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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Robert Crampton

From rom coms to wrestling and fatherhood to fist fights, Robert Crampton's How to Be a Beta Male is a brilliantly funny and sometimes moving insight into being a modern-day bloke. 
 
Robert Crampton has been writing his Beta Male column for The Times since 2001. A much-loved weekly insight into modern masculinity – whatever that might mean – Beta Male strives to unlock the secrets of contemporary relationships in all their frequent glory, occasional frustration and on-going complexity. While by his own admission totally failing in this task, Crampton is at any rate amusing as he goes about his business, as his legions of loyal fans would attest. 
 
How to be a Beta Male is a carefully curated selection, bursting with observational nuggets on the minutiae of daily domestics and disasters in the Crampton household, and offering the very best of a sixteen-year-long account of what it is to be a beta male married to an alpha female. From his attempts at DIY to disciplining their children to trying once in a while to put his foot down to getting involved in a punch-up in the street in her defence, Robert continues to fail to impress his wife but always delights his readers. 
 
It's a very smart, extremely funny and yet surprisingly sensitive exploration of the trials, tribulations – and, ultimately, triumphs – of not being young, free and single.

How to Be a Beta Male

Jenny McCarthy

On the morning Jenny McCarthy discovered her two-year-old son Evan having a seizure, her life turned upside down. From being the mother of an average toddler she was suddenly thrown into a world of turmoil. As doctor after doctor misdiagnosed his symptoms, Evan suffered many harrowing, life-threatening episodes. Then, one amazing doctor recognized the truth. Evan was autistic. 
 
Desperate, but relieved to finally have a diagnosis, Jenny didn't know what to do or where to go for guidance. Alone, and without any resources - except for her unshakeable determination to help her son - Jenny soon realized that she'd have to become a detective if she was ever going to be able to help her son. She embarked on a frantic search for guidance and information, and spoke with many doctors, nurses, parents, government agencies and private foundations. Essentially, she earned a Ph. D. in 'Google research'. Eventually, she discovered the groundbreaking programme that became the key to helping Evan. 
 
Deeply moving, and at times heartbreaking, in Louder Than Words Jenny McCarthy reveals more than the winning formula that worked for her son. Here she tells of the remarkable, sometimes harrowing, journey of discovery they took together. She shares the frustrations and joys of raising an autistic child and creates a road map for concerned parents. She also shows how, with love and determination, parents may be able to shape their child's destiny and their future happiness.

Louder Than Words

Katy Morgan-Davies

'I was the shadow child no one ever saw...' 
 
From the day she was born until she escaped aged 30, Katy Morgan-Davies knew nothing but a life in captivity. Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who convinced himself that he was a god, and the immortal leader of the world. 
 
Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control those around him led to Katy being imprisoned indoors with the curtains drawn most of the time, denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. When she did finally engineer her escape she realised just how little she knew of the world outside her front door. She had never before done the things we take for granted such as choosing what she wanted to eat from a menu or travelling by herself on public transport. Step by step, she learned the skills she needed in order to exist in a world that was completely unfamiliar to her. 
 
In this unique and powerful memoir, we see how Katy rose above what she suffered and found a way to freedom through her love of books. Reading the works of others enabled her to see her captivity for what it truly was, while writing gave her a voice when her own was silenced. Her story raises fascinating questions, such as how a child can be kept hidden from the world outside and how, in spite of years of being brainwashed, Katy still developed a clear sense of right and wrong.

Caged Bird

Nora Ephron

‘Nora Ephron can write about anything better than anybody else can write about anything’ 
New York Times 
 
A bitingly funny, provocative and revealing look at our foibles, passions and pastimes – from the much-missed, bestselling author of I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing. 
 
From her Academy Award-nominated screenplays (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle, Julie &amp; Julia) to her bestselling fiction and essays, Nora Ephron was one of the most gifted, prolific and versatile writers of our time. 
 
In this classic collection of magazine articles, Ephron does what she does best: embrace culture with love, cynicism and unmatched wit. 
 
From tracking down the beginnings of the self-help movement, to dressing down the fashion world’s most powerful publication, to capturing a glimpse of a legendary movie in the making, these timeless pieces tap into our enduring obsessions with celebrity, food, romance, clothes, entertainment and sex. Whether casting her ingenious eye on public figures or herself, Ephron deftly weaves her journalistic skill with the intimate style of an essayist and the incomparable talent of a great storyteller.

Wallflower at the Orgy

Pip Granger

Do you remember the West End of London during the 1950s? Did you live or work there? If so, I want to hear from you ... 
 
This was the advertisement author Pip Granger placed in a local newspaper, and the response was immediate. Soon she was hearing from people who recalled what it was like when sweets were rationed; from families who'd been bombed out of their homes during the Blitz; from men who'd worked in the flower markets of Covent Garden; and from the son of a family of immigrants who'd opened one of the very first delicatessens in Soho. All had extraordinary stories to tell. 
 
Based on the author's own memories and dozens of interviews and written testimonies, Up West evokes a unique and vibrant community, and a way of life that is vanishing fast.

Up West

Voices from the Streets of Post-War London

June Vendall Clark

Starlings Laughing is a vivid memoir of life during the waning phase of colonial Africa. June Vendall Clark came to love passionately the wildlife, people and land of Southern Africa during the forty-three years she spent there. Living with her philandering husband, Robert Kay, on Far Lamorna, a farm in the Rhodesian bush, June surrounded herself with animals, befriended the local Africans and steeped herself in tribal legends. Despite the hardships of farm life and a stormy marriage, the magical quality of the land itself, reflected in the beauty of the changing seasons and in the wild animals, gave her a sense of purpose and belonging. 
 
On a whim, Robert decreed the move to the remote Okavango delta on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Shaku Zulu, a converted army surplus amphibious transporter, made an eccentric but practical home and for eight years they organised safaris, hunted crocodiles for a living and learned the practical lessons of survival in the wild. June became foster mother to lion cubs and other orphan animals, including a serval kitten, a jackal and a buffalo calf – ‘all of which either died or bit people’. 
 
It was an enthralling but difficult existence. On top of endless financial problems, there were tropical diseases, terrifying encounters with killer lions and crocodiles and the final disintegration of the marriage to contend with. But then Robert and June found common cause in a battle to curb the random slaughter of wild animals, mostly by visiting ‘sportsmen’. Decades in advance of today’s concern for conservation, they embarked on a campaign to persuade local hunting tribes to create the Moremi Wildlife Reserve. 
 
This, however, is not just another animal book. Beautifully written, in the tradition of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa and Elspeth Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika, Starlings Laughing is the richly rewarding chronicle of a courageous woman’s extraordinary times, told with honesty and humour.

Starlings Laughing

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