Walden is a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings.[2] The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. Thoreau also used this time to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.First published in 1854, Walden details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in a cabin he built near...

"When a pair of young lovers abscond from a Puritan colony, little do they know that their humble cabin in the woods will become the home of an extraordinary succession of human and nonhuman characters alike. An English soldier, destined for glory, abandons the battlefields of the New World to devote himself to apples. A pair of spinster twins navigate war and famine, envy and desire. A crime reporter unearths a mass grave--only to discover that the...

This memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people-and the times-that touched her life.

In the early 1920's, cowboy and farmer, Ralph Moody finds himself with mountainous debts through the collapse of the livestock market and the dealings of a crooked partner. Ralph never surrenders, but finds a way to turn tragedy into opportunity.

"'Fans of The Chilbury Ladies' Choir and The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society will adore The Jane Austen Society... A charming and memorable debut, which reminds us of the universal language of literature and the power of books to unite and heal.' -Pam Jenoff, New York Times bestselling author of The Lost Girls of Paris Just after the Second World War, in the small English village of Chawton, an unusual but like-minded group of people...

"Bird Cloud" is the name the author gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four hundred foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she first visited, a cloud in the shape of a bird hung in the evening sky. She also saw pelicans, bald eagles, golden eagles, great blue herons, ravens, scores of bluebirds, harriers, kestrels, elk, deer and a dozen antelope. She fell in love with the land, then owned by the Nature Conservancy,...

The author describes a family trip to the Greek island of Corfu. First published in 1956.

After Burroughs was adopted by his mother's shrink at age 13, his childhood took a turn for the bizarre with electroshock machine fun and games; month-long family/patient sleep-overs on the front lawn; a physician-assisted fake suicide attempt to get excused from school forever; and a pedophile living in the barn. Running with Scissors is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her...

Fashioned from the same experiences that would inspire the masterpiece "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "Life on the Mississippi" is Mark Twain's most brilliant and most personal nonfictional work. It is at once an affectionate evocation of the vital river life in the steamboat era and a melancholy reminiscence of its passing after the Civil War. A priceless collection of of humorous anecodotes and folktales, and a unique glimpse into Twain's...

An engrossing biography of Buck, a woman whose fascinating life gave her a unique outlook on the plight of women and the suffering of China's rural poor.