The last installment of Scharnhorst's three-volume biography chronicles the life of Samuel Clemens between his family's extended trip to Europe in 1891 and his death in 1910. During this period, Clemens grapples with bankruptcy, the lecture circuit, loses two daughters and his wife, and writes some of his darkest, most critical works.

In mid-fourteenth century Yorkshire, the plague wipes out half the inhabitants of a remote village. Left behind, a twelve-year-old shepherd boy survives a brutal winter and keeps his flock alive. In the years that follow, he struggles to reconnect with life. He tells his story in a sequence of eighty-four sonnets.

In the spring of 1871, Ralph Waldo Emerson took month-and-a-half-long tour of California - an interlude that became one of the highlights of his life. Engaging and compelling, this travelogue makes it clear that Emerson was still capable of wonder, surprise, and friendship, debunking the presumed darkness of his last decade.

From advertising exec in the city to charcoal burner in the woods: a frank and inspiring memoir about letting go of what we're told to want, risking everything to find happiness and the brutal salve of nature.