Life Biography

It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant and award-winning biographer, Laura Thompson now turns her sharp eye to Agatha Christie. Arguably the greatest crime writer in the world, Christie’s books still sell over four million copies each year - more than thirty years after her death - and it shows no signs of slowing.

Kit Carson: The Life of an American Border Man strikes a balance between prevailing notions about this quintessential Western figure. Whereas the dime novelists exploited Carson's popular reputation, Remley reveals that the real man was dependable, ethical, and - for his day - relatively open-minded. Remley sees Carson as a complicated man struggling to master life on America's borders, where people of different races, cultures, and languages met, mixed, and fought, sometimes against each other, sometimes together, for the possession of home, hunting rights, and honor.

Beyond the rehashed clichés, this book inspires us to rediscover Diogenes' philosophical legacy—whether it be the challenge to the established order, the detachment from materialism, the choice of a return to nature, or the formulation of a cosmopolitan ideal strongly rooted in the belief that virtue is better revealed in action than in theory.

Losing It is Valerie Bertinelli's frank, motivational look inside the life of one of TV's most adored actresses. It tells the inspiring story of her young stardom as the girl next door - cutie Barbara Cooper on the hit show One Day at a Time - her complicated family life, her struggles to maintain a healthy self-esteem while coping with celebrity, her tumultuous 20-year marriage to rock star Eddie Van Halen, her struggle with depression, and her life-long battle with weight.

This is the riveting story of Noor Inayat Khan, the descendant of an Indian Prince Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who became a British secret agent for SOE during World War II. Born into an illustrious Indian family in 1914 and brought up in the non-violent Sufi religion, Noor seemed an unlikely secret agent. Yet she became the first female radio operator to be landed in enemy-occupied France, and refused to abandon her post in Paris in 1943, continuing her work under extremely dangerous circumstances.

Rob Paulsen is one of Hollywood's busiest and most passionate performers. If you don't know him by name, you will know him by the many characters he has brought to life: Pinky from Pinky and the Brain and Yakko from Animaniacs, Raphael from the original animated Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and many more. So, you can imagine how terrifying it must have been when Rob was diagnosed with throat cancer, putting his entire livelihood in jeopardy and threatening to rob the world of all his loveable characters that filled our youth and adulthood with humor and delight.

Discover the remarkable life of Joachim von Ribbentrop...

With unprecedented access, the veteran New York Times reporter and editorial writer who covered New York City and state politics offers a revealing portrait of one of the richest and famously private public figures in the country: business genius, inventor, innovator, publisher, philanthropist, activist, sly wit, and potential presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.

Life with Picasso, written with Carlton Lake, is about Picasso the artist and Picasso the man. We hear him talking about painting and sculpture, his life, his career, as well as other artists, both contemporaries and old masters. We glimpse Picasso in his many and volatile moods, dismissing his work, exultant over his work, entertaining his various superstitions, being an anxious father. But Life with Picasso is not only a portrait of a great artist; it is also a picture of a talented young woman of exacting intelligence at the outset of her own notable career.

A matinee of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs awakened something within Don Bluth. Despite growing up in rural Texas and Utah, he practiced and worked hard to become a Hollywood animator. And after working alongside his idol Walt Disney, and on films including Sleeping Beauty, The Sword in the Stone, Robin Hood, Winne the Pooh, The Rescuers, and Pete's Dragon, he realized that the company had changed into something he didn't necessarily believe in. So he made the industry-shocking decision to start his own animation studio.

Yvonne Durant was one of the few Black women writing ads for major brands in the ‘70s and ‘80s. Ambitious and determined, she ultimately won a position at a global ad agency in Milan, Italy. While her career was exciting, it was a challenge to be self-defining in a Mad Men world that had little experience with or respect for Black experience.

THE YEAR IS 1921. A 14-year-old boy abandons the comforts of home for the wild, untamed bushlands of East Africa to become a hunter. This incredible true-life story follows his exploits in a harsh land where life's lessons must be learned quickly, or die young. Determined to succeed, he undertakes any odd job to put food on the table. His attempts at farming, gold mining and running a garage seemed doomed to failure as he is constantly called back to a life in the bush. Enjoy accounts of his amazing escapades, filled with more excitement and adventure than anyone could have in 10 lifetimes....

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction—above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea—that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica, remains too little explored, until now.

Proud and talented, history now remembers this conflicted man solely through the lens of his last desperate act of treason. Yet the fall of Benedict Arnold remains one of the Revolutionary period's great puzzles. Why did a brilliant military commander, who repeatedly risked his life fighting the British, who was grievously injured in the line of duty, and fell into debt personally funding his own troops, ultimately became a traitor to the patriot cause?

At the onset of World War II, Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own "Hannibal Trek." Billy Williams became a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them, but his story has since been forgotten.

As the brother in law to JFK and a member of the Rat Pack, Peter Lawford was one of America's most acclaimed movie stars. Lawford led an extraordinary life. His story, as told by the woman who knew him best, is the always candid, sometimes shocking unveiling of the most intriguing show business personalities and significant political events of our time.

A Chance to Die is a vibrant portrayal of Amy Carmichael, an Irish missionary and writer who spent fifty-three years in south India without furlough. There she became known as "Amma," or "mother," as she founded the Dohnavur Fellowship, a refuge for underprivileged children. Amy's life of obedience and courage stands as a model for all who claim the name of Christ. She was a woman with desires and dreams, faults and fears, who gave her life unconditionally to serve her Master.

Joseph Campbell, arguably the greatest mythologist of the twentieth century, was certainly one of our greatest storytellers. This masterfully crafted book interweaves conversations between Campbell and some of the people he inspired, including poet Robert Bly, anthropologist Angeles Arrien, filmmaker David Kennard, Doors drummer John Densmore, psychiatric pioneer Stanislov Grof, Nobel laureate Roger Guillemen, and others. Campbell reflects on subjects ranging from the origins and functions of myth, the role of the artist, and the need for ritual to the ordeals of love and romance.

Merle Haggard was one of the most important country music musicians who ever lived. The Hag tells, without compromise, the extraordinary life of Merle Haggard, augmented by the deep secondary research, sharp detail, and ample anecdotal material that biographer Marc Eliot is known for, and enriched and deepened by more than 100 new and far-ranging interviews.

Even Flow takes you deep inside the life and music of Eddie Vedder, the relentless voice behind Pearl Jam’s biggest anthems. From his turbulent childhood in Evanston through sun-soaked, guitar-strumming days in San Diego, you’ll follow Eddie’s search for identity and belonging. Three chapters chart his teen years and punk-bar gigs, laying the foundation for the demo tape that would rock Seattle’s underground. Then witness the birth of Ten, the band’s fight with Ticketmaster, and the pressures of sudden superstardom. Beyond the roar of fifty-thousand-seat arenas you’ll see ...