Joseph Delaney used to be an English teacher, before becoming the best-selling author of the Spook's series, which has been published in 30 countries and sold over 4.5 million copies worldwide. The first book, The Spook's Apprentice, was adapted into a major motion picture starring Jeff Bridges and Julianne Moore.

Joseph Delaney

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Ruth Jones

James Corden

Gavin & Stacey’ is a TV series like no other. Now, for the first time, its creators James Corden and Ruth Jones tell the full extraordinary story of how they turned their little show into a full-on cultural phenomenon. 
 
As they recount the rejection, obstacles and challenges they faced on the way to giving birth to their beloved comedy creation, James and Ruth also explore the flourishing of their own real-life friendship. While their now legendary on-screen characters Nessa and Smithy had a profound awkwardness to negotiate, culminating in that marriage proposal in the 2019 Christmas special, Ruth and James forged a magical relationship of mutual support based also on a deep, shared sense of subversive fun. 
 
Here, from their tentative initial pitch to the emotionally overwhelming final day of filming, the duo detail what’s occurred every step of the way, bouncing off each other in inimitable style. Full of revelations and never-before-heard stories, this is a one-of-a-kind book about a show that’s already gone down in history.

When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between

A Story of Love and Friendship

Joe Wilkinson

Henry Paker

‘Joyfully absurd and hilarious.’ ADAM KAY 
'One of the funniest things I’ve ever read. It is brilliant.' CLAUDIA WINKLEMAN 
 
Here before you is Joe Wilkinson's brilliantly absurd and utterly fictional account of his time on - and briefly off - planet Earth. 
 
Through cartoon stories (illustrated by Henry Paker) Joe recounts the defining moments and bizarre encounters of his imaginary life – from his schoolboy misfortunes to his formative years on the dating scene, to his money-making schemes and globetrotting adventures. 
 
With tall stories including… 
 
-Winning ‘most nits’ at school 
-That time I threw a turd into a tornado 
-Becoming the bad boy of fly tipping 
-The disastrous double date 
-My car airbag addiction 
-The time I tunnelled too far out of prison and ended up in the prison next door 
-The real reason Bigfoot went into hiding 
 
…this book is a delightfully absurd journey into the mind of a comic maverick. 
 
Hilarious, heart-warming and utterly unique, Joe Wilkinson: My Autobiography is the off-the-wall life story of one of our most beloved and unorthodox comedians.

My (Illustrated) Autobiography

Prince Harry The Duke of Sussex

It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow-and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling-and how their lives would play out from that point on. 
 
For Harry, this is that story at last. 
 
Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness-and, because he blamed the press for his mother's death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. 
 
At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn't find true love. 
 
Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple's cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . . 
 
For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

Spare

Kitty Kelley

For the first time, the most secretive and powerful dynasty in American history has all of its secrets revealed. This is the book the Bush family do not want you to read. 
 
Over the past one hundred years, the Bush family have made millions of dollars, dominated the US government, and created a legacy unlike any other American family. Prescott Bush was a two-time Senator from Connecticut who had the ear of Dwight D. Eisenhower and tangled with Joe McCarthy. His son, George H.W. was a congressman, the head of the CIA, Vice-President under Ronald Reagan and then the 41st President of the United States. One of his sons, Jeb, is governor of Florida and almost certainly a future presidential candidate. The eldest son, George W., is the 43rd president - possibly the most polarizing and controversial head of state in American history. How did these men - backed and often controlled by strong and single-minded women - rise to power? How did they manoeuvre their way from Yale and the secretive Skull and Bones through back door politics, the CIA, and the White House to have so much control over international politics? The answers are startling. 
 
Kitty Kelley has written a compelling portrait of a family addicted to wealth and power. From Prescott Bush's lies about his heroism during the First World War, and George Bush senior's relationship with his wife Barbara, his unsuccessful campaign for Texas senator and his actions as the head of the CIA, the Vice-President and President of the United States, to his sons' current positions of power and influence in US politics. George Bush junior's successes and failures have had closer public scrutiny than any other member of the family, but Kitty Kelley leaves no stone unturned in her examination of his childhood, his relationship with his parents, his party days at Andover and Yale, his business dealings, his rise to political power and his performance as the 43rd President of the United States.

