Adam Usden

Adam Wagner

Adam Wasson

Adam Weymouth's work has been published widely, including in Granta, The Atlantic, The Observer and the BBC. His first book, Kings of the Yukon, won the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Lonely Planet Adventure Travel Book of the Year and the Prix Paul-Emile Victor. He has been named by the National Writing Centre as one of ten writers shaping the UK's future.

Adam Weymouth

Adam Wisniewski-Snerg (1937-95) was born on the outskirts of Warsaw. His science fiction writing is largely focused around the consequences of totalitarianism. Although largely unread during his lifetime, after his suicide in 1995 his work began to receive major critical attention. He is now considered to be, along with Stanislaw Lem, one of Poland's greatest science fiction writers.

Adam Wisniewski-Snerg

Ade Edmondson

Adele Lang

Adele Nozedar is an author and photographer. Previously, she was in a cult indie band, then ran her own indie record label and became A&amp;R Director/General Manager of a major record company. 
 
Her wide-ranging passions are reflected in her books, which include The Hedgerow Handbook (2012), The Signs and Symbols Sourcebook (2011), The Secret Language of Birds (2006), and The Element Encyclopedia of Native Americans (2013).

Adele Nozedar

Adele Puhn

Adeline Yen Mah

Adelle Waldman is a freelance writer and book critic. She worked as a reporter at the New Haven Register and the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal's website. Her articles also have appeared in The New York Times Book Review,The New Republic,Slate,The Wall Street Journal, and other national publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Adelle Waldman

Aditi Kakade Beaufrand is an Indian illustrator based in France. She likes experimenting with bright, happy colours. She grew up reading fairytales, watching animated films and imagining adventure stories, and her style is an embodiment of her Indian heritage and western culture. She loves animals and taking long walks on the beach, but she is never too far away from a pencil and a paper to draw her perception of the world.

Aditi Kakade Beaufrand

Aditya Chakrabortty

Adiva Geffen is a bestselling writer and playwright. Her plays have appeared on major stages in Israel, she lectures and leads numerous writing workshops and she is a board member of the Israeli Writers’ Association. 
 
 Geffen started out as a special-education teacher, before serving as the spokesperson for the Habima National Theatre for more than a decade. She founded and subsequently led the Israeli Theatre Award for ten years, and now serves as head of The Gnazim Institute of the Hebrew Writers Association, the largest Hebrew literature archive in the world. 
 
 Born in Haifa, Israel and the mother of three sons, Geffen now lives in Tel Aviv with her partner Aharon Meidan.

Adiva Geffen

Adnan Sarwar, 35, is a former British soldier who served in the Iraq War.  He has since worked as a military consultant to film and is a writer based in London.  Read more at www.adnansarwar.com / @adnansarwar

Adnan Sarwar

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Loos (1877-1933) was a leading Austro-Hungarian architect, perhaps most famous for the revolutionary 'Loos House' opposite the Hofburg Palace in Vienna, which caused outrage when it was built in 1912, and the wonderful American Bar, also in Vienna. He wrote extensively on architecture and design, working in reaction to the elaborate mass of decoration celebrated by the Vienna Secession movement.

Adolf Loos

Adolfo García Ortega

Adomnan of Iona

Adonis

Adriaan Van Dis

Adrian Bean

Adrian Bliss is a creator, writer and performer from London, best known for his comedy sketches which, explore everything from history to natural science to religion. Adrian's work has earned him nearly 20 million followers across social media and has been featured in CNN, The Times and Vogue. Adrian was named one of the New Faces of Comedy at Just For Laughs, and his one-man play Inside Everyone sold out its debut run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival prior to opening.

Adrian Bliss

Adrian Desmond

Adrian Edmondson

Adrian Fort

Adrian Gilbert

Adrian Henri

Adrian House

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Katherine Shellduck

'This morning I found this bag. I had been looking for sweets. I put my hand in the bag and felt a sticky liquid on my fingers, then I looked at it. A red smear. Then I looked in the bag: bloody knives and clothes. It didn't feel good. What did it mean? I don't know. There are no answers; I daren't ask the questions' 
 
Growing up in poverty in London's East End, Kathy was eight years old when her father forced her mother into prostitution. When their mother fled, leaving Kathy and her sisters behind, the girls stuck fiercely together while being passed from children's homes to boarding schools. Then, on a rare trip home, Kathy looked out the window to see a man firing four shots into a Rolls-Royce. It took several seconds for her to realise the victim was her mother's lover, and the gunman was her father. 
 
Kathy began her haunting memoir when, as an adult, she travelled back to London, to find out who her gangster father really was. A compelling memoir of an extraordinary childhood, Dance for your Daddy is a true story of the effects on one family of poverty and affluence, violence and love.

