"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland....

Introduces Evelyn Ryan, an enterprising woman who kept poverty at bay with wit, poetry, and perfect prose during the "contest era" of the 1950s and 1960s. Standing up to the church, her alcoholic husband, and antiquated ideas about women, Evelyn turned every financial challenge into an opportunity for innovation, all the while raising her six sons and four daughters with the belief that miracles are an everyday occurrence.

A goldfish gives a personal account of his experiences while swimming around his bowl as it slowly fills with fish and other accessories, only to realize when he is relocated for a cleaning how much he misses them.

Marie Brennan begins a thrilling new fantasy series in A Natural History of Dragons, combining adventure with the inquisitive spirit of the Victorian Age.
You, dear reader, continue at your own risk. It is not for the faint of heart—no more so than the study of dragons itself. But such study offers rewards beyond compare: to stand in a dragon's presence, even for the briefest of moments—even at the risk of one's

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"In A Story Lately Told, Anjelica Huston described her enchanted childhood in Ireland and her glamorous but troubled late teens in London. That memoir of her early years ended when Anjelica stepped into Hollywood. In Watch Me, Huston tells the story of falling in love with Jack Nicholson and her adventurous, turbulent, high-profile, spirited seventeen-year relationship with him and his intoxicating circle of friends. She writes about learning the...

'You don't have to act your age.' Show-business legend Dick Van Dyke is living proof that life gets better the longer you live it. Who better to offer instruction, advice, and humor than a man who's entering his ninth decade with a jaunty two-step? Dick Van Dyke's irrepressible belief in embracing the moment and unleashing his inner child has proven to be the ultimate elixir of youth, and his optimistic outlook is an invigorating tonic for anyone...

In THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD, Elizabeth Alexander--poet, mother, and wife--finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband, who was just 49. Reflecting with gratitude on the exquisite beauty of her married life that was, grappling with the subsequent void, and feeling a re-energized devotion to her two teenage sons, Alexander channels her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid prose that describes a very personal and...

"Join a brilliant, but stubborn, parrot as he endures the banality of the pet store before being purchased by an equally insufferable young man. But while things between parrot and owner get off to a rocky start, the delights of having a pet (or human) bring them both around in the end"-Provided by the publisher.

Ronald Reagan today is a conservative icon. Playing a major role in ending Communism in the Soviet Union, Reagan established himself as one of the truly great presidents of the twentieth century. Follow him from small-town Illinois through his career as an actor and finally into politics, as a California governor and then president whose pragmatic leadership and steadfast vision transformed the nation.

The author's story of his father’s, Dr. Harry Kozol, life and work as a nationally noted specialist in disorders of the brain and his astonishing ability, at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease, to explain the causes of his sickness and then to narrate, step-by-step, his slow descent into dementia.