The Family: The Real Story Of The Bush Dynasty

T.J. English

Even among the Mob, the Westies were feared. Out of a partnership between two sadistic thugs - James Coonan and Mickey Featherstone - the gang dominated the decaying slice of New York City's West Side known as Hell's Kitchen in the 1970s and '80s. Excelling in extortion, numbers running, loansharking and drug-peddling, they became the most notorious gang in the history of organized crime. The then prosecutor Rudolf Giuliani called them 'the most savage organisation in the long history of New York street gangs'. Upping the ante on brutality and depravity, their speciality when it came to punishment and killings was dismemberment. Their reign lasted almost twenty - their end would come as their own violent natures got the best of them and precipitated a downfall as infamous as their rise. This revised and updated edition, brings the story of the Westies up to date with 'where are they now' snapshots of the men - and women - of the Westies.

The Westies

Inside New York's Irish Mob

Christopher Fowler

Christopher Fowler's memoir captures life in suburban London as it has rarely been seen: through the eyes of a lonely boy who spends his days between the library and the cinema, devouring novels, comics, cereal packets - anything that might reveal a story. 
Caught between an ever-sensible but exhausted mother and a DIY-obsessed father fighting his own demons, Christopher takes refuge in words. His parents try to understand their son's peculiar obsessions, but fast lose patience with him - and each other. The war of nerves escalates to include every member of the Fowler family, and something has to give, but does it mean that a boy must always give up his dreams for the tough lessons of real life? 
Beautifully written, this rich and astute evocation of a time and a place recalls a childhood at once entertainingly eccentric and endearingly ordinary.

Paperboy

Cherry Simmonds

NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is the hand-on-heart, honest, charming and occasionally tear-inducingly tragic, often laugh out loud funny story of what it was like to grow up in Liverpool in the 1950s and '60s as the youngest child in a large and somewhat eccentric Anglo-Irish family: Cherry's father would while away the hours playing his guitar in the outside loo until the pubs opened while her mother seemed to be either menopausal or depressed or both, and devoted most of her energies into saving for a divorce or her own business - whichever came cheapest! Capturing the despondency and deprivations of post-war England as embodied in the back streets of Liverpool and the subsequent vibrancy and liberation of the swinging sixties - the decade of the Beatles, national strikes and Liverpool FC winning the FA cup for the first time - this is an ebullient tale told by a natural storyteller. NOBODY IN PARTICULAR is not only a funny, affecting and nicely self-deprecating personal story (peopled by some splendidly observed larger-than-life characters - her family) but also a rather wonderful slice of social history, evoking a bygone yet still familiar and fondly remembered era.

Nobody In Particular

Sarah Gristwood

Discover the incredible, forgotten true story of England’s lost queen and in-depth account of a key figure in Tudor history, perfect for readers of Alison Weir. 
 
‘A powerful story of the dynastic insecurity of the Tudors and Stuart' The Sunday Times 
 
'This is historical biography at its best...Don't miss it' Alison Weir 
 
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Lady Arbella Stuart’s royal bloodline suggested a glorious future. 
 
A descendant of Henry VII, niece to Mary Queen of Scots, and granddaughter to the great Tudor dynast Bess of Hardwick, Arbella was brought up in the belief that she would inherit Elizabeth I's throne. 
 
When this did not become reality, she briefly gained the independence she craved at the heart of Jacobean society. 
 
But then she made the mistake of angering her cousin, the newly crowned King James I, by secretly marrying another distant heir, William Seymour, thus strengthening her claim to the throne. 
The consequences would be deadly. 
 
A tale of forbidden love, disguised escape and wild flight, to an agonizing imprisonment and death in the Tower in 1615, this is the beguiling biography of an extraordinary woman who became a pawn in the power struggles of her time. 
 
