Frank Carlson Library

The Award—winning author recounts coming of age in 1950s Washington State with his mother and abusive stepfather in this classic memoir. This unforgettable memoir, by one of our most gifted writers, introduces us to the young Toby Wolff, by turns tough and vulnerable, crafty and bumbling, and ultimately winning. Separated by divorce from his father and brother, Toby and his mother are constantly on the move. As he fights for identity and self-respect...

Who was this amazing writer who was so secretive about her personal life that she never gave an interview? Where did she get her ideas? Were there real-life models for her ultra-manly heroes, independent-minded heroines, irascible guardians, and clever villains? What motivated her to build a Regency world so intricately researched that readers want to escape there again and again? Heyer's Regency romances, historical novels, and mysteries have surprised...

The memoirs of the Pulitzer prizewinning columnist of the New York Times.

Follows the life of the popular author of essays, poems, and children's books.

A powerful, blazingly honest, inspiring memoir: the story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again.

A biography of Charles Dickens, examining his difficult youth, his rise to hero status as an author, and virtures and vices as a writer and a human being.

On December 31, 2006, Isfandiy�ar�i's life changed. It was believed she was part of an American conspiracy for "regime change" in Iran. After weeks of interrogation, she was detained at the notorious Evin Prison, where she spent 105 days in solitary confinement.

Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and a writer. Then early one winter morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. "I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian," she writes, "or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut." But she ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed. A lesbian left-wing journalist who covered...

Jeanette Winterson's novels have establishing her as a major figure in world literature. She has written some of the most admired books of the past few decades, including her internationally bestselling first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, the story of a young girl adopted by Pentecostal parents that is now often required reading in contemporary fiction. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is a memoir about a life's work to find happiness....

For Julia Pandl, the rite of passage into young-adulthood included mandatory service at her family's restaurant, where she watched as her father, who was also the chef, ruled with the strictness of a drill sergeant. At age twelve, Julie was initiated into the rite of the Sunday brunch, a weekly madhouse at her father's Milwaukee-based restaurant, where she and her eight older siblings before her did service in a situation of controlled chaos, learning...