Bookshelf

From Perversion to Purity: The stardom of Catherine Deneuve

Lisa Downing, Sue Harris · 2011

Catherine Deneuve is indisputably one of the world’s most celebrated actresses, both in her native France and throughout the world. Her career has spanned five decades during which she has worked with the most significant of French auteurs, as well as forging partnerships with international directors such as Buñuel and Polanski.<br/><br/>The Deneuve star persona has attained such iconic status that it now symbolises the very essence of French womanhood and civic identity. In this wide-ranging and authoritative collection of essays by a selection of international film academics and writers, the Deneuve persona is scrutinised and illuminated. Beyond the glamorous iconographic status of Yves Saint Laurent’s muse, and the epitome of sexual inviolability, Deneuve’s status as actress is foregrounded.<br/><br/>The book will be essential reading for students and lecturers in star studies.

The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve: Close Up and Personal

Catherine Deneuve · 2007

"Marvelously opaque diaries of the great French cineaste."-The Observer (London)<br/>Catherine Deneuve's startling portrayal of an icy, sexually adventurous housewife in Luis Buuel's Belle de Jour established her as one of the most remarkable and compelling actresses of her generation. Forty years later, Deneuve is still widely regarded as one of the grandes dames of French cinema.<br/>Despite her international appeal, however, Deneuve has always chosen to avoid the ferocious glare of Hollywood and seldom allows the public into her private life. In these memoirs, Deneuve takes the reader behind the scenes of her life and career in this fascinating collection of seven previously unpublished diaries that she kept while filming abroad.<br/>In her own words, Deneuve charts the shooting of films such as The April Fools (1968), co-starring Jack Lemmon; Tristana (1969), directed by Buuel; Indochine (1991), shot in Vietnam; and Lars von Trier's acclaimed Dancer in the Dark (1999), co-starring Bjork. Including a never-before-published interview with famed director Pascal Bonitzer, The Private Diaries of Catherine Deneuve offers an intimate look into Deneuve's life both on and off screen.<br/>Arguably the most compelling blonde in film history, the international star of Roman Polanski's Repulsion has produced a memoir every bit as riveting as her movie persona.<br/>Catherine Deneuve's breakthrough role came with Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, which won the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival. She has worked with cinema's finest directors, starring in Buuel's Belle de Jour and Franois Truffaut's iconic Le Dernier Mtro. In 1992 she won a Csar Award and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in Indochine.

Girl, Interrupted

Susanna Kaysen · 1994

<b>30th ANNIVERSARY EDITION <b>• </b>NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In 1967, after a session with a psychiatrist she'd never seen before, eighteen-year-old Susanna Kaysen was put in a taxi and sent to McLean Hospital. Her memoir of the next two years is a "poignant, honest ... triumphantly funny ... and heartbreaking story" (<i>The New York Times Book Review</i>). <br><br><b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY THE AUTHOR <br></b></b><br>The ward for teenage girls in the McLean psychiatric hospital was as renowned for its famous clientele—Sylvia Plath, Robert Lowell, James Taylor, and Ray Charles—as for its progressive methods of treating those who could afford its sanctuary. Kaysen's memoir encompasses horror and razor-edged perception while providing vivid portraits of her fellow patients and their keepers. It is a brilliant evocation of a "parallel universe" set within the kaleidoscopically shifting landscape of the late sixties. <br><br><i>Girl, Interrupted</i> is a clear-sighted, unflinching document that gives lasting and specific dimension to our definitions of sane and insane, mental illness and recovery.

My Mother Laughs

Chantal Akerman · 2019

What She Means

Joan Didion · 2022

Leonard Cohen: Everybody Knows

Leonard Cohen · 2014

Miss May Does Not Exist: The Life and Work of Elaine May, Hollywood’s Hidden Genius

Carrie Courogen · 2024

Be My Baby: A Memoir

Ronnie Spector · 2022

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

Marina Abramovic · 2018

Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen

Suzanne Scanlon · 2024

I Am Not Myself These Days

Josh Kilmer-Purcell · 2006

What the Dead Know: Learning About Life as a New York City Death Investigator

Barbara Butcher · 2023

From Here to the Great Unknown: A Memoir

Lisa Marie Presley, Riley Keough · 2024

Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.<br/><br/>In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-gestating memoir.<br/><br/>A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words, never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and now grieved.<br/><br/>Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland, about the unconditional love she felt from her father, about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran toward his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, about being married to Michael Jackson, what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.<br/><br/>To make her mother known.<br/><br/>This extraordinary book is written in both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating—from this world to the one beyond—as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other—the last words of the only child of an American icon.

Elvis and Me: The True Story of the Love Between Priscilla Presley and the King of Rock N' Roll

Priscilla Beaulieu Presley · 1986

The #1 New York Times bestselling memoir that reveals the intimate story of Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, told by the woman who lived it.<br/><br/>THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE PRISCILLA, DIRECTED BY SOFIA COPPOLA<br/><br/>Decades after his death, millions of fans continue to worship Elvis the legend. But very few knew him as Elvis the man. Here in her own words, Priscilla Presley tells the story of their love, revealing the details of their first meeting, their marriage, their affairs, their divorce, and the unbreakable bond that has remained long after his tragic death.<br/><br/>A tribute to both the man and the legend, Elvis and Me gives Elvis fans the world over an unprecedented look at the true life of the King of Rock 'N' Roll and the woman who loved him.

Consent

Jill Ciment · 2025

The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone

Olivia Laing · 2017

Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays

Edgar Gomez · 2025

A Stolen Life: A Memoir

Jaycee Dugard · 2012

An instant #1 New York Times bestseller—Jaycee Dugard’s raw and powerful memoir, her own story of being kidnapped in 1991 and held captive for more than eighteen years.<br/><br/>In the summer of June of 1991, I was a normal kid. I did normal things. I had friends and a mother that loved me. I was just like you. Until the day my life was stolen.<br/><br/>For eighteen years I was a prisoner. I was an object for someone to use and abuse. For eighteen years I was not allowed to speak my own name. I became a mother and was forced to be a sister. For eighteen years I survived an impossible situation.<br/><br/>On August 26, 2009, I took my name back. My name is Jaycee Lee Dugard. I don’t think of myself as a victim, I simply survived an intolerable situation. A Stolen Life is my story—in my own words, in my own way, exactly as I remember it.

The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex

Melissa Febos · 2025

A Change of Habit: Leaving Behind My Husband, Career, and Everything I Owned to Become a Nun

Sister Monica Clare · 2025

The soulful, hilarious memoir of a chronic people pleaser who surprised everyone in her life by abandoning an unfulfilling career and marriage to join a convent—and learned how much we stand to gain when we fully embrace our authentic selves<br/><br/>In her twenties and thirties, Monica Clare was a talented but exhausted photo editor who spent her days getting yelled at by clients who were often strung out on cocaine and megalomania. For years, the voice calling her to a simpler, quieter life had been getting louder. As a little kid, she’d seen Audrey Hepburn in The Nun’s Story and thought: That’s me. That’s how she found herself straightening her habit nervously as she walked into a convent, preparing to live alongside eleven other sisters who’d taken the same vow of poverty and celibacy . . . indefinitely. Could a chronically fidgety, pop culture–obsessed woman of the world ever fit in? she wondered. And why did the other nuns seem so cold and disapproving?<br/><br/>As the months went on, she realized the other nuns were shy, not unfriendly—much like herself. The culture at the convent discouraged giving compliments or even saying “please” or “thank you,” since acts of generosity were to be freely given and received. But when Monica rose to the role of Sister Superior, she got the policy against compliments changed. Relationships started to blossom, first awkwardly and then more easily. Who would have predicted that Sister Christina, the one she thought had deeply disliked her from the start, would turn out to be a huge hugger? Or that they’d spend entire afternoons trying to keep a wild turkey from running amok in their community garden?<br/><br/>Equal parts tell-all and rallying cry, A Change of Habit reveals how much we can say yes to when we stop laboring to prove our worth to ourselves and others. In her role as a spiritual counselor, Sister Monica guides people from all walks of life toward resisting the false promises of capitalism, finding healing in small acts of nurture and connection, and ultimately, restoring themselves to a place of wholeness, all while living in this gorgeously messy world of ours.

Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway

Cherie Currie, Tony O'Neill · 2011

American Legends: The Life of Sharon Tate

Charles River Editors · 2015

I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition

Lucy Sante · 2025

Named a Top 10 Book of the Year by The New York Times and The Washington Post<br/><br/>“Reading this book is a joy... much to say about the trans journey and will undoubtedly become a standard for those in need of guidance. ”<br/>— The Washington Post<br/><br/>"Sante’s bold devotion to complexity and clarity makes this an exemplary memoir. It is a clarion call to live one’s most authentic life.”<br/>— The Boston Globe<br/><br/>“Not to be missed, I Heard Her Call My Name is a powerful example of self-reflection and a vibrant exploration of the modern dynamics of gender and identity.” — Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2024<br/><br/>An iconic writer’s lapidary memoir of a life spent pursuing a dream of artistic truth while evading the truth of her own gender identity, until, finally, she turned to face who she really was<br/><br/>For a long time, Lucy Sante felt unsure of her place. Born in Belgium, the only child of conservative working-class Catholic parents who transplanted their little family to the United States, she felt at home only when she moved to New York City in the early 1970s and found her people among a band of fellow bohemians. Some would die young, to drugs and AIDS, and some would become jarringly famous. Sante flirted with both fates, on her way to building an estimable career as a writer. But she still felt like her life a performance. She was presenting a façade, even to herself.<br/><br/>Sante’s memoir braids together two threads of personal narrative: the arc of her life, and her recent step-by-step transition to a place of inner and outer alignment. Sante brings a loving irony to her account of her unsteady first steps; there was much she found she still needed to learn about being a woman after some sixty years cloaked in a man’s identity, in a man’s world. A marvel of grace and empathy, I Heard Her Call My Name parses with great sensitivity many issues that touch our lives deeply, of gender identity and far beyond.

Girlhood

Melissa Febos · 2021

National Book Critics Circle Award Winner National Bestseller Lambda Literary Award Finalist NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME * NPR * The Washington Post * Kirkus Reviews * Washington Independent Review of Books * The Millions * Electric Literature * Ms Magazine * Entropy Magazine * Largehearted Boy * Passerbuys “Irreverent and original.” –New York Times “Magisterial.” –The New Yorker “An intoxicating writer.” –The Atlantic “A classic!” –Mary Karr “A true light in the dark.” –Stephanie Danler “An essential, heartbreaking project.” –Carmen Maria Machado A gripping set of stories about the forces that shape girls and the adults they become. A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society. In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them. When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she'd been told about herself and the habits and defenses she'd developed over years of trying to meet others' expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs. Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny. Written with Febos' characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

F**ked My Way Up to the Top: The Complete Biography of Lana Del Rey Using Her Own Words

Jared Woods · 2023

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (A Memoir of the Craft (Reissue))

Stephen King · 2020

Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America

Elizabeth Wurtzel · 2014

Elizabeth Wurtzel's New York Times best-selling memoir, with a new afterword "Sparkling, luminescent prose . . . A powerful portrait of one girl's journey through the purgatory of depression and back." —New York Times "A book that became a cultural touchstone." —New Yorker Elizabeth Wurtzel writes with her finger on the faint pulse of an overdiagnosed generation whose ruling icons are Kurt Cobain, Xanax, and pierced tongues. Her famous memoir of her bouts with depression and skirmishes with drugs, Prozac Nation is a witty and sharp account of the psychopharmacology of an era for readers of Girl, Interrupted and Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar.

Empty: A Memoir

Susan Burton · 2020

An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still. “Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful.”—People NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret.   When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents’ abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But in the fallout from her parents’ breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from “peculiarity to pathology.”   Susan entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success—she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse—she’d binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again—and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to “quit food.”   Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of narrative and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.

Being Lolita: A Memoir

Alisson Wood · 2021

"Have you ever read Lolita?"<br/><br/>So begins seventeen-year-old Alisson's metamorphosis from student to lover and then victim. A lonely and vulnerable high school senior, Alisson finds solace only in her writing and in a young, charismatic English teacher, Mr. North. He praises her as a special and gifted writer, and she blossoms under his support and his vision for her future.<br/><br/>Mr. North gives Alisson a copy of Lolita to read, telling her it is a beautiful story about love. The book soon becomes the backdrop to a relationship that blooms from a simple crush into a forbidden romance, with Mr. North convincing her that theirs is a love affair rivalled only by Nabokov's masterpiece. But as time progresses and his hold on her tightens, Alisson is forced to evaluate how much of that narrative is actually a disturbing fiction.<br/><br/>In the wake of what becomes a deeply abusive relationship, Alisson is faced again and again with the story of her past, from re-reading Lolita in college, to working with teenage girls, to becoming a professor of creative writing. It is only with that distance and perspective that she understands the ultimate power language has had on her and how to harness that power to tell her own true story.<br/><br/>Being Lolita is a stunning coming-of-age memoir of obsession, passion and manipulation, shining a bright light on our shifting perceptions of consent, vulnerability and power. This is the story of what happens when a young woman realises her entire narrative must be rewritten and then takes back the pen to rewrite it.

Sociopath: A Memoir

unknown author · 2024

<p><b>'Deliciously wicked and insightful.' - <i>The Guardian</i></b><br> <br> <b>'Addictively page-turning.' - <i>The Telegraph</i><br> <br> 'Thought-provoking and surprisingly life-affirming.' - <i>Cosmopolitan</i></b><br> <br> <i>Sociopath: A Memoir</i> is the astoundingly honest true story of a life lived on the edge of the law, and a fascinating account of one woman's battle to understand her diagnosis. Jaw-dropping, moving and illuminating, it will challenge everything you thought you knew about sociopathy.<br> <br> <b><i>'Your friends would probably describe me as nice. But guess what? I can't stand your friends. I'm a liar. I'm a thief. I'm highly manipulative. I don't care what other people think. I'm capable of almost anything.'</i></b><br> <br> From stabbing elementary school classmates with pencils to stealing car keys from fellow frat party guests and joyriding around her college town, to breaking and entering, even stalking, Patric Gagne doesn't hold back when it comes to describing the behaviour that, eventually, made her realize she is a sociopath.<br> <br> But her discovery forced her to question the official descriptions of sociopathy. After all, she had a plan for her life, had nurtured close relationships and was doing her best (most of the time) to avoid harming others.<br> <br> While her darker impulses warred against her attempts to live a settled, loving life with her partner, Patric began to wonder - was there a way for sociopaths to integrate happily into society? And could she find it before her own behaviour went a step too far?<br> <br> <b>'Surprising, thoughtful and deeply personal.' - Pandora Sykes<br> <br> 'Arresting and addictive.' - <i>The Times</i><br> <br> 'She is compelling, like a movie character - a sociopath who's beautiful, warm and funny, articulate and charming' - <i>The Guardian</i></b></p>

Munkey Diaries

Jane Birkin · 2021

'Birkin's diary entries ultimately expose the toxic reality behind one of the 20th century's most glamorous couples' Sunday Times<br/><br/>Jane Birkin - actor, singer, songwriter and model - attained international fame with her decade-long musical and personal relationship with Serge Gainsbourg that featured their internationally controversial hit song 'Je t'aime...moi no plus'. She has also enjoyed a notable career as a movie actress in Blow-Up, Death on the Nile and Evil Under the Sun.<br/><br/>Munkey Diaries re-creates the flamboyant era of Swinging London and Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 1970s, and lets us into the everyday life of an exceptional woman. There are intimate revelations about Jane's tumultuous life with her first husband, the composer John Barry, and her romantic and professional collaboration with Gainsbourg, as well as keen insights into a working life as an actor, singer and songwriter.

I'm with the Band

Pamela Des Barres · 2005

Biography of X: A Novel

Catherine Lacey · 2023

Named one of the Ten Best Books of 2023 by Time (#1), Vulture, and Publishers Weekly, and one of the Best Books of 2023 by The New York Times, the New Yorker, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Esquire, the Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, Lit Hub, and Amazon.<br/><br/>National Bestseller. Winner of the 2024 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2023 Brooklyn Library Prize, a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and longlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award. A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.<br/><br/>“A major novel, and a notably audacious one.” ―Dwight Garner, The New York Times<br/><br/>From one of our fiercest stylists, a roaring epic chronicling the life, times, and secrets of a notorious artist.<br/><br/>When X―an iconoclastic artist, writer, and polarizing shape-shifter―falls dead in her office, her widow, CM, wild with grief and refusing everyone’s good advice, hurls herself into writing a biography of the woman she deified. Though X was recognized as a crucial creative force of her era, she kept a tight grip on her life story. Not even CM knows where X was born, and in her quest to find out, she opens a Pandora’s box of secrets, betrayals, and destruction. All the while, she immerses herself in the history of the Southern Territory, a fascist theocracy that split from the rest of the country after World War II, and which finally, in the present day, is being forced into an uneasy reunification.<br/><br/>A masterfully constructed literary adventure complete with original images assembled by X’s widow, Biography of X follows CM as she traces X’s peripatetic trajectory over decades, from Europe to the ruins of America’s divided territories, and through her collaborations and feuds with everyone from Bowie and Waits to Sontag and Acker. At last, when she finally understands the scope of X’s defining artistic project, CM realizes her wife’s deceptions were far crueler than she imagined.<br/><br/>Pulsing with suspense and intellect while blending nonfiction and fiction, Biography of X is a roaring epic that plumbs the depths of grief, art, and love. In her most ambitious novel yet, Catherine Lacey pushes her craft to its highest level, introducing us to an unforgettable character who, in her tantalizing mystery, shows us the fallibility of the stories we craft for ourselves.

Just Kids

Patti Smith · 2010

<p> It was the summer Coltrane died, the summer of love and riots, and the summer when a chance encounter in Brooklyn led two young people on a path of art, devotion, and initiation. </p> <p> Patti Smith would evolve as a poet and performer, and Robert Mapplethorpe would direct his highly provocative style toward photography. Bound in innocence and enthusiasm, they traversed the city from Coney Island to Forty-second Street, and eventually to the celebrated round table of Max's Kansas City, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. In 1969, the pair set up camp at the Hotel Chelsea and soon entered a community of the famous and infamous—the influential artists of the day and the colorful fringe. It was a time of heightened awareness, when the worlds of poetry, rock and roll, art, and sexual politics were colliding and exploding. In this milieu, two kids made a pact to take care of each other. Scrappy, romantic, committed to create, and fueled by their mutual dreams and drives, they would prod and provide for one another during the hungry years. </p> <p> <i>Just Kids</i> begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. It serves as a salute to New York City during the late sixties and seventies and to its rich and poor, its hustlers and hellions. A true fable, it is a portrait of two young artists' ascent, a prelude to fame. </p>

ONE PIECE NAMI - Shueisha Jump Remix

Shueisha

Lady Snowblood

Kazuo Koike · 2014

Nana

Ai Yazawa · 2005

The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein

Dorothy Hoobler, Thomas Hoobler · 2009

The authors of the award-winning In Darkness, Death share the remarkable true story of Frankenstein's origins and the curse on its creators.

Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft & Mary Shelley

Charlotte Gordon · 2016

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SEATTLE TIMES<br/><br/>This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book—until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic visionary who gave the world Frankenstein—two courageous women who should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy.<br/><br/>In 1797, less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft died, and a remarkable life spent pushing against the boundaries of society’s expectations for women came to an end. But another was just beginning. Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary was to follow a similarly audacious path. Both women had passionate relationships with several men, bore children out of wedlock, and chose to live in exile outside their native country. Each in her own time fought against the injustices women faced and wrote books that changed literary history.<br/><br/>The private lives of both Marys were nothing less than the stuff of great Romantic drama, providing fabulous material for Charlotte Gordon, an accomplished historian and a gifted storyteller. Taking readers on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England, she seamlessly interweaves the lives of her two protagonists in alternating chapters, creating a book that reads like a richly textured historical novel. Gordon also paints unforgettable portraits of the men in their lives, including the mercurial genius Percy Shelley, the unbridled libertine Lord Byron, and the brilliant radical William Godwin.<br/><br/>“Brave, passionate, and visionary, they broke almost every rule there was to break,” Gordon writes of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. A truly revelatory biography, Romantic Outlaws reveals the defiant, creative lives of this daring mother-daughter pair who refused to be confined by the rigid conventions of their era.<br/><br/>Praise for Romantic Outlaws<br/><br/>“[An] impassioned dual biography . . . Gordon, alternating between the two chapter by chapter, binds their lives into a fascinating whole. She shows, in vivid detail, how mother influenced daughter, and how the daughter’s struggles mirrored the mother’s.”—The Boston Globe

The Mortal Immortal

Mary Shelley · 2022

Mathilda

Mary Shelley · 2024

Falkner

Mary Shelley · 2023

Lodore

Mary Shelley · 2016

The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck

Mary Shelley · 2018

The Last Man

Mary Shelley · 2015

Valperga

Mary Shelley · 1998

Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

Mary Shelley · 2018

<b>Mary Shelley’s classic novel, presented in its original 1818 text, with an introduction from National Book Critics Circle award-winner Charlotte Gordon</b><br>  <br> <b>Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s <i>The Great American Read</i></b><br>  <br>The original 1818 text of <i>Frankenstein</i> preserves the hard-hitting and politically-charged aspects of Shelley’s original writing, as well as her unflinching wit and strong female voice. This edition also emphasizes Shelley’s relationship with her mother—trailblazing feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, who penned <i>A Vindication of the Rights of Woman</i>—and demonstrates her commitment to carrying forward her mother’s ideals, placing her in the context of a feminist legacy rather than the sole female in the company of male poets, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron.<br>  <br> This edition includes a new introduction and suggestions for further reading by National Book Critics Circle award-winner and Shelley expert Charlotte Gordon, literary excerpts and reviews selected by Gordon, and a chronology and essay by preeminent Shelley scholar Charles E. Robinson. <br>  <br>Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Sharp Objects

Gillian Flynn · 2006

Gone Girl

Gillian Flynn · 2014

Near to the Wild Heart

Clarice Lispector · 2012

The Passion According to G.H.