Meticulously researched and drawing on a wide variety of sources, Arbella brings to life a woman who, despite the turmoil in her life, strove to love freely, speak her wrongs loudly, and - rare for a woman of her time - take charge of her own destiny. 
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Praise for Arbella: England’s Lost Queen: 
 
‘An enthralling account of an extraordinary life' Spectator 
 
‘A Jacobean tragedy … Fresh, vivid and beautifully detailed … Gristwood conveys it with exactly the right mixture of suspense and sympathy.’ Independent 
 
'Well researched and stimulating...A sad but enthralling story' Evening Standard

Arbella: England's Lost Queen

Terry Darlington

At seventy-five, Terry and Monica Darlington had done everything they could think of doing, including starting a business and becoming athletes and running a literary society.Lately they had become boating adventurers and Terry a bestselling writer. But in their Midlands canal town in November, life was looking dull and short on surprises. 
Then their famous canal boat was destroyed by fire. Within a few days they had bought a new one and soon headed north in the Phyllis May 2 – to Liverpool, Lancaster, the Pennines and Wigan Pier. Terry recorded the journey, and alongside it the story of his life and his marriage and his dog Jim, with his broken ear like a flat cap, and Monica’s dog Jess, known with heartbreaking reason as the Flying Catastrophe. 
Funny, affecting and beautifully told, this is a story that brims with incident and excitement, and is full of the famous and fascinating people the Darlingtons have met - a story of an adventurous life well lived.

Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier

Kevin James Thornton

From comedian and TikTok star Kevin James Thornton comes a hilarious and heartfelt story of growing up in a Christian fundamentalist church, turning trauma into comedy, and finding your own way. 
 
Growing up in the 90s in a small town in Indiana, Kevin James Thornton had little notion he would one day make a career as a comedian. Like most kids in his deeply Christian town, his free time revolved around his church community—drinking Messiah Macchiatos at the youth group cafe, bedazzling his jacket with the words “Jesus Is Lord,” and evangelizing in the streets of Spanish Harlem dressed as a sin-themed clown. But when he started to question his sexuality, life became complicated. Kevin began to realize that the community that raised him might never truly accept him. 
 
What follows is a winding story of self-discovery, following Thornton from a revelatory summer in New York City to the transformative years of college—where he finds like-minded people, a knack for performance, and first loves—all the way to adulthood, where he navigates complicated relationships, finds his way into the comedy scene, and forms a special bond with a black cat named Comet (who might just have the power to travel between dimensions). Through it all, he redefines himself again and again, realizing that few things go as planned, and that “driving off into the sunset” is never really the end of the story. 
 
Told in his unique brand of brash but emotionally honest humor, and filled with 90s nostalgia, Big Baby is a coming-of-age tale that speaks to anyone who feels like they don’t fit in.

Big Baby

Souad

When Souad was seventeen she fell in love. In her village, as in so many others, sex before marriage was considered a grave dishonour to one's family and was punishable by death. This was her crime. Her brother-in-law was given the task of arranging her punishment. One morning while Souad was washing the family's clothes, he crept up on her, poured petrol over her and set her alight. 
 
In the eyes of their community he was a hero. An execution for a 'crime of honour' was a respectable duty unlikely to bring about condemnation from others. It certainly would not have provoked calls for his prosecution. More than five thousand cases of such honour killings are reported around the world each year and many more take place that we hear nothing about. 
 
Miraculously, Souad survived rescued by the women of her village, who put out the flames and took her to a local hospital. Horrifically burned, and abandoned by her family and community, it was only the intervention of a European aid worker that enabled Souad to receive the care and sanctuary she so desperately needed and to start her life again. She has now decided to tell her story and uncover the barbarity of honour killings, a practice which continues to this day. 
 
Burned Alive is a shocking testimony, a true story of almost unbelievable cruelty. It speaks of amazing courage and fortitude and of one woman's determination to survive. It is also a call to break the taboo of silence that surrounds this most brutal of practices and which ignores the plight of so many other women who are also victims of traditional violence.

Burned Alive

Janet Gleeson

The life of Harriet Spencer, Countess of Bessborough, was one of both respectability and high scandal. The aristocracy of the eighteenth century were the A-list celebrities of the day; their lives, loves, fashions and misfortunes avidly reported in the press. They dominated the political world as well as the social, and Harriet was at the very heart of this powerful clique. She was born into the wealth and privilege of the Spencer family - and was the great-great-great-aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales. Following in the train of her sister, the charismatic Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Harriet became one of the most glamorous and influential women of the Regency age. 
 
