The Pattern in the Carpet: A Personal History with Jigsaws is an original and brilliant work. Margaret Drabble weaves her own story into a history of games, in particular jigsaws, which have offered her and many others relief from melancholy and depression. Alongside curious facts and discoveries about jigsaw puzzles–did you know that the 1929 stock market crash was followed by a boom in puzzle sales?–Drabble introduces us to her beloved Auntie Phyl, and describes childhood visits to the house in Long Bennington on the Great North Road, their first trip to London together, the books they read,
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From a desperately poor village in northeast China, at age eleven, Li Cunxin was chosen by Madame Mao’s cultural delegates to be taken from his rural home and brought to Beijing, where he would study ballet. In 1979, the young dancer arrived in Texas as part of a cultural exchange, only to fall in love with America-and with an American woman. Two years later, through a series of events worthy of the most exciting cloak-and-dagger fiction, he defected to the United States, where he quickly became known as one of the greatest ballet dancers in the world. This is his story,
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From the internationally acclaimed author of An Unquiet Mind, an exquisite, haunting meditation on mortality, grief, and loss.
Perhaps no one but Kay Redfield Jamison—who combines the acute perceptions of a psychologist with a writerly elegance and passion—could bring such a delicate touch to the subject of losing a spouse to cancer. In direct, straightforward, and at times strikingly lyrical prose, Jamison looks back at her relationship with her husband, Richard Wyatt, a renowned scientist who battled debilitating dyslexia to become one of the foremost experts on schizophrenia. And with her characteristic honesty,
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In 1817, at the late age of thirty-three,Marceline Desbordes, the actress and Romantic poet–the only woman counted by Paul Verlaine among his poètes maudits, or “accursed poets,” a group that included Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Alfred de Vigny–marries Prosper Valmore, a fellow actor who brings love and stability to her tumultuous life. Such stability is short-lived, however, when she meets Henri de Latouche, an influential man of letters, they soon begin a passionate affair. Although their tryst does not last more than a year, their relationship survives through letters and memory. It sparks inspiration in Marceline’s work and leads her to create some of the most beautiful poetry in French literature.
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As Duchess of Aquitaine, Eleanor grew up knowing what it was to be regarded for herself and not for her husband’s title. Now, as wife to Louis VII and Queen of France, she has found herself unsatisfied with reflected glory—and feeling constantly under threat, even though she outranks every woman in Paris.
Then, standing beside her much older husband in the course of court ceremony, Eleanor locks eyes with a man—hardly more than a boy, really—across the throne room, and knows that her world has changed irrevocably…
He is Henry D’Anjou, eldest son of the Duke of Anjou,
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Bestselling author James Kaplan redefines Frank Sinatra in a triumphant new biography that includes many rarely seen photographs.
Frank Sinatra was the best-known entertainer of the twentieth century—infinitely charismatic, lionized and notorious in equal measure. But despite his mammoth fame, Sinatra the man has remained an enigma. As Bob Spitz did with the Beatles, Tina Brown for Diana, and Peter Guralnick for Elvis, James Kaplan goes behind the legend and hype to bring alive a force that changed popular culture in fundamental ways.
Sinatra endowed the songs he sang with the explosive conflict of his own personality.
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