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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Josefina Rivera

'I stood there for a moment, silently speaking to myself: Josefina, you will survive this. You are strong. You are a fighter. You adapt.' 
 
As a young mum-of-three, Josefina Rivera was determined to get her troubled life back on track. But then she met Gary Heidnik and the next four months became a living nightmare. 
 
 Along with five women Josefina was held captive in a cellar where she was starved, beaten, and repeatedly raped to fulfil Heidnik’s desire of creating a ‘family’ of ten children. 
 
Cellar Girl is the shocking but ultimately inspiring story of how one brave, young woman saved herself and others from a life worse than hell.

Cellar Girl

Audrey Delaney

'I could see what he was doing to the other girls because he had been doing it to me for as long as I could remember' 
 
At just six years of age, Audrey Delaney's childhood was cut tragically short when her father first abused her. What followed was a lifetime of pain and betrayal at the hands of the very man who should have protected her. Too young to know right from wrong, the only thing Audrey knew for sure was that her father's actions left her feeling sordid and guilty. When she saw him touching other girls, this innocent child felt that she was to blame. 
 
Then finally, after years of harbouring her father's shocking secret, Audrey found the courage to go public. All My Fault is the inspiring and triumphant account of a scared and hurt little girl who managed to confront her demons and reclaim her life.

All My Fault

The True Story of a Sadistic Father and a Little Girl Left Destroyed

Simon Goddard

They had just a few hundred pounds, one band missing a drummer, a sock drawer for an office, more dreams than sense and not a clue between them how to run a record company. But when Alan Horne and Edwyn Collins decided to start their own label from a shabby Glasgow flat in 1979, nobody was going to stand in their way. 
 
Postcard Records was the mad, makeshift and quite preposterous result. Launching the careers of Orange Juice, Aztec Camera and cult heroes Josef K, the self-styled ‘Sound of Young Scotland’ stuck it to the London music biz and, quite by accident, kickstarted the 1980s indie music revolution. 
 
Simon Goddard has interviewed everyone involved in the making of the Postcard legend to tell this thrilling rock’n’roll story of punk audacity, knickerbocker glories, broken windscreens, raccoon-fur hats, comedy, violence and creating something beautiful from nothing, against all the odds.

Simply Thrilled

The Preposterous Story of Postcard Records

Edward Conlon

'Superb. The most stunning memoir ever written about the cop world' 
Joseph Wambaugh 
 
'Beautiful and inspiring, terrifying and heartbreaking' 
James Frey 
 
'More chilling than even the most realistic cop dramas on TV' 
People 
 
'A great book...with the testimonial force equal to that of Michael Herr's Dispatches' Time 
 
Blue Blood is the fast-paced, insider story of Edward Conlon's career in the New York Police Department. Conlon tells of his first days as a rookie, walking a beat in the south Bronx through his time in narcotics and his ascent to gold shield detective. Conlon is the product of generations involved in law enforcement, good cops and bad, and he paints a vivid portrait of the teeming street life of the city, in all its horror and splendour. It's all here: adrenaline-fuelled chases, toxic police politics, crackhead informants and police camaraderie. The pace is relentless, the stories hypnotic, the scope nothing less than monumental.

Blue Blood

Stephan Talty

Discover the truth about the Black Hand, as featured in Peaky Blinders 
 
Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. 
 
Standing between the American public and the Black Hand’s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand’s activities spread far beyond New York’s borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country’s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino’s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand’s power would take him all the way to Sicily—but at a terrible cost. 
 
Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.

The Black Hand

Doug Gold

'An unforgettable love story set in perilous times' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz 
 
The greatest love blossoms in the darkest hour. 
 
In the heart of Nazi-occupied Europe, two people meet fleetingly in a chance encounter. One is an underground resistance fighter; the other a prisoner of war. A crumpled note passes between these two strangers and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever. 
 
