"A lyrical and evocative collection of personal stories from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Under the Tuscan Sun, in which the queen of wanderlust reflects on the comforts of home. While Frances Mayes is known for her travels, she has always sought a sense of home wherever she goes. In this poetic testament to the power of place in our lives, Mayes reflects on "home," from the earliest imprint of four walls to the startling discoveries...

Rune, whose voice has been compared to that of an angel, has a mysterious affliction linked to her talent that leaves her sick and drained at the end of every performance. Convinced creative direction will cure her, her mother ships her off to a French boarding school for the arts, rumored to have a haunted past. Shortly after arriving at RoseBlood conservatory, Rune starts to believe something otherworldly is indeed afoot. The mystery boy she's seen...

"A beautiful, evocative, and sometimes provocative memoir of Australia's unique landscape, and how that singular place has shaped Tim Winton and his writing. From boyhood, Winton's relationship with the world around him-rock pools, sea caves, scrub, and swamp-has been as vital as any other connection. Camping in hidden inlets, walking in high rocky desert, diving in reefs, bobbing in the sea between surfing sets, Winton has felt the place seep into...

"From the beloved author of The House on Mango Street: a richly illustrated compilation of true stories and nonfiction pieces that, taken together, form a jigsaw autobiography: an intimate album of a literary legend's life and career. From the Chicago neighborhoods where she grew up and set her groundbreaking The House on Mango Street to her abode in Mexico, in a region where "my ancestors lived for centuries," the places Sandra Cisneros has lived...

"From one of our most intrepid and eloquent adventurers of the natural world: an account of her search for home -- experiences traveling in Greenland, the North Pole, the Channel Islands of California, Japan; of herding animals in Wyoming and Montana, and her embrace of the balance between the ordinary and celestial. In The Solace of Open Spaces, Gretel Ehrlich announced her aspiration as a writer to assign the physical qualities of the earth -- weather,...

"In this examination of landscape and memory, four sites of American history are revealed as places where historical truth was written over by oppressive fiction-with profound repercussions for politics past and present. Popular narratives of American history conceal as much as they reveal. They present a national identity based on harvesting the treasures that lay in wait for European colonization. In Whose Ruins tells another story: winding through...

"From the New Yorker staff writer Hua Hsu, a gripping memoir on friendship, grief, the search for self, and the solace that can be found through art. In the eyes of 18-year-old Hua Hsu, the problem with Ken-with his passion for Dave Matthews, Abercrombie & Fitch, and his fraternity-is that he is exactly like everyone else. Ken, whose Japanese American family has been in the United States for generations, is mainstream; for Hua, a first-generation...