Clarice Lispector · 2012

A Breath of Life

Clarice Lispector · 2012

The Hour of the Star

Clarice Lispector · 2011

Agua viva

Clarice Lispector · 2020

A Literate Passion: Letters of Anais Nin and Henry Miller, 1932-1953

Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Gunther Stuhlmann · 1987

A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anais Nin (Penguin Twen

Anais Nin · 1992

Henry and June

Anais Nin · 1990

A Spy in the House of Love

Anais Nin · 2001

Under a Glass Bell

Anaïs Nin · 2013

Little Birds

Anaïs Nin · 2004

The inspiration for the six-part series "Little Birds" from Sophia Al-Maria.<br> <br> <br> <br> These thirteen erotic short stories by the acclaimed author of Henry and June explore the nature of desire, taboo, and female sensuality.<br> <br> From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.<br> <br> <br> <br> "[It is] so distinct an advance in the depiction of female sensuality that I felt, on reading it, enormous gratitude."--Alice Walker<br> <br> <br> <br> "One of contemporary literature's most important writers.--Newsweek

Delta of Venus

Anais Nin · 2004

Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction

Malcolm Gaskill · 2010

The Ruin of All Witches

Malcolm Gaskill · 2021

The Autobiography of F.B.I. Special Agent Dale Cooper

Scott Frost · 1991

The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer

Jennifer Lynch · 2011

Back in print for the first time in years—and available in eBook for the first time—the New York Times bestselling tie-in to the hit television show and cult classic, Twin Peaks.<br/><br/>Laura Palmer was introduced to television audiences in the opening scenes of "Twin Peaks"—as a beautiful dead girl, wrapped in plastic.<br/><br/>Now available in print for the first time in many years (and in e-book for the very first time!), The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer chronicles Laura's life from age 12 to her death at 17, and is filled with secrets, character references, and even clues to the identity of her eventual killer.<br/><br/>Fans of the show will love seeing their favorite characters again, and Laura's diary makes compelling reading as she turns from a naive freshman having her first kiss to a "bad girl" experimenting with drugs, sex and the occult.<br/><br/>"As seen by" Jennifer Lynch, creator David Lynch's daughter, The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer is authentic, creepy, and a perfect book for anyone who loves supernatural suspense.

The Secret History of Twin Peaks: A Novel

Mark Frost · 2016

Misery

Stephen King · 2016

Tender Is the Flesh

Agustina Bazterrica · 2020

<b>INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER</b><br> <br><b>Working at the local processing plant, Marcos is in the business of slaughtering humans—though no one calls them that anymore.</b><br><br>His wife has left him, his father is sinking into dementia, and Marcos tries not to think too hard about how he makes a living. After all, it happened so quickly. First, it was reported that an infectious virus has made all animal meat poisonous to humans. Then governments initiated the “Transition.” Now, eating human meat—“special meat”—is legal. Marcos tries to stick to numbers, consignments, processing.<br> <br>Then one day he’s given a gift: a live specimen of the finest quality. Though he’s aware that any form of personal contact is forbidden on pain of death, little by little he starts to treat her like a human being. And soon, he becomes tortured by what has been lost—and what might still be saved.

Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Patrick Suskind · 2001

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • Set in eighteenth-century France, the classic novel that provokes a terrifying examination of what happens when one man’s indulgence in his greatest passion—his sense of smell—leads to murder.<br/><br/>In the slums of eighteenth-century France, the infant Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born with one sublime gift—an absolute sense of smell. As a boy, he lives to decipher the odors of Paris, and apprentices himself to a prominent perfumer who teaches him the ancient art of mixing precious oils and herbs. But Grenouille’s genius is such that he is not satisfied to stop there, and he becomes obsessed with capturing the smells of objects such as brass doorknobs and fresh-cut wood. Then one day he catches a hint of a scent that will drive him on an ever-more-terrifying quest to create the “ultimate perfume”—the scent of a beautiful young virgin. Told with dazzling narrative brilliance, Perfume is a hauntingly powerful tale of murder and sensual depravity.<br/><br/>Translated from the German by John E. Woods.

The Moon Is Always Female

Marge Piercy · 1980

Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou · 1995

Leaves Of Grass

Walt Whitman · 2018

Violet Bent Backwards Over the Grass

Lana Del Rey · 2020

Ariel: Poems

Sylvia Plath · 2018

The Complete Poems

Anne Sexton · 2016

The Price of Salt

Patricia Highsmith · 2015

A chance encounter between two lonely women leads to a passionate romance in this lesbian cult classic. Therese, a struggling young sales clerk, and Carol, a homemaker in the midst of a bitter divorce, abandon their oppressive daily routines for the freedom of the open road, where their love can blossom. But their newly discovered bliss is shattered when Carol is forced to choose between her child and her lover.<br/>Author Patricia Highsmith is best known for her psychological thrillers Strangers on a Train and The Talented Mr. Ripley. Originally published in 1952 under a pseudonym, The Price of Salt was heralded as "the novel of a love society forbids." Highsmith's sensitive treatment of fully realized characters who defy stereotypes about homosexuality marks a departure from previous lesbian pulp fiction. Erotic, eloquent, and suspenseful, this story offers an honest look at the necessity of being true to one's nature. The book is also the basis of the acclaimed 2015 film Carol, starring Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.

Summer Will Show (New York Review Books Classics)

Sylvia Townsend Warner · 2009

Fair-Play

Tove Jansson · 2019

The Well of Loneliness

Radclyffe Hall · 2015

Winter Love

Suyin Han · 2022

<p><b>An unheralded queer classic set in wartime London--"Han Suyin's outstanding achievement . . . her finest novel." (Alison Hennegan)</b></p> <p>As a college student in London during the bitterly cold winter of 1944, Red falls in love with her married classmate Mara. Their affair unleashes a physical passion, jealousy, and self-doubt that sweep all her previous experiences aside and will leave her changed forever. </p> <p>Set against the rubble and austerity of wartime London--barrage balloons overhead, blackout curtains drawn, cafés eking out tins of powdered egg--Winter Love evokes the exhilaration and the peril of living and loving in a city under siege.</p> <p>First published in 1962, this novella was long overlooked in Han's prolific career. "Probably the best thing she has ever written" (<i>Daily Telegraph</i>), it is also Han Suyin's most unexpected, tender, and stirring work.</p>

Carmilla

Joseph Sheridan Lefanu · 2019

<p><i>"To this hour the image of Carmilla returns to my memory with ambiguous alternations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church. Sometimes, I start from a reverie, certain I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing-room door."</i><br></p> <p><p>Isolated in a remote mansion in a central European forest, Laura longs for companionship--until a carriage accident brings another young woman into her life: the secretive and sometimes erratic Carmilla. As Carmilla's actions become more puzzling and volatile, Laura develops bizarre symptoms, and as her health goes into decline, Laura and her father discover something monstrous.</p> <p><p>Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's compelling tale of a young woman's seduction by a female vampire was a source of influence for Bram Stoker's <i>Dracula</i>, which it predates by over a quarter century. <i>Carmilla</i> was originally serialized from 1871 to 1872 and went on to inspire adaptations in film, opera, and beyond, including the cult classic web series by the same name.</p>

Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Jeanette Winterson · 1997

Winner of the Whitbread Prize for best first fiction, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a coming-out novel from Winterson, the acclaimed author of The Passion and Sexing the Cherry. The narrator, Jeanette, cuts her teeth on the knowledge that she is one of God’s elect, but as this budding evangelical comes of age, and comes to terms with her preference for her own sex, the peculiar balance of her God-fearing household crumbles.

