Archives de catégorie : Biography

DIANAWORLD de Edward White

An intelligent and insightful exploration of Diana Spencer – the person and the cultural figure – through her relationships with the wide range of people who surrounded her.

DIANAWORLD:
The Many Lives of the People’s Princess
by Edward White
W.W. Norton, 2025
(via The Gernert Company)

DIANAWORLD is a fascinating, multi-faceted portrait of Diana, Princess of Wales—the person, the cultural figure, and the enduring mythology of the “People’s Princess”—exploring her relationships with those who knew her intimately, those who worked with and for her, and the many ordinary people from Britain, America, and elsewhere who felt connected to her. In some chapters, White will pay particular attention to Diana’s relationship with one person; in others, there will be a wider cast of characters. But in each case these relationships will connect to a theme highly germane to her private life, and her public reputation, providing an opportunity to question unexamined assumptions, as well as branching out into areas unexplored by straightforward biographies of Diana. This is a book about what Diana means to “us.”

Based in the UK, Edward White studied European and American history at Mansfield College, Oxford and Goldsmiths College, London. Since 2005 he has worked in the television industry, including two years at the BBC, devising programs in its art and history departments. Hehas written for publications including the Paris Review and is a contributor to The Times Literary Supplement. He is the author of The Tastemaker: Carl Van Vechten and the Birth of Modern America (FSG, 2014) and The Twelve Lives of Alfred Hitchcock (W.W. Norton, 2021).

WITH GREAT POWER: The Marvelous Stan Lee, d’Annie Hunter Eriksen, illustré par Lee Gatlin

Stan Lee didn’t have hulking strength. Or fantastic flexibility. Or cat-like reflexes. His superpower was creating heroes who did.

WITH GREAT POWER: The Marvelous Stan Lee
by Annie Hunter Eriksen
illustrated by Lee Gatlin
Page Street Kids, September 2021

Every superhero has their origin story: a radioactive spider bite turns ordinary teen Peter Parker into Spider-Man, wealthy Tony Stark escapes captivity by building his Iron Man suit, scientist Bruce Banner survives gamma rays only to transform into the Hulk.
For Stan Lee, it was books of adventure, monsters, and magic that helped him transform from an ordinary boy to a superstar superhero creator. At first, reading these stories was a pathway to a world bigger than his family’s tiny apartment in New York City, but it wasn’t long until Stan was crafting his own stories, creating comics professionally when he was still just a teenager! Still, writing wasn’t exciting when the heroes were always the same: strong, perfect, and boring. Stan had a revolutionary idea. What if anyone―even an ordinary kid―could be a superhero?
Discover more about the life of the Cameo King, known to many for his appearances in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and how he revolutionized comics with this vibrant introduction bustling with action, humor, and references for fans new and old. ‘Nuff said!

Annie Hunter Eriksen grew up with a love of superheroes, and remains a huge Marvel nerd to this day. Her favorite comic book series is Ms. Marvel. She works as a freelance writer and lives in Ohio with her husband, cat named Cosmo, and hedgehog named Pineapple.

Lee Gatlin learned to draw by looking at cartoons, kids’ books, and comics. He is the illustrator of the Monster School by Kate Coombs (Chronicle). In addition to drawing and making things, he enjoys making a racket on the piano or banjo. An illustrator and cartoonist, he lives with wife and three children in Georgia.

PARACHUTE WOMEN de Elizabeth Winder

In the tradition of Girls Like Us, a group biography of the extraordinary women at the center of the Rolling Stones’ world.

PARACHUTE WOMEN:
Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, Anita Pallenberg, and the Women Behind the Rolling Stones
by Elizabeth Winder
Hachette US, September 2021

The Rolling Stones have long been considered one of the greatest rock-and-roll bands of all time. At the forefront of the British Invasion and heading up the counterculture movement of the 1960s, the Stones’ innovative music and iconic performances defined a generation, and fifty years later, they’re still performing to sold-out stadiums around the globe. Yet, as the saying goes, behind every great man is a greater woman, and behind these larger-than-life rockstars were four incredible women whose stories have yet to be fully unpacked. . . until now.
In PARACHUTE WOMEN, Elizabeth Winder introduces us to the four women who inspired, styled, wrote for, remixed, and ultimately helped create the legend of the Rolling Stones. Marianne Faithfull, Marsha Hunt, Bianca Jagger, and Anita Pallenberg put the glimmer in the Glimmer Twins and taught a group of straight-laced boys to be bad. They opened the doors to subterranean art and alternative lifestyles, turned them on to Russian literature, occult practices, and LSD. They connected them to cutting edge directors and writers, won them roles in art house films that renewed their appeal. They often acted as unpaid stylists, providing provocative looks from their personal wardrobes. They remixed tracks for chart-topping albums, and sometimes even wrote the actual songs. More hip to the times than the rockers themselves, they consciously (and unconsciously) kept the band current—and confident—with that mythic lasting power they still have today.
Lush in detail and insight, and long overdue, PARACHUTE WOMEN is a group portrait of the four audacious women who transformed the Stones into international stars, but who were themselves marginalized by the male-dominated rock world of the late ’60s and early ’70s. Written in the tradition of Sheila Weller’s Girls Like Us, it’s a story of lust and rivalries, friendships and betrayals, hope and degradation, and the birth of rock and roll.