The Note Through the Wire is the stunning true story of Josefine Lobnik, a resistance heroine, and Bruce Murray, an imprisoned soldier, as they discover love in the midst of a brutal war. Woven through their story of great bravery, daring escapes, betrayal, torture and retaliation is their remarkable love that survived against all odds.

The Note Through The Wire

The unforgettable true love story of a WW2 prisoner of war and a resistance heroine

James Salant

Leaving Dirty Jersey is the compellingly crafted tale of James Salant's descent into crystal meth addiction. Written at the age of only twenty-two, this memoir chronicles his year-long addiction with complete honesty and heartbreaking candour. 
 
Brought up in a stable, middle-class family, the second son of two therapists, he was introduced to heroin at seventeen by his brother Joe. This resulted in a spell in rehab where he met a bunch of ex-convicts, and he soon fell into the thuggish, drifting lifestyle of meth addiction. It was to take a near-psychotic event to finally get him to clean up. 
 
With graphic descriptions of life on crystal meth - the insatiable sex drive, the paranoia, the desperate need for more drugs to sustain the high - James' writing mimics the emotional detachment of the drug and the wired yet aimless life it induces. His voice is so open and authentic, it is hard to believe he is still so young. 
 
Given the nickname Dirty Jersey, while living as a tough guy-junkie in California, James had it tattooed on the inside of his left arm. There it remains as a graphic and permanent reminder of his past life as a junkie.

Leaving Dirty Jersey

A Crystal Meth Memoir

Michael Walsh

Brothers in War is the immensely powerful and deeply tragic story of the Beechey brothers, and how they paid the ultimate price for King and country. All eight went to fight in the Great War on such far-flung battlefields as France, Flanders, East Africa and Gallipoli. Only three would return alive. Even amid the carnage of the trenches, it was a family trauma almost without parallel. Their wives and sweethearts were left bereft, their widowed mother Amy devastated. It is a tragedy that has remained forgotten and unmarked for nearly 90 years. Until now. 
 
Kept in a small brown case handed down by the brothers' youngest sister, Edie, were hundreds of letters sent home from the front by the Beechey boys: scraps of paper scribbled on in the firing line, heartfelt messages written from a deathbed, exasperated correspondences detailing the absurdities of life in the trenches. From it all emerges the remarkable tale of the lost brothers. 
 
Tragic and moving, poetic in its intensity, Brothers in War reveals first-hand the catastrophe that was the Great War; all told through one family forced to sacrifice everything.

Brothers in War

Chas Griffin

In 1982 the Griffins left the security of suburbia to grow garlic in West Wales. This is a funny and sometimes touching, warts-and-all account of their first three years: of how they learned lambing and marketing and ploughing and hay-making: and of the dung-sodden joys of milking and the surreal terrors of bee-keeping. Be amused. Be very amused. 
 
Scenes from a Smallholding is by turns challenging, touching, and informative; but above all, it is very funny.

Scenes From A Smallholding

Kenneth Doyle

Patrick Doyle

My brother Patrick remembers my first beating, of which I assume I was completely unaware. He was just five years old when he watched our mother punching herself again and again in her pregnant stomach while shouting at the top of her voice, 'I don't want this fucking child!' 
 
Ken and Patrick Doyle grew up in a family of nine children. For sixteen years their home was a place of suffering. Behind the doors of their ordinary, three-bedroomed house they were subjected to deprivation, cruelty and humiliation at the hands of the one person who should have loved and protected them - their own mother. 
 
Starved, savagely beaten, locked up for days on end and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. Yet, despite numerous official reports of abuse from social workers and health boards, their suffering continued ... 
 
In Mummy from Hell, the victims tell the horrifying true story of their childhood and how they survived it.

Mummy from Hell

Two Brothers. A Sadistic Mother. A Childhood Destroyed.

Bobby Teale

'The Krays were out of control. They had the East End buttoned up too tight and someone had to undo it. Slowly, I realised that someone had to be me...' 
 
