Utilizing over 5,000 previously unpublished letters, notes, and documents, the author tells how Christie's life was "as full of romance, travel, wealth, and scandal as any mystery Christie ever crafted.

Argues that the bard was actually Edward de Vere, the seventeenth Earl of Oxford, in a portrait that identifies the earl as a courtier, scholar, and prolific ghostwriter whose life events mirrored and inspired themes in Shakespeare's plays.

"As a boy, Henry Friston dreamed of traveling the world. He thought he was signing up for a lifetime of adventure when he joined the Royal Navy. But when World War I begins, it launches the world, and Henry, into turmoil. While facing enemy fire at Gallipoli, Henry discovers the strength he needs to survive in an unexpected source: a tortoise. And so begins the friendship of a lifetime. Based on true events, and with charming illustrations, this story...

Offers a glimpse into the life of Roald Dahl, author of "James and the Giant Peach," and tells the story of how the book was made into a movie.

"How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,...

"In 1773, the Scottish James Boswell persuaded his English friend Samuel Johnson to accompany him on a tour through the Highlands of Scotland. Johnson was well known for his literary works and his dictionary. The two travelers set out from Edinburgh and skirted the eastern and northeastern coasts of Scotland. They proceeded into the Highlands and spent several weeks on various islands in the Hebrides. After a visit to Boswell's Estate at Auchinleck,...

"Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-sixteenth century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men. Some readers may have heard of Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney, but few will have heard of Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the seventeenth century to publish a book of original poetry, which offered...

A short biography of children's author J.K. Rowling written as a comic book.