"Growing up gifted and poor in small-town Arkansas, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives--broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In...

In her memoir, Joy Harjo recounts how her early years - a difficult childhood with an alcoholic father and abusive stepfather, and the hardships of teen motherhood - caused her to suppress her artistic gifts and nearly brought her to her breaking point. "It was the spirit of poetry," she writes in Crazy Brave, "who reached out and found me as I stood there at the doorway between panic and love."

"'Tender, unsparing, poignant. . . . [A] love story that braids together intimate self-revelation with a rich meditation on the literature of aging.'-- Stephen Greenblatt. On Susan Gubar's seventieth birthday, she receives a beautiful ring from her husband, a gift that startles her into an appreciation of their luck. As she contemplates their sustaining relationship, Susan considers how older lovers differ from their youthful counterparts--and from...

"Profound essays on nurturing life while facing a terminal diagnosis, from the dedicated humanitarian and young mother whose writings The New York Times called "nothing less than a master class in how to be fully human". "I am holding both my hope and my grief together in the same hands. It is a loose hold, looser than I am accustomed to. My love is so much bigger than me." Nonprofit leader and minister Tallu Schuyler Quinn has spent her adult life...

"A National Book Award Finalist for Non-Fiction, Never Caught is the eye-opening narrative of Ona Judge, George and Martha Washington's runaway slave, who risked everything for freedom. Now in a Young Readers Edition"-- In this incredible narrative, Erica Armstrong Dunbar reveals a fascinating and heartbreaking behind-the-scenes look at the Washingtons' when they were the First Family-and an in-depth look at their slave, Ona Judge, who dared to escape...

"A unique collection of eulogies of the twentieth century's greatest figures, written by conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. and compiled by National Review and Fox News chief Washington correspondent James Rosen. In a half-century on the national stage, William F. Buckley Jr. achieved unique stature as a polemicist and the undisputed godfather of modern American conservatism. He knew everybody, hosted everybody at his East 73rd Street maisonette,...

"The award-winning author of The Good Negress shares invaluable insights on the precarious journey toward creativity that is the writer's life, and tells the compelling story of her relationship with Toni Morrison, painting an illuminating portrait of this towering yet enigmatic cultural icon. With the publication of her debut novel The Good Negress in 1995, A. J. Verdelle became an overnight sensation, winning critical acclaim and competing for prestigious...

In 1945, after barely escaping Hitler's invasion of Hungary followed by "liberation" of the country by the Red Army, three members of the Gabor family--Jolie, her ex-husband Vilmos, and their daughter Magda--arrived in New York City. In Hollywood, their other daughters, Zsa Zsa and Eva, had worked feverishly throughout the war years to secure their rescue from the Nazis' plan to exterminate the Jews. Stepping off the boat, Jolie, the iron-willed matriarch,...