Washoe County Library System

Jean Rhys is one of the most compelling writers of the twentieth century. Memories of her Caribbean girlhood haunt the four short and piercingly brilliant novels that Rhys wrote during her extraordinary years as an exile in 1920s Paris and later in England, a body of fiction―above all, the extraordinary Wide Sargasso Sea―that has a passionate following today. And yet her own colorful life, including her early years on the Caribbean island of Dominica,...

A portrait of the mystery writer shares insights into her Edwardian youth, marriages, relationship with her daughter, and mysterious disappearance for eleven days in 1926. The author of the New York Times bestselling The Six now turns her formidable biographical skills to the greatest crime writer in the world, Agatha Christie. It has been one hundred years since Agatha Christie wrote her first novel and created the formidable Hercule Poirot. A brilliant...

"From the Booker Prize winner and national bestselling author, reflections on gardening, art, literature, and life Penelope Lively takes up her key themes of time and memory, and her lifelong passions for art, literature, and gardening in this philosophical and poetic memoir. From the courtyards of her childhood home in Cairo to a family cottage in Somerset, to her own gardens in Oxford and London, Lively conducts an expert tour, taking us from Eden...

1938: She was one of the six sparkling Mitford sisters, known for her stinging quips, stylish dress, and bright green eyes. But Nancy Mitford's seemingly dazzling life was really one of turmoil: with a perpetually unfaithful and broke husband, two Nazi sympathizer sisters, and her hopes of motherhood dashed forever. With war imminent, Nancy finds respite by taking a job at the Heywood Hill Bookshop in Mayfair, hoping to make ends meet, and discovers...

The story of Charles Dickens and the creation of his holiday classic novel "A Christmas carol."