Notes of a Crocodile

Qiu Miaojin · 2018

Winner of the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize Longlisted for the PEN Translation Prize A New York Times Editors' Choice<br/>The English-language premiere of Qiu Miaojin's coming-of-age novel about queer teenagers in Taiwan, a cult classic in China and winner of the 1995 China Times Literature Award.<br/><br/>An NYRB Classics Original<br/><br/>Set in the post-martial-law era of late-1980s Taipei, Notes of a Crocodile is a coming-of-age story of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, this cult classic is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and major countercultural figure.<br/>Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend. Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.

Olivia

Dorothy Strachey · 2020

I Am Woman: A Native Perspective on Sociology and Feminism

Lee Maracle · 2002

Feminism, Interrupted

Lola Olufemi · 2020

Unlikeable Female Characters: The Women Pop Culture Wants You to Hate

Anna Bogutskaya · 2023

The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

Naomi Wolf · 2002

The Purity Myth: How America''s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women

Jessica Valenti · 2009

The Witches Are Coming

Lindy West · 2021

Hood Feminism

Mikki Kendall · 2020

Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality

Gail Dines · 2010

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir · 2012

The essential masterwork that has provoked and inspired generations of men and women. “From Eve’s apple to Virginia Woolf’s room of her own, Beauvoir’s treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge.” —Vogue This unabridged edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir’s pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as when it was first published, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

Entitled: How Male Privilege Hurts Women

Kate Manne · 2021

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny

Kate Manne · 2019

Norwegian Wood

Haruki Murakami · 2010

Mieko Kawakami 3 Books Collection Set (Heaven, All The Lovers In The Night, Breasts and Eggs)

Mieko Kawakami · 2024

Beauty and Sadness

Yasunari Kawabata · 1975

Woman Running in the Mountains

Yuko Tsushima · 2022

Kitchen

Banana Yoshimoto · 2015

<p>The acclaimed debut of Japan's "master storyteller" ( Chicago Tribune ). With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Banana Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart. In a whimsical style that recalls the early Marguerite Duras, Kitchen and its companion story, Moonlight Shadow, are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a very special writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul. "Lucid, earnest and disarming... [It] seizes hold of the reader's sympathy and refuses to let go." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times<br></p>

The Housekeeper and the Professor

Yoko Ogawa · 2009

<p>Yoko Ogawa's <i>The Housekeeper and the Professor</i> is an enchanting story about what it means to live in the present, and about the curious equations that can create a family.<br><br> He is a brilliant math Professor with a peculiar problem—ever since a traumatic head injury, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. <br><br>She is an astute young Housekeeper—with a ten-year-old son—who is hired to care for the Professor. <br>And every morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are introduced to each other anew, a strange and beautiful relationship blossoms between them. Though he cannot hold memories for long (his brain is like a tape that begins to erase itself every eighty minutes), the Professor's mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past. And the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her young son. The Professor is capable of discovering connections between the simplest of quantities—like the Housekeeper's shoe size—and the universe at large, drawing their lives ever closer and more profoundly together, even as his memory slips away.</p>

Confessions of a Mask

Yukio Mishima · 1958

No Longer Human

Osamu Dazai · 1973

The poignant and fascinating story of a young man who is caught between the breakup of the traditions of a northern Japanese aristocratic family and the impact of Western ideas. Mine has been a life of much shame. I can’t even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being. Portraying himself as a failure, the protagonist of Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human narrates a seemingly normal life even while he feels himself incapable of understanding human beings. His attempts to reconcile himself to the world around him begin in early childhood, continue through high school, where he becomes a “clown” to mask his alienation, and eventually lead to a failed suicide attempt as an adult. Without sentimentality, he records the casual cruelties of life and its fleeting moments of human connection and tenderness. Still one of the ten bestselling books in Japan, No Longer Human is an important and unforgettable modern classic: “The struggle of the individual to fit into a normalizing society remains just as relevant today as it was at the time of writing.” (The Japan Times)

The Memory Police: A Novel

Yoko Ogawa · 2020

Finalist for the International Booker Prize and the National Book Award<br/><br/>A haunting Orwellian novel about the terrors of state surveillance, from the acclaimed author of The Housekeeper and the Professor.<br/><br/>On an unnamed island, objects are disappearing: first hats, then ribbons, birds, roses. . . . Most of the inhabitants are oblivious to these changes, while those few able to recall the lost objects live in fear of the draconian Memory Police, who are committed to ensuring that what has disappeared remains forgotten. When a young writer discovers that her editor is in danger, she concocts a plan to hide him beneath her f loorboards, and together they cling to her writing as the last way of preserving the past. Powerful and provocative, The Memory Police is a stunning novel about the trauma of loss.<br/><br/>ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR<br/>THE NEW YORK TIMES * THE WASHINGTON POST * TIME * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * THE GUARDIAN * ESQUIRE * THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS * FINANCIAL TIMES * LIBRARY JOURNAL * THE A.V. CLUB * KIRKUS REVIEWS * LITERARY HUB<br/><br/>American Book Award winner

Lizard

Banana Yoshimoto · 2018

Jeff Buckley: His Own Voice

· 2019

The journals, notebooks, musings, and early song drafts of Jeff Buckley, the late singer best-known for the definitive version of "Hallelujah" and his classic album Grace, including dozens of evocative photos of his personal effects and ephemera.<br/><br/>After the release of his acclaimed debut album, Grace, in 1994, Jeff Buckley quickly established himself as one of the decade's most defining talents in pop music: a singer, guitarist, and songwriter with a multi-octave range whose tastes took in rock, blues, jazz, hardcore, Qawwali music, and even show tunes. Hailed by the likes of Bono, Jimmy Page, and Robert Plant, Grace showcased Buckley's voice, passion, and influences and pointed to an inordinately promising future. Three short years later, at the age of thirty, he tragically drowned in Memphis. But his legend and stature have only grown since; in recent years, everyone from Adele to Coldplay to Radiohead has spoken of the impact Buckley's music had on them.<br/><br/>For much of his life, Buckley diligently kept journals recording his goals, inspirations, aspirations, and creative struggles. These diaries amount to one of the most insightful life chronicles any musical artist has left behind. Jeff Buckley: His Own Voice marks the first-ever publication of Buckley's handwritten account of his journey from his days in Los Angeles in the late '80s through shortly before his passing. Combined with reproductions of other memorabilia--including letters, notes, and unpublished lyrics--this book takes readers and fans deep into Buckley's mind and life.