At a time when marriage was an aristocratic woman's only career choice, Harriet made an excellent match, to Frederick, Viscount Duncannon. But the marriage proved unhappy and Harriet soon embarked on a series of illicit affairs, including one with the charismatic playwright Richard Sheridan. In Naples she met and fell in love with the handsome young aristocrat Lord Granville Leveson Gower, a man twelve years her junior. And so began the affair that became the last, untold story of enduring love in the Regency period, an open secret within just a tiny circle. It only ended when Granville married her niece, Georgiana's daughter, taking into his care the two illegitimate children he had by Harriet. 
 
Harriet's was a life intertwined with public scandal, royal intrigue and high political drama. She was petted and spoiled by Marie Antoinette; she witnessed the French Revolution and George III's madness. She successfully dodged the Prince Regent's amorous advances; quarrelled bitterly with Byron, when her daughter Caroline Lamb embarked on a scandalous affair with him; and travelled through war-torn Europe during the rise and fall of Napoleon. She survived her sister Georgiana by twenty years, living to see the Battle of Waterloo and the coronation of George IV. An Aristocratic Affair opens a window on aristocratic life at its most intimate, and brings one of the Regency period's most colourful characters vividly to life.

An Aristocratic Affair

Ronan Tynan

In Halfway Home, Ronan Tynan, a member of the enormously popular Irish Tenors, shares his moving life story - a story Barbara Walters calls 'so amazing you may find it hard to believe' - of overcoming adversity and attaining worldwide success in several different fields. 
 
Diagnosed with a lower-limb disability at birth, Tynan had his legs amputated below the knee when he was twenty years old. Eight weeks later, he was climbing the stairs of his college dormitory, and within a year, he was winning races in the Paralympic Games, amassing eighteen gold medals and fourteen world records. After becoming the first disabled person ever admitted to the National College of Physical Education, he served a short stint in the prosthetics industry and began a new career in medicine. He continued his studies at Trinity College, where he specialized in orthopaedic sports injuries. 
 
After earning his medical degree, Tynan chose music for the next act in his life. Less than one year after he began studying voice, he won both the John McCormack Cup for Tenor Voice and the BBC talent show Go For It. He went on to win the prestigious International Operatic Singing Competition in France, and in 1998 his debut Sony album, My Life Belongs to You, became a top-five hit in England within just two weeks and eventually went platinum. Later that year, he was invited to join The Irish Tenors, furthering a journey that started in a small Irish village and has brought him to the world's grandest stages.

Halfway Home

Steve James

In 1999, England slumped to a new low in their tumultuous cricket history. Defeat at home by a mediocre New Zealand team saw them fall to the bottom of the world Test rankings, below even Zimbabwe. Yet only just over a decade later, England reached the top. It was a remarkable and profound transformation, brought about largely by two men with an insatiable desire to succeed, Duncan Fletcher and Andy Flower. 
 
In The Plan, Steve James tells the story of the renaissance of English cricket from a unique perspective. As the former batting partner of ECB managing director Hugh Morris, a player under Fletcher at Glamorgan and Flower's closest confidant in the press corps, James is the perfect analyst of this period in cricket history. From crucial choices of captain to innovative coaching and a complete overhaul of training and preparation for matches, it is the tale of a refusal to be second best. 
 
And in examining Fletcher and Flower's background in Zimbabwe, where James himself played, he uncovers the continental shift behind the turnaround. It is the story of how English steel was melded with African fire to create the most potent combination in world cricket.

The Plan: How Fletcher and Flower Transformed English Cricket

Ian Denys Peek

In February 1942, Singapore fell to the Japanese. Denys Peek and his brother were just two of tens of thousands of British and Commonwealth soldiers and citizens taken prisoner. 
Eight months later, he and his comrades were packed into steel goods wagons and transported by rail to Siam. They were to become part of the slave labour force destined for the massive construction project that would later become infamous as the Burma Thailand Railway. He would spend the next three years in over fifteen different work and 'hospital' camps on the railway, stubbornly refusing to give in and die in a place where over 20,000 prisoners of war and uncounted slave labourers met their deaths. 
Narrated in the present tense and written with clarity, passion and a remarkable eye for detail, Denys Peek has vividly recreated not just the hardships and horrors of the railway and the daily struggle for survival but also the comradeship, spirit and humour of the men who worked on it. It stands as a haunting, evocative and deeply moving testimony to the suffering of those who lived and died there - a salutary reminder of man's potential for inhumanity to his fellow man.

One Fourteenth Of An Elephant

Howard Reid

On 6 April 1943, Ian Reid, an officer in the Black Watch, was wounded and captured in Tunisia and sent off to an Italian prisoner-of-war camp. Five months later, when the Germans took over the camp as the Italians pulled out of the war, he escaped. So began a life-or-death game of hide and seek in the heart of the beautiful Italian countryside, living in barns, sleeping in ditches and desperate scavenging for food. He was recaptured - though heroically he was to escape from the Germans a total of five times. 
 
Nearly sixty years later, Howard Reid quite literally followed in his father's footsteps and made the same journey across Italy - though in a rather more relaxed fashion. Starting near Modena, he travelled to Florence and through Chianti, Siena and Orvieto to Rome and beyond, painting an intimate portrait of his extraordinary father and getting closer to the truth of his amazing escapades, which were the subject of a bestselling book in the 1950s. 
 
Along the way, as we are shown the real, modern Italy, Howard mused on father-son relationships, and the deep but invisible scars left by two world wars on each of our personal histories. This poignant and engrossing book is a must for everyone who has ever asked (or wanted, too late, to ask) the question 'What did you do in the war, Dad?'

Dad's War

Paul O'Grady

THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER 
 
'Warmly funny, dry and mischievous . . . Genuine and brilliant.' Daily Mail 
 
Paul O'Grady is one of Britain's very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul O'Grady Show on Channel 4 or the massive hit ITV show, For the Love of Dogs. 
 
 
Now, in his own unique voice, Paul O'Grady tells story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that started him on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a brilliantly evoked, hilarious and often moving tale of gossip in the back yard, bragging in the corner shop and slanging matches on the front doorstep, populated by larger-than-life characters with hearts of gold and tongues as sharp as razors. 
 
At My Mother's Knee features an unforgettable cast of rogues, rascals, lovers, fighters, saints and sinners - and one iconic bus conductress. It's a book which really does have something for everyone and which reminds us that, when all's said and done, there's a bit of savage in all of us... 
 
Readers love At My Mother's Knee: 
 
'I laughed, I cried, I couldn't put it down and the characters really just jumped out of the page.' ***** 
'Candid, heart warming and also hilarious.' ***** 
'Wonderfully written, laugh out loud funny and poignant by turns.' *****

At My Mother's Knee...And Other Low Joints

Tales from Paul’s mischievous young years

Ron Haslam

Leon Haslam

'Rocket' Ron Haslam started racing on the professional circuit in 1972 at the age of 15 and developed into one of the finest, and fastest, racers the UK has ever seen. Winner of three World titles and four British championships, as well as a record six Macau GPs, he rode in more than 100 Grands Prix. Despite tragically losing two of his brothers in motorbike accidents, Haslam kept on riding, setting speed records wherever he went. 
 
His son, Leon, the 'Pocket Rocket', is following in his father's extremely speedy footsteps. A national Motorcross champion and national Scooter champion at the age of just 14, he became the youngest ever rider to compete in the 500cc World Championship and is now one of Britain's top racers, competing for Stiggy Honda in the World Superbike Championship. 
 
This is the extraordinary story of a father and a son who are addicted to motorbikes, with all the thrills and spills, miraculous escapes and multiple broken bones that involves. Both colourful characters, their story takes us all the way from the 1970s to today and is full of hilarious high-octane derring-do, a cast of characters including legends like Fast Freddie Spencer and Barry Sheene, and nothing less than terrifying but exhilarating adventure.

Rocket Men

Sarah MacDonald

After backpacking her way around India, 21-year-old Sarah Macdonald decided that she hated this land of chaos and contradiction with a passion, and when an airport beggar read her palm and insisted she would come back one day - and for love - she vowed never to return. 
 
But twelve years later the prophecy comes true when her partner, ABC's South Asia correspondent, is posted to New Delhi, the most polluted city on earth. Having given up a blossoming radio career in Sydney to follow her new boyfriend to India, it seems like the ultimate sacrifice and it almost kills Sarah - literally. After being cursed by a sadhu smeared in human ashes, she nearly dies from double pneumonia. It's enough to send a rapidly balding atheist on a wild rollercoaster ride through India's many religions in search of the meaning of life and death. 
 
From the 'brain enema' of a meditation retreat in Dharamsala to the biggest Hindu festival on earth on the steps of the Ganges in Varanasi, and with the help of the Dalai Lama, a goddess of healing hugs and a couple of Bollywood stars - among many, many others - Sarah discovers a hell of a lot more.

Holy Cow!

An Indian Adventure

Dave Bassett

Wally Downes

'If we can sell Newcastle Brown to Japan, and if Wimbledon can make it to the First Division, there is surely no achievement beyond our reach.' Margaret Thatcher 
 
The Crazy Gang is the story of a football miracle. Promoted to the Football League in 1977, Wimbledon FC was a small team from south London that against the odds went all the way to the top of the First Division, then to win the FA Cup, in only just over a decade. With no money, scant resources and a blend of youth players and offcuts from other clubs, they were christened 'Rag-Arse Rovers'. They played hard on the pitch and partied hard off it. 
 
Dave 'Harry' Bassett was the manager who drilled a fierce fighting spirit into his players, an unbreakable team ethos, but he was also an underrated master tactician and pioneer of innovative training methods. Wally Downes was the midfield fulcrum of the Dons, but also the ringleader for the various acts of debauchery and general silliness that earned the club their reputation. 
 
In The Crazy Gang, Harry and Wally are joined by a host of former Wimbledon players and staff, both famous names like Vinnie Jones, Lawrie Sanchez and Dave Beasant, but also unsung heroes in the club's history, to tell it as it really was. This is real football, the way fans remember it, and a world away from multimillionaire Premier League primadonnas.

The Crazy Gang

Michael Calvin

Naftali Schiff

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
'A dramatic, poignant and astonishing untold story of the Holocaust.' SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE 
 
‘Extraordinary. One of the most haunting episodes of the war.’ DAILY MAIL 
 
'The remarkable story of a unique event - the reprieve of 51 Hungarian Jewish teenagers already naked and trapped inside the gas chambers.' PROFESSOR ROBERT JAN VAN PELT 
 
An unforgettable testament to hope and the bonds of brotherhood, Miracle reveals the untold story of the boys who escaped the gas chamber in Auschwitz, the only known group of Holocaust survivors to walk away from the jaws of the Nazi killing machine. 
 
Early on the morning of October 10, 1944, eight-hundred boys, aged between 13 and 17, were taken out of Block 11 at Auschwitz. The night before, during a visit by Dr Josef Mengele, their identification cards had been stamped with a solitary German word – gestorben – 'died' in English. They were then marched by 25 bayonet-wielding SS men to Crematorium 5, stripped, and herded into a gas chamber. 
 
This book is the story of a true-life miracle of the fifty-one boys who were pulled from that gas chamber – the only Holocaust survivors known to have escaped such a close brush with the Nazi killing machine – and given a second chance at life. A life, of course, that would be so horrifically snatched from those around them. 
 
Based on the first-hand testimonies of six of the boys, six survivors whose stories are shared in this book for the very first time, Miracle interweaves the lives of the boys and the grander sweep of history in which they were held. The result is an unforgettable tale of hope, faith and fortitude in the face of one of the worst crimes against humanity. 
 
‘Astonishing. A powerful book.’ JEWISH NEWS 
 
'A truly extraordinary story.' JAMES O'BRIEN 
 
‘The remarkable but harrowing true story. Extraordinary.’ TIMES RADIO

Miracle

The Boys Who Escaped the Gas Chamber in Auschwitz

Alicia Appleman-Jurman

'This memoir is heartbreaking.' Elie Wiesel, author of Night 
 
Alicia Jurman is five-years-old when her story begins. It is 1935 and she is living in the East Polish town of Buczacz. Although brought up in an atmosphere of anti-Semitism, nothing could have prepared her for the Russian invasion of Poland and the full horror of the Nazi Occupation. 
 
At thirteen, while fleeing the Nazis through war-ravaged Poland, Alicia began saving the lives of strangers. Her family cruelly wrenched from her, Alicia rescued other Jews from the Gestapo, led them to safe hideouts, and lent them her courage and hope. Even the sight of her mother's brutal murder could not quash this remarkable child's faith in human goodness - or her determination to prevail against overwhelming odds. 
 
After the war, Alicia continued to risk her life, leading Polish Jews on an underground route to freedom in Palestine. She swore on her brother's grave that if she survived, she would speak for her silenced family. This book is the eloquent fulfilment of that oath.

