Showing titles in Essays

In this new collection, recorded live, on-location from Massachusetts to California, David Sedaris reflects on what it means to be a foreigner, a brother, a lifelong friend, in essays that are "among the best of his career" (Publishers Weekly, starred review). 'Very little makes me laugh. I...

Chuck Palahniuk's world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. The pieces that comprise Stranger than Fiction, his first nonfiction collection, prove just how different, in ways both highly entertaining and deeply unsettling. Included are encounters with alternative culture heroes...

Kate Humble has a knack for sharing her own journey towards a more pleasing and purposeful life in a way that inspires listeners, enables them to reassess their own lives and helps them achieve their personal goals. Having encouraged listeners to reconnect with nature in Thinking on My Feet and simplify their lifestyles in A Year of Living Simply, she turns now to reimagining the ideal home.

Brought to you by Penguin. A much-loved classic of nature writing from environmentalist and the author of Waterlog, Roger Deakin, Wildwood is an exploration of the element wood in nature, our culture and our lives. From the walnut tree at his Suffolk home, he embarks upon a quest that takes him...

Brought to you by Penguin. From global bestseller and creator of Jack Reacher, comes Lee Child’s first-ever autobiographical collection. On Monday September 5th, 1994, at home, at the dining room table, I sat down to write. An hour later, I gave the first chapter to my wife. I asked, “Should...

High heels, movie deals, wagon wheels, shoes, reviews, having the blues, builders, babies, families and other calamities.... Many think that Marian Keyes leads a glitzy life of limos, television, and showbiz parties - but she would argue that she spends the majority of her life writing alone, wearing her PJs, and eating bananas with a laptop on a pillow in front of her. Under the Duvet is a wide collection of her journalism and stories - all personal, closely observed, and painfully funny.

Dismissed by a bored author at a book signing, a betrayed young man named David Sedaris made a vow. Someday, when it was his turn at the table, he’d connect with his readers. The experience has been even more revealing than he’d hoped.In this hilarious and perceptive essay, the celebrated humorist reflects on the unusual patterns of forced socialization between author and audience, and the obligations and sometimes surprising returns of not-so-chance encounters with strangers: jokes, secrets, insights, and even charity.

'I tend to think of myself as a man of few words, but looking at this collection it seems to have been gab gab gab for the last thirty years'. Admittedly not all the words are his own - but even the work of other writers can be transformed by Alan Bennett. This unique anthology of Bennett's...

Penguin Presents the audio edition of Daemon Voices, written and read by Philip Pullman with an introduction by Simon Mason. In over 30 essays, written over 20 years and recorded by the author himself in his home city of Oxford, one of the world's great story-tellers meditates on the art of...

Ursula K. Le Guin witnessed and contributed to many of the twentieth century’s rebellions and upheavals, including women’s liberation, the Civil Rights movement and US anti-war and environmental activism. Spanning fifty years of her life and work, Space Crone brings together Le Guin’s writings on feminism and gender for the first time, offering new insights into her imaginative, multispecies feminist consciousness: from its roots in deep ecology and philosophies of non-violence to her self-education about racism and her writing on motherhood and ageing.

“A faithful translation is rare; a translation which preserves intact the original text is very rare; a perfect translation of Montaigne appears impossible. Yet Donald Frame has realized this feat. One does not seem to be reading a translation, so smooth and easy is the style; at each moment, one seems to be listening to Montaigne himself - the freshness of his ideas, the unexpected choice of words. Frame has kept everything.” (Andre Maurois, The New York Times Book Review)

A wide-ranging selection of George Orwell's essays, written in the clear-eyed, passionate and uncompromising style that has earned him a reputation as one of Britain's greatest writers.

David Sedaris's remarkable ability to uncover the hilarious absurdity teeming just below the surface of everyday life is elevated to wilder and more entertaining heights than ever in this new book of stories. Sedaris proceeds from bizarre conundrums of daily life - the etiquette of having a...

In this powerful and wide-ranging collection of essays, Rebecca Solnit turns her attention to the war at home. This is a war, she says, "[W]ith so many casualties that we should call it by its true name, this war with so many dead by police, by violent ex-husbands and partners and lovers, by people pursuing power and profit at the point of a gun or just shooting first and figuring out who they hit later."

Il faut prêter attention aux analyses d'Amin Maalouf : ses intuitions se révèlent des prédictions, tant il semble avoir la prescience des grands bouleversements de l'Histoire. Il s'inquiétait il y a vingt ans de la montée des "identités meurtrières" ; il y a dix ans du "dérèglement du monde".

Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young, attractive but impoverished New Yorkers. They are in love and decide to marry, but realise their chances of happiness are slim without the wealth and society that their more privileged friends take for granted. Nick and Susy agree to separate when either encounters a more eligible proposition.

Following the best-selling Summer of a Dormouse, Sir John Mortimer - playwright, novelist, octogenarian, and erstwhile QC - offers up more lessons in living and growing old disgracefully. What would we like to leave to our descendants? Not a third-rate painting or our PEPS, according to Sir John, but a love of Shakespeare, a taste for alcohol, the ability to defeat boredom, the importance of never locking the lavatory door, and so on.

Staring down the barrel of her 40th year, Samantha Irby is confronting the ways her life has changed since the days she could work a full 11 hour shift on 4 hours of sleep, change her shoes and put mascara on in the back of a moving cab and go from drinks to dinner to the club without a second thought. Recently, things are more 'Girls Gone Mild.'

In this ground-breaking book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous fantasy). The fantasies are extraordinary: they are full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation. From fantasising about someone off-limits to conjuring a scene with multiple partners, from sex that is gentle and tender to passionate and playful, these letters provide a window into the most secret part of our minds.