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  Every Love Story Is a Ghost...

  D.T. Max

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  David Foster Wallace was the leading literary light of his generation, a man who not only captivated readers with his prose but also mesmerized them with his brilliant mind. In this, the first biography of the writer, D. T. Max sets out to chart Wallace's tormented, anguished, and often triumphant battle to succeed as a novelist as he fights off depression and addiction to emerge with his masterpiece, Infinite Jest. 
   
  Since his untimely death by suicide at the age of forty-six in 2008, Wallace has become more than the representative writer of his time-he has become a symbol of sincerity and honesty in an inauthentic age. His reputation and reach grow by the day. Max takes us from Wallace's early years as a child of the 1970s in the Midwest to his hothouse success in his twenties and subsequent collapse into depression and drugs, and from there through his painful reemergence as an apostle of recovery, ending with his triumphant novel of addiction and redemption, the book of the decade, published when he was just thirty-three. But Infinite Jest itself left as an open question what should come next, as Wallace sought hopefully-and then, increasingly, helplessly-for a way forward, stymied even in the midst of the happiest personal time he had ever known. 
   
  Max guides us on this remarkable literary and spiritual journey, this prolonged exploration of what it means to be human. Wallace was coy with the press and very private, yet the concerns of his writing and the struggles of his life were always closely intertwined. In illuminating the life, Max enriches our understanding of the work. And in his skillful, active investigations into Wallace's prose, he reveals the author in unexpected ways. 
   
  In the end, as Max argues, what is most important about Wallace is not just the words he left behind but what he taught us about life, showing that whatever the price, the fight to live meaningfully is always worth the struggle. Written with the cooperation of Wallace family members and friends and with access to hundreds of his unpublished letters, manuscripts, journals, and audio tapes, this deeply researched portrait of an extraordinarily gifted author is as fresh as news, as intimate as a letter from a friend, as painful as a goodbye.

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  Palm Beach Mar-a-Lago and the...

  Les Standiford

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  From the first Gilded Age to the second, a “charming, zippy history . . . a rollicking, informative lesson in real estate, American history, and current events.” —Town & Country 
   
  Looking at the island of Palm Beach today, with its unmatched mansions, tony shops, and pristine beaches, one is hard pressed to visualize the dense tangle of Palmetto brush and mangroves that it was when visionary entrepreneur and railroad tycoon Henry Flagler first arrived there in April 1893. Trusting his remarkable instincts, he built the Royal Poinciana Hotel within a year, and two years later, what was to become the legendary Breakers—instantly establishing the island as the preferred destination for those who could afford it.  
   
  Over the next 125 years, Palm Beach has become synonymous with exclusivity—especially its most famous residence, Mar-a-Lago. As Les Standiford relates, the high walls of Mar-a-Lago and other manses like it were seemingly designed to contain scandal within as much as keep intruders out. 
   
  This book tells the history of this fabled landscape intertwined with the colorful lives of its famous and infamous protagonists, from Flagler’s two wives to architect Addison Mizner, who created Palm Beach’s “Mediterranean look” to heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband E. F. Hutton, the original residents of Mar-a-Lago. With authoritative detail, Standiford recounts how Marjorie ruled Palm Beach society until her death in 1973, and how the fate of her mansion threatened to tear apart the very fabric of the town until Donald Trump acquired it in 1985. 
   
  “Edifying, energetic, and captivating.” —Florida Weekly

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  The Many Faces of Jesse James

  Phillip W. Steele, George Warfel

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  "Not only does this new book record a factual story of my great-grandfather Jesse James in print, but also helps the reader get to know Jesse's true personality and appearance. A great contribution toward separating facts from folklore and provides a guide for any future photo identification work." --James R. Ross, Superior Court Judge of the State of California, great-grandson of Jesse JamesA name well known to most Americans, Jesse James was a veteran of the Civil War, a bankrobber, and a very romanticized popular hero. Although James has been the subject of countless biographies and historical novels, as well as the theatre and cinema, new light can still be shed on his life.In The Many Faces of Jesse James, author, the late Phillip W. Steele, with George Warfel, presented a fascinating study of James' life using his many portraits as a frame of reference. Steele took each documented photograph of James and examined it closely, showing how the dress, demeanor, and physical well-being of James relate to what scholars believe him to have been doing at the time.Since the possibility of more actual portraits and photographs of James exists, Steele explained the process George Warfel has devised to accurately identify Jesse James, even including a group of "false photos" of James to illustrate his point. Fans of James-Younger gang lore will appreciate this fresh, yet practical approach to understanding this enigmatic historical figure. Readers for whom Jesse James is only a name will no doubt become more knowledgeable about the complex circumstances that led the outlaw to lead the life he did.

