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Since finishing The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe at ten years old I’ve been drawn to inspiring and unforgettable stories whether through music, film, or in print. I’m a storyteller at heart who is fortunate to have built a career through capturing compelling stories, including those that have swirled in my imagination. From espionage thrillers to YA fantasy, I’m drawn to great characters and epic adventures. Now that I’m writing my own YA fantasy series, Beacon Hill, I have a firsthand glimpse of the commitment to world building within the pages that stand the test of time. It’s been a great challenge, inspired by even greater storytellers.
I boarded a plane in Los Angeles the day after Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows released.
Before we were airborne, I opened the pages to the epic conclusion of the HP series. When I glanced to my left and right, I realized the passengers in my row were all doing the same.
What struck me in that moment was how Harry Potter transcended from a series for young adults to one for YA fans of all ages—a remarkable feat by one of the greatest YA storytellers in history.
If you haven’t read the books but have seen the films, I would highly recommend diving into the HP series as you will not be disappointed.
So many themes are woven throughout Deathly Hallows rooted in the value of love and friendship from all ages.
It's time to PASS THE MAGIC ON - with brand new children's editions of the classic and internationally bestselling series
The seventh and final book in the global phenomenon series that changed the world of books forever
As he climbs into the sidecar of Hagrid's motorbike and takes to the skies, leaving Privet Drive for the last time, Harry Potter knows that Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters are not far behind. The protective charm that has kept Harry safe until now is now broken, but he cannot keep hiding.
The Dark Lord is breathing fear into everything Harry loves,…
I moved around non-stop as a kid, attending a dozen schools by age
eleven. As a result, once I stayed put long enough to make real
friends, I stuck to them like glitter glue. As a reader and writer, I
can’t get enough stories about female friendships, whether rock-solid or
fraying. My latest novel involves
childhood friends whose loyalty is stretched like a pair of latex gloves
yanked off at a crime scene. The book grew out of a meme I saw on
Facebook, captioned: “Real friends help you hide the bodies”. My first
thought was: who would I help? Straight off, I thought of my oldest
friends.
If anyone’s life seems perfect, you can be sure that it isn’t. Big Little Lies
follows a group of school moms, in a nice neighborhood, who bond and
support each other while hiding massive secrets.
Liane Moriarty is a
master at crafting relatable characters who feel real, like people you
know from the school gates, only more glamorous. The idyllic suburban
setting is equally vivid, while the twists keep coming. This isn’t a
typical whodunnit but an exploration of the truths women hide from
themselves and each other.
You’ve probably read it already, but if you
haven’t–grab it.
*Published as BIG LITTLE LIES in Australia and the United States*
Liane Moriarty, million copy selling author of The Husband's Secret brings us another addictive story of secrets and scandal.
Jane hasn't lived anywhere longer than six months since her son was born five years ago. She keeps moving in an attempt to escape her past. Now the idyllic seaside town of Pirriwee has pulled her to its shores and Jane finally feels like she belongs. She has friends in the feisty Madeline and the incredibly beautiful Celeste - two women with seemingly perfect lives . . . and their…
I started singing and playing guitar in garage bands in high school, about the same time that I began thinking of myself as a serious writer, so for me the two endeavors have always gone hand in hand. Over the decades, I’ve continued to write creatively—while teaching thousands of students along the way—and also to play in a number of bands that have specialized in everything from country-folk to raucous punk. Like many writer-musicians, I love reading good stories about the challenges and joys of people joining together, and falling apart, as they attempt to transcend ordinary life through the power of music.
Keith Richards is a legend in large part because of his musicianship and the many timeless songs he has written with Mick Jagger for the Rolling Stones, but he’s also legendary for his consumption of alcohol and drugs.
“I’m glad to be here,” he has said on more than one occasion. “I’m glad to be anywhere.” Therefore, it’s astonishing how much he remembers of his life, including nearly a hundred pages on his youth before the formation of the Stones.
And what a life it is, full of celebrities and misadventures and close calls with the law and, above all, Keith’s unstoppable drive to make it to the next gig.
As lead guitarist of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, the lyrics, and the songs that roused the world. A true and towering original, he has always walked his own path, spoken his mind, and done things his own way.Now at last Richards pauses to tell his story in the most anticipated autobiography in decades. And what a story! Listening obsessively to Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records in a coldwater flat with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones, building a sound and a band out of music they loved. Finding fame and success as a bad-boy band, only…
I’ve been studying friendships for over 20 years. As a sociologist, I use social science research methods, particularly interviewing and network analysis, to better understand who people are friends with and how friendship ties help us. As a professor at Dartmouth College, I’m particularly interested in how friendship ties help college students academically and socially and how they get in the way academically and socially. My first research on friendship was a group project in a Women’s Studies course at Tulane University focused on undergraduate women’s close friendships. The best part of that study was developing close friendships with each other, some of which have lasted more than two decades!
In a memoir co-written by two best friends, Aminatou and Ann detail the joys and struggles of their “big friendship” over the years in an honest and hilarious way. I appreciated their stories and advice on the work it takes to keep meaningful relationships that don’t fade or become resentful. It didn’t come easy to be open with each other and vulnerable about the friction they felt from ignoring racial and class dynamics in their friendship. They situate their friendship within the dynamics of their friend groups, which they term “the friendweb.” To live “shine theory” within the friendweb, ties are collaborative, supporting each other so that “I don’t shine if you don’t shine.” This book makes it clear that friendship is not always easy, but it is worth it.
A close friendship is one of the most influential and important relationships a human life can contain. Anyone will tell you that! But for all the rosy sentiments surrounding friendship, most people don’t talk much about what it really takes to stay close for the long haul.
Now two friends, Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, tell the story of their equally messy and life-affirming Big Friendship in this honest and hilarious book that chronicles their first decade in one another’s lives. As the hosts of the hit podcast Call Your Girlfriend, they’ve become known for frank and intimate conversations. In…
I’ve been studying friendships for over 20 years. As a sociologist, I use social science research methods, particularly interviewing and network analysis, to better understand who people are friends with and how friendship ties help us. As a professor at Dartmouth College, I’m particularly interested in how friendship ties help college students academically and socially and how they get in the way academically and socially. My first research on friendship was a group project in a Women’s Studies course at Tulane University focused on undergraduate women’s close friendships. The best part of that study was developing close friendships with each other, some of which have lasted more than two decades!
While friends are important in many ways, so are “weak ties” within our networks. In this non-fiction book, sociologist Mario Luis Small analyzes interviews with a group of graduate students, investigating who they turn to for support about a range of topics, including love, depression, and finances. Because of the obligations that close friends and family entail, Small finds that people often avoid turning to these close ties and instead rely on the convenience of people in their orbits. I’m drawn to this book because it contradicts what we think we know about who we talk to about important matters and because it’s such a rich investigation of people’s social ties and under what circumstances they actually turn to the people closest to them.
Winner of the James Coleman Award for Best Book from the Rationality and Society section of the American Sociological Society Winner of the Outstanding Recent Contribution from the Social Psychology section of the American Sociological Association Winner of the Best Publication Award from the Mental Health section of the American Sociological Association Honorable Mention, PROSE Book Award, Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, from the Association of American Publishers
When people are facing difficulties, they often feel the need for a confidant. How do they decide on whom to rely? In Someone To Talk To, Mario Luis Small follows a group of…
Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same.
A captivating memoir that I could not put down. The mesmerizing cover! The story of a happy child growing up in a happy family in the Midwest that is somehow riveting! I was hooked from the get-go.
As someone who used to book comics in NYC, I admire anyone who can do brilliant clean humor. I wouldn’t call her a humor writer. She’s just a fantastic writer. I do not re-read books, but I do re-read this gem to feel sane and awed and to laugh. It reminds me of simpler times and that there are good, genuine people in this messy world.
When Haven Kimmel was born in 1965 in Mooreland, Indiana, was a sleepy little hamlet of three hundred people. Nicknamed "Zippy" for the way she would bolt around the house, this small girl was possessed of big eyes and even bigger ears. In this witty and lovingly told memoir, Kimmel takes readers back to a time when small-town America was caught in the amber of the innocent postwar period--people helped their neighbors, went to church on Sunday, and kept barnyard animals in their backyards.
To three-year-old Zippy, it made perfect sense to strike a bargain with her father to keep…
Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same.
Notaro is a comedic goddess. I still don’t know what a “tweaker” is (since reading Idiot Girl and the Flaming Tantrum of Death years ago), but she cracks me up hard, early, and often. I wish she was my neighbor. She somehow makes her other characters sound as funny as she, which they may or may not be in real life.
The chapter on becoming magically invisible once you let your hair go grey is worth the price of admission. This book is largely about aging. She mines the comedy. I hope to meet her one day.
A laugh-out-loud spin on the realities, perks, opportunities, and inevitable courses of midlife.
