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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Paddy Doyle

The past they tried to hide. 
 
His mother died from cancer in 1955. His father committed suicide shortly thereafter. Paddy Doyle was sentenced in an Irish district court to be detained in an industrial school for eleven years. He was four years old... 
 
Paddy Doyle's prize-winning bestseller, The God Squad, is both a moving and terrifying testament of the institutionalised Ireland of less than fifty years ago, as seen through the bewildered eyes of a child. During his detention, Paddy was viciously assaulted and sexually abused by his religious custodians, and within three years his experiences began to result in physical manifestations of trauma. He was taken one night to hospital and left there, never to see his custodians again. So began his long round of hospitals, mainly in the company of old and dying men, while doctors tried to diagnose his condition. This period of his life, during which he was a constant witness to death, culminated in brain surgery at the age of ten - by which time he had become permanently disabled. 
 
The God Squad is the remarkable true story of a survivor, told with an extraordinary lack of bitterness for one so shockingly and shamefully treated. In Paddy Doyle's own words: 'It is about a society's abdication of responsibility to a child. The fact that I was that child, and that the book is about my life, is largely irrelevant. The probability is that there were, and still are, thousands of 'me's.'

The God Squad

Jilly Cooper

Pigeons carrying vital messages to and from the beleaguered city during the Siege of Paris; horses and mules struggling through miles of fetid mud to bring ammunition to the front in the Great War; dogs sniffing out mines for the British invasion force in the Second World War - countless brave animals have played their part in the long, cruel history of war. Some have won medals for gallantry - like G.I. Joe, the American pigeon who saved 100 British lives in Italy, and Rob, the black and white mongrel who made over twenty parachute jumps with the SAS. Too many others have died abandoned, in agony and alone, after serving their country with distinction. Jilly Cooper has here written a tribute to the role of animals in wartime. It is a tragic and horrifying story - yet it has its lighter moments too: a hilarious game of musical chairs played on camels during the Desert Campaign; and the budgie who remarked, when carried from a bombed-out East End tenement, 'This is my night out'. This is a vivid and unforgettable record of man's inhumanity to animals, but also an astonishing story of courage, intelligence, devotion and resilience.

Animals In War

Wendy Holden

Haatchi and Little B tells the inspiring and moving true story of Owen Howkins (also known as Little B, short for 'Buddy') and Haatchi, an Anatolian shepherd dog who was abandoned on a railway line as a puppy and left for dead. 
 
Thankfully, Haatchi was rescued, despite sustaining severe injuries. And so Haatchi, in turn, was able to rescue Owen, at the time an anxious and withdrawn little boy born with a rare genetic disorder, who found it hard to make friends. But Owen fell in love with his new three-legged canine housemate at first sight, and life would never be the same. 
 
The touching story of this dynamic and loveable duo is a life-affirming tale of happiness and friendship.

Haatchi and Little B

Robert Kugler

For fans of Nala's World and Arthur, this is an uplifting and unforgettable true story about how the love of a good dog can save your life. 
 
Rob Kugler adopted his chocolate Lab Bella as a puppy - a bundle of fun and love to keep his girlfriend company as he headed off to war. But when Rob's brother died and his relationship fell apart, it was Bella who was there to help heal the wounds, and make Rob's life worth living again. So when Rob was told Bella had cancer - first in her leg, which had to be amputated, and then in her lungs - he was devastated. 
 
With only months of Bella's life left, he knew just what he had to do for his furry best friend. Determined to show her the same unconditional love she had always shown him, Rob decided to give Bella the farewell adventure of her doggy dreams. Criss-crossing the USA from coast to coast, making many new friends along the way, Bella taught Rob never to give up and to live each day as though it's your last. 
 