A Light That Never Goes Out: The Enduring Saga of the Smiths

Tony Fletcher · 2013

The definitive book about The Smiths, one of the most beloved, respected, and storied indie rock bands in music history.<br/><br/>They were, their fans believe, the best band in the world. Hailing from Manchester, England, The Smiths--Morrissey, Johnny Marr, Andy Rourke, and Mike Joyce--were critical and popular favorites throughout their mid-1980s heyday and beyond. To this day, due to their unforgettable songs and lyrics, they are considered one of the greatest British rock groups of all time--up there with the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and the Clash.<br/><br/>Tony Fletcher paints a vivid portrait of the fascinating personalities within the group: Morrissey, the witty, literate lead singer whose loner personality and complex lyrics made him an icon for teenagers who felt forlorn and forgotten; his songwriting partner Marr, the gregarious guitarist who became a rock god for a generation of indie kids; and the talented, good-looking rhythm section duo of bassist Rourke and drummer Joyce. Despite the band's tragic breakup at the height of their success, A Light That Never Goes Out is a celebration: the saga of four working-class kids from a northern English city who come together despite contrasting personalities, find a musical bond, inspire a fanatical following, and leave a legacy that changed the music world--and the lives of their fans.

Devotion

Patti Smith · 2018

“Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading.”—Suzi Feay, Financial Times<br/><br/>“Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing. ”—Katherine Cooper, Hyperallergic<br/><br/>A work of creative brilliance may seem like magic—its source a mystery, its impact unexpectedly stirring. How does an artist accomplish such an achievement, connecting deeply with an audience never met? In this groundbreaking book, one of our culture’s beloved artists offers a detailed account of her own creative process, inspirations, and unexpected connections.<br/><br/>Patti Smith, a National Book Award–winning author, first presents an original and beautifully crafted tale of obsession—a young skater who lives for her art, a possessive collector who ruthlessly seeks his prize, a relationship forged of need both craven and exalted. She then takes us on a second journey, exploring the sources of her story. We travel through the South of France to Camus’s house, and visit the garden of the great publisher Gallimard where the ghosts of Mishima, Nabokov, and Genet mingle. Smith tracks down Simone Weil’s grave in a lonely cemetery, hours from London, and winds through the nameless Paris streets of Patrick Modiano’s novels. Whether writing in a café or a train, Smith generously opens her notebooks and lets us glimpse the alchemy of her art and craft in this arresting and original book on writing.<br/><br/>The Why I Write series is based on the Windham–Campbell Lectures, delivered annually to commemorate the awarding of the Donald Windham–Sandy M. Campbell Literature Prizes at Yale University.

And a Voice to Sing With

Joan Baez · 1988

Reckless Daughter: A Portrait of Joni Mitchell

David Yaffe · 2018

Girl in a Band: A Memoir

Kim Gordon · 2015

<p>*THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*</p><p>**Updated and expanded with new material from the author and new foreword from Rachel Kushner**</p><p>For many, Kim Gordon is the epitome of cool: vocalist, bassist/guitarist and founding member of Sonic Youth—one of the most successful bands to emerge from the post-punk New York scene—despite being famously reserved.</p><p>Ten years ago, Gordon distilled that coolness into her groundbreaking memoir, Girl in a Band, speaking openly about her life. From her childhood in the sunbaked suburbs of Southern California, growing up with a schizophrenic sibling, to New York’s downtown art and music scene in the halcyon days of the 80s and 90s and creating Sonic Youth—a band that would go on to pave the way for acts like Nirvana and inspire the Riot Grrrl generation. Girl in a Band is an edgy and evocative portrait of a life in art.</p><p>A decade on, Gordon’s exploration of the artists, musicians, and writers who influenced her, and of the relationship that defined her life for so long, remains a deeply intimate self-portrait of a woman who became an icon, and whose stature continues to evolve in and grow. With a new foreword by Rachel Kushner and new chapter from Kim herself ruminating on her career as a solo artist and her two 2025 Grammy nominations, her connection to touring after nearly forty years, and the death of her brother Keller.</p>

The Beatles Anthology

The Beatles · 2000

The Raven

Lou Reed · 2007

Strange Days: My Life with and Without Jim Morrison

Patricia Kennealy · 1998

The wife of Jim Morrison offers a thorough portrait of the enigmatic leader of the Doors, discussing the shy, private, and complex man he was, plus Woodstock, the Miami obscenity trial, and other rock celebrities

Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk

Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain · 2016

“Ranks up there with the great rock & roll books of all time.”—Time Out New York<br/><br/>“Lurid, insolent, disorderly, funny, sometimes gross, sometimes mean and occasionally touching . . . Resounds with authenticity.”—The New York Times<br/><br/>“No volume serves juicier dish on punk’s New York birth . . . Tales of sex, drugs and music that will make you wish you’d been there.”—Rolling Stone<br/><br/>A contemporary classic, Please Kill Me is the definitive oral history of the most nihilistic of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Richard Hell, the Ramones, and scores of other punk figures lend their voices to this decisive account of that explosive era. This 20th anniversary edition features new photos and an afterword by the authors.<br/><br/>“Utterly and shamelessly sensational.”—Newsday

House of Psychotic Women

Kier-La Janisse · 2015

It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over

Anne de Marcken · 2024

Hungerstone

Kat Dunn · 2025

The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales

Jacob Grimm

Creep: A Love Story

Emma van Straaten · 2025

Bad Behavior: Stories

Mary Gaitskill · 2012

National Book Award finalist Mary Gaitskill’s debut collection, Bad Behavior—powerful stories about dislocation, longing, and desire which depict a disenchanted and rebellious urban fringe generation that is searching for human connection. Now a classic, Bad Behavior made critical waves when it first published, heralding Gaitskill’s arrival on the literary scene and her establishment as one of the sharpest, erotically charged, and audaciously funny writing talents of contemporary literature. Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times called it “Pinteresque,” saying, “Ms. Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail, that she is able to make even the most extreme situations seem real…her reportorial candor, uncompromised by sentimentality or voyeuristic charm…underscores the strength of her debut.”

When Women Kill

Alia Trabucco Zerán · 2022

A genre-bending feminist account of four Chilean women who committed the double transgression of murder, violating not only criminal law but also the invisible laws of gender. Women Who Kill: Four Crimes Retold analyzes four homicides carried out by Chilean women over the course of the twentieth century. Drawing on her training as a lawyer, Alia Trabucco Zerán offers a nuanced close reading of their lives and crimes, foregoing sensationalism in order to dissect how all four were both perpetrators of violent acts and victims of another, more insidious kind of violence. This radical retelling challenges the archetype of the woman murderer and reveals another narrative, one as disturbing and provocative as the transgressions themselves: What makes women lash out against the restraints of gendered domesticity, and how do we—readers, viewers, the media, the art world, the political establishment—treat them when they do? Expertly intertwining true crime, critical essay, and research diary, International Booker Prize finalist Alia Trabucco Zerán (The Remainder), in a translation by Sophie Hughes, brings an overdue feminist perspective to the study of deviant women.

