When Jack fell into a canal when he was four years old and unable to swim, he tried to move towards the sun, and when that didn’t work, he thought, “Never mind, Jack, let it go. Life is a bitch.” But then he’s rescued, and when he gets home his stepfather beats him up. As usual.

Swallowing a jar of red ink before you go to sleep is not the most successful way to commit suicide, Jack finds out, but when it comes down to it, Jack doesn’t want to die. He just wants to stop living.

At...

Note to you:

You are the author of your own life, so make sure you write a f*cking novel!

In times of darkness and adversity, you never faltered. You fought against physical pain and limitations, but your spirit remained unbroken. Your determination to keep fighting and your love for our family found their way to my heart.Eduardo carried the heavy burden of his own pain while I also cared for our children. His smile, even in the midst of the most difficult moments, gave me courage. He has shown me that despite the ruins of life, there is always hope.

Thanks to your unconditional l...

One can find plenty of literature on the life and works of William Shakespeare. Much less if any can be found and read about his three children. This is the first book about the married life of his eldest daughter Susanna with her husband doctor John Hall, a general practitioner in the Stratford-upon-Avon of those days. Through the eyes of Susanna and with her husband’s original notes on his patients we get acquainted with the family, neighbours and friends of her famous father. In this w...

Dear Mark Tuan, I know that life is difficult and only those who decide to face it really get something out of it. For you, life is an adventure, and you accept every challenge your life gives you with full passion and determination and came out victorious… making a mark for yourself. You might be an inspiration for many, but for me you are my guide. Because whenever I look up at the sky in search of answers; the first face that I see, is yours, and think to myself if you were at my place;...

After his first legendary safari in 1933, Hemingway left Africa on the Swedish luxury liner Gripsholm, where he and his new hunting partner, Baron Bror Blixen, tried the patience of their fellow passengers and crew. But Karen Blixen’s ex-husband wasn’t the writer’s only Swedish friend: Ingrid Bergman, Hemingway’s choice for Maria in For Whom the Bell Tolls, became a part of the inner circle, and they corresponded frequently until his death in 1961.

Jan Sigurd uncovers Hemingway’s ...

In this incandescent novel Frances Raval gives superbly vivid, powerful and at times wickedly funny portrayals of the foundations of Freudian psychoanalysis as it emerged in the 1890s and thus by implication of the inner life of the whole epoch. The Story of Dora is a richly ironic and imaginative reconstruction of the famous Freudian case-history, Dora: An Analysis of a Case of Hysteria. The novel shows Freud’s handling of the case to be one of his most scandalous impositions of theory ont...

If, in these pages, written in remembrance of my father, I should tell you my dear friends, nothing new of him, I can, at least, promise you that what I shall tell will be told faithfully, if simply, and perhaps there may be some things not familiar to you.

A great many writers have taken it upon themselves to write lives of my father, to tell anecdotes of him, and to print all manner of things about him. Of all these published books I have read but one, the only genuine “Life” thus far ...

A Gold Nugget

'A memoir about [Flanagan's] parents, interwoven with meditations on Tasmania, genocide, colonialism, the atomic bomb, H.G. Wells and Rebecca West . . . A masterpiece’ Mark Haddon

'Devastating and beautiful, mighty in its rage and tenderness: his most momentous book yet’ Laura Cumming

Who loves longer?

Beginning at a love hotel by Japan’s Inland Sea and ending by a river in Tasmania, Question 7 is about the choices we make about love and the chain reaction that follows.

By way of H. G. ...