The first pilot to fly around the world in a homebuilt plane tells his remarkable story in this memoir of determination, courage and adventure.After beating cancer, Manuel Queiroz was ready to take on a life-changing goal—and decided that he would fly solo around the world. Five years later, he not only fulfilled that dream—setting six world speed records in the process—but did it in a plane he built himself. Now he shares the incredible story of his record-breaking...

This story is about Aleixo de Queiroz Ribeiro, a Portuguese sculptor, and his celebrated marriage in Philadelphia to Sarah Elizabeth Stetson, the widow of the multimillionaire philanthropist John B. Stetson, owner of the biggest and most renowned hat company in the world. Based on real people and events, the novel explores Aleixo’s early years in Paris where he crosses paths with some of the era’s greatest names in sculpture, like Rodin and Saint-Gaudens, his brief and controversial stay i...

A scholarly, passionate and brilliantly-written biography of Pablo Picasso by Patrick O’Brian, the famous author of the much-loved Aubrey-Maturin series, reissued in a stunning new cover.Patrick O’Brian’s outstanding biography of Picasso explores comprehensively the life of this awe-inspiring artist. Enormously productive and hugely successful, Picasso continues to attract avid, insatiable public interest. O’Brian was a close friend and a neighbour of Picasso’s, and the book reflec...

The authorized, original edition of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic with a foreword by acclaimed author Russell Banks and an afterword by Wilder's nephew, Tappan Wilder, with illuminating documentary material about the novel and its rich literary history."As close to perfect a moral fable as we are ever likely to get in American literature." —Russell Banks"There are books that haunt you down the years, books that se...

Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973), one of the leading fashion designers of the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, was known for her flair for the unusual. The first designer to use shoulder pads and animal prints, and the inventor of shocking pink, Schiaparelli collaborated with artists including Jean Cocteau, Alberto Giacometti, and Salvador Dalí to create extraordinary garments such as the Dalí Lobster Dress. Schiaparelli had an affluent clientele, from Katharine Hepburn to Marlene Dietrich, who embrace...

Noel Braun yearns to walk the Camino, the ancient pilgrimage route that leads across France and Spain to Santiago de Compostela. Since the suicide of Maris, his beloved wife of forty-two years, he has struggled to find himself. But is it pure madness? He's an old bloke. At seventy-seven-years, he should be sensible, act his age and relax in a rocking chair. Can his body and spirit withstand the demands? Can he leave family and friends behind? Noel believes this is a journey he MUST underta...

In 1944, at the age of five, William Graves was taken from England to the delightful mountain village of Deya in Majorca, where his father - the poet Robert Graves - had returned with his new family to the place he had lived with Laura Riding before the war.Young William grew up in the shadow of this great writer in the Englishness of the Graves household, while experiencing the ways of life of the Majorcans, which had hardly changed for hundreds of years.Wonderfully observ...

With a foreword by Karl Lagerfeld, “this enchanting, tiny book”—a series of transcriptions from interviews with the fashion icon—is the closest anyone can get to a face-to-face with Coco [Chanel]” (The Spectator)Coco Chanel invited Paul Morand to visit her in St. Moritz at the end of the Second World War when he was given the opportunity to write her memoirs; his notes of their conversations were put away in a drawer and o...

The revered Brazilian songwriter and novelist "has breathed the story of a whole country into a single, unforgettable man with a soul as big as Brazil" (Nicole Krauss, author of Forest Dark).As Eulálio d'Assumpção lies dying in a Brazilian public hospital, his daughter and the attending nurses are treated—whether they like it or not—to his last, rambling monologue. Ribald, hectoring, and occasionally delusional, Eulálio reflects on his past, present, and f...

For fans of Colleen McCullough, Kate Morton, and Lucinda Riley, a powerful saga of family, love, honor, and betrayal set in historical Barcelona and romantic Paris, from the author of Tuscan Rose.“You who judge me: come! Let me tell you a story…” Paloma Batton is the granddaughter of Spanish refugees who fled Barcelona after the Civil War. A disciplined student attending the school of the Paris Opera Ballet, Paloma lets little get in the way of her career ...

Mexico, through the eyes of Sybille Bedford, is a country of passion and paradox: arid desert and shrieking jungle, harsh sun and deep shadow, violence and sentimentality. In her frank descriptions of the horrors of travel- trapped in a broiling stationary train, or in a bus with a dead fish against her face- she gains our trust. But it is the charmed world of Don Otavio which steals our imagination. He is, she says, 'one of the kindest men I ever met.' She stays in his crumbling ancestral...

Paul Poiret’s autobiography tells the extraordinary story of