Popular Authors

Filled with broken hearts and black ravens, Edgar Allan Poe's ghastly tales have delighted readers for centuries. Born in Boston in 1809, Poe was orphaned at age two. He was soon adopted by a Virginia family who worked as tombstone merchants. In 1827 he...

Funny and totally true childhood biographies and full-color illustrations tell the tales from the growing-up years of Beverly Cleary, J. R. R. Tolkien, and 13 other great writers. Every great author started out as a kid. Before the best sellers, fan clubs, and beloved...

A landmark collection that brings together Truman Capote's life's work in the form he called his "great love," The Complete Stories confirms Capote's status as a master of the short story. "To best experience Capote the stylist, one must go back to his short...

Learn how Judy Blume went from a stay-at-home mother to one of the most beloved American authors of the twentieth century. Readers adore Judy Blume for her personal stories about the journey from childhood to adolescence. She has always been an imaginative person and...

Henry Miller's monumental venture in self-revelation was begun with his Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, which on their American publication were hailed as "miraculous," "superb," "ribald," "brilliant," and "shamelessly shocking." Sexus is the first volume of a series called The Rosy Crucifixion,...

Everyone has secrets, but no one can hide them from Cici! As a future writer, Cici knows what questions to ask and where to find the clues she needs to unlock peoples' hearts. Yet even though Cici is great at helping others, for a...

Kids can experience William Shakespeare's England and get their first taste of the Bard's sublime craft with this lively biography and activity book. Staging swordplay, learning to juggle, and creating authentic costumes like a flamboyant shirt with slashed sleeves or a lady's lace-trimmed glove...

This fascinating firsthand account of life and travel in the early twentieth century includes 24 pages of photographs. "It is like a fairyland." So Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of the beloved Little House series, described her 1915 voyage to San Francisco to visit her...

In this book from the critically acclaimed, mulitmillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover how Astrid Lindgren grew up to become one of the world's best-loved authors, and the creator of the irresistible Pippi Longstocking. Little Astrid grew up on an old farm...

Born into wealth in 1860's London, Beatrix Potter always had a vivid imagination. Her early interests included natural history and archaeology, and Potter delighted in sketching fossils and fungi. After briefly illustrating Christmas cards with her brother, Bertram, Potter wrote and illustrated her well-known...

Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic extremism...

In this book from the critically acclaimed, multimillion-copy best-selling Little People, BIG DREAMS series, discover the life of Hans Christian Andersen, the father of fairy tales. When Hans Christian Andersen was a little boy, he treated storybooks as jewels to be treasured. He wanted...

Find out how stories about his son's stuffed bear, famously known as Winnie the Pooh, made A. A. Milne one of the world's best-known children's authors in this informative biography from the #1 New York Times Best-Selling Series, Who Was?. Born in England in...

For anyone who enjoys reading memoirs--or is thinking about writing one--this collection offers a master class from nine distinguished authors, including Annie Dillard, Frank McCourt, and others. The events, memories, and emotions of the past often resist the orderly structure of a book. Inventing...

The International Bestselling memoir from award-winning author Amos Oz, "one of Isreal's most prolific writers and respected intellectuals" (The New York Times), about his turbulent upbringing in the city of Jerusalem in the era of the dissolution of Mandatory Palestine and the beginning of...

Peter Weiss's first prose work, The Shadow of the Coachman's Body, was unanimously praised as an original and perfect work of art by critics when it appeared in 1960. Here, in poet Rosmarie Waldrop's stunning translation, Weiss arranges a dark, vividly alive comedy of...

"Streamlined and impacting, Darla Worden's Cockeyed Happy could be construed as a narrative of the author himself, a compelling account of Hemingway's summers in Wyoming--and I can think of no finer compliment."--Craig Johnson, author of the Walt Longmire Mysteries In March 1928, after the...

"A book filled with richnesses of humor and tragedy of disappointment and triumph, of sweetness and bitterness, and all in that unsurpassed American prose."--New York Herald Tribune Book ReviewMark Twain was a figure larger than life: massive in talent, eruptive in temperament, unpredictable in...

Curious, ruminative, and wry, this literary autobiography tours what Rachel Kushner called the strange remove that is the life of the writer. Frank's essays cover a vast spectrum--from handling dismissive advice, facing the dilemma of thwarted ambition, and copying the generosity that inspires us,...

Octavia Butler (1947-2006) spent the majority of her prolific career as the only major black female author of science fiction. Winner of both the Nebula and Hugo Awards as well as a MacArthur "genius" grant, the first for a science fiction writer, Butler created...