Diaries & Memoirs

All moonlight is moving, wherever it may be...Japanese gentlewoman Sei Shonagon invites us to look behind the painted screens in the Emperor's palace and discover a lost world, in which games of poetry are the highest form of wit, lovers send each other elegant morning-after letters, and appreciation of the natural world - wild geese in autumn, the pure white frost of winter - is one of life's most exquisite pleasures.

A compelling blend of personal narrative, universal themes and spiritual exploration to help you to reflect, connect and find solace in the shared human experience.

In turn bleak, tender and darkly funny, Clare Dempsey's debut memoir takes us inside the Intensive Care Unit during the Covid outbreak.

'Christle's exacting rigour and ferocious curiosity are matched only by the utter eccentricity of her vision, the delicious and frankly peerless freshness of her idiom: "There is a difference between bones and a book," she writes, "but both have at their centre a spine." What results is irreducibly human. In the Rhododendrons is vital consolation. It's a triumph, an instant classic. Christle has become one of our art's most urgent living practitioners' Kaveh Akbar

Told in three parts - SEX, FOOD, CANCER - this is a short, powerful memoir about one woman's relationship with her body and a universally relatable story for anyone who has ever had, or lost, breasts

USA TODAY BESTSELLER An intimate and uplifting story of one family’s journey from tragedy to triumph, inspiring readers to transform life’s obstacles into opportunities for growth and change. "Nicole Avant gives a raw and courageous look into how she found the light in her darkest moment. She reminds us that grief is different for everyone, and we have the power to move through it in our own unique way." —Cleo Wade, New York Times bestselling author "A love song to a great woman told through the eyes of the great woman she created." —Tyler Perry

Have you or anyone you've known suffered through the depth of depression or mania? What about both at the same time? Mind of a Mixed State follows the thoughts and emotional tribulations of a young woman riding the waves of a severe Bipolar mixed episode with psychotic features. Take a journey through the mind of someone struggling to find their voice as they navigate the nation-wide issues that plagues many of us: mental illness.

Out of Sight is both an investigative deep dive into the meat industry’s treatment of farm animals, and a story of resilience and, ultimately, professional and personal triumph.  This insightful and moving memoir chronicles the author’s forty-year career conducting undercover investigations and documenting animal abuse in the U.S. meat industry while simultaneously coping with a mysterious and incapacitating medical condition. Due to the isolation she experienced in childhood suffering from an undiagnosed neurological disorder, Gail Eisnitz found solace with animals, especially those who were neglected or injured. Her childhood desire to rescue animals was eventually realized when, she was hired as staff writer at the Humane Society of the United States, the largest animal protection organization in the world. She later transitioned to become the only female cruelty investigator at HSUS. In that capacity, Eisnitz initiated investigations into many issues, including documenting violations in puppy mills and the dog racing industry, ritual animal sacrifice, factory farms, and slaughterhouses.   Exposing the slaughterhouse violations she had uncovered proved extremely difficult. Network television producers invariably concluded that the evidence Eisnitz had secretly obtained was too disturbing to air on TV. Forced to quit her job at HSUS, the author hired on with the Humane Farming Association, where she continued investigating and wrote her first book, Slaughterhouse. She then implored a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist at the Washington Post to write a story exposing the slaughter evidence she had documented. That front-page article prompted immense outrage in U.S. Congress and resulted in an annual multimillion-dollar appropriation for enforcement of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, the first funding for what had been a zero-budgeted law.   As she continued her investigative efforts around slaughterhouses and also documented unthinkable abuses at industrial pig, calf, and dairy farms – exposed in vivid detail in Out of Sight – the symptoms of the undiagnosed visual processing disorder she had grappled with since childhood dramatically worsened. The many plot twists that occurred during the author’s campaign to expose the meat industry included her breast cancer diagnosis at age 35, a robbery in which one of three gunmen shot somebody in her presence, elaborate cover-ups by the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and a state governor, and ongoing clashes with state attorneys general as the author struggled to obtain prosecutions of animal abusers. Out of Sight is both an investigative deep dive into the meat industry’s treatment of farm animals, and a story of resilience and, ultimately, professional and personal triumph.  It is a poignant account of a lifelong struggle towards self-acceptance that takes the reader on an inspiring journey from helpless victim – much like the animals the author investigated – to empowered victor.

"This book re-framed my entire adolescence. I highly recommend you read it." -- LING MAFrom the critically acclaimed author of Dead Girls ("stylish and inspired"--New York Times Book Review), a sharp, engrossing collection of essays that explore the strange career of popular feminism and steady creep of cults and cult-think into our daily lives.In seven stunning original essays, Alice Bolin turns her gaze to the myriad ways femininity is remixed and reconstructed by the pop culture of the computer age. The unlikely, often insidious forces that drive our popular obsessions are brilliantly cataloged, contextualized, and questioned in a kaleidoscopic style imitating the internet itself.In "The Enumerated Woman," Bolin investigates how digital diet tracking apps have increasingly transformed our relationships to our bodies. Animal Crossing's soothing retail therapy is analyzed in "Real Time"--a surprisingly powerful portrait of late capitalism. And in the showstopping "Foundering," Bolin dissects our buy-in and complicity with mythmaking around iconic founders, from the hubristic fall of Silicon Valley titans, to Enron, Hamilton, and the USA.For readers of Trick Mirror and How to Do Nothing, Culture Creep is a swirl of nostalgia and visions of the future, questioning why, in the face of seismic cultural, political, and technological shifts as disruptive as the internet, we cling to the icons and ideals of the past. Written with her signature blend of the personal and sharply analytical, each of these keen-eyed essays ask us to reckon with our own participation in all manner of popular cults of being, and cults of believing.

Maureen's memoir is a story of migration, family tragedy, resilience, humour and finding peace and fulfilment in the natural world. The eldest of four children from a working class family living in a sleepy corner of South Wales, she experiences the death of her mother and the shock of life with a new stepmother, who was emotionally ill-equipped to deal with four grieving children. The family of ten children travel to Australia to follow her father's dream of living in Paradise, and Maureen writes with candour about her difficult childhood and adolescence, as well as life in Wales and her new home, as she grows up, marries and eventually takes charge of her own life.

Charles Ricketts wrote this account of his close friendship with Oscar Wilde, partly as an imagined conversation with a fictitious French writer. Facsimile with afterword.