Aliens and Anorexia (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Chris Kraus · 2000

As the rope was tightening around my neck, an Alien made love to me. Belief is atechnology for softening the landscape. The world becomes more beautiful when God is in it. Here iswhat happens inside a person's body when they starve.Written in the shadow of Georg Buchner's Lenzat razor pitch, Aliens & Anorexia, first published in 2000, defines a female form of chance thatis both emotional and radical. The book unfolds like a set of Chinese boxes, using stories andpolemics to travel through a maze that spirals back into itself. Its characters include Simone Weil,the first radical philosopher of sadness, the artist Paul Thek, Kraus herself, and "Africa," hervirtual S&M partner who's shooting a big-budget Hollywood film in Namibia while Kraus holes upin the Northwest Woods for the winter to chronicle the failure of Gravity & Grace, her ownlow-budget independent film.In Aliens & Anorexia, Kraus argues for empathy as the ultimateperceptive tool, and reclaims anorexia from the psychoanalytic girl-ghetto of poor "self-esteem."Anorexia, Kraus writes, could be an attempt to leave the body altogether: a rejection of thecynicism this culture hands us through its food.

Blood and Guts in High School

Kathy Acker · 2017

Little Rabbit

Alyssa Songsiridej · 2022

I Fear My Pain Interests You

Stephanie Lacava · 2022

A punky, raw novel of millenial disaffection, trauma and 1960s cinema Margot is the child of renowned musicians and the product of a particularly punky upbringing. Burnt-out from the burden of expectation and the bad end of the worst relationship yet, she leaves New York and heads to to the Pacific Northwest. She’s seeking to escape both the eyes of the world and the echoing voice of that last bad man. But a chance encounter with a dubious doctor in a graveyard, and the discovery of a dozen old film reels, opens the door to a study of both the peculiarities of her body and the absurdities of her famous family. A literary take on cinema du corps, Stephanie LaCava’s new novel is an audaciously sexy and moving exploration of culture and connections, bodies and breakdowns.

The Princess of 72nd Street

Elaine Kraf · 2025

<p>Ellen is a single artist living alone on New York's Upper West Side in the 1970s. She is beset by old boyfriends, paint pigment choices, and, occasionally, by 'radiances' - episodes of joyous, reckless unreality. Under the influence of 'radiances' she becomes Princess Esmeralda, and West 72nd Street becomes the kingdom over which she rules. Life as Esmeralda is a liberating experience for Ellen, who, despite the chaos and stigma these episodes can bring, relishes the respite from the confines of the everyday. And yet those around her, particularly the men in her life, are threatened by her incarnation as Esmeralda, and by the freedom that it gives her.<br> <br> <i>The Princess of 72nd Street</i> is Elaine Kraf's witty, dizzyingly inventive take on female liberation and mental health, a work of immense literary power and unbridled energy. Provocative at the time of its publication in 1979 and thoroughly iconoclastic, it is a remarkable portrait of an unforgettable woman.</p>

The Post-Office Girl

Stefan Zweig · 2011

Wes Anderson on Stefan Zweig:  "I had never heard of Zweig...when I just more or less by chance bought a copy of Beware of Pity. I loved this first book.  I also read the The Post-Office Girl.  The Grand Budapest Hotel has elements that were sort of stolen from both these books. Two characters in our story are vaguely meant to represent Zweig himself — our “Author” character, played by Tom Wilkinson, and the theoretically fictionalised version of himself, played by Jude Law. But, in fact, M. Gustave, the main character who is played by Ralph Fiennes, is modelled significantly on Zweig as well." 2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist The logic of capitalism, boom and bust, is unremitting and unforgiving. But what happens to human feeling in a completely commodified world? In The Post-Office Girl, Stefan Zweig, a deep analyst of the human passions, lays bare the private life of capitalism.Christine toils in a provincial post office in post–World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine’s rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same. Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within. Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig’s haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master’s achievement.

Cursed Bread: A Novel

Sophie Mackintosh · 2023

WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION NOMINEE • Best Book of the Month: The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Book Riot, CrimeReads • An elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village, by the Booker Prize–nominated author of The Water Cure<br/><br/>"Intoxicating, sumptuous, and savage.”—Alexandra Kleeman, acclaimed author of Something New Under the Sun<br/><br/>Still reeling in the aftermath of the deadliest war the world had ever seen, the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. Some historians believe the mysterious illness and violent hallucinations were caused by spoiled bread; others claim it was the result of covert government testing on the local population.<br/><br/>In that town lived a woman named Elodie. She was the baker’s wife: a plain, unremarkable person who yearned to transcend her dull existence. So when a charismatic new couple arrived in town, the forceful ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet, Elodie was quickly drawn into their orbit. Thus began a dangerous game of cat and mouse--but who was the predator and on whom did they prey?<br/><br/>Audacious and mesmerizing, Cursed Bread is a fevered confession, an entry into memory’s hall of mirrors, and an erotic fable of transformation. Sophie Mackintosh spins a darkly gleaming tale of a town gripped by hysteria, envy like poison in the blood, and desire that burns and consumes.

My Husband: A Novel

Maud Ventura · 2023

In this suspenseful and darkly funny debut novel, a sophisticated French woman spends her life obsessing over her perfect husband—but can their marriage survive her passionate love?<br/>A Belletrist Book Club Pick • An Amazon UK Best Book of the Year • Winner of France’s First Novel Prize • Named a Best Book of the Summer by Vogue • theSkimm • Oprah Daily • The Millions<br/>At forty years old, she has an enviable life: a successful career, stunning looks, a beautiful house in the suburbs, two healthy children, and most importantly, an ideal husband, whose wealthy background allows her to transcend her own social class. After fifteen years together, she is still besotted with him. But she’s never quite sure that her passion is reciprocated.<br/>Determined to keep their relationship perfect, she meticulously prepares for every encounter they have, always taking care to make her actions seem effortless. She watches him attentively, testing him to make sure that he still loves her just as much as he did when they first met.<br/>Until one day she realizes she may have gone too far . . .<br/>“Fans of Caroline Kepnes’ You or Gillian Flynn will find My Husband to be a new, satisfying, and unnerving take on the relationship-suspense genre.” —Booklist (starred review)

Big Swiss

Jen Beagin · 2024

Vladimir: A Novel

Julia May Jonas · 2022

An NPR, Washington Post, Time, People, Vulture, Guardian, Vox, Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, LitHub, and New York Public Library Best Book of the Year * “Delightful…cathartic, devious, and terrifically entertaining.” —The New York Times * “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny.” —People (Book of the Week) * One of Shondaland’s 13 Best College-Set Novels of All Time A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students—a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own... “When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.” And so we are introduced to our narrator who’s “a work of art in herself” (The Washington Post): a popular English professor whose charismatic husband at the same small liberal arts college is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extra-marital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir—a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus—their tinder box world comes dangerously close to exploding. “Timely, whip-smart, and darkly funny” (People), Vladimir takes us into charged territory, where the boundaries of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. This edgy, uncommonly assured debut perfectly captures the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the nuances and the grey area between power and desire.

