Literary Memoir

First published in 1875, General William T. Sherman's memoir was one of the first from the Civil War and was offered to the public because, as Sherman wrote in his dedication, "no satisfactory history" of the war was yet available. Although Memoirs has been revised and corrected many times over the years, Sherman famously never changed the original text of his recollections.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER An insightful look into the mind of a master storyteller—and a unique look at the craft of writing from the beloved and best-selling author of 1Q84, Norwegian Wood, and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. "Murakami is like a magician who explains...

George Russell Jr. had a gift. He could walk into any room, any bar, any party, any crowd, and within minutes everyone knew his name. Women were drawn to him. Men wanted to be around him. He was handsome, magnetic, and unfailingly entertaining. He knew how to make people feel seen, special, and safe. He was also, beneath every carefully constructed smile, a predator. In the summer of 1990, three women were murdered in the affluent suburbs of Seattle. Their bodies were posed, arranged with grotesque deliberateness, as if the killer wanted to send a message.

In the long ebb of empire and memory, Aubrey’s Honour charts the final passages of two men who were never merely characters, but forces of nature shaped by war, friendship, and the sea itself. Told with the grace, gravity, and grit that fans of O’Brian’s world have come to revere, this book does not seek to inflate the legend — it seeks to understand the men beneath it. Admiral Jack Aubrey, once the thunder of the quarterdeck, now stalks the halls of power with a sailor’s unease and a tactician’s eye. Dr. Stephen Maturin, naturalist and spy, walks more quietly, but never without...

Machado de Assis’ classic novel, the precursor of Latin American fiction, is finally rendered as a stunningly relevant work for 21st-century audiences. In eloquent, contemporary prose, Costa and Patterson breathe new life into the dynamic character of Brás Cubas and reveal the vivid, tempestuous Rio de Janeiro of his time. The recently deceased Cubas narrates his life story, admitting glibly: “I am not so much a writer who has died, as a dead man who has decided to write.”

After a lifetime beside his sister, a brother has six weeks to keep one final promise. When an unexpected diagnosis brought Nancy home for hospice, the doctor gave her about six weeks. For her brother Bill, those weeks became more than a countdown. They became the final chapter in a family story shaped by duty, silence, erased women, hidden labor, and weight carried quietly from one generation to the next.

#1 New York Timesbestselling author Harlan Coben offers a look behind the curtain at his own writing process in an inspiring, candid memoir filled with indispensable insights and techniques. “For aspiring writers, Harlan’s advice, stories, and anecdotes are wise, proven, and valuable. For...

In no less than seven concentration and extermination camps, the Polish-Jew Noach (Natan) Żelechower was imprisoned during World War II. His first wife and their daughter were transported from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka and perished there during the Great Deportation of the Warsaw Jews in the summer of 1942, and he was left alone to face the threat of Nazi persecution and death. With great resilience, fortitude, and the hope to be reunited with his wife and daughter, Noach was able to withstand and survive the hardships of the camp world, forced labor, and death marches. Throughout the...

A full account of the most heinous crime of the century in which nearly 30 young boys were sexually tortured to death.

In this original and trenchant work, Christina Sharpe interrogates literary, visual, cinematic, and quotidian representations of Black life that comprise what she calls the "orthography of the wake". Activating multiple registers of "wake" - the path behind a ship, keeping watch with the dead, coming to consciousness - Sharpe illustrates how Black lives are swept up and animated by the afterlives of slavery, and she delineates what survives despite such insistent violence and negation.

Bloomsbury presents The Loves of My Life by the legendary author Edmund White, a stunning, revelatory memoir of a lifetime of gay love and sex. Read by Joel Froomkin. A VULTURE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “In his panoply of sexual encounters, Edmund White’s love of sex makes us proud to be human...

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Recovering and The Empathy Exams comes “a blazing, unputdownable memoir” (Mary Karr, author of Lit), the “piercing, intimate” story (TIME Magazine) of rebuilding a life after the end of a marriage—an exploration of motherhood, art, and...

These widely acclaimed essays from the besteselling author of Infinite Jest — on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more — established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book — a collection of seven pieces on subjects...

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed contains a dozen short works by John Irving, beginning with three memoirs, including an account of Mr. Irving’s dinner with President Ronald Reagan at the White House. The longest of the memoirs, The Imaginary Girlfriend,” is the core of this collection.

Between 1978 and 1981, a rapist prowled the South Hill neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. He targeted women jogging alone, waiting for buses, walking home after dark. His signature: a gloved fist rammed into his victim's mouth to silence her screams. By the time police made an arrest, more than forty women had been attacked.

The Life of a Stupid Man (Aru ahō no isshō) by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa was written in the summer of 1927 and found among his papers later that year. It is one of the most extraordinary short works in modern Japanese literature. Akutagawa wrote it in fifty-one numbered fragments, each only a few sentences long, recounting moments from his life as he remembered them — childhood, school, his first encounters with European literature, his teachers, his early successes, his marriage, his reading, his children, the deaths of friends, the books that had shaped him. The fragments accumulate into ...

An account of the crimes of Arthur Shawcross describes how the paroled child killer shot, stabbed, suffocated, and strangled 16 Rochester, New York, prostitutes and examines how the legal system failed his victims.

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Empathy Exams comes this transformative work showing that sometimes the recovery is more gripping than the addiction. With its deeply personal and seamless blend of memoir, cultural history, literary criticism, and reportage, The Recovering turns...

Abridged Edition Curated Selections from the definitive, career-spanning collection of writing from Anthony Bourdain, assembled for the first time and read by Tony with Dion Graham, Kimberly Witherspoon, Kaleo Griffith, David Colacci, and Chris Patton. Anthony Bourdain represented many things to...

In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With documentaries like I Am Not Your Negro bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction.