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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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

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 
 
---------------------------- 
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. 
---------------------------- 
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imprisoned in a fairy-tale castle and under constant threat of execution by his ruthless captor an 18th century apothecary struggled to realize the alchemist's dream. His name was Johann Frederick Bottger. But instead of transforming base metal into gold he was to discover the formula for something even more exotic and elusive, a substance so precious it was known as 'white gold'. And it was a formula for which others were prepared to lie, cheat, steal and even kill to possess. 
 
This was the remarkable backdrop to one of the most strange and compelling episodes in European cultural and scientific history; a tale of genius and greed, of demonic cruelty and exquisite beauty, of the best and worst of which man is capable - it is the true story of the invention of European porcelain.

The Arcanum

Claire Bertschinger

One of the most enduring images of the Ethiopian famine that shocked the world in 1984 was that of the young International Red Cross nurse who, surrounded by thousands of starving people and with limited supplies, had the terrible task of choosing which children to feed, knowing that those she turned away might not last the night. That nurse was Claire Bertschinger, and those pictures inspired Live Aid, the biggest relief programme the world had ever seen. 'In her was vested the power of life and death,' Bob Geldof said. 'She had become God-like, and that is unbearable for anyone.' Michael Buerk, whose BBC documentary first showed those pictures, persuaded Claire to return to Ethiopia almost twenty years later. For all those years she had been haunted by the terrible choices she had been forced to make. But when she met them again, the survivors welcomed her back with open arms. 
 
Born in Essex, Claire Bertschinger had to overcome dyslexia to qualify as a nurse. When she joined the International Red Cross, she fulfilled a zest for adventure and a passionate vocation for relief work. She has worked with the war-wounded and hostages in Lebanon, with the Mujahidin in Afghanistan, and with victims of civil war and displaced persons in Uganda, Sierra Leone and the Sudan. Working in war zones she often came under fire herself while trying to save the lives of others.

Moving Mountains

Three hundred years ago, a charismatic young gambler and man-about-town with a natural gift for mathematics fled London for the Contintent. His name was John Law and he had a good reason to go, having killed a man in a duel. 
 
Living off his lucrative winnings at the gaming tables of Europe, Law became increasingly fascinated by the nature of finance and journeyed to the impoverished , famine-stricken France of Louis XIV with an extraordinary idea. At the time when wealth was stored and exchanged as gold and silver coin - and there was rarely enough to fund the extravagance of kings, let alone trade - Law realised that the overriding problem was lack of available money. He reasoned that if this could be lent in the form of paper, properly backed by assets, then it could be lend repeatedly and credit used to multiply the opportunities for the making of money. 
 
Such a radical notion meant Law faced opposition from powerful vested interests. His persistence paid off in 1716 when, with royal backing, he established the first French bank to issue paper money. He also created a trading company which made its shareholders rich beyond their wildest dreams: so much so that the new term 'millionaire' was coined to describe them. 
 
What follows is the stuff of epic drama: a tale of fortunes won and lost, of paupers made rich and lords losing all. And in telling this enthralling tragi-comic story, Janet Gleeson brings to life two fascinating characters who together would change the way the world worked: the inscrutable John Law, and mercurial money itself.

The Moneymaker

Jean Sasson

When Jean Sasson’s book Princess: Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia was published, it became an immediate international bestseller. It sold to 43 countries and spent 13 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Now, in this long-awaited, compelling new book, Sasson and the Princess ‘Sultana’ return to tell the world what it means to be a Saudi woman today. 
 
Through advances in education and with access to work, Saudi women are breaking through the barriers; they are becoming doctors, social workers, business owners and are even managing to push at the boundaries of public life. Major steps forward have, undoubtedly, been made. 
 
But this is not the whole story. Sadly, despite changes in the law, all too often legal loopholes leave women exposed to terrible suppression, abuse and crimes of psychological and physical violence. 
For many, the struggle for basic human rights continues. 
 
This fascinating insight will include personal stories of triumph and heartbreak, as told to Princess 'Sultana', her eldest daughter, and author Jean Sasson. Each of these stories will offer the reader a glimpse into different aspects of Saudi society, including the lives of the Princess, her daughter and other members of the Al-Saud Royal family.

Princess More Tears to Cry

Jane Maas

What was it like to be an advertising woman on Madison Avenue in the sixties and seventies, that Mad Men era of casual sex and professional serfdom? Now, in her immensely entertaining and bittersweet memoir, Jane Maas reveals all… 
 
·Was there really that much sex at the office? 
·Were there really three-Martini lunches? 
·Were women really second-class citizens? 
Jane Maas says the answer to all three questions is unequivocally yes! 
 
Based on her experiences as a copywriter who succeeded in this primarily male jungle, and countless interviews with her peers, Mad Women gives us the full story. There is the junior account man whose wife almost left him when she found the copy of Screw magazine he’s used to find a ‘date’ for a client, and the Ogilvy &amp; Mather’s annual Boat Ride, a sex-and-booze-filled orgy, from which it was said no virgin ever returned intact. 
 
Wickedly funny and full of juicy inside information, Mad Women also tackles some of the tougher issues of the era, such as unequal pay, rampant, jaw-dropping sexism, and the difficult choice many women faced between motherhood and career.

Mad Women

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