Writers Books

Thirty years ago, Gina Chick’s mother Suzanne wrote a bestselling memoir after discovering that her birth mother was none other than iconic Australian writer Charmian Clift. That book, Searching for Charmian, is now being rereleased for Mothers’ Day 2025...

‘Enlightening, moving’ SIR IAN MCKELLENFrom the acclaimed and bestselling biographer Jonathan Bate, a luminous new exploration of Shakespeare and how his themes can untangle comedy and tragedy, learning and loving in our modern lives. ‘The web of our...

A Treasure Trove of 175 Quips—Both Witty and Wise—from Beloved Writer Jane Austen!“Wisdom is better than wit, and in the long run will certainly have the laugh on her side.”—Jane Austen to Fanny Austen, 1814No wiser or wittier words have been spoken...

The Independent Best Book for Walkers 2022Where can a walk take you? It goes without saying, walking can connect us to our surroundings and free us from our worries. It can raise our heart rate and relax our minds. It can lead us across historic ground...

C. S. Lewis offers a magisterial take on the literature and poetry of one of the most consequential periods in world history, providing deep insight into some of the greatest writers of the age, including Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, William...

Winner of the H.R.F. Keating Award for best biographical/critical book related to crime fiction, and nominated for the Edgar Allen Poe and Macavity Awards for Best Critical/Biographical book. Ninety crime writers from the world’s oldest and most famous...

‘An absolute belter of a biography’ MARINA HYDEA Times Literary Non-Fiction Book of the Year 2022An LA Times Best Book of the Year 2022An intimate, revealing and profoundly moving biography of Jean Rhys, acclaimed author of Wide Sargasso Sea. An...

See through the eyes of the Brontës as you immerse yourself in their lives and landscapes, wandering the very same paths they each would have walked in search of the inspiration behind their novels and poetry.An ‘imaginative and elegant trek through the...

A dazzling biography of two interwoven, tragic lives: John Keats and F. Scott Fitzgerald.‘Highly engaging … Go now, read this book’ THE TIMES ‘For awhile after you quit Keats,’ Fitzgerald once wrote, ‘All other poetry seems to be only whistling or...

Take a stroll through some of the most influential pieces of literature of all time with Read the Classics. From Aristotle and Plato to Kerouac and Tolstoy, don’t just read the classics, learn why they hold such a time-honored place in the...

The first essay collection from one of the most acclaimed writers of our time.‘This trenchant, unrepentant collection reminds you that she’s a brilliant writer… Order a copy in case she’s cancelled by Christmas’ THE TIMES (Book of the Year) ‘You may...

A devastating essay on loss and the people we love from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the bestselling author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. 'Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn...

With a passport stamped 'never to return', St Petersburg intellectual and publisher Abram Kagan was expelled by Lenin in 1922, ending up in Berlin, where his young son Anatol would read the proofs of Leon Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. But...

'I was confined, locked into my library, tracing my heartbeats from way, way back.'In Telltale, Carmel Bird seizes on an enforced isolation to re-read a rich dispensary of books from her past. A rule she sets herself is that she can consult only...

Jane Carswell began her working life at Pegasus Press shortly after its audacious publication of Janet Frame's novel Owls Do Cry, and years later she went on to write an award-winning memoir called Under the Huang Jiao Tree:...

How to Be Between is a memoir about female facial hair, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and negotiating identity for those visibly between gender binaries. Young women's bodies are relentlessly scrutinised and judged, so for most, the appearance of facial...

The title of Robert Gray's autobiography is drawn from a poem by the famous Australian poet Christopher Brennan, 'The land I came thro' last was dumb with night / a limbo of defeated glory, a ghost'. There is more glory than defeat in this work, though,...

**2021 National Biography Award, highly commended****2020 NSW Premier's History Awards, shortlisted**A new edition of this acclaimed biography of an unsung literary talent.Australian poet and journalist Zora Cross caused a sensation in 1917 with...

Autobiography or fiction? This question has shadowed the work of enigmatic Australian author Eve Langley since her death in 1974. Was her writing the truth, or false, or somewhere in between? What did it mean when she described her father as 'evil' and...

A wave of life stories and autobiographical narratives by Aboriginal women began in the late 1970s and gained momentum a decade later with the publication of Sally Morgan's My Place (1987), which became a bestseller. While some of the books of the first...

Biographer Suzanne Falkiner presents a fascinating portrait of English writer E. L. Grant Watson, whose experiences as a young man in Australia at the beginning of the twentieth century shaped his later years as a novelist.Enlisted in 1910 by a Cambridge...

A prolific poet, raconteur, activist, and thinker, Allen Ginsberg was also a prolific collector, meticulously saving letters, postcards, draft notes and manuscripts, photographs and snapshots, appearance bills and rally broadsheets, not only featuring...

An “extraordinarily brilliant” and “pleasurably naughty” (André Aciman) investigation into the Shakespeare authorship question, exploring how doubting that William Shakespeare wrote his plays became an act of blasphemy…and who the Bard might really be...