Bobby Teale and his brothers, David and Alfie, were the three men the Kray twins trusted most. They weren't in the Firm, they were closer than that. They were old family friends, confidants, companions... 
 
But then things changed. Witnessing Ronnie and Reggie become increasingly psychotic - taking murder, torture and rape to sickening new levels - Bobby knew he had to take action. Unknown to his brothers, he became a police informer; risking not just his own life but those of the people dearest to him too. 
 
Using the codename 'Phillips', he was forced to live on his wits, feeding back information to Scotland Yard. With bent cops on their side the Krays knew they had a grass in their midst, but before they could flush him out, Bobby's evidence saw the London gangsters get locked up for life. 
 
Bobby fled the country, but now 40 years on he's back. And he wants to set the record straight. With the help of his brothers, the man brave enough to stand up to the Krays has rewritten history as we know it; dispelling the myths and tearing apart the gangsters' glamorous veneer to reveal the true, sadistic nature of Ronnie and Reggie. 
 
Crammed full of explosive, new revelations, Bringing Down The Krays is the last great untold story of Britain's most infamous crime family.

Bringing Down The Krays

Finally the truth about Ronnie and Reggie by the man who took them down

Anne Nolan

Linda Nolan

"It's ok to be scared, to feel lonely... we'll get through it, because we have to." 
 
For more than 40 years Linda and Anne have performed side by side as members of iconic Irish girl group The Nolans. But in 2020 the sisters sat next to each other for a very different experience. Soon after returning home from filming their hit TV series The Nolans Go Cruising, with their sisters Coleen and Maureen, Linda and Anne received devastating cancer diagnoses within days of each other and soon began gruelling rounds of chemotherapy together. It was a stark reminder of how cruel life can be and, of course, of their beloved sister Bernie, who also faced and lost the same battle. 
 
Stronger Together is Linda and Anne's story. A reflection on their close-knit relationship, in the limelight and behind the scenes, and of how family helped them hold it all together when things got tough. Deeply personal, incredibly moving and told with trademark humour, it's a story they hope will help you too.

Stronger Together

How We’re Living While Fighting

Elaine Lordan

Elaine Lordan is well-known to millions as EastEnders' Lynne Slater. Yet the real-life heartache and loss she came to suffer eclipsed even the rollercoaster troubles of her TV character. After leaving the show, Elaine lost her beloved mother when she took her life under a train. Then later that same year, just two days after her wedding, Elaine lost James, her one-year-old son and only child, to a rare condition. 
 
Whatever It Takes is the story of a no-nonsense working-class girl who hit the big time and enjoyed several happy years as one of the nation's favourite soap stars. Things took a downward turn as her heavy drinking and affair with a married man led to her being hounded by the press. Yet Pete would become the love of her life and together they would experience the unfathomable joy of having a child. This flush of happiness was short-lived, though, as Elaine felt the full impact of her mother's death, while her son James battled for life. It wasn't long before family life revolved around the hospital - hoping for the best, but fearing the worst. 
 
Full of larger-than-life characters from her boisterous Irish family and close circle of north London friends, Elaine tells her story with heart-wrenching candour. In this life-affirming memoir of overcoming tragedy, we see how Elaine's indomitable spirit and innate humour have carried her through even the bleakest moments, and how one woman's 'sink or swim' approach has ensured her survival.

Whatever It Takes

A Story of Family Survival

David Teale

David Teale: groomed by the twins, controlled by threats, raped by Ronnie, falsely imprisoned by the State for his 'own protection' as younger brother of Kray-informer Bobby. Turns out that's only half the story. 
 
David first met the Krays when he was seventeen years old. He was drawn into London's underworld, and became Ronnie's reluctant foot soldier, driver, errand boy. He was close to murder, and witnessed menaces and the increasingly psychotic behaviours of the most feared men in gangster land. 
 
Unbeknown to David, his brother Bobby had bravely turned informer at great risk to his own safety and that of his brothers. That had its own consequences. 
 
