Literary Biography

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.

Listeners will learn about the life and works of Suzanne Collins. This young adult author’s life leading up to her success as the best-selling author of the Hunger Games trilogy is discussed. Listeners will also learn about the author’s writing process and what inspires her to write. What’s next for this author and other interesting details are also included.

A humorist, narrator, and social observer, Mark Twain is unsurpassed in American literature. Best known as the author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain, not unlike his protagonist, Huck, has a restless spirit. He found adventure prospecting for silver in Nevada, navigating steamboats down the Mississippi, and making people laugh around the world. But Twain also had a serious streak and decried racism and injustice. His fascinating life is captured candidly in this enjoyable biography.

A gripping narrative history of Spain’s most brilliant and troubled literary family - a tale about the making of art, myth, and legacy - set against the upheaval of the Spanish Civil War and beyond.

How much do you know about Amanda Gorman? Find out the facts you need to know about this impressive young poet. You’ll learn about the childhood, challenges, and accomplishments of this rising star.

A classic portrait of immigrant life in the early decades of the twentieth century, A Walker in the City is a tour of tenements, subways, and synagogues—but also a universal story of the desires and fears we experience as we try to leave our small, familiar neighborhoods for something new.

Published nine years after her 1933 novelization of the trial and death of Socrates, Rogue’s Legacy is Babette Deutsch imagining François Villon, the notorious French poet known as much for his verse as for his criminality. As Herbert Gorman wrote in the New York Times: “The extant documentation concerning Villon in Rogue’s Legacy is brought to such a sharp and living fictional focus that the result for the reader is very much like draining a huge beaker of ruddy Beaune that the poet loved so well. . . . She has created a character who lives and who might very well be the François ...

At the age of seventeen, Jack joins a company and finds his true calling in sales. After meeting and falling in love with the boss' daughter they begin theirs happily ever after including the birth of their daughter, Katherine. Mindful of the business world Jack and his wife Sarah purchase the company from her father. They struggle for many years and it pays off in a successful enterprise. Life can be harsh and after a short 24 years of marriage, Sarah dies from cancer. After giving up control of the company to be with his wife during her battle, Jack is aimless and depressed. Over the next...

From the best-selling book On The Road With Charles Kuralt, these classic stories represent Kuralt's defining, and perhaps finest, work. Never before released on audio, this collection ensures that his unforgettable voice will be heard by generations to come.

Agatha Christie’s ‘most absorbing mystery’ – her own autobiography. Over the three decades since her death on 12 January 1976, many of Agatha Christie’s readers and reviewers have maintained that her most compelling book is probably still her least well-known. Her candid Autobiography, written mainly in the 1960s, modestly ignores the fact that Agatha had become the best-selling novelist in history and concentrates on her fascinating private life.

How did Jon Scieszka get so funny, anyway? Growing up as one of six brothers was a good start, but that was just the beginning. Throw in Catholic school, lots of comic books, lazy summers at the lake with time to kill, babysitting misadventures, TV shows, jokes told at family dinner, and the result is Knucklehead. Part memoir, part scrapbook, this hilarious trip down memory lane provides a unique glimpse into the formation of a creative mind and a free spirit.

Filled with practical tips and helpful advice, Dear Ally is a treasure for aspiring writers at any stage of their careers. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at how books get made, from idea to publication, and gives you insight into the writing processes of some of the biggest and most talented YA authors writing today.

Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, based on her own childhood and later life, are still beloved classics almost a century after she began writing them. Now young listeners will see just how similar Laura's true-life story was to her books. Born in 1867 in the "Big Woods" in Wisconsin, Laura experienced both the hardship and the adventure of living on the frontier.

He glides through life cocooned by his devoted family, lucrative business, sporting prowess and good looks. He is the embodiment of thriving post-war America, land of liberty and hope. Until one sunny day in 1968, when Swede's daughter, Merry, commits an outlandishly savage act of political terrorism and the Levov family is plunged into mayhem. Extraordinarily nuanced and poignant, American Pastoral is the first in an eloquent trilogy of post-war American novels that still resonates today.

Born in 1857 and raised in oil country, Ida M. Tarbell was one of the first investigative journalists and probably the most influential in her time. Her series of articles on the Standard Oil Trust, a complicated business empire run by John D. Rockefeller, revealed to readers the underhanded, even illegal practices that had led to Rockefeller's success.

How is it that Flaubert, the great 19th-century novelist and last of the great French romantics, still seems so very modern? In this stunning biography, Geoffrey Wall investigates why Flaubert and his work, Madame Bovary, exert such a firm hold on the popular literary imagination.

Well-loved author Tomie dePaola brings his childhood memories to audio in this collection of books 5-8 from his 26 FAIRMOUNT AVENUE series.

In 1941, newlyweds William and Rosalie Schiff are forcibly separated and sent on their individual odysseys through a surreal maze of hate. Terror in the Krakow ghetto, sadistic SS death games, cruel human medical experiments, eyewitness accounts of brutal murders of men, women, children, and even infants, and the menace of rape in occupied Poland make William & Rosalie an unusually explicit view of the chaos that World War II unleashed on the Jewish people.

A journey through the life of Swami Vivekananda is a study of the Indian civilization, its ethos and value system. Not only did his message of tolerance, based on knowledge, make him an exemplary spokesperson of the country, but his life's mission of creating an order of monks who dedicated their lives for others made him a prophet and a leader. His teachings continue to be relevant even today, especially in the light of the prevailing intolerance and fanaticism in the nation, and the increasing turmoil in the world.

"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. Jane Digby's Diary continues with Volume Three: Following an Eastern Star. 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. Kings, princes, barons, ...