Elizabeth Winder is the author of Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy, and Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953. Her work has appeared in the Chicago Review, Antioch Review, American Letters, and other publications. She is a graduate of the College of William and Mary, and earned an MFA in creative writing from George Mason University.

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE de Grace Ellis, illustré par Hannah Templer

A fictional and complex portrait of bestselling author Patricia Highsmith caught up in the longing that would inspire her queer classic, The Price of Salt.

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE:
The Indecent Adventures of Patricia Highsmith
by Grace Ellis
illustrated by Hannah Templer
Abrams ComicArts, February 2022

FLUNG OUT OF SPACE is an imagined portrait of the wild and complicated figure that was infamous crime writer Patricia Highsmith. As the story opens, we meet Pat begrudgingly writing low-brow comics. A drinker, a smoker, and a hater of life, Pat knows she can do better. Her brain churns with images of the great novel she could and should be writing—what will eventually be Strangers on a Train (which would later be adapted into a classic film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951).
Pat is a chronic womanizer, but she’s ashamed of being gay, and so on the recommendation of her therapist, she enrolls in conversion therapy, where she meets many of her future sexual conquests.
This is also not just the story of a queer woman, but of a queer artist. Written and illustrated by two heavyweights in the comics world—Grace Ellis and Hannah Templer, it’s a comic about what it was like to write comics in the 1950s, but also about what it means to be a writer at any time in history, struggling to find your voice.
FLUNG OUT OF SPACE isn’t a rosy portrait of queer life, but rather an unflinching one. Ellis’s savvy writing combines with Templer’s stunning illustrations to create a work that will intrigue and fascinate comics fans. An afterword written by Highsmith’s authorized biographer, Joan Schenkar, contextualizes the writer’s life with this fictional portrayal and offers insight into Highsmith’s complex legacy. Highsmith was unapologetic but guilt-ridden, talented but self-sabotaging, magnetic but withdrawn, vicious but hilarious. In short: She was a hell of a woman and a hell of a protagonist.

Grace Ellis made a name for herself in the industry by creating unforgettable, lovable, and funny characters. She burst onto the comics scene with The Lumberjanes, which she cocreated and cowrote. It was a New York Times bestselling, Eisner and GLAAD Award–winning comics series that broke the mold of both YA and superhero comics. She is also the author and creator of the series Moonstruck, illustrated by Shea Beagle, and writer of the soon-to-be-released series Lois Lane and the Friendship Challenge for DC Comics. Ellis lives in Columbus, Ohio.
Hannah Templer is a queer cartoonist currently living in Baltimore, Maryland. They have worked as a colorist, cover artist, and interior artist on titles such as GLOW, Samurai Jack, Jem and the Holograms, Captain Marvel, and Tomb Raider. They are also the creator of Cosmoknights, an original graphic novel series published in 2019 by Top Shelf Comics. Their work as a cover artist—with clients like Dark Horse, IDW, Valiant, BOOM! Studios, Marvel, HarperCollins, and Abrams Books—is as extensive as it is dynamic and stunning.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE de Jennifer Ashley Wright

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is a little bit You Never Forget Your First, a little bit The Knick, a dash of The Age of Innocence, and a sprinkle of The Shawshank Redemption.

BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE
by Jennifer Ashley Wright
Hachette Books, Spring 2023

This sharp, witty Gilded Age medical history stars Madame Restell, a glamorous women’s healthcare provider in Manhattan, who was a celebrity in her era and a Moira Rose-esque figure with a flair for high fashion and petty public beefs. The story of Restell’s struggle to care for New York’s unmarried women—providing abortions, birth control, and other assistance—in defiance of increasing persecution from powerful men, it ends not in outright tragedy, but with a glorious, life-affirming, bittersweet twist. That this book doubles as a history of women’s health—and the propaganda on which the “pro-life” movement was founded—makes it not just entertaining, but profoundly comforting for feminist readers. Few and far between are the books expanding our sense of hope, humor, and what’s possible for women’s rights in this politicized arena, one which augurs some real downer developments in the coming years. BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE does just that, and it does so in a sumptuous, character-driven, frequently funny package.

Jennifer Ashley Wright has written beloved pop history collections from It Ended Badly and Get Well Soon (Holt) to the forthcoming She Kills Me, an illustrated field guide to righteous women who have committed murder (Abrams Image). BEHOLD THE TRIUMPH OF VIRTUE is Wright’s first work of single narrative history.