Книги, похожие на «Агата Кристи, An Autobiography»

Jonathan Franzen arrived late, and last, in a family of boys in Webster Groves, Missouri. ‘The Discomfort Zone’ is his intimate memoir of his growth from a ‘small and fundamentally ridiculous person’ through an adolescence both excruciating and strangely happy, into an adult with embarrassing and unexpected passions. It's also a portrait of a middle class family weathering the turbulence of the 1970s, and a vivid personal history of the decades in which America has taken an angry turn away from its mid-century ideals.The stories told here draw on elements as varied as the effects of Kafka's fiction on Franzen's protracted quest to lose his virginity, the elaborate pranks that he and his friends orchestrated from the roof of his high school, his self-inflicted travails in selling his mother's house after her death, and the web of connections between his all-consuming marriage, the problem of global warming, and the life lessons to be learned in watching birds.These chapters of a Midwestern youth and a New York adulthood are warmed by the same combination of comic scrutiny and unqualified affection that characterize Franzen's fiction, but here the main character is the author himself. Sparkling, daring, arrestingly honest, Franzen narrates the formation of a unique mind and heart in the crucible of an everyday American family.

This timeless classic is an exciting true story of survival against all odds.‘There was a sudden sickening sense of disaster. I felt a great lurch and heel, and a thunder of sound filled my ears. I was conscious, in a terrified moment, of being driven into the front and side of my bunk with tremendous force. At the same time there was a tearing cracking sound, as if Tzu Hang was being ripped apart, and water burst solidly, raging into the cabin. There was darkness, black boards, and I fought wildly to get out, thinking Tzu Hang had already gone. Then suddenly I was standing again, waist deep in water, and floorboards and cushions, mattresses and books were sloshing in wild confusion round me.’Miles Smeeton and his wife Beryl sailed their 46-ft Bermuda ketch, Tzu Hang, in the wild seas of Cape Horn, following the tracks of the old sailing clippers through the world’s most notorious waters. This is an exciting true story of survival against all odds, but it is also a thoughtful book which provides hard-learned lessons for other intrepid sailors.As Nevil Shute writes in his foreword: ‘It has been left to Miles Smeeton to tell us in clear and simple language just where the limits of safety lie.’

Graham Thorpe’s achievements on the cricket field contrasted wildly with his personal problems, where drink and depression combined to send him spiralling off the rails. This is his brutally honest life story, including his dramatic retirement from Test cricket, and updated to include England’s 2005 Ashes win, and his new coaching career.Graham Thorpe was one of the best batsmen in world cricket for more than a decade. Yet the national press hounded him as 'English cricket's most disturbed player' for pulling out of a series of tours and turning his back on the game more than once.With painful candour and often unexpected humour, Thorpe dissects his career in cricket and the inner recesses of his private life: the impact of his bitter divorce; the suicidal depression that afflicted him in his darkest hours; the reasons why he needed to 'save himself' by withdrawing from past England tours; the elation of his magnificent century on his comeback Test at the Oval in 2003; and his fresh outlook in life with a new partner after confronting his own failings and past troubles.Twelve years on from his Test debut against Australia, Thorpe took the decision to retire from international cricket after the disappointment of his controversial non-selection for the Ashes 2005 tour.With updated material on his coaching spell in Australia – where he gained valuable insight into cricket’s No 1 nation.