But why, when the police were being furnished with eye-witness statements, from an impeccable source, were they seemingly incapable of bringing the twins to justice? The Krays were untouchable. 
 
After tireless research through newly released documents in the National Archives, and piecing together previously classified information together with his own, first-hand knowledge of the time, David Teale uncovers the shocking new truth, revealed in this book for the first time. 
 
David's story rewrites True Crime history.

Surviving the Krays

The Final Explosive Secret about the Firm

In 1982 the Griffins left the security of suburbia to grow garlic in West Wales. From the struggle with rurality that ensued grew (organically) the very amusing, and informative, warts-and-all account Scenes From a Smallholding . 
 
Now in this sometimes touching, but always funny sequel, Chas reveals what happened four years after their arrival - when the dream had been well and truly dreamt and they were experiencing some rather rude awakenings. Did they ever achieve the blissful good life? Are they surrounded by organic veg? How have the family coped with their new rural life? 
 
Written with Chas Griffin's trademark charm and humour, enjoy another compelling romp through the countryside.

More Scenes From a Smallholding

Paddy Doherty

'I fight hard and love strong. I'm a traveller.' 
 
Paddy Doherty loves his life as an Irish traveller, but as a child he felt like an outsider. He was different to his siblings. On the rare occasions he went to school, he was bullied for being a gypsy boy. And beyond the gates of the camp he found nothing but hostility. 
 
Slowly, Paddy's hurt turned into anger and by the age of 11 he had started out on an illustrious career in bare-knuckle fighting. This earned him a position as one of the most well-respected (and feared) men in the travelling community. Yet while he won countless contests in the ring, the real battles he faced were very much outside. 
 
In this deeply honest autobiography, he tells of how he has loved and lost five children; plummeted to seven stone while battling depression, drink and drugs. He describes how it feels to be shot point-blank in the head and the lengths he'll go to to protect his people, as well as life since My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding and Big Brother. 
 
Told with all the warmth and humour he is famed for, Paddy's rich and colourful story is one that will stay with you for a long time to come.

Hard Knocks & Soft Spots

Daniel Friebe

'The whole point of a race is to find a winner... I chose to race, so I chose to win.' 
 
For 14 years between 1965 and 1978, cyclist Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx simply devoured his rivals, their hopes and their careers. His legacy resides as much in the careers he ruined as the 445 victories - including five Tour de France wins and all the monument races - he amassed in his own right. So dominant had Merckx become by 1973 that he was ordered to stay away from the Tour for the good of the event. 
 
Stage 17 of the 1969 Tour de France perfectly illustrates his untouchable brilliance. Already wearing the yellow jersey on the col du Tourmalet, the Tour's most famous peak, Merckx powered clear and rode the last 140 kilometres to the finish-line in jaw-dropping solitude, eight minutes ahead of his nearest competitor. 
 
Merckx's era has been called cycling's Golden Age.It was full of memorable characters who, at any other time, would all have gone on to become legends. Yet Merckx's phenomenal career overshadowed them all. How did he achieve such incredible success? And how did his rivals really feel about him? Merckx failed drug tests three times in his career - were they really stitch ups as he claimed? And what of the crash at a track meet in Blois, France that killed Merckx's pacer Fernand Wambst, which Merckx claimed deeply affected him psychologically and physically? Or the attack by a spectator in 1975? 
 
Despite his unique achievements, we know little about the Cannibal beyond his victories. This will be the first comprehensive biography of Merckx in English, and will finally expose the truth behind this legendary man.

Eddy Merckx: The Cannibal

Jeremy Hardy

When Jeremy Hardy decided to explore his ancestry it was, in part, to get to the bottom of his grandmother Rebecca's dubious claims that the family descended from a certain 17th-century architect and that, more recently, Jeremy's great-grandfather was a Royal bodyguard. Other legends ranged from the great aunt who ran illegal hooch during Prohibition to the wronged Victorian servant girl who bore an illegitimate Hardy, not forgetting the family's rightful claim to a large country estate. 
 
