NCW Libraries

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW’ S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A Best Book of the Year: San Francisco Chronicle, Seattle Times
Winner of the Plutarch Award for Best Biography
The acclaimed biographer of Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf gives us an intimate portrait of one of the most quietly brilliant novelists of the twentieth century.
Penelope Fitzgerald was a great English writer whose career...

The first authoritative and authorized biography of a writer who changed the conversation of American literature, "And So It Goes" is the culmination of five years of research and writing. The 21st century has seen interest in and scholarship about Vonnegut's works grow even stronger, and this is the first book to examine in full the life of one of the most influential iconoclasts of his time. 528 pp. 50,000 print.

"Dawkins shares with us his infectious sense of wonder at the natural world, his enjoyment of the absurdities of human interaction, and his bracing awareness of life's brevity: all of which have made a deep imprint on our culture" --

"Debating literature's greatest heroines with a friend, playwright Samantha Ellis has a revelation--"My whole life, I'd been trying to be Cathy, when I should have been trying to be Jane." With this discovery, she embarks on a retrospective look at the literary ladies--the characters and the writers--whom she has loved since childhood. From early obsessions with the March sisters to later idolizations of Sylvia Plath, Ellis evaluates how her heroines...

Ronald Reagan left behind a legacy that America will never forget. Now, in this one-of-a-kind collection of his most intimate thoughts, his favorite quotations by others, and his own most collectible jokes, all culled from a newly disclosed set of personal notecards he kept throughout his life and career, fans and admirers of the fortieth president will find a unique window of insight into the soul of an American icon. Edited by Douglas Brinkley,...

"The first authorized biography of a great American novelist"--

In May of 1953, a twenty-one-year-old Plath arrived in New York City, the guest editor of Mademoiselle's annual College Issue. She lived at the Barbizon Hotel, attended the ballet, went to a Yankees game, and danced at the West Side Tennis Club. She was supposed to be having the time of her life. But what would follow was, in Plath's words, twenty-six days of pain, parties, and work which, ultimately, changed the course of her life.

"Recollections of one of the grand masters of science fiction, on his storied career as a celebrated author and on his relationships with other luminaries in the field. This memoir is filled with all the humor and irreverence Harry Harrison's readers have come to expect from the New York Times bestselling author of the uproarious Stainless Steel Rat series. This also includes black and white photos spanning his sixty-year career"--

A remarkable literary hybrid-part biography, part detective story-about the enduring figure of Robinson Crusoe   Where did Crusoe come from? Frank explores the intertwined lives of two real men, Daniel Defoe and Robert Knox, and the character and book that emerged from their peculiar conjunction.   January 1719. A man sits at a table, writing. Nearly sixty, Daniel Defoe is troubled with gout and mired in political controversy and legal threats....

"In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade. Hemingway divulged the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic...