Presents the lives of the presidents, focusing on their roles as parents, husbands, pet owners, and neighbors, while also including humorous anecdotes about hairstyles, attitudes, diets, fears, and sleep patterns.

It's no secret that Beethoven went deaf, that Mozart had constant money problems, and that Gilbert and Sullivan wrote musicals. But what were these people-and other famous musicians-really like' What did they eat' What did they wear' How did they spend their time' And-possibly most interesting of all-what did their neighbors think' Discover the fascinating and often humorous stories of twenty famous musicians-people of all shapes, sizes, temperaments,...

Profiles twenty notable pirates throughout history and describes their adventures, the battles they fought, and the riches and cultural legacies they left behind.

Shakespeare wrote with a feather quill and ink; Emily Dickinson wrote with a fountain pen; Isaac Bashevis Singer wrote on a Yiddish typewriter. But what did such writers do when they weren't writing? What did Jane Austen eat for breakfast? What could make Mark Twain throw his shirts out the window? Why would Zora Neale Hurston punch a fellow elevator passenger? Lives of the Writers tells all that and more.

Profiles many of history's most noteworthy scientists, from Zhang Heng and Isaac Newton to Albert Einstein and Barbara McClintock, sharing lesser-known facts about their favorite activities, relationships, and eccentricities.

The life of Patricia Highsmith was as secretive and unusual as that of many of the best-known characters who people her "peerlessly disturbing" thrillers and short stories. Yet even as her work has found new popularity in the last few years, the life of this famously elusive writer has remained a mystery.
For Beautiful Shadow, the first biography of Highsmith, British journalist Andrew Wilson mined the vast archive of diaries, notebooks,...

Wild parties, wanton women, relentless work - nothing helps tycoon Lucas Jackson escape his dark and haunting past. Arriving at his rural castle in a snarling snowstorm, he craves only complete isolation ... But it seems oblivion can take an unexpected and highly intoxicating form! Personally delivering a vital file left on her boss's desk, secretary Emma Gray starts seriously to regret her dutiful overtime mission. She never expected that the dark...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the beloved author of the Vampire Chronicles, the second installation of her spellbinding Mayfair Chronicles—the inspiration for the hit television series!
 
“[Anne] Rice’s descriptive writing is so opulent it almost begs to be read by candlelight.”—The Washington Post Book World
 
In seventeenth-century Scotland, the first “witch,”...

Discusses the life, work, and legacy of nineteenth-century French Impressionist artist Claude Monet.

Sir Leslie Stephen (1832–1904) came from a distinguished family of politicians, jurists and writers, and was the father of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. His literary career began with writing about his great passion, the Alps, and he became a noted author and critic, and the first editor of the Dictionary of National Biography. He was a friend of John Morley (1838–1923), the general editor of English Men of Letters, who commissioned him

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