Wild stories aside, Jeremy sets out to such diverse locations as the Croydon one-way system and the hostile waters around Malta in order to find traces of recognisable family traits and a sense of how he came to be. With wry humour and a keen eye for the absurd and the frustrating, Jeremy takes us on a by turns funny and moving journey into the world of family ancestry. 
 
My Family and Other Strangers will be enjoyed by anyone who has tried to decipher the 1901 census records, or simply wishes they too had asked their grandparents more about their lives.

My Family and Other Strangers

Adventures in Family History

Andrew Collins

Fast approaching his fortieth birthday, Andrew is cornered at a family gathering by the nine-year-old son of his brother-in-law's sister. Having seen him as a talking head on TV, the boy asks, 'What are you?' It is a question so frank and simple that Andrew doesn't have an immediate answer to hand. 
 
So, with hilarious self-deprecation, he sets out to retrace how he got to where he is today. Seventeen precarious jobs in seventeen years: from trolley collector at Sainsbury's to high-flying film critic sipping cocktails with Will Smith and Jerry Bruckheimer on a yacht in Cannes. This is Andrew's tale of rubbing shoulders with the world's biggest stars: pissing off Christini Ricci, having his hairstyle mocked by Noel Gallagher, trying not to wake Clive James from his afternoon nap, having his apple pie eaten by Bob Geldof, and somehow stumbling into the next dream job. 
 
Along the way, he's been the world's worst gossip columnist, an almost-hip young gunslinger at the NME, a Radio 1 DJ (enduring a hellish Radio 1 roadshow in a car park in Birmingham), an ITV presenter, EastEnders scriptwriter, ghost writer for a major TV personality and much, much more. It charts a world of hedonism, mundanity, towering egos, shallow idiocy and occasional moments of mind-blowing joy. And, of course, being sent shit in a box.

That's Me in the Corner

Adventures of an ordinary boy in a celebrity world

Heidi Harding

Tom Harding

Chloe Harding

He was our abusive father. 
We were just children. 
No one could know. 
 
Heidi was 18 when she read her little sister Chloe’s diary, and discovered that they shared a terrible secret: they had both been abused by their father. After years of fear and isolation, Heidi knew she had to go to the police. 
 
For a long time, Chloe resented Heidi for forcing her to disclose what had happened when she wasn’t ready, while their brother, Tom, couldn’t understand how he had so misjudged his father, and at first he didn’t believe their tale. The truth threatened to destroy them all. 
 
This is the very honest story of three siblings, and how a man they trusted threatened to tear their family apart.

Afraid to Tell

Patrick Touher

Leaving his abusive Irish boarding school after eight long years, Patrick Touher thought his troubles were over. But the adult world was a dangerous place for a naïve adolescent. From the Dublin Catholic boys' home to arriving alone in London, again Patrick is seen as easy prey. 
 
Yet Patrick's strength, honesty and sense of humour never left him. The boy they couldn't break fought back and eventually found love and a family. But the shadow of his early years was always with him. With the encouragement of his wife - a constant witness to his traumatic nightmares - Patrick set about taking the Christian Brother to task. 
 
The eagerly awaited sequel to bestseller Fear of the Collar that doesn't disappoint, Scars that Run Deep is a deeply moving and ultimately triumphant true story.

Scars that Run Deep

Sometimes the Nightmares Don't End

Sent to an Industrial School in Dublin at the age of seven, Patrick Touher was forced into a tough regime of education and training, prayer and punishment, strict discipline and fearful nights. No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane demanded absolute obedience, absolute submission; Patrick's was an education in cruelty and fear. 
 
Patrick Touher spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of an official inquiry. 
 
This is the inside story of a childhood lived in the most horrific of circumstances. A moving and powerful true account, Fear of the Collar bears testament to the courage and determination of the children that society forgot.

