Showing titles in Authors

On July 19, 2001, Jeffrey Archer—politician and international best-selling author—was sentenced to four years in prison for perjury. He became Prisoner FF8282 and spent the first three weeks of his sentence in a high-security prison that housed some of Britain's most violent criminals. He was moved to the Lifer's wing—because of the security it provided—where he became a trusted confidant to fellow convicts. Prisoners and guards alike asked for his autograph and sought his advice—though one cellmate sold a story about Archer to the British tabloids.

This book is part memoir, part philosophical text, part study in human behavior, from one of America's greatest literary treasures. Narrated masterfully by Bronson Pinchot, this audiobook also includes Twain’s popular short story, "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County".

"If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by aeroplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V. C.) Bird is the prime minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a prime minister would want an airport named after him - why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen..." So begins Jamaica Kincaid's expansive essay, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the 10-by-12-mile island in the British West Indies.

Three-a-Penny describes what it is like to be a woman in a man's world - about the ups and downs of earning a living as a writer in the 1920s and '30s. Lucy Malleson wrote over 70 crime novels and was part of what is often referred to as the Golden Age of crime writing. But in order to be published she used a male pseudonym and successfully concealed her true identity for many years.

"La storia di una famiglia somiglia più a una cartina topografica che a un romanzo, e una biografia è la somma di tutte le ere geologiche che hai attraversato". Come si racconta una vita se non esplorandone i luoghi simbolici e geografici, ricostruendo una mappa di sé e del mondo vissuto? Tra la Basilicata e Brooklyn, da Roma a Londra, dall'infanzia al futuro, il nuovo libro dell'autrice di "Cleopatra va in prigione" è un'avventura che unisce vecchie e nuove migrazioni.

Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate.

In April 1878, Mark Twain and his family traveled to Europe. Overloaded with creative ideas, Twain had hoped that the sojourn would spark his creativity enough to bring at least one of the books in his head to fruition. Instead, he wrote of his walking tour of Europe, describing his impressions of the Black Forest, the Matterhorn, and other attractions.

Richard Madeley has been gracing our screens since the early 1980s, best known for his time on This Morning and Richard and Judy with his wife, Judy Finnegan. Taking inspiration from the Richard and Judy Book Club, Richard recently started writing novels of his own. He visits the Audible Studios to talk about his latest crime novel, The Night School.

Dame Beryl Bainbridge was one of the best loved and most recognisable English novelists of her generation. She was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and her critically acclaimed novels The Dressmaker (1973), The Bottle Factory Outing (1974), An Awfully Big Adventure (1990), Every Man for Himself (1996) and Master Georgie (1998) confirmed her status as one of the major literary figures of the last 50 years.

On August 5, 1949, a crew of 15 of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for 40 years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.

In this beautifully nostalgic memoir, eminent author Angela Thirkell recalls in rich detail the three houses in which she grew up. Focusing first on 'The Grange', where her grandfather, the celebrated painted Sir Edward Burne-Jones, set the cultivated tone, Thirkell also reminisces about her parents' home in Kensington Square and the Burne-Jones' seaside retreat, where Angela's cousin, Rudyard Kipling, lived across the green.

A.J.A. Symons discovered Frederick Rolfe’s Hadrian the Seventh in 1925 and became consumed with fascination for its eccentric author, aka ‘Baron Corvo’. His ‘quest’ takes the form of an irresistible detective story, the twists and turns of his investigation into Rolfe’s unfortunate life resulting in a groundbreaking form of biography that reveals much about both men.

Sarah Winman is the internationally best-selling author of When God Was a Rabbit and A Year of Marvellous Ways. Her latest novel, Tin Man, is described as 'unforgettable and achingly tender'. Sarah visits the Audible Studios to tell us more about her writing process, her characters and much more.

Binyavanga Wainaina tumbled through his middle-class Kenyan childhood out of kilter with the world around him. Here he takes us through his chaotic school days, his attempt to study in South Africa, a moving family reunion in Uganda, and his travels around Kenya. The landscape in front of him always claims his main attention, but he also evokes the shifting political scene that unsettles his views on family, tribe, and nationhood.

From Shakespeare and Milton to Alan Moore and Douglas Adams, writers have striven to convey the enormity and wonder of our universe. In this enlightening three-part series, Robin Ince, aided by special guests including his fellow Infinite Monkey Cage presenter Brian Cox, appraises the great communicators past and present, who have captured our imagination and advanced our knowledge.

The mercurial, self-mythologizing novelist and journalist Joseph Roth, author of the twentieth-century masterpiece The Radetzky March, was the finest observer and chronicler of his age. Endless Flight travels with Roth from his childhood in the town of Brody on the eastern edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to an unsettled life spent roaming Europe between the wars, including spells in Vienna, Paris, and Berlin. His decline mirrored the collapse of civilized Europe: in his last decade, he opposed Nazism in exile from Germany, his wife succumbed to schizophrenia, and he died an alcoholic.

Charles Dickens was a literary giant, second only to Shakespeare in the ranks of England's greatest writers. This extensive biographical collection looks at the man, his novels and his legacy to provide an all-round portrait of the much-loved author.

Antonia Fraser's memoir describes growing up in the 1930s and 1940s but its real concern is with her growing love of history. The fascination began as a child when her evacuation at the beginning of the war to an Elizabethan manor house became an inspiration for historical imaginings - and developed into an enduring passion; as she writes, 'for me, the study of History has always been an essential part of the enjoyment of life'.

Generations of children have fallen in love with the pioneer saga of the Ingalls family, of Pa and Ma, Laura and her sisters, and their loyal dog. Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books have taught millions of Americans about frontier life, giving inspiration to many and in the process becoming icons of our national identity. Yet few realize that this best-selling series wandered far from the actual history of the Ingalls family and from what Laura herself understood to be central truths about pioneer life.

Hunter S. Thompson, "smart hillbilly"; boy of the South; born and bred in Louisville, Kentucky; son of an insurance salesman and a stay-at-home mom; public school-educated; jailed at 17 on a bogus petty robbery charge; member of the US Air Force (airman second class); copy boy for Time; writer for The National Observer; et cetera.