Dance for your Daddy

The True Story of a Brutal East End Childhood

Julian Clary

This is Julian Clary's story, in his own words - the tale of an awkward schoolboy who became a huge worldwide success on stage and screen. 
 
After a sheltered suburban upbringing, Julian was sent to St Benedict's, where beatings from 'holy' men gave him some brutal life lessons, and other 'unholy' boys his first awakenings of sexuality. He had just one true friend and ally, Nick - to his other school peers, Julian's aloof demeanour made him an enigma or simply a figure of ridicule. In school he was just another pained adolescent, but inside Julian was a new Jean Genet or Quentin Crisp bursting to get out. 
 
Leaving St Benedict's thankfully behind him, Julian went on to college where he found his true vocation as an entertainer with a peculiar comic brand of smut and glamour. At the same time, he was finding as much sex as he could, sometimes with remarkably less-than-glamorous characters. 
 
Periods in community theatre and the singing telegram industry followed before Julian hit the big time with cabaret co-star Fanny the Wonder Dog as The Joan Collins Fan Club. Soon, the world was his oyster. But fame came at a price, as Julian struggled not only with the reality of being a high-profile gay man in the 1980s but also the pain of losing his lover to terminal illness. 
 
Far more than just another celebrity autobiography or 'funny book', this is a touching, beautifully written and wryly witty account of a unique progression from shy child to comedy icon.

A Young Man's Passage

Madhur Jaffrey

'I was born in a sprawling house by the Yamuna River in Delhi. When I was a few minutes old, Grandmother welcomed me into the world by writing "Om", which means "I am" in Sanskrit, on my tongue with a little finger dipped in honey. When the family priest arrived to draw up my horoscope, he scribbled astrological symbols on a long scroll and set down a name for me, Indrani, or "queen of the heavens". My father ignored him completely and proclaimed my name was to be Madhur ("sweet as honey").' 
 
So begins Madhur Jaffrey's enchanting memoir of her childhood in India. Her description of growing up a in a very large, wealthy family (half a train was booked to transport the family from Delhi to the mountains for the summer) conjures up the spirit of a long lost age. Whether climbing the mango trees in her grandparents' orchard, armed with a mixture of salt, pepper, red chillies and roasted cumin, or enjoying picnics in the foothills of the Himalayas, reached by foot, rickshaw, palanquin or horse, where meatballs stuffed with sultanas and mint leaves, cauliflowers flavoured with ginger and coriander, and spiced pooris with hot green mango pickle were devoured, food forms a major leitmotiv of this beautifully written memoir. With recipes drawn from memories of dinners, lunches, breakfasts, weddings and picnics, moving effortlessly from the lamb meatballs of Moghul emperors to the tamarind chutneys of the streets, this book will appeal to keen armchair cooks, as well as fans of Madhur the world over.

Climbing the Mango Trees

A Memoir of a Childhood in India

Martin Brundle

Maurice Hamilton

In this unique book the reader will have his armchair converted to the laid-down cockpit of a Formula One car and be swept around the world's classic motor racing circuits. He will experience the extraordinary sensations, the adrenaline and the atmosphere as told by the sport's best analyst. 
 
Together with F1's respected journalist, Maurice Hamilton, Brundle brings his infallible humour and insight, his experiences and opinion, to each of the circuits and its classic races. From the camber at Monaco, which will leave your wheels hanging in the air, to Melbourne and the dynamics behind the most dramatic crash of the decade. Encompassing such essential details as neck-snapping acceleration, smashing cars worth a quarter of a million, and the amount of sweat a driver will lose in a race, this is a rare F1 book - funny, opinionated, evocative and dramatic.

Working The Wheel

John Batt

To lose one child is terrible; to lose two is unimaginable. For no one to believe that you are innocent of their deaths and to be imprisoned because of it must be unbearable. 
 
Yet this is the reality Sally Clark had to face. The daughter of a policeman, wife of a solicitor and a solicitor herself, just when she was grieving from the tragic death of her second child the system she'd always believed in turned against her. Justice suddenly seemed a far-off principle as she was convicted and her initial appeal quashed. Her family, lawyers and various volunteers were relentless in their fight to clear her name. Finally, following three long years in prison, suffering abuse and the bleak horrow of bereavement, Sally Clark was finally acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2003. 
 
Her release caught the nation's attention, and paved the way for succesful appeals by wrongly convicted mothers such as Angela Canning. Written with the power of a thriller, the book is a tragic but ultimately uplifting story of a mother's love and a family's gutsy fight for what they knew to be right.

Stolen Innocence

A Mother's Fight for Justice

Stuart Maconie

Cider with Roadies is the true story of a boy's obsessive relationship with pop. A life lived through music from Stuart's audience with the Beatles (aged 3); his confessions as a pubescent prog rocker; a youthful gymnastic dalliance with northern soul; the radical effects of punk on his politics, homework and trouser dimensions; playing in crap bands and failing to impress girls; writing for the NME by accident; living the sex, drugs (chiefly lager in a plastic glass) and rock and roll lifestyle; discovering the tawdry truth behind the glamour and knowing when to ditch it all for what really matters. 
 
From Stuart's four minutes in a leisure centre with MC Hammer to four days in a small van with Napalm Death it's a life-affirming journey through the land where ordinary life and pop come together to make music.

Cider With Roadies

June Goulding

'I promised that I would one day write a book and tell the world about the home for unmarried mothers. I have at last kept my promise.' 
 
In Ireland, 1951, the young June Goulding took up a position as midwife in a home for unmarried mothers run by the Sacred Heart nuns. What she witnessed there was to haunt her for the next fifty years. It was a place of secrets, lies and cruelty. A place where women picked grass by hand and tarred roads whilst heavily pregnant. Where they were denied any contact with the outside world; denied basic medical treatment and abused for their 'sins'; where, after the birth, they were forced into hard labour in the convent for three years. But worst of all was that the young women were expected to raise their babies during these three years so that they could then be sold - given up for adoption in exchange for a donation to the nuns. 
 
Shocked by the nuns' inhumane treatment of the frightened young women, June risked her job to bring some light into their dark lives. June's memoir tells the story of twelve women's experiences in this home and of the hardships they endured, but also the kindness she offered them, and the hope she was able to bring.

The Light In The Window

Judy Corbett

Castles in the Air is a beautifully written, autobiographical story of rescuing an ancient mansion. Gwydir Castle was inhabited by ravers and rats until Judy Corbett and her husband Peter Welford found and acquired this 500-year-old house mouldering in the foothills of Snowdonia. Despite the toads, strange smells and squatters, they decided to mortgage themselves to the hilt to bring the castle back to life. 
 
This is an evocatively written and genuinely moving book and is infused with an extraordinary sense of place. The couple's adventures in a gothic wonderland lead them through plots both supernatural and historical. In a museum storeroom in a Bronx warehouse they find a missing room, in the castle's Solar Tower the ghost of a young woman appears and from the far edges of the woods a silent man called Sven emerges to befriend the couple and their beloved castle. 
 
For everyone who has ever wanted to live in a glorious house or escape from the mundanity of life - Castles in the Air is pure magic.

Castles In The Air

The Restoration Adventures of Two Young Optimists and a Crumbling Old Mansion

Rhona Cameron

1979 takes place in a small fishing town called Musselburgh, situated on the east coast of Scotland. An evocative, moving and at times hilarious true-life story about growing up gay in a small town, finding out you're adopted, and losing your father at the age of fourteen. 
 
Always an outsider, the Rhona of 1979 was desperate to fit in at any cost, and here lies the bittersweet humour. At the heart of the book is the Clubhouse, a place that symbolises all that is normal, happy, and secure. And behind the club, outside, Rhona and her friends are smoking, fighting, kissing and drinking. 
 
In this darkly funny and deeply biographical first book, Rhona Cameron takes us back to a year when everything seemed to change. A new British government came to power, the Eighties were approaching and at times life felt so precarious that it really looked like she and her family might never make it through the next year, let alone the next decade.

1979

A Big Year in a Small Town

Andrew Collins

Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

Where Did It All Go Right?

Growing Up Normal in the 70s

George Best

George Best needs little introduction. A legend in his own lifetime, he is undoubtedly the greatest footballer the UK has ever produced. Blessed with an extraordinary gift he brought a beauty and grace to the game never before seen. But Best was unable to cope with the success and fame his football genius brought. His fabled story is littered with tales of women and sex and, of course, alcohol. 
 
Much has been written about Best, but very little substantiated by the man himself. That is until George Best opened his heart and engaged us in one of the most exhilarating life stories for years, Blessed. In his own words George recounts the halcyon days at Manchester United, the big games and European Cup win of '68. And then there's the heartbreaking truth about the death of his mother and his struggles with alcohol that forced him to face up to a life without drink. 
 
Blessed reveals the man behind the up-for-a-laugh, boozy, womanizing stereotype that had dogged George Best for so long. Open and honest about his mistakes, George is also incredibly candid about his triumphs, his regrets, and, only three years before his death, what he had hoped for the future. 
 
'Don't coach him, he's a genius' Sir Matt Busby 
 
'Unquestionably the greatest' Sir Alex Ferguson

Blessed - The Autobiography

Aaron Vallance

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JANE GRIGSON AWARD 2025 
 
'Aaron’s heartfelt memoir will leave your heart and mind full … but your stomach craving latkes.' Tim Anderson, chef & award-winning writer 
 
'Beautifully written. A book which reminds us that food is the language of love.' Asma Khan, chef & bestselling author 
 
In this captivating coming-of-age memoir, Aaron Vallance gives you a seat at the enchanting and delectable meals that shaped his understanding of the world, growing up in an Ashkenazi Jewish family in 1980s Manchester. 
 
