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Something to declare: Essays
By Julia Alvarez. 1998
Alvarez, the author of "How the Garcia girls lost their accents" and other works, reminisces about her childhood in the…
Dominican Republic and her family's escape to New York City. Also describes how she became an author and how to experience the writing life. 1998.Small beneath the sky: a prairie memoir
By Lorna Crozier. 2009
Poet Crozier vividly depicts her hometown of Swift Current, with its one main street, two high schools, and three beer…
parlours - where her father spent most of his evenings. She writes unflinchingly about the grief and shame caused by poverty and alcoholism, while at the heart of the book is her fierce love for her mother, Peggy. The narratives of daily life - sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking - are interspersed with prose poems. Some strong language. 2009.Shirley Jackson: a rather haunted life
By Ruth Franklin. 2016
Still known to millions only as the author of the "The Lottery," Shirley Jackson (1916-1965) remains curiously absent from the…
American literary canon. A genius of literary suspense, Jackson plumbed the cultural anxiety of postwar America better than anyone. Biographer Ruth Franklin reveals the tumultuous life and inner darkness of the author behind such classics as 'The Haunting of Hill House' and 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle'. Placing Jackson within an American gothic tradition of Hawthorne and Poe, Franklin demonstrates how her unique contribution to this genre came from her focus on "domestic horror" drawn from an era hostile to women. With its exploration of astonishing talent shaped by a damaged childhood and a troubled marriage, this is the definitive biography of a generational avatar and an American literary giant. Winner of the 2017 Edgar Award for best critical / biography book. 2016.Storyteller: the authorized biography of Roald Dahl
By Donald Sturrock. 2010
Biography of writer Roald Dahl (1916-1990), author of "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" (DC00453). Chronicles Dahl's English boarding-school education; World…
War II service that involved aerial combat and espionage; and family tragedies, including the death of his daughter Olivia and his first wife Patricia Neal's stroke. 2010.Stephen Leacock (Extraordinary Canadians)
By John Ralston Saul, Margaret MacMillan. 2009
Macmillan has great affection for Leacock's gentle wit and sharp-eyed insight. The renowned historian examines Leacock's life as a poor…
but ambitious student who rose to become an economist, celebrated academic, and, most importantly, the beloved humourist who taught Canadians to laugh at themselves. c2009.Sophia Tolstoy: a biography
By Alexandra Popoff. 2010
As Leo Tolstoy's wife, Sophia Tolstoy experienced both glory and condemnation during their forty-eight-year marriage. Drawing on newly available archival…
material, including Sophia's unpublished memoir, Alexandra Popoff presents a dramatically different and accurate portrait of the woman and the marriage. Some descriptions of sex. c2010.Starting out, 1920-1947
By Pierre Berton. 1987
Stay me, oh comfort me: journals and stories, 1933-1941
By M. F. K Fisher. 1993
Shortly before her death in 1992, Fisher decided to publish a memoir about the end of her first marriage and…
her brief, tragic second marriage. She wanted a record of how she felt at the time instead of a version reinterpreted by her older self. Fisher put together unpublished letters, short stories, and excerpts from journals of that period to tell her story. Sequel to "Long Ago in France" .1993.Stars come out within
By Jean Little. 1990
Renowned author Jean Little describes her childhood with a visual impairment, the early death of her father, the shock of…
losing her remaining sight to glaucoma, and her battle with depression. A talking computer and her guide dog, Zephyr, brought her independence and freedom. Sequel to "Little by Little".Song of Rita Joe: autobiography of Mi'kmaq poet
By Lynn Henry, Rita Joe. 1996
Mi'kmaq poet Rita Joe reflects on the tumultuous events of her life. Raised in foster homes and educated in an…
Indian residential school, she endured prejudice, sexism, and poverty. She began to write poetry, and soon discovered the voice through which she could reclaim her Aboriginal heritage. 1996.Song of Erne
By Robert Harbinson. 1987
So who's perfect!: people with visible differences tell their own stories
By Dhyan Cassie. 1984
Presents interviews with handicapped or physically "different" people. They tell of their experiences in childhood, school, social and work life,…
religious faith, and what they would like to share with society. 1984.Something cloudy, something clear
By Tennessee Williams. 1995
Autobiographical play set in 1940 dealing with Tennessee Williams' first love - a young Canadian draft dodger who was dying…
of a brain tumour. Descriptions of sex and some strong language. 1995, c1981.At the age of thirty-four, Gerald Shea discovered that he had been partially deaf since childhood, yet somehow managed to…
navigate his way through Andover, Yale, and Columbia Law School, and to establish an international legal career. Shea had compensated for his deafness through sheer determination and an amazing ability to translate the melody of vowels. His experience gives fascinating new insight into the nature and significance of language, the meaning of deafness, the fierce controversy between advocates of signing and of oral education, and the longing for full communication that unites us all. 2013.Smile please: an unfinished autobiography (Twentieth Century Classics Ser.)
By Jean Rhys. 1990
"Smile please" was begun when the author was 86 years old, and left unfinished due to her death three years…
later. This book is a collection of autobiographical vignettes. As a novelist she speaks with originality of the plight of the disaffected, but self-aware; here she reveals the influences that shaped her life, and with perfect recall she returns to the tensions of her childhood on the island of Dominica and to the rebellious uncertainties of her later life in London and Paris. 1990.Sixty: a diary of my sixty-first year
By Ian Brown. 2015
"Sixty" is a report from the front, a dispatch from the Maginot Line that divides the middle-aged from the soon…
to be elderly. Ian began keeping a diary with a Facebook post on the morning of February 4, 2014, his sixtieth birthday. As well as keeping a running tally on how he survived the year, Ian explored what being sixty means physically, psychologically and intellectually. "What pleasures are gone forever? Which ones, if any, are left? What did Beethoven, or Schubert, or Jagger, or Henry Moore, or Lucien Freud do after they turned sixty?" And most importantly, "How much life can you live in the fourth quarter, not knowing when the game might end?" Bestseller. 2015.At twenty-one Maya Angelou's life has a double focus - music and her son. Working in a record store at…
the start of this third volume of autobiography, she is on the edge of new worlds: marriage, show business and, in 1954, a triumphant tour of Europe and North Africa as a feature dancer with "Porgy and Bess". Sequel to “Gather together in my name”, followed by “The heart of a woman“. 1985.Silk parachute: Essays
By John McPhee. 2010
Shelley: the pursuit
By Richard Holmes. 2005
Shelley, the most neglected of all the great Romantic poets, was born in Sussex in 1792 and died in Tuscany…
in 1822, a brief life packed with love affairs, alarums and excursions. This biography offers a serious and critical reappraisal of Shelley as a man and a writer; all his prose and poetry is carefully re-examined, his sense of spiritual and geographical isolation described and a detailed portrait of his macabre imaginative life slowly assembled. 2005, c1994.Shadowlands: the story of C S Lewis and Joy Davidman (Hodder Christian paperbacks)
By Brian Sibley. 1985
The unique private story of C.S. Lewis's love for Joy Davidman, in whom he truly found love and was drawn…
out of his shell. But his happiness was short-lived as she died months after they were married. Brian Sibley looks at Lewis's childhood, his literary legacy and shows how, despite grievous doubts, Lewis's Christian faith shone through. 1985.