Biographies & Memoirs

A gripping true tale of life in Russia, Turkey, and the United States, A Nomad's Journey shares the incredible story of Atilla Bektore and his father, Shevki Bektore. Born in Dobruja, Rumania, in 1888, Shevki Bektore dreams of being a teacher in his ancestral land of the Crimea. When the horrifying events ...

A concise biography of one of the most popular of Victorian novelists.

George IV continues to be admired as a collector of discernment and an architectural patron of genius. Yet his life was also stalked by tragedy and farce: his father was considered mad, his daughter died in childbirth and his secret marriage was illegal. This biography introduces the monarch.

Here the author offers an intimate account of the American immigrant experience, recounting the moving story of his grandparents' struggle to build a new life in turn-of-the-century America. By turns charming, wrenching, and poetic, this book is an intensely personal yet timeless tale that will appeal to nearly every descendant of immigrants.

This autobiography details the story of Larry Flynt's rise from small town beginnings to become one of the richest men in America, owning a string of nightclubs, sex outlets and, of course, the infamous pornographic magazine, "Hustler".

In 1764-65, the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais travelled to Madrid, where he immersed himself in the life and society of the day. This book is an account of Beaumarchais's visit to Madrid (he never went to Seville) and a re-creation of the society that fired his imagination.

The spiritual journey of Pouge's frontman Shane MacGowan's girlfriend, after having hit rock bottom with her hard-partying lifestyle.

First published in 1996, this is a powerful exploration of the mysteries and passions at the heart of family life, and the price one family paid for their father's denial of his identity. Only after his death did Louise begin slowly to discover the truth he'd been hiding and start to make sense of his past - and therefore her own.

Simon Gray is determined to give up smoking. Can he kick the habit of sixty years? Will he, sometime soon, be able to leave his house without nervously feeling for his two packets of twenty and his two lighters? This is the final volume of the trilogy that began with "The Smoking Diaries".

Fifty years ago, in the fall of 1957, two thirteen-year-old boys were enrolled at an elite, boys-only New England boarding school. One of them, descended from wealth and eminence, would go on to Yale, then to a career as a navy officer and Vietnam war hero, and finally to the U.S. Senate, from where ...

'An extraordinary, moving book ... like opening a jewellery box packed with beautiful, unusual gems' Marian Keyes

Presents a memorable portrait of the volcanic city from an American writer who has lost his heart to the place and to a mysterious Neapolitan woman. Naples is an amalgam of equivocal beauty, betrayals and secrets, a wounded city whose commonplace wonders are conjured by this lyrical book.

If somebody had said to me, "Your wife will go mad, she'll go missing, you'll end up bringing up your children alone, you're going to search for her for years and years," I would have thought they were the ones going insane.

In spare, rhythmic prose, this book describes the nightmarish sequence of events that surrounded the sudden illness and subsequent death of Laure Adler's nine-month old child. The child's resilience as the story is told feeds a desperate kind of hope in both Adler's family and the reader.

Gardner Botsford grew up in a Manhattan town house, and won a job as a reporter on The New Yorker. This book concludes with a series of memorable vignettes about life on the magazine and about such New Yorker ornaments as AJ Liebling, Maeve Brennan, and William Shawn, Botsford's long-time friend, mentor, boss, and, at the last, adversary.

The faux memoir of George W. Bush, from the creators of WeeklyRadioAddress.com, featured on TheOnion.com one of the highest rated podcasts in America.

In 1880, Ada Curtis bore Gerald Howard, the first of several illegitimate children. Ada was a housemaid, the daughter of a Lincolnshire butcher. Inspired by the stories Ada's great-granddaughter sets out to trace the criss-crossing lines of their history. She wonders if the history offered any explanation of what had happened in her own life.

Twenty-three years old, forensic archaeologist Courtney Brkic joined a UN-contracted team excavating mass grave sites in eastern Bosnia, drawn there by her family history. This is a book belonging and nationality and sheds light on the roots of violence and genocide.

A biography of the great 18th-century novelist, Tobias Smollett, by the author of "Cyril Connolly: A Life". It is filled with curious details from the worlds of publishing, medicine, politics and literary life.

Honest and deeply felt and thought, Family Wanted sheds a fascinating and surprising light on identity, family, love and belonging.