Fear of the Collar

The True Story of the Boy They Couldn't Break

Shaparak Khorsandi

It's 1977 and life in Iran is becoming unpredictable. The Shah will be overthrown and events are about to take place on the world stage. But for five-year-old Shappi Khorsandi all this means is that she must flee, leaving behind a mad extended Iran clan and everything she has ever known. 
 
Shappi and her beloved brother Peyvand arrive with their parents in London - all cold weather and strange food - without a word of English. If adapting to a new culture isn't troubling enough, it soon becomes clear that the Ayatollah's henchmen are in pursuit. With the help of MI5, Shappi's family go into hiding. So apart from checking under the family car for bombs every morning, Shappi's childhood is like any other kids' - swings in the park, school plays, kiss-chase and terrorists. 
 
'An extraordinary story...really funny and warm' 
Graham Norton

A Beginner's Guide To Acting English

Toni Maguire

Lynn Murray

Every family has its secrets, but some are worse than others. 
 
‘I had learnt to switch myself off from feeling anything when he molested me. Just lie there like a wooden doll and don’t give him the satisfaction of allowing one whimper to leave your mouth.’ 
 
Lynn’s mother wanted the world to see the perfect family. An immaculate house, three well-dressed children and a charming husband. But behind closed doors it was a different story. 
 
Abused by her father from when she was just a baby, Lynn would scream for her mother, who ignored the little girl’s cries. Nothing was going to shatter her perfect life. Threatened by their parents, Lynn and her brother never told anyone in fear of being separated, but the trauma of their past followed them throughout their lives, with devastating consequences. 
 
Now as Lynn tries to piece together and come to terms with her past as an adult, she discovers she wasn’t the only one with a secret.

Daddy's Little Girl

A picture-perfect family with a terrible secret

Julia O'Donnell

Irish singing star Daniel O'Donnell's mother, Julia, grew up on a remote island off the northwest coast of Ireland, going barefoot and doing hard labour as as child during the poverty-stricken 1920s. 
 
The hard work continued through her teenage years as she picked potatoes in the fields and travelled to Scotland to gut fish in the ports. After she married, Julia's beloved husband, Francie, was forced to work away from home for months on end. Physically demanding, the work eventually took its toll and Julia found herself widowed and penniless with five children while still in her forties. 
 
In this classic and inspiring story of triumph over adversity, Julia tells how she battled through this dark period by knitting sweaters into the early hours of the morning to support her family. Then, in an amazing twist of fate, this hard-working woman and dedicated mother watched from the wings as her offspring flourished. Her daughter Margaret and son Daniel went on to achieve fame and fortune as chart-topping singers. 
 
Poignant, warm and laced with great humour, The Mother's Story is a tale of maternal love, hardship and sacrifice, and a fascinating insight into this remarkable Irish family's life. 
 
'I was six when my father died so my mother has been everything to me. Wherever I go I tell the world about my wonderful mother. I'm a singer today because of my mother's encouragement. She has been the biggest influence in my life.' Daniel O'Donnell

Even on Days when it Rains

A True Story of Hardship and Maternal Love

Josh Axelrad

'I was thrown out of my first casino in spring of 2000. In the years since then I've kept playing and kept winning, in wigs, under aliases, from behind fake glasses. I've been chased across casino floors; followed outdoors by crazed goons with drawn weapons; pursued in a car at high speeds; and placed wrongfully under arrest. Casinos continue to provide my entire income, along with free rooms, Champagne, and, most important, a mission in life. The heat, this business of getting thrown out, hasn't kept me away from the action at all; it's the very force that keeps me coming back.' 
 
Repeat Until Rich is the hotly awaited true adventure of how an average Joe in a dead-end spreadsheet job took to the road as a member of a blackjack card-counting gang taking millions of dollars from casinos across the US. 
 