Through exceptional storytelling, Aaron re-creates the particularities of his childhood - one where he would have chicken on a Friday, eat Challah every Saturday, bagels every Sunday, and then a smattering of chopped herring, chremsls, chrain, and latkes in between. With a stomach full, he explores the traditions, rituals, festivals and meaning behind these foods we might all recognise, celebrating the nuances of a tight-knit, if often insular, Jewish community along the way. 
 
Written with warmth and joy, Friday Night Chicken then is a one-of-a-kind story for all lovers of food and personal stories to delight in. 
 
'Aaron is such a lyrical writer. I always learn something new.' Ruby Tandoh, bestselling author of Eat Up! 
 
'Full of heart and warmth. A joy to read!' Angela Hui, author of Takeaway

Friday Night Chicken

Eric Idle

Idle In Provence

A Brief History of Thyme

Caitlin Moran

How to Be Hopeful

My year of living joyfully

Kiyoshi Tanimoto

The whole city was covered with dark clouds, and conflagrations were breaking out in various directions. Could all of this have happened at once? It was then that black drops of rain, as big as blackberries, began to fall – rain caused by the atomic bomb. I wondered what had happened to my home and church. With a pale face, I ran down the Koi highway… 
 
When the atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima at 8.15am on 6 August 1945, Methodist minister Kiyoshi Tanimoto was just beginning his day with the usual bowl of soybean and rice bran porridge. Unbeknownst to him at that moment, the aftermath that will unfold before him over days and weeks is full of horror, but through his courageous determination to save his family, church and city from total devastation, Tanimoto would become internationally recognised as a hero of Hiroshima. In 1946, he featured in American journalist John Hersey’s seminal book Hiroshima which catapulted Tanimoto into global fame – but it is only now that we have discovered the manuscript that he wrote in his own words. 
 
What Divides Us is his remarkable eyewitness account of this devastating moment of history. Although written only a couple of years after the bomb, the manuscript had been lost for many decades and was only recently discovered in a university archive. 
 
Today, over eighty years later in a world fraught with conflict, Tanimoto’s story is a moving and powerful reminder of how the strength, love and resilience of the human spirit will always triumph over the things that divide us.

What Divides Us

A Memoir of Hiroshima

Minette Batters

Minette Batters was the first female president of the National Farmers’ Union in its 109-year history. During that time, she fought tooth and nail for the interests of farmers, never afraid to put her head above the parapet. 
 
But Minette’s expertise in British farming spanned many more years than her presidency. In fact, the union was the third act of a life lived at the heart of the farming community: first, she was born and raised on a farm and, even after her father warned her there was no future in farming, her heart brought her home to take over the family farm. In her third act, as advocate for the UK’s farming industry, she became not only a life-long farmer but the most visible agriculture expert in the UK, at a time when Brexit, Covid and international conflict has pushed our farms, and our food production, to a state of crisis. So, who better to understand how British farming really works? 
 
Blending memoir and manifesto, this book will be a powerful insight into the real life of farmers, a love letter to British rural life, and a rallying cry to save it – and how.

Harvest

Byrne & Balzano

Described by his creator as 'short, fat and primitive', Evert Bäckström is a rather unique homicide detective but he is undeniably the real deal with it comes to modern policing. 
 
This series is blackly comic, thrillingly compelling and utterly real.

Bäckström

CAMP GOLD

Caedmon Aisquith

Cairo Trilogy

Can You Solve the Murder?

Capital

Care Bears

Cartoon Kid

Cath Kidston

A crime-fiction series with a twist - private investigator Catherine Berlin, is a damaged soul struggling with a heroin addiction, but she still manages to do her best, even when her own neck is on the chopping block.

Catherine Berlin

Celeste Express

Central Intelligence

Chaos and Flame

Charles Hayden

Charles Paris Dramatisations

Charlie Bass

Charlie Changes Into a Chicken

Charlie and Lola

Cherry Blossoms After Winter

Chevalier

Chinese Cinderella

Life at Tanglewood isn't all sleepovers, picnics and beach parties. Cherry, Summer, Skye, Coco and Honey all face some tough life challenges in this delicious series from bestselling girls' favourite Cathy Cassidy. Every sister has a secret to share. Which one will be your favourite?

Chocolate Box Girls

Christmas

Chronicles of Vladimir Tod

Churchminister

Welcome inside the violent, treacherous world of Roman politics, and learn how one man - clever, compassionate, devious, vulnerable - fought to reach the top.

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