Literary Life

In The Literary Life, critic Van Wyck Brooks delivers a sharp examination of the conditions facing American writers in the early twentieth century. Brooks argues that the United States possesses abundant talent but too often fails to nurture it. Writers are pushed toward popularity, commercial...

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right? During a snowstorm in England in 1910, a baby is born and dies before she can take her first breath. During a snowstorm in England in 1910, the same baby is born and lives to tell the tale. What if...

Matt Bomer's heart-rending narration in this new audiobook edition offers a fresh and poignant listening experience of Hanya Yanagihara's timeless modern classic. Perfect if you're an A Little Life fan or a new listener. 'I'm not exaggerating when I say this novel challenged everything I thought...

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF DYMOCKS BOOK OF THE YEAR A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2021 A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK WINNER OF THE INWORDS LITERARY AWARD ‘Sheer joy' Graham Norton ‘Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About...

Fifteen years after graduating from Harvard, five close friends on the cusp of middle age are still pursuing an elusive happiness and wondering if they’ve wasted their youthful opportunities. Jules, already a famous actor when she arrived on campus, is changing in mysterious ways but won’t share what is haunting her. Mariam and Rowan, who married young, are struggling with the demands of family life and starting to regret prioritising meaning over wealth in their careers.

'A rare novel . . . Unbearably moving, yet hopeful and transcendent in all the best ways. Just read it. Lose yourself in it. Be changed by it' – JENNIE GODFREY, bestselling author of The List of Suspicious Things 'A stunning novel' – OPRAH DAILY A remarkable child transforms a small rural...

Two great loves. A world in chaos. And a life that never lands in order. Discover the long-awaited sequel to the bestselling phenomenon, The Time Traveler’s Wife. Alba De Tamble is a time traveler, slipping unpredictably through decades like her father before her. But the hardest thing she...

Meet one of the most significant and notorious American writers of the 20th century. Ernest Hemingway is considered one of the greatest writers in modern history, and his novels and stories are read, studied, and imitated around the world. His concise prose style earned him both a Pulitzer and a Nobel Prize. His name conjures up vivid images: grand adventurer, soldier, war correspondent, big-game hunter, bullfight aficionado, and writer.

Brought to you by Penguin. From the eminent philosopher, an authoritative exploration of the great questions of how to live 'There is a question everyone has to ask and answer - in fact, has to keep on asking and keep on answering. It is, 'How should I live my life?' meaning, 'What values shall...

Andreas Egger knows every path and peak of his mountain valley, the source of his sustenance, his livelihood, his home. Set in the mid-twentieth century and told with beauty and tenderness, Robert Seethaler's A Whole Life is a story of man's relationship with an ancient landscape, of the value...

Linda Wagner-Martin brings a wealth of new information to this detailed portrait of Hemingway and his world, concentrating particularly on his friendships with women and the history of his four marriages.

Saeed is the comic hero, the luckless fool, whose tale tells of the aggression and resistance, terror and heroism, reason and loyalty, that typify the hardships and struggles of Arabs in Israel. An informer for the Zionist state, his stupidity, candor, and cowardice make him more of a victim than a villain; but in a series of tragicomic episodes, he is gradually transformed from a disaster-haunted, gullible collaborator into a Palestinian—no hero still, but a simple man intent on survival and, perhaps, happiness. 

A writer's search for inspiration, beauty and solace leads her to birds in this intimate and exuberant meditation on creativity and life—a field guide to things small and significant. For Vladimir Nabokov, it was butterflies. For John Cage, it was mushrooms. For Sylvia Plath, it was bees. Each...

Bloomsbury presents The Girl with the Seven Lives by Vikas Swarup, read by Rea Malhotra Mukhtyar. A high-stakes tour-de-force from Vikas Swarup, the internationally bestselling author of Q & A, the book that inspired one of the most memorable films of the twenty-first century: hit Hollywood...

Biddy Weir is a quirky girl. Abandoned by her mother as a baby, and with a father who's not quite equipped for the challenges of modern parenting, Biddy lives in her own little world, happy to pass her time painting by the sea and watching the birds go by. That is, until she meets Alison Flemming. Because there are a few things about Biddy that aren't normal, you see. And Alison isn't afraid to point them out to the world. All of a sudden, Biddy's quiet life is thrown into turmoil. If only there was someone to convince her that, actually, everyone's a little bit weird....

Frederica Potter arrives at Cambridge University greedy for knowledge, sex and love. It isn’t long before she becomes infatuated with a mysterious and controlling poet. Back in Yorkshire, her sister Stephanie abandons academia and is confronted with the boredom and frustrations of motherhood. Meanwhile, their younger brother Marcus begins to recover from a nervous breakdown. Each sibling is desperate to shape their own future, but a horrifying event will soon change their lives forever.

In this collection, Vivian Gornick turns her attention to a large theme in literature: the struggle for the semblance of inner freedom. In the essays collected here, she explores the work of V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth.

Bloomsbury presents The Loves of My Life by the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex. Read by Joel Froomkin. A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White’s love of sex makes us proud to be human...

Brought to you by Penguin. Five lives overlap across two centuries. School teacher Geoffrey’s war takes him to the brink of sanity; Billy’s fortitude lifts him from the Victorian slums in London; Elena and Jeanne interrogate the notion of the soul, from opposite points of view, a century...

Shakespeare’s plays and poems remain as beloved in the twenty-first century as they were in the sixteenth. For all the years between us, the world he inhabited was much like our own—afflicted by political turmoil, divisiveness, war, extreme weather, recurrent plagues, the fouling of natural resources on which everyone relied, and discrimination against people who were different. The bard’s remedy for these troubles was to offer respite and inspiration to his audience through his writing.