Josh was an Ivy League graduate who grudgingly started a regular life before a chance meeting at a party changed his life forever. This is a brilliantly written memoir first and gambling book second - a universal tale of an everyday guy's unexpected exit into a mysterious and dangerous underworld from which there's no going back. It is a story about finding meaning in a crazed ongoing battle far from the dull and comfortable confines of the 9 to 5 world.

Repeat Until Rich

Ann Kenny

When Ann Kenny was four years old her foster mother hit her across the face with a fireplace shovel. She was left lying unconscious on the cold hard floor while the family went to mass. She almost lost an eye. 
 
This is just one of the childhood incidents Ann recalls in her vivid, shocking memoir of growing up in rural Ireland, in a house where she wasn't wanted. Her early story is Cinderella-like, but without the happy ending: she had two older sisters who were loved, but Ann was put to work on household chores and received constant neglect and physical abuse, and sexual abuse from her grandfather. On growing up Ann found it hard to escape the shadows of her past, marrying an alcoholic and effectively raised her children herself. 
 
Ann eventually found the road to recovery and her book is a testament to the strength of a survivor. She began writing the book as she set to find out who was the tiny child she remembered left in a wicker basket - that child turned out to be herself.

The Girl in the Wicker Basket

John Elder Robison

From the time he was three or four years old, John Elder Robison realised that he was different from other people. He was unable to make eye contact or connect with other children, and by the time he was a teenager his odd habits - an inclination to blurt out non-sequiturs, obsessively dismantle radios or dig five-foot holes (and stick his younger brother in them) - had earned him the label 'social deviant'. It didn't help that his mother conversed with light fixtures and his father spent evenings pickling himself in sherry. 
 
Look Me in the Eye is his story of growing up with Asperger's syndrome – a form of autism – at a time when the diagnosis simply didn't exist. Along the way it also tells the story of two brothers born eight years apart yet devoted to each other: the author and his younger brother Chris, who would grow up to become bestselling author Augusten Burroughs. 
 
This book is a rare fusion of inspiration, dark comedy and insight into the workings of the human mind. For someone who has struggled all his life to connect with other people, Robison proves to be an extraordinary storyteller.

Look Me in the Eye

My Life with Asperger's

Clara Kramer

On 21 July 1942 the Nazis took control of the small Polish town of Zolkiew, life for Jewish 15-year-old Clara Kramer was never to be the same again. While those around her were either slaughtered or transported, Clara and her family hid perilously in a hand-dug bunker. Living in the house above and protecting them were the Becks. 
 
Mr Beck was a womaniser, a drunkard and a self-professed anti-Semite, yet he risked his life throughout the war to keep his charges safe. Nevertheless, life with Mr Beck was far from predictable. From the house catching fire, to Beck's affair with Clara's cousin, to the nightly SS drinking sessions in the room just above, Clara's War transports you into the dark, cramped bunker, and sits you next to the families as they hold their breath time and again. 
 
Sixty years later, Clara Kramer has created a memoir that is lyrical, dramatic and heartbreakingly compelling. Despite the worst of circumstances, this is a story full of hope and survival, courage and love.

Clara's War

Richard McCann

One October night in 1975 Richard, aged five, was alone in the house with his three sisters. It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. Next morning, the police arrived to take the children away. Their mother had become the first victim of a serial killer soon to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. 
 
Passed from one violent home to another, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the salacious headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to recover from their mother's murder. Whilst Richard tried to handle the terror of his violent upbringing, his sister struggled to deal with memories of sexual abuse. Without love or support they spiralled away from help or happiness. 
 
Then one day Richard McCann, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided no one was going to rescue their lives but him. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal. A heartbreaking, uplifting story of survival and hope.

Just A Boy

The True Story Of A Stolen Childhood

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16 books for 9 to 12-year-olds that love adventures

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24 must-read books for 9-12-year-olds

A picture of several different children's books on a pink to blue ombre background; each book has a bright yellow shadow

Showing results for: ‘joseph delaney’

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