HPL Biographies

"Life, like a poem, is a series of choices." In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman's personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist...

When veteran war reporter Benjamin Hall woke up in Kyiv on the morning of March 14, 2022, he had no idea that, within hours, Russian bombs would nearly end his life. As a journalist for Fox News, Hall had worked in dangerous war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, but with three young daughters at home, life on the edge was supposed to be a thing of the past. Yet when Russia viciously attacked Ukraine in February 2022, Hall quickly volunteered to go....

"Mott Street follows Chinese American writer Ava Chin, who grew up estranged from her father, as she seeks the truth about her family history-and uncovers a legacy of exclusion and resilience that speaks to the American experience past and present. Chin's ancestors became lovers, classmates, sworn enemies, and, eventually, through her birth, kin-all while converging at a single Chinatown address"--

"When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle in 1973, Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor seemed destined to become inseparable. The boys, both children of college professors, grew up on the same street in intellectually vibrant homes shaped by ideas, liberal Jewish culture, the trauma of the Holocaust, and a shared love of basketball and standup comedy. But the two best friends were also keen competitors bearing the same great expectations, and when Michael...

"Stranded in a volatile, ever-shifting family, saddled with a mercurial mother mired in crack addiction, and demeaned daily for his perceived weakness, Joseph Earl Thomas was under constant threat. Roaches fell from the ceiling, colonizing bowls of noodles and cereal boxes. Fists and palms pounded down at school and at home, leaving welts that ached long after they disappeared. An inescapable hunger gnawed at his frequently empty stomach, and requests...

"The fact that Susannah Constantine made her name as a 'style guru' as part of "Trinny and Susannah" from What Not to Wear is the least interesting thing about her . Susannah grew up amongst the great and good of British aristocracy and (unwittingly) trained to be a society bride. Fittingly, Barbara Cartland was her touchstone for romance: she wanted to be the underdog heroine who ended up marrying a prince. Instead she dated Princess Margaret's son...

"A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry was at the heart of the American Revolution"--

"One night in 2009, Tanya Frank finds her nineteen-year-old son, Zach--gentle and full of promise--in the grip of what the psychiatrists would label a psychotic break. Suddenly and inexplicably, Tanya is thrown into a parallel universe: Zach's world, where the phones are bugged, his friends have joined the Mafia, and helicopters are spying on his family. In the years following Zach's shifting psychiatric diagnoses, Tanya goes to war for her son, desperate...

"A memoir of the author's experience growing up in an apocalyptic cult, with an emphasis on how understanding the natural world was her key to escape and survival"--