Akron Public Library

1845: New York City is a sprawling warren of gaslit streets and crowded avenues, bustling with new immigrants and old money, optimism and opportunity, poverty and crime. Edgar Allan Poes "The Raven" is all the rage-the success of which a struggling poet like Frances Osgood can only dream. As a mother trying to support two young children after her husbands cruel betrayal, Frances jumps at the chance to meet the illustrious Mr. Poe at a small literary...

"Grace and Ted Chapman. Literary power couple. Ted is considered "the thinking man's John Grisham" and Grace, his wife of twenty years is beautiful, stylish, carefree. All of this is on the surface. Beneath, what no one sees, is Ted's rages. His mood swings. And the precarious house of cards that their lifestyle is built upon. When Ted's longtime assistant and mainstay leaves, the house of cards begins to crumble and Grace, with dark secrets...

The story of the couple's youthful passion and ambition interwoven with a portrait of a marriage, thirty-plus years later, a lifetime's shared compromises, secrets, betrayals, and mutual love.

After nearly forty years of marriage, Joan and Joe Castleman are complements. Where Joe is casual, Joan is elegant. Where Joe is vain, Joan is self-effacing. And where Joe enjoys his very public role as Great American Novelist, Joan pours her considerable intellect, grace, charm, and diplomacy into the private role of Great Man's Wife. Joe is about to be awarded the Nobel Prize for his acclaimed and prolific body of work. Joe's literary star has blazed...

A witty look at the complex and fascinating but tumultuous marriages of five well-known figures in the literary world, including British theater critic Kenneth Tynan, and authors Roald Dahl and Kingsley Amis.

"There are so few established facts about how the son of a glove maker from Warwickshire became one of the greatest writers of all time that some people doubt he could really have written so many astonishing plays. We know that he married Anne Hathaway, who was pregnant and six years older than he, at the age of eighteen, and that one of their children died of the plague. We know that he left Stratford to seek his fortune in London, and eventually...

"A twenty-first-century Highsmith, Virginia Feito conjures the unforgettable Mrs. March, an Upper East Side housewife whose life is shattered by her husband's latest novel. In this astonishing debut, the venerable but gossipy New York literary scene is twisted into a claustrophobic fun house of paranoia, horror, and wickedly dark humor. George March's latest novel is a smash. No one is prouder than Mrs. March, his doting wife. But one morning, the...

"Through his alcoholism and her mental illness, his career lows and her institutional confinement, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's devotion to each other endured for more than twenty-two years. Here now, for the first time, is the story of their love in the couple's own letters. Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda consists of more than 75 percent previously unpublished or out-of-print letters as well as extensive narrative on the Fitzgeralds' marriage by the...

In a tribute to his late wife, Alice, and their relationship, the author celebrates the life of a remarkable woman who played a vital role in his life.

On the day of famed writer Alfred Gibson's public funeral, his estranged widow, Dorothea (Dodo), sits alone in her small London apartment, reminiscing about the One and Only. Although caring deeply about his public image as a family man, Alfred's actual relationship with his brood is fraught by his egomaniacal demands and philandering, his career eclipsing everything else. Dodo wishes she could climb onto the page, become one of her husband's protagonists...