Alicia

Memoirs of A Survivor

Elizabeth Kim

I don't know how old I was when I watched my mother's murder, nor do I know how old I am today.' 
 
The illegitimate daughter of a peasant and an American GI, Elizabeth Kim spent her early years as a social outcast in her village in the Korean countryside. Ostracized by their family and neighbours, she and her mother were regularly pelted with stones on their way home from the rice fields. Yet there was a tranquil happiness in the intense bond between mother and daughter. Until the day that Elizabeth's grandfather and uncle came to punish her mother from the dishonour she had brought on the family, and executed her in front of her daughter. 
 
Elizabeth was dumped in an orphanage in Seoul. After some time, she was lucky enough to be adopted by an American couple. But when she arrived in America she found herself once again surrounded by fanaticism and prejudice. 
 
Elizabeth's mother had always told her that life was made up of ten thousand joys as well as ten thousand sorrows, and, supported by her loving daughter, and by a return to her Buddhist faith, she finally found a way to savour those joys, as well as the courage to exorcise the demons of her past.

Ten Thousand Sorrows

Few relationships fire our imagination like that of Elizabeth I and her 'bonnie sweet Robin' - the Earl of Leicester, Robert Dudley. 
 
Almost immediately after she became queen, Elizabeth's infatuation with the married Earl became the subject of letters from scandalized ambassadors. And when Dudley's wife, Amy, died a mere two years later under suspicious circumstances many speculated that Elizabeth and Robert would marry. 
 
They never did, although by the time Robert died he had been Elizabeth's councillor and commander of her army, had sat by her bed in sickness and represented her on state occasions. But she had also humiliated him, made him dance attendance on her other suitors, and tried to have him clapped in prison when he finally broke loose and married again. 
 
Elizabeth and Leicester is a portrait - at times a startlingly intimate one - of the tie between two of the people who forced their age; of a relationship where, unusually, a woman held all the power; of an edgy yet enduring love that still speaks to us today.

Elizabeth & Leicester

Rosemary Bailey

'I wake to the sun striking gold on a stone wall. If I lean out of the window I can see Mount Canigou newly iced with snow. It is wonderful to live in a building with windows all around, to see both sunrise and sunset, to be constantly aware of the passage of the sun and moon.' 
 
In 1988, Rosemary Bailey and her husband were travelling in the French Pyrenees when they fell in love with, and subsequently bought, a ruined medieval monastery, surrounded by peach orchards and snow-capped peaks. Traces of the monks were everywhere, in the frescoed 13th century chapel, the buried crypt, the stone arches of the cloister. 
 
For the next few years the couple visited Corbiac whenever they could, until in 1997, they took the plunge and moved from central London to rural France with their six-year-old son. Entirely reliant on their earnings as freelance writers, they put their Apple Macs in the room with the fewest leaks and sent Theo to the village school. With vision and determination they have restored the monastery to its former glory, testing their relationship and resolve to the limit, and finding unexpected inspiration in the place. 
 
Life in a Postcard is not just Rosemary Bailey's enthralling account of the challenges of life in a small mountain community, but also a celebration of the rugged beauty of French Catalonia, the pleasures of Catalan cooking, and an exploration of an alternative, often magical world.

Life In A Postcard

E P F Lynch

'It's the end of the 1916 winter and the conditions are almost unbelievable. We live in a world of Somme mud. We sleep in it, work in it, fight in it, wade in it and many of us die in it. We see it, feel it, eat it and curse it, but we can't escape it, not even by dying...' 
Edward Lynch enlisted when he was just 18 - one of thousands of fresh-faced men who were proudly waved off by the crowds as they embarked for France. It was 1916 and the majority had no idea of the reality of the Somme trenches, of the traumatised soldiers they would encounter there, of the innumerable, awful contradictions of war. Private Lynch was one of those who survived, and on his return home, wrote Somme Mud in pencil in over 20 school exercise books, perhaps in the hope of coming to terms with all that he had witnessed there? 
Written from the perspective of an ordinary 'Tommy' and told with dignity, candour and surprising wit, Somme Mud is a testament to the human spirit: for out of the mud that threatened to suck out a man's soul rises a compelling story of humanity and friendship. 
For all who are marking the centenary of the Great War, it is a rare and precious find.