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  Maybe You Never Cry Again

  Bernie Mac

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  The film, television, and comedy legend tells the hilarious and moving story of how tough love, and a sense of humor made him the man he is today 
  By the tender age of five, Bernie Mac had found his calling: making others laugh. He has since become the star and cocreator of Fox’s hit sitcom The Bernie Mac Show; a stand-up legend; and a hit movie star in Head of State and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle. Now this amazing comedian delves deep down inside to retell the poignant and hilarious story of his childhood and the people who helped shape him into the comedian—and the strong and self-reliant man—he is today. 
  When young Bernie Mac lost his beloved mother to breast cancer, and faced an astounding number of other hardships, he remembered the “Mac-isms” she taught him: You have to meet all of the challenges, big and small. Because how you start is how you finish. If you want a helping hand, look at the end of your arm. These tough-love lessons gave him an inner strength that led him to choose hope over despair, and to follow his dreams. Maybe You Never Cry Again is a powerful testament to how a mother’s love made everything possible for Bernie Mac by teaching him to believe in himself.

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  Fight the Good Fight: Voices of...

  John Broom

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  “The inspiring stories of a number of very different characters who used their Christian faith to cope with their experiences of the First World War.” —Jacqueline Wadsworth, author of Letters from the Trenches   While a toxic mixture of nationalism and militarism tore Europe and the wider world apart from 1914 to 1919, there was one factor that united millions of people across all nations: that of a Christian faith. People interpreted this faith in many different ways. Soldiers marched off to war with ringing endorsements from bishops that they were fighting a Godly crusade, others preached in churches and tribunal hearings that war was fundamentally against the teachings of Christ. Whether Church of England or Nonconformist, Catholic or Presbyterian, German Lutheran or the American Church of Christ in Christian Union, men and women across the globe conceptualized their war through the prism of their belief in a Christian God.   This book brings together twenty-three individual and family case studies, some of well-known personalities, others whose stories have been neglected through the decades. Although divided by nation, social class, political outlook, and denomination, they were united in their desire to ‘Fight the Good Fight.’   “John Broom looks at such beliefs during the first world war—the Tommies were always fighting for God, the king and their country . . . a fascinating study.” —Books Monthly   “A detailed study of a usually hidden aspect of wartime social history, the topic of Christian faith. Fight the Good Fight has been meticulously researched and includes a wealth of previously unpublished material.” —Come Step Back In Time

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  Anton Chekhov - Six of the Best...

  Anton Chekhov

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  Six has always been a number we group things around – Six of the best, six of one half a dozen of another, six feet under, six pack, six degrees of separation and a sixth sense are but a few of the ways we use this number. 
   
  Such is its popularity that we thought it is also a very good way of challenging and investigating an author’s work to give width, brevity, humour and depth across six of their very best. 
   
  In this series we gather together authors whose short stories both rivet the attention and inspire the imagination to visit their gems in a series of six, to roam across an author’s legacy in a few short hours and gain a greater understanding of their writing and, of course, to be lavishly entertained by their ideas, their narrative and their way with words. 
   
  These stories can be surprising and sometimes at a tangent to what we expected, but each is fully formed and a marvellous adventure into the world and words of a literary master. 
   
   1 - Six of the Best - Anton Chekov - An Introduction 
  2 - Anton Chekhov - An Introduction 
  3 - The Lady with the Dog by Anton Chekhov 
  4 - The Kiss by Anton Chekhov 
  5 - Gooseberries by Anton Chekhov 
  6 - Misery by Anton Chekhov 
  7 - The Student by Anton Chekhov 
  8 - Volodya by Anton Chekhov

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