Frank McCourt, the author of ANGELA’S ASHES and ’TIS, wraps up his trilogy of memoirs with this account of the 30 years he spent teaching in New York public high schools, from his rocky beginning as a young man teaching En...

An intimate memoir of growing up in Africa during the Rhodesian civil war of 1971 to 1979 describes her life on farms in southern Rhodesia, Milawi, and Zambia, detailing her hardscrabble existence with an alcoholic mother, frequently ...

Bestselling author Mary Higgins Clark writes about her early years, beginning with her Bronx childhood during the Depression with her widowed mother, to her own widowhood and the raising of her five children years later. She also writ...

On February 14, 1989, Valentine's Day, Salman Rushdie was telephoned by a BBC journalist and told that he had been "sentenced to death" by the Ayatollah Khomeini. For the first time he heard the word ifatwa. His crime? To ha...

As moving as his bestselling works of fiction, Nicholas Sparks's unique memoir, written with his brother, chronicles the life-affirming journey of two brothers bound by memories, both humorous and tragicIn January 2003, Nicholas Spark...

''I've struck it!'' Mark Twain wrote in a 1904 letter to a friend. ''And I will give it away--to you. You will never know how much enjoyment you have lost until you get to dictating your autobiography.'' Thus, after dozens of false...

An acclaimed novelist's riveting memoir about what it means to be adopted and how all of us construct our sense of self and family Before A.M. Homes was born, she was put up for adoption. Her birth mother was a twenty-two- year-old...

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever wri...

A Washington Post Notable Work of NonfictionAn NPR Best Book of 2012Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Russo turns to memoir in this hilarious and bittersweet account of his lifelong bond with his high-strung, spirited mother—a...

Over the course of his 60 years, Christopher Hitchens has been a citizen of both the United States and the United Kingdom. He has been both a socialist opposed to the war in Vietnam and a supporter of the U.S. war against Islamic ext...

OLIVIA LAING'S WIDELY ACCLAIMED ACCOUNT OF HOW WRITERS IN THE GRIP OF ALCOHOLISM CREATED SOME OF THE GREATEST WORKS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing takes a journey across America, examining the links b...

The author of Portrait in Sepia profiles the landscapes and people of her native country; recounts the 1973 assassination of her uncle, which caused her to go into exile and choose to become a writer; and shares her experiences as an ...

This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby an...

Hang on for the ride: with characteristic poetry and pluck, Barbara Kingsolver and her family sweep readers along on their journey away from the industrial-food pipeline to a rural life in which they vow to buy only food raised in th...

She was born Marguerite, but her brother Bailey nicknamed her Maya ('mine'). As children, Maya and Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother is Stamps, Arkansas. Their early world revolved around this remarkable woman and the st...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Look for special features inside. Join the Random House Reader's Circle for author chats and more.  Pat Conroy's great success as a writer has always been intimately linked with the exploration of his fa...

The companion audiobook to the upcoming PBS miniseries presents material from the great writer's literary works, diaries, and letters, and follows him from his Hannibal, Missouri childhood, through his travels throughout the world, to...

The sequel to the acclaimed Rocket Boys continues the story of Coalwood, West Virginia, as the author and his fellow Rocket Boys face their senior year at Big Creek High, while the forces of change bring Coalwood to a difficult crossr...

The author describes her intimate twenty-year friendship with the late Lucy Grealy, tracing their introduction at a writer's workshop, the integral part their friendship played in their writing careers, and her witness to Grealy's med...

With his dog Charley, John Steinbeck set out in his truck to explore and experience America in the 1960s. As he talked with all kinds of people, he sadly noted the passing of region speech, fell in love with Montana, and was appalled ...

After eight commanding works of fiction, the Pulitzer Prize winner now turns to memoir in a hilarious, moving, and always surprising account of his life, his parents, and the upstate New York town they all struggled variously to escap...

In THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING, Joan Didion writes an account of her life since the 2003 death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Didion’s grief was profound and debilitating; she and Dunne had been married for nearly 40 years...

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the wo...

In his earlier books, TV news anchor Tom Brokaw has leaned heavily on the experiences of others to remember and define what he calls 'the Greatest Generation'--those who came of age during World War II and its aftermath. In A Long Way...

Since it was first published in France, The Sexual Life of Catherine M. has become a bestseller all around the world and has been hailed as one of the most important books on sexuality to be published in decades. Since her youth,...

This haunting story of a son's quest to understand the mystery of his father's death is "searing and unforgettable…memoir writing at its best" (San Francisco Chronicle)—a "powerfully affecting" (O, The Oprah Ma...

The acclaimed writer A. M. Homes was given up for adoption before she was born. Her biological mother was a twenty-two-year-old single woman who was having an affair with a much older married man with a family of his own. The Mistress...

Drawn from the author’s early writings for "Guideposts" and, to a lesser extent, other publications, this selection of personal reflections and essays is organized around 13 spiritual motifs and interwoven to create a ...

Thanks to a successful interview with the painfully shy E.B. White, a beautiful, 19-year-old, blue-eyed blonde from the cornfields of Iowa lands a job as a receptionist at The New Yorker magazine. There she stays two decades, becoming...

Largely to amuse herself, Gertrude Stein wrote this book in 1932..using as a sounding board her companion Miss Toklas, who had been with her for twenty-five years. The book is full of the most lucid and shapely anecdotes, told in a pu...