She has a job in Paris, a handsome Frenchman, a beautifulbilingual toddler, and an adorable apartment with breathtakingviews. So why does Catherine Sanderson feel that her life is comingapart? Stuck in a relationship quickly losing its heat, overwhelmedby the burdens of motherhood, and restless in a dead-end job,Catherine reads an article about starting an online diary, and on aslow day at work–voilà–Petite Anglaise is born. But what begins asa lighthearted diversion, a place to muse on the fish-out-of-waterchallenges of expat life, soon gives way to a raw forum whereCatherine shares intimate details about her relationship, herdiscontents, and her most impulsive desires. When one of herreaders–a charming Englishman–tries to get close to the girl behindthe blog, Catherine’s real and virtual personas collide, forcingher to choose between life as she knows it and the possibility ofmore.
Thomas Hardy once said that America had two great attractions:the skyscraper and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay. The mostfamous poet of the Jazz Age, Millay captivated the nation: Shesmoked in public, took many lovers (men and women, single andmarried), flouted convention sensationally, and became theembodiment of the New Woman. Thirty years after her landmark biography of Zelda Fitzgerald,Nancy Milford returns with an iconic portrait of this passionate,fearless woman who obsessed America even as she tormented herself.Chosen by USA Today as one of the top ten books of the year, SavageBeauty is a triumph in the art of biography. Millay was an Americanoriginal—one of those rare characters, like Sylvia Plath and ErnestHemingway, whose lives were even more dramatic than their art.
In My Hands began as one non-Jew’s challenge toany who would deny the Holocaust. Much like The Diary of AnneFrank , it has become a profound document of anindividual’s heroism in the face of the greatest evil mankind hasknown. In the fall of 1939 the Nazis invaded Irene Gut’s beloved Poland,ending her training as a nurse and thrusting the sixteen-year-oldCatholic girl into a world of degradation that somehow gave her thestrength to accomplish what amounted to miracles. Forced into theservice of the German army, young Irene was able, due in part toher Aryan good looks, to use her position as a servant in anofficers’ club to steal food and supplies (and even informationoverheard at the officers’ tables) for the Jews in the ghetto. Shesmuggled Jews out of the work camps, ultimately hiding a dozenpeople in the home of a Nazi major for whom she washousekeeper. An important addition to the literature of human survival andheroism, In My Hands is further proof of why, in spite ofeverything, we mus
Saddle shoes. Camp shorts. Girdles. Bell-bottoms. Each plays asignificant role as we follow B., the wardrobe's owner, through herbuttoned-up Midwestern childhood to the freedom of miniskirts,sundresses, and New York City. We watch as B. copes with theuntimely death of her mother, makes a go of glamorous magazinework, and, after the inevitable false starts and fashion missteps,finally comes into her own.Part memoir, part fashion and culturalhistory of the last five decades, Autobiography of a Wardrobe is anexploration of the clothes each generation has embraced and thesmallest details in which we are able to seek comfort andmeaning.
A wild, lyrical, and anguished autobiography, in which CharlesMingus pays short shrift to the facts but plunges to the verybottom of his psyche, coming up for air only when it pleases him.He takes the reader through his childhood in Watts, his musicaleducation by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, andCharlie Parker, and his prodigious appetites--intellectual,culinary, and sexual. The book is a jumble, but a glorious one, bya certified American genius.
