Lona left her husband behind, and followed the sun to Florida. She took fl ight, like a migrating bird, and lay on the hot sands, hungry for love. She lived like there was no tomorrow. But her nights of revelry ended in loneliness. She wandered all over the continent, searching for something she never found.

‘Locked-in syndrome: paralysed from head to toe, the patient, his mind intact, is imprisoned inside his own body, unable to speak or move. In my case, blinking my left eyelid is my only means of communication.’In December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby, editor-in-chief of French ‘Elle’ and the father of two young children, suffered a massive stroke and found himself paralysed and speechless, but entirely conscious, trapped by what doctors call ‘locked-in syndrome’. Using his only funct...

A triumphant memoir by the former editor-in-chief of French Elle that reveals an indomitable spirit and celebrates the liberating power of consciousness.In 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby was the editor-in-chief of French Elle, the father of two young children, a 44-year-old man known and loved for his wit, his style, and his impassioned approach to life. By the end of the year he was also the victim of a rare kind of stroke to the brainstem.After 20 da...

An accident, a suicide, an act of criminal negligence . . . and a near-death experience. The short stories in Emma Donoghue's Three and a Half Deaths – set in France, the USA and Canada – bring together calamities from two centuries.'What the Driver Saw' is inspired by a freak accident on Nice's Promenade des Anglais, the 1920s equivalent of Princess Diana's last ride through Paris.'The Trap' takes us to New York, 1878, when a woman at the centre o...

'A great work of art, radiant and rapturous, affirming the power of love and imagination' The New York Times Book ReviewAda or Ardor is a romance that follows Ada from her first childhood meeting with Van Veen on his uncle's country estate, in a 'dream-bright' America, through eighty years of rapture, as they cross continents, are continually parted and reunited, come to learn the strange truth about their singular relationship and, decades later,...

Set in the richly drawn art world of nineteenth-century Paris, this stunning historical novel imagines Édouard Manet's last days in an indelible snapshot of genius, illness, and the dying embers of passion.Suffering from the complications of syphilis toward the end of his life, Édouard Manet begins to jot down his daily impressions, reflections, and memories in a notebook. He travels for healing respites in the French countryside and finds inspiration in nature—a c...

In his great triptych "The Millennium" Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise.Whence Henry Miller's title for this, one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller's life on the Big Sur, a section of California coast where he lived for fifteen years.Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the U.S.—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (& writers who...

"A tender, heady and heartwarming tale where the strained conversation of a father and son transforms into a lifetime bond." —Seattle Times"In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning." —F. Scott FitzgeraldAntonio is eighteen years old and on the cusp of adulthood. His father, a brilliant mathematician, hasn't played a large part in his life since divorcing Antonio's mother but when Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy, they trave...

First published nearly a quarter-century ago and one of the very few short-story collections to win the PEN/Faulkner Award, this is American fiction at its most vital - each narrative a masterpiece of sustained power and seemingly effortless literary grace. Two New York attorneys newly flush with wealth embark on a dissolute tour of Italy; an ambitious young screenwriter unexpectedly discovers the true meaning of art and glory; a ruder, far off in the fields, is involved in an horrific acc...

Continuing the subversive self-revelation begun in Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn, Henry Miller takes readers along a mad, free-associating journey from the damp grime of his Brooklyn youth to the sun-splashed cafes and squalid flats of Paris. With incomparable glee, Miller shifts effortlessly from Virgil to venereal disease, from Rabelais to Roquefort. In this seductive technicolor swirl of Paris and New York, he captures like no one else the blending of people and the cities th...

Using the scaffolding of Isadora Duncan's life and the stuff of her spirit, Amelia Gray delivers an incredibly imaginative portrait of the artistIn 1913, the restless world sat on the brink of unimaginable suffering. But for one woman, the darkness of a new era had already made itself at home. Isadora Duncan would come to be known as the mother of modern dance, but in the spring of 1913 she was a grieving mother, after a freak accident in Paris resulted in the drown...

Back in print for the first time in decades—and featuring a new interview with the author, in celebration of her centennial birthday—the delectable escapades of Hollywood legend Olivia de Havilland, who fell in love with a Frenchman—and then became a ParisianIn 1953, Olivia de Havilland—already an Academy Award-winning actress for her roles in To Each His Own and The Heiress—became the heroine of her own real-life love affair. She married a French...