'Superb... Beautifully written and thoroughly researched' - GuardianA beautifully illustrated travelogue, chronicling the life and work of one of the world greatest poets.Du Fu (712-70) is one of China’s greatest poets. His career coincided with periods...

The extraordinary life of one of the world’s greatest music and literary icons, in the words of those who knew him best.Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon—there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a true giant in...

This glittering, “wild romp of a story, boldly and beautifully told” (Neal Thompson, author of The First Kennedys) explores the darkly intertwined fates of infamous socialite Ann Woodward and literary icon Truman Capote, sweeping us to the upper echelons...

A revelatory portrait of Chekhov during the most extraordinary artistic surge of his life.In 1886, a twenty-six-year-old Anton Chekhov was publishing short stories, humor pieces, and articles at an astonishing rate, and was still a practicing...

Shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier's Literary Award for Non-Fiction  Longlisted for the 2023 Margaret and Colin Roderick Literary AwardFrom the best-selling author of The Tall Man and The Arsonist, a personal tale about death, life...

In this vividly rendered and empathetic biography of two of the greatest poets of the 20th century—Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton—“the friendship and rivalry that the pair shared—not to mention the titular cocktails at a Boston hotel—is explored in...

The extraordinary life of one of the world’s greatest music and literary icons, in the words of those who knew him best.Poet, novelist, singer-songwriter, artist, prophet, icon—there has never been a figure like Leonard Cohen. He was a true giant in...

Enjoy daily distraction with this engaging Almanac. Each date is assigned one or more literary connections. Book lovers will find extracts from authors' diaries and letters, chance upon the narrative twists and transformative moments in their favourite...

'Dazai's brand of egoistic pessimism dovetails organically with the emo chic of this cultural moment and with the inner lives of teenagers of all eras.' Andrew Martin, The New York TimesBest-known for his novels No Longer Human...

A beautifully illustrated collection of haiku poetry from the 100 most famous Japanese poets.Ongoing spring; a nameless mountain under a light mist - BashoThis beautifully illustrated collection of haiku poems by Japan's best-known poets is...

The never-before-told story of the extraordinary women behind a trailblazing British magazine. During the 1890s, British women for the first time began to leave their family homes to seek work, accommodation, and financial and sexual freedom. Decadent...

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886-1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that resurrected forgotten ancient goddesses, and autobiographical prose that explored...

A collection of previously unpublished writing culled from the Kerouac archiveJack Kerouac's archive is vast. Throughout his life he was constantly writing, and he meticulously saved and catalogued his material. The result is that beyond the work...

When Isaac Bashevis Singer emigrated to America in 1935, he left behind his wife and five-year-old son, Israel, with the promise to send for them as soon as he settled. He never did. In 1955, twenty years after their separation, Zamir came to New York to...

A blow-by-blow unearthing of the places where the Beat writers first came to full bloom: the flat where Ginsberg wrote "Howl;" Gary Snyder's zen cottage in Berkeley; the ghostly railroad yards where Kerouac and -Cassady toiled; the pads where Jack &...

A new critical biography of medieval England's most famous poet.For over six centuries, Chaucer has epitomized poetic greatness, though more recent treatments of The Canterbury Tales'lively and often risqu style have made his name more synonymous with...

Tangled Paths tells the life story of Aby Warburg, one of the most influential historians of art and culture of the twentieth century. It also tells the story of a man who, throughout his life, struggled to assert his place in the world. Charting...

Beckett's Childrenis a lyrical blend of personal memoir, fatherson dialogue, and literary investigation that probes the works of Irish writer Samuel Beckett and American poet Susan Howe in search of traces of their long-rumored status as father and...

What is it about Elena Ferrante's writing, especially her masterwork Neapolitan Novels, that resonates so deeply with millions of readers, making this Italian author who writes under a pseudonym with absolutely no "platform" an international...

At last! Godine found a use for the word "sciolist" in a subtitle! This is a throwback to Godine's core of erudition on obscure but fascinating subjects.Unique history of lexicographers and the dictionaries they created. Abundantly illustrated.Author,...

Philip K. Dick struggled to make a living during his lifetime, but his work has since served as a deep seam of ideas to be mined by filmmakers such as Ridley Scott, Paul Verhoeven, Steven Spielberg, John Woo and Richard Linklater, resulting in some of...

The extraordinary twentieth-century writer Barbara Comyns led a life as captivating as the narratives she spun. This pioneering biography reveals the journey of a woman who experienced hardship and single-motherhood before the age of thirty but went on...

Like her much-loved heroine Emma Woodhouse, Jane Austen 'played and sang'. Music occupied a central role in her life, and she made brilliant use of it in her books to illuminate characters' personalities and highlight the contrasts between them.Until...

In a searching and powerful debut memoir, award-winning poet and literary translator Ani Gjika tells a different kind of origin story by writing about the ways a woman listens to her own body, intuition, and desire.Ani Gjika was born in Albania and came...