape of Good Hope, Beatrice Hastings was one of those talented marginal figures who are major witnesses to their times, but whose testimony has been sadly neglected.
'Women so empowered are dangerous'Written with a 'black woman's anger' and the precision of a poet, these searing pieces by the groundbreaking writer Audre Lorde are a celebration of female strength and solidarity, and a cry to speak out against those who seek to silence anyone they see as 'other'.
Dua Lipa's Service95 Book Club Pick for July 2026The International BestsellerWinner of the Ondaatje Prize | Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize | Shortlisted for the Costa Biography Prize 'The best book I read last year by a mile.
'Superb, beautifully written, touching and occasionally very funny' Andrew RobertsDavid Gilmour's superb biography of Rudyard Kipling is the first to show how the life and work of the great writer mirrored the trajectory of the British Empire, from its zenith to its final decades.
'A deeply intelligent and searching book, one that makes you re-consider the narrative of your own life and reframe the story you tell yourself' Hilary Mantel"e;There was a question that had come to trouble me a bit earlier, once I had taken the first steps on this return journey to Reims.
When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media--though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candour about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "e;a raw display of private life"e; by The New York Times Book Review.
From the legendary author of Things Fall Apart comes this long-awaited memoir recalling Chinua Achebe's personal experiences of and reflections on the Biafran War, one of Nigeria's most tragic civil warsChinua Achebe, the author of Things Fall Apart, was a writer whose moral courage and storytelling gifts have left an enduring stamp on world literature.
Discover the heart-warming and uplifting story of a Glasgow tenement urchin finding her way against adversity Born during the Second World War in Glasgow, Christine Fraser was her mother's eighth child.
Charles Dickens is the acclaimed definitive biography of Britain s greatest novelist by bestselling author Claire Tomalin, author of Samuel Pepys: The Unequalled Self and Jane Austen: A Life Powerful and remarkable.
Evelyn Juers' extraordinary book is a unique imagining of the unconventional love affair between the writer and political activist Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger - a tall, blonde ex-barmaid twenty-seven years his junior - recounting their flight from Nazi Germany in 1933, to France and then to Los Angeles.
This new rebrand of MORE ABOUT BOY is a favourite book containing a wealth of new photos, facts and writings about Roald Dahl and his childhood, together with the original text and illustrations from his much-loved memoir.
Giacomo Leopardi was the greatest Italian poet of the nineteenth century and was recognized by readers from Nietzsche to Beckett as one of the towering literary figures in Italian history.
Published to coincide with the release of the film Bright Star, written and directed by Oscar Winner Jane Campion (The Piano, In the Cut), starring Abbie Cornish (Elizabeth: The Golden Age) and Ben Whishaw (Brideshead Revisited, Perfume)John Keats died aged just twenty-five.
A prodigiously brilliant thinker who sharply challenged the beliefs of his age, the political and social radical John Stuart Mill was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century.
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 .
