Beautiful Essays

One of America’s most trusted theologians offers spiritual inspiration for every week of the year. This program is read by the author. A Beautiful Year: 52 Meditations on Faith, Wisdom, and Perseverance offers an essay for every week in the seasons of the Christian year: From Advent and...

The beloved New York Times bestselling author reflects on home, family, friendships and writing in this deeply personal collection of essays. ""The elegance of Patchett’s prose is seductive and inviting: with Patchett as a guide, readers will really get to grips with the power of struggles...

Paris Review contributor Katy Kelleher explores our obsession with gorgeous things, unveiling the fraught histories of makeup, flowers, perfume, silk, and other beautiful objects. April recommended reading by the New York Times Book Review, Vanity Fair, Goodreads, Jezebel, Christian Science...

Over a quarter of a century after its first publication, the great and simple wisdom in this book continues to influence women's lives...

Includes an introduction written and read by Jesmyn Ward, a foreword written and read by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s granddaughter, Eleanor Lanahan, and an afterword written and read by Professor James L. W. West III The only edition of the beloved classic that is authorized by Fitzgerald’s family...

“A book about a rare life, profound love, profound grief, anxiety, self-assurance, empowerment, aging, loss, and joy. It is nuanced, complex, insightful, helpful, and constantly surprising.” —Ann Patchett, New York Times bestselling author of These Precious Days Writer and former model...

Join Leslie Means, founder of the popular website Her View From Home, as she weaves together a powerful, emotional collection of essays from women of all ages and stages. These real-life, straight-to-the-heart stories will make you laugh, cry, and nod along. No two mothers are alike. No two experiences in motherhood mirror each other. But something powerful happens when our stories come together: they speak love, worth, value, and beauty. They take the undefinable experience of motherhood and give it shape and substance and strength. They speak to us all.

*Named one of TIME magazine's Most Anticipated Titles of 2022* From a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestselling author and poet comes a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America's unresolved problem with race. In the midst of civil unrest in the...

Let It All Be Beautiful is a collection of 45 essays and energy practices designed to awaken the natural, authentic, and magnetic energy within all of us. Blending memoir, poetry, and lists with intentional practices, this book invites you to see yourself in your full glory. Whether you’re longing to feel more radiant, searching for healing, or motivated to become more mindful, this book will meet you where you are, celebrate everything you exude, and walk alongside you as you find your way home.

This essay comes from the NPR series This I Believe, which features brief personal reflections from both famous and unknown Americans. The pieces that make up the series compel listeners to rethink not only what and how they have arrived at their beliefs, but also the extent to which they share them with others.

“With humor and candor, Die Hot With a Vengeance shows why beauty should be a tool of self-expression, not self-hate.” - TIME *ONE OF BUSTLE'S MOST ANTICIPATED SUMMER READS* Journalist and former Allure editor Sable Yong debuts with a sharp-toothed and hilarious essay collection about beauty...

Can a band comprised of six very talented but very different musicians make a difference with their music? What made it possible for Diamond Rio to weather the storms inherent in the fickle world of fame and fortune and go more than two decades without a single lineup change? Any reader in...

A new collection of thirteen mesmerizing stories by American master Joyce Carol Oates, including the 2017 Pushcart Prize–winning “Undocumented Alien”. The diverse stories of Beautiful Days, Joyce Carol Oates explore the most secret, intimate, and unacknowledged interior lives of characters...

The editors of Texas Monthly explore what it means to be a Texan in this anthology packed with essays, reportage, recipes, and recommendations from their renowned list of contributors. Big hats, big trucks, big oil fortunes—Texas clichés all. And while those elements do flourish throughout...

In Search of a Beautiful Freedom brings together the best work from Farah Jasmine Griffin's rich forays on music, Black feminism, literature, the crises of Hurricane Katrina and COVID-19, and the Black artists she esteems. She moves from evoking the haunting strength of Odetta and the rise of soprano popular singers in the 1970s to the forging of a Black women's literary renaissance and the politics of Malcolm X through the lens of Black feminism.

“Sarah Hall is one of those rare writers whose short fiction has the same luminosity as her novels. But the short form allows her more room to probe and roam, to experiment with form, to sink her fingers into the earth.”—The Observer (London) Featuring her signature themes of identity...

From one of the most accomplished British writers working today, the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Wolf Border, comes a unique and arresting collection of short fiction that is both disturbing and dazzling. Sarah Hall has been hailed as ""one of the most significant and exciting of...

Walking Chickens in the Rain: Embracing the Chaos of Life is a wildly relatable, laugh-out-loud, heartwarming collection of essays for anyone who’s ever tried to hold it all together while everything—chickens included—ran wildly off-script. With wit, warmth, and muddy boots, Annie Rowen invites you into a life less filtered, full of flying feathers, sideways plans, and accidental wisdom. Whether she’s chasing a hen across the driveway in slippers or finding meaning in the cluck of an unimpressed bird, Annie reminds us that life doesn’t have to be tidy to be beautiful. This is not ...

Each time when i don't understand something that bothers me into my real life ... i start writing a book about it. Trying to clarify it. To deeply understand what is going on. And ... i write and write. All being a form of ... self-therapy. So ... this time i come in front of the public asking myself ... why the hell i continue pushing the love connection that i am involved in?! Why i can't stop myself doing it?! Why those connections related to duality ... fail so often?! Why i can't continue being happy like i was into the beginning?! Why i can't experience the happiness in continuous ...

Wyl Menmuir’s The Draw of the Sea is a beautifully written and deeply moving portrait of the Cornish Coast and the people who make their livings there, examining the ephemeral but universal pull the sea holds over the human imagination. ‘A beautiful portrait of lives shaped by the swell of...