Washoe County Library System

Traces the personal crisis the author endured after the death of her mother and a painful divorce, which prompted her ambition to undertake a dangerous 1,100-mile solo hike that both drove her to rock bottom and helped her to heal.

"Peggy Rowe is at it again—this time giving a hilarious inside look at her writing career. Peggy Rowe has been writing all of her adult life. In fact, she doesn’t know how not to write—even through those years of constant rejection from publishing houses. But between her tenacity and the encouragement of her family, Peggy’s breakthrough finally came—at the age of eighty! Vacuuming in the Nude is most likely her funniest prose to date as...

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness...

"One journalist's memoir of her personal friendship with Harper Lee and her sister, drawing on the extraordinary access they gave her to share the story of their lives. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee is one of the best loved novels of the twentieth century. But for the last fifty years, the novel's celebrated author, Harper Lee, has said almost nothing on the record. Journalists have trekked to her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where Harper...

The author presents a relatable, darkly comic memoir about her lifelong struggles with anxiety, tracing her upbringing by a bohemian mother and sanitized, affluent father in a transforming New York City.

A lifelong worrier, Philpott always kept an eye out for danger, a habit that only intensified when she became a parent. But she looked on the bright side, too, believing that as long as she cared enough, she could keep her loved ones safe. Then, in the dark of one quiet, pre-dawn morning, she woke abruptly to a terrible sound-and found her teenage son unconscious on the floor. In the aftermath of a crisis that darkened her signature sunny spirit,...

""As the case with her fiction, Berlin's pieces here are as faceted as the brightest diamond." --Kristin Iversen, NYLON NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE. Named a Fall Read by Buzzfeed, Vulture, Newsday and HuffPost A compilation of sketches, photographs, and letters, Welcome Home is an essential nonfiction companion to the stories by Lucia Berlin Before Lucia Berlin died, she was working on a book of previously unpublished autobiographical...

America's foremost literary critic celebrates the American pantheon of great writers from Walt Whitman to Ralph Ellison, to Ursula K. LeGuin, Philip Roth, and more.

In an attempt to heal from the deterioration caused by the pressures of sudden fame and too much alcohol, famous Beat author Jack Kerouac escapes to an isolated, mist-shrouded cabin in the primitive landscape of the Big Sur woods. Instead of finding the peace he desires, he is foiled once again by his own inner demons and sets off on a visceral collision course of paranoia, sex, delirium tremens, misery and madness.

"In these daring essays, some of the most provocative writers of our time offer a private view on a public figure, and in doing so, reveal themselves. Original essays by Mary Gaitskill on Linda Lovelace, Rick Moody on Karen Dalton, Johanna Fateman on Andrea Dworkin, Hanne Blank on MFK Fisher, Kate Zambreno on Kathy Acker, Justin Vivian Bond on Karen Graham, Jill Nelson on Aretha Franklin, Zoe Pilger on Mary Gaitskill"--