A description of the personal life and career of the twentieth-century English writer of such successful books as "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," "James and the Giant Peach," and "Matilda."

Suffering from writer's block a man goes for a walk in Liverpool and meets a war buddy working as a busker. They discuss the death of a soldier for which the writer always felt responsible and the buddy's revelation changes the writer's life.

"From the celebrated biographer of Nancy Mitford, and Evelyn Waugh: a full and fascinating biography--the very first--of the long-admired and universally-acclaimed English writer. When Sybille Bedford died in 2006 at the age of 94, she had written ten books, including four novels and a biography of Aldous Huxley. Her novels--the last of which was shortlisted for the Booker--all fictionalized her extraordinarily colorful, peripatetic life and dramatic...

Profiles the life and work of William Shakespeare.

From an Edgar award–winning author, a crime novel about an English ex-pat on the run from danger is "a wondrous, strange trip through a very fine mind" (The New York Times). From the critically acclaimed author of the Van der Valk and the Henri Castang mystery series comes a stand-alone crime novel about a man startled out of his placid life in the South of France by a violent attempt on his life. An aging British crime writer living out his...

An easy-to-read biography of J. K. Rowling, the English author of the popular Harry Potter series of children's books.

"Will Self is one of Britain's best-known contemporary writers, a public intellectual whose novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into over twenty languages. In Will, his first ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self, and in particular his addictions as a young man. An addiction memoir like no other, Will echoes the best of Self's psychedelic fiction, and is one of the most eloquent depictions of the allure...

An essay on grief and love for the author's late wife Pat, in which he discusses ballooning, photography, love, and bereavement; putting two things and two people together; and then tearing those things apart.