A Certain Hunger

Chelsea G. Summers · 2021

One of Vanity Fair's Books That Will Get You Through This Winter<br/>“One of the most uniquely fun and campily gory books in my recent memory... A Certain Hunger has the voice of a hard-boiled detective novel, as if metaphor-happy Raymond Chandler handed the reins over to the sexed-up femme fatale and really let her fly." ―The New York Times<br/><br/>Food critic Dorothy Daniels loves what she does. Discerning, meticulous, and very, very smart, Dorothy’s clear mastery of the culinary arts make it likely that she could, on any given night, whip up a more inspired dish than any one of the chefs she writes about. Dorothy loves sex as much as she loves food, and while she has struggled to find a long-term partner that can keep up with her, she makes the best of her single life, frequently traveling from Manhattan to Italy for a taste of both.<br/><br/>But there is something within Dorothy that’s different from everyone else, and having suppressed it long enough, she starts to embrace what makes Dorothy uniquely, terrifyingly herself. Recounting her life from a seemingly idyllic farm-to-table childhood, the heights of her career, to the moment she plunges an ice pick into a man's neck on Fire Island, Dorothy Daniels show us what happens when a woman finally embraces her superiority.<br/><br/>A satire of early foodieism, a critique of how gender is defined, and a showcase of virtuoso storytelling, Chelsea G. Summers’ A Certain Hunger introduces us to the food world’s most charming psychopath and an exciting new voice in fiction.

I Who Have Never Known Men

Jacqueline Harpman · 2019

<p><b>SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.</b><br> <br> <b>Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation.</b><br> <br> Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?<br> <br> Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.<br> <br> Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.<br> <br> <b>WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE <i>WATER CURE</i><br> <br> **<i>Orlanda</i>, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**</b></p>

Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, new edition: Collected Stories (Semiotext(e) / Native Agents)

Cookie Mueller · 2022

Boy Parts

Eliza Clark · 2020

<p>‘Hallucinogenic, electric and sharp, <i>Boy Parts</i> is a whirlwind exploration of gender, class and power.’</p><p>– Jessica Andrews</p><br><p>Irina obsessively takes explicit photographs of the average-looking men she persuades to model for her, scouted from the streets of Newcastle.</p><p>Placed on sabbatical from her dead-end bar job, she is offered an exhibition at a fashionable London gallery, promising to revive her career in the art world and offering an escape from her rut of drugs, alcohol, and extreme cinema. The news triggers a self-destructive tailspin, centred around Irina’s relationship with her obsessive best-friend, and a shy young man from her local supermarket who has attracted her attention….</p><p><i>Boy Parts</i> is the incendiary debut novel from Eliza Clark, a pitch-black comedy both shocking and hilarious, fearlessly exploring the taboo regions of sexuality and gender roles in the twenty-first century.</p>

Madonna in a Fur Coat

Sabahattin Ali

The bestselling Turkish classic of love and longing in a changing world, available in English for the first time. 'It is, perhaps, easier to dismiss a man whose face gives no indication of an inner life. And what a pity that is: a dash of curiosity is all it takes to stumble upon treasures we never expected.' A shy young man leaves his home in rural Turkey to learn a trade in 1920s Berlin. The city's crowded streets, thriving arts scene, passionate politics and seedy cabarets provide the backdrop for a chance meeting with a woman, which will haunt him for the rest of his life. Emotionally powerful, intensely atmospheric and touchingly profound, Madonna in a Fur Coat is an unforgettable novel about new beginnings and the unfathomable nature of the human soul. 'Passionate but clear . . . Ali's success [is in ] his ability to describe the emergence of a feeling, seemingly straightforward from the outside but swinging back and forth between opposite extremes at its core, revealing the tensions that accompanies such rise and fall.' Atilla Özkirimli, writer and literary historian

I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

Joanne Greenberg · 2022

The multimillion-copy bestselling modern classic of autobiographical fiction about a young woman’s struggle with mental health, featuring a new foreword by Esmé Weijun Wang, the New York Times bestselling author of The Collected Schizophrenias, and a new afterword by the author<br/><br/>A Penguin Classic<br/><br/>After making an attempt on her own life, sixteen-year-old Deborah Blau is diagnosed with schizophrenia. With the reluctant and fearful consent of her parents, she enters a psychiatric hospital many hours from her home in suburban Chicago. Here she will spend the next three years, trying, with the help of a gifted psychiatrist, to find a path back to her “normal” life, and to emerge from the imaginary Kingdom of Yr in which she has sought refuge.<br/><br/>A semiautobiographical novel originally published under the pen name Hannah Green just a year after Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar--a very different portrait of psychological breakdown--I Never Promised You a Rose Garden remains, more than half a century later, a timeless and ultimately hopeful book, ripe for rediscovery by a new generation eager to erase the stigma of mental illness.<br/><br/>For more than seventy-five years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 2,000 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

My Dark Vanessa: A Novel

Kate Elizabeth Russell · 2020

INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “[An] exceedingly complex, inventive, resourceful examination of harm and power.” —The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice “A lightning rod . . . brilliantly crafted.”—The Washington Post Recommended by The New York Times • USA Today • Entertainment Weekly • Marie Claire • Elle • Harper's Bazaar • Newsweek • New York Post • Esquire • Real Simple • The Sunday Times • The Guardian • and more! Exploring the psychological dynamics of the relationship between a precocious yet naïve teenage girl and her magnetic and manipulative teacher, a brilliant, all-consuming read that marks the explosive debut of an extraordinary new writer. 2000. Bright, ambitious, and yearning for adulthood, fifteen-year-old Vanessa Wye becomes entangled in an affair with Jacob Strane, her magnetic and guileful forty-two-year-old English teacher. 2017. Amid the rising wave of allegations against powerful men, a reckoning is coming due. Strane has been accused of sexual abuse by a former student, who reaches out to Vanessa, and now Vanessa suddenly finds herself facing an impossible choice: remain silent, firm in the belief that her teenage self willingly engaged in this relationship, or redefine herself and the events of her past. But how can Vanessa reject her first love, the man who fundamentally transformed her and has been a persistent presence in her life? Is it possible that the man she loved as a teenager—and who professed to worship only her—may be far different from what she has always believed? Alternating between Vanessa’s present and her past, My Dark Vanessa juxtaposes memory and trauma with the breathless excitement of a teenage girl discovering the power her own body can wield. Thought-provoking and impossible to put down, this is a masterful portrayal of troubled adolescence and its repercussions that raises vital questions about agency, consent, complicity, and victimhood. Written with the haunting intimacy of The Girls and the creeping intensity of Room, My Dark Vanessa is an era-defining novel that brilliantly captures and reflects the shifting cultural mores transforming our relationships and society itself.

Time Travelers Guide To Medieval England

Ian Mortimer · 2008

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Marion Meade · 1977

Poor Things

Alasdair Gray · 2002

One of Alasdair Gray's most brilliant creations, Poor Things is a postmodern revision of Frankenstein that replaces the traditional monster with Bella Baxter - a beautiful young erotomaniac brought back to life with the brain of an infant. Godwin Baxter's scientific ambition to create the perfect companion is realized when he finds the drowned body of Bella, but his dream is thwarted by Dr. Archibald McCandless's jealous love for Baxter's creation.<br/><br/>The hilarious tale of love and scandal that ensues would be "the whole story" in the hands of a lesser author (which in fact it is, for this account is actually written by Dr. McCandless). For Gray, though, this is only half the story, after which Bella (a.k.a. Victoria McCandless) has her own say in the matter. Satirizing the classic Victorian novel, Poor Things is a hilarious political allegory and a thought-provoking duel between the desires of men and the independence of women, from one of Scotland's most accomplished authors.