When poet and writer Joy Davidman began writing letters to C. S. Lewis--known as Jack--she was looking for spiritual answers, not love. Love, after all, wasn't holding together her crumbling marriage. Everything about New Yorker Joy seemed ill-matched for an Oxford don and the beloved writer of Narnia, yet their minds bonded over their letters. Embarking on the adventure of her life, Joy traveled from America to England and back again, facing heartbreak...

Fame, envy, lust, violence, intrigues literary and criminal they're all here in The Information, as one of the most gifted and innovative novelists of our time explores the question, How does one writer hurt another writer? "Satirical and tender, funny and disturbing...wonderful." The New York Times "A portrait of middle-age realignment with more verbal felicity and unbridled reach than [anything] since Tom Wolfe forged Bonfire of the Vanities."...

Offers a seductive snapshot of Noel Coward, that consummate man of the theater. Most of the action occurs during one week in 1971. The recently knighted Sir Noel is living in his tiny hilltop retreat in Jamaica, the eponymous Firefly, above his much larger, bustling home below. He divides his time between there and Switzerland, avoiding England for tax reasons. The great man is in poor health, suffering dizzy spells and leading a sedentary life (he...

Walking on the cliffs in Cornwall, Daphne du Maurier stumbles upon the drowned body of a beautiful woman, dressed only in a nightgown, her hair strewn along the rocks, her eyes gazing up to the heavens. Daphne soon learns that the mysterious woman was engaged to marry Lord Hartley of Padthaway, an Elizabethan mansion full of intriguing secrets. As the daughter of the famous Sir Gerald du Maurier, Daphne is welcomed into the Hartley home, but when...