Somme Mud

Pang-Mei Natasha Chang

After long afternoons spent with her great-aunt Yu-i, Pang-Mei, a first-generation Chinese-American, paints this unforgettable saga of a woman, born in Shanghai at the turn of the century to a well-to-do family, who continually defied the expectations of her class and culture. 
 
'In China, a woman is nothing,' began Yu-i over tea and dumplings. 'This is the first lesson I want to give so that you will understand.' Growing up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emperor and the Communist Revolution, Yu-i led a life marked by a series of rebellions that changed the course of her life, including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. And as Yu-i confides her innermost dreams and demons to her great-niece in this dual memoir, the deeply textured portrait of a woman's life in China is blended with the very Western story of a young woman's search for identity and belonging.

Bound Feet And Western Dress

Joshua M Greene

'The soundtrack of [Harrison's] spiritual journey begins with the explosions of battle and ends, fifty-eight years later with the harmonies of eternal peace. And like all good stories, this one starts when the hero was just a child.' 
 
In Here Comes the Sun Joshua Greene sheds new light on the most mysterious of the Beatles, George Harrison, and provides a unique portrait of the man through his music and his spiritual quest. 
 
As Greene looks back at Harrison's early life and the years he spent growing up in an impoverished, post-war Liverpool, he follows the path taken by the quietly rebellious teenage, the experiences and friendships that helped to shape his destiny and, of course, explores Harrison's rollercoaster ride to fame as a member of the legendary Beatles. He also draws on scores of previously unpublished transcripts of recorded conversations, first-hand accounts and fresh anecdotes about Harrison and other musical greats such as Dylan and Presley. 
 
Poignant, insightful, and written with an immediacy that captures the very essence of the 'quiet one', Here Comes the Sun gives us an unprecedented close-up of Harrison's often underrated contribution to the Beatles' legacy, and his spiritual awakening through Indian music, mysticism and meditation.

Here Comes The Sun

A J Baime

'The story of Truman’s accession to the presidency is worthy of a Hollywood melodrama, and A J Baime’s zippy, well-judged and hugely readable book more than does it justice...' - Dominic Sandbrook, SUNDAY TIMES 
 
Heroes are often defined as ordinary characters who find themselves facing extraordinary circumstances and, through courage and a dash of luck, cement their place in history. Chosen as President Roosevelt's fourth term Vice President for his admired work ethic, good judgement and lack of enemies, Harry S. Truman was the prototypical ordinary man from small-town America. That is, until he was thrust in over his head following the sudden death of Roosevelt. 
 
With the world still caught up in the inferno of the Second World War, Truman found himself playing the roles of both judge and jury during the founding of the UN, the Potsdam Conference, the Manhattan Project, the German surrender, the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the decision to drop the Bomb and bring the war to the end. 
 
Tightly focused, meticulously researched and drawing on documentation not available to previous biographers, The Accidental President escorts readers into the situation room with Truman during this tumultuous, history-making four months - when the stakes were high and the challenges even higher . . .

The Accidental President

Frank Gardner

On the June 6, 2004, while on assignment in Riyadh, BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were ambushed by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was hit in the shoulder and leg. As he lay in the dust, a figure stood over him and pumped four more bullets into his body at point-blank range... 
 
Against all the odds, Frank Gardner survived. 
 
Today, although partly paralysed, Frank continues to travel the world, reporting and making documentaries for the BBC. This acclaimed memoir was brought up to date with a new chapter that recounted his return to Saudi Arabia for the first time since he was shot and the story he tells continues to move and inspire, and remains an affirmation of his deep understanding of - and affection for - the Islamic world in these uncertain times. 
___ 
 
 
'Gardner tells his remarkable tale well and bravely, with an astonishing lack of anger and enduring love and respect for the Islamic world' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'Brave, unsentimental and genuinely inspiring' EVENING STANDARD 
'What makes Gardner's moving, often humorous, deeply personal story so important is the fact that he has woven into it a brilliantly dispassionate, clear-eyed account of the Islamic world' SCOTSMAN 
'A witty, self-deprecating, inspiring testament' DAILY TELEGRAPH

Blood and Sand

The BBC security correspondent’s own extraordinary and inspiring story

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