Laurie Notaro has proved everyone wrong: she didn't end up in rehab, prison, or cremated at a tender age. She just went gray. At past fifty, every hair's root is a symbol of knowledge (she knows how to use a landline), experience (she rode in a car with no seat belts), and superpowers (a gray-haired lady can get away with anything).
Though navigating midlife is initially upsetting-the cracking noises coming from her new old body, receiving regular junk mail from mortuaries-Laurie accepts it. And then some. With…
Raised when unsupervised kids roamed freely in the woods, my friends and I became adept at finding fun. My 20s were spent in New York in the 1980's zeitgeist of exploration and excess. A lifelong fan of comedy, I worked at the Comedy Cellar, where I booked and watched countless standup comics. Later, I left NYC’s glamor for Vermont’s nature. Since then, my Vermont newspaper column, "Upper Valley Girl," has amused and astonished (and possibly appalled) readers with humor and candor. Ever adventurous to the point of risk, making awful mistakes, and enduring impossible people, I learned limits the hard way. I advise young people not to do the same.
Advice by way of memoir, which I liked more as it went along. Maybe it was a slow start for me because she had seemingly lucky breaks, and I’ve had struggles. By the end, I was in LOVE.
She is frank, ballsy, unapologetic, kickass riotous, with an apparent ability to moonwalk, all of which is to say totally New York City in a way that I badly miss, having left 30 years ago.
I relived some of my youth. I learned things and laughed.
What does it take to grow up cool and popular, master adulthood, fast track your success, and always be your best? Laura Belgray wouldn't know.
Her wildly relatable coming-of-age stories include hate-following her 6th grade bully on social media decades later; moving home post-college to measure her self-worth in hookups with Upper West Side bartenders; dating a sociopathic man-baby; proving herself in the early '90s at New York's coolest magazine (as the world's worst intern); falling for get-rich-quick schemes on the Internet; and, most of all, saying "tough titties" to the supposed-to's in life: driving a car,…
I worked in television as a development producer for twenty years, designing game shows, reality shows, formatted documentaries, all sorts of programming. One of the prerequisites of working in telly is to watch a lot of it, and that has always been a joy for me, as I love the medium. Even after I left the profession to become an author, I’ve retained my passion for the small screen and write a regular blog on what I’m watching. So, for me, a combination of books and television is something to be savored and celebrated.
Nick Hornby is one of my favorite writers, and About a Boy is one of my favorite books of all time.
I love how his prose is pared down but so profound; every sentence, however simple, carries weight, and his characterization is wonderfully human. In this book, Hornby champions mainstream entertainment, something I’m passionate about, as I can’t stand cultural snobbishness.
It’s an homage to a golden age of light entertainment, and, like television comedy, this is a book that "makes us all part of something."
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER SOON TO BE A TV SERIES STARRING GEMMA ARTERTON AND RUPERT EVERETT
'Simply unputdownable' Guardian
'Hilarious' Daily Telegraph
'Highly entertaining' Sunday Times _________________
Make them laugh, and they're yours forever . . .
Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh.
So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nation's hearts.
Funny Girl is the story of a smash-hit TV show and…
I was an adult before I realized I had ADHD. Getting a diagnosis was like getting glasses; so many things in my life immediately became clear to me, including that I wasn’t simply a sloppy, lazy, scattered person. And I also learned, like many others, that ADHD can be a challenge and a strength.
Have you seen Nanette? If not, go watch it right now. I’ll wait.
Okay. Now that you’ve seen Gadsby’s Netflix special, you either get it or you don’t (and you either love Gadsby or you don’t). Gadsby, who grew up queer in a small, intolerant community, and who was later diagnosed with ADHD and ASD, recounts some of her formative experiences in order to construct a portrait of an artist in the 21st century.
Ten Steps to Nanette is at turns painful, hilarious, depressing, and inspiring. And: there are footnotes! (I used footnotes too in one of my novels and I do believe the footnote is a good and loyal friend to the writer with ADHD).
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Multi-award-winning Hannah Gadsby broke comedy with their show Nanette. Now they take us through the defining moments in their life and their powerful decision to tell the truth—no matter the cost.
Don’t miss Hannah Gadsby’s Something Special, coming to Netflix on May 9!
“Hannah is a Promethean force, a revolutionary talent. This hilarious, touching, and sometimes tragic book is all about where their fires were lit.”—Emma Thompson
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: PopSugar, Vulture
“There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself,” Hannah Gadsby declared in their show…
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