A heartbreaking but ultimately uplifiting true tale, A Dog Named Beautiful is full of hope, love, tears and laughter. Enjoy the journey. 
_______________ 
 
'Teaches the reader a wealth about the value of making human connections.' FORBES

A Dog Named Beautiful

The true story of the Labrador who taught a Marine to love life again

Evan Wright

Generation Kill is about the young men sent to fight their nation's first open-ended war since Vietnam. Despite the flurry of media images to come of the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, you have never really met any of these people, who serve as front-line troops. For whatever reason, the media simply doesn't get them. As we all know, news accounts of the last two wars focused almost exclusively on battlefield imagery of high-tech weapons wreaking astounding destruction, comply with analysis from retired army grandees and other experts, punctuated by the odd heart-warming patriotic sound-bite. The troops themselves play a role in the media's presentation of recent wars rather like extras in The Triumph of the Will. They are everywhere yet somehow invisible. When they speak you get the sense that what they are saying has been carefully scripted. Now Generation Kill tells the soldiers' story in their own words. 
 
The narrative focuses on a platoon of 23 marines, many of them veterans of Afghanistan, whose elite reconnaissance unit spearheaded the blitzkrieg on Iraq. This is the story of young men that have been trained to become ruthless killers. It's about surviving death. It's about taking part in a war many questioned before it even began. 
 
Evan Wright was the only reporter with First Recon, which operated well ahead of most other forces, usually behind enemy lines. They were among the first marines sent into the fight and one of the last units still engaged on the outskirts of Iraq, even after the city centre fell. Generation Kill is not just a combat chronicle but an inside look at how people fighting in war actually experience it. It is both an action narrative like Black Hawk Down and a detailed portrait of a generation at war along the lines of Band of Brothers. It is not a book you are going to forget in a hurry...

Generation Kill

Harold G Moore

Joseph L. Galloway

'If you want to know what is was like to go to Vietnam as a young American... and find yourself caught in ferocious, remorseless combat with an enemy as courageous and idealistic as you were, then you must read this book. Moore and Galloway have captured the terror and exhilaration, the comradeship and self-sacrifice, the brutality and compassion that are the dark heart of war' THE TIMES 
 
THE MUST READ CLASSIC OF THE VIETNAM WAR 
 
In November 1965, 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt.Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. 
 
Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces. Together, these actions at the landing zones X-Ray and Albany constituted one of the most savage and significant battles of the Vietnam War. How these men persevered - how they sacrificed themselves for their comrades and never gave up - is both inspiring and devastating. 
 
General Moore and Joseph Galloway, the only journalist on the ground throughout the fighting, have interviewed hundreds of the men who fought there, including the North Vietnamese commanders, to present a picture of soldiers facing the sort of brutal challenge they would have found unimaginable only a few hours earlier. 
 
It is a spellbinding true portrait of warfare at its most visceral and desperate, which reveals to us, as rarely before, the extraordinary resources man can summon in the darkest of hours.

We Were Soldiers Once...And Young

James Carnac

This memoir was recently discovered and appears to have been written in the 1920s by somone who asserts that he was Jack the Ripper. 
 
This person is James Carnac, this memoir written shortly before his death is an account of his entire life, including a few short months in 1888 when he became the murderer known to posterity as Jack the Ripper. 
 
This book introduces a new suspect for the infamous murders in Whitechapel in 1888. There is information in this book that does not appear to be derived from contemporary newspapers or any other publications and the descriptions of Tottenham in the 1870s, the visits to performances of Jekyll and Hyde, the intricate geography of Whitechapel in 1888 are written with pin-point accuracy. There is also a credible motive given for James becoming the murderer Jack and also a reason for the end of the murders. Given the fact that the author also appear to have knowledge about aspects of the case not in the public arena at the time it could be that this actually is the autobiography of Jack the Ripper. 
 
Ultimately it is up to the reader to decide if they believe the mystery has been solved at last but even if they end up deciding the account to be a work of fiction it would still be one of the very earliest imaginings of the Ripper case, written in the early years of the twentieth century, a fascinating piece of period writing and a worthy addition to the Ripper canon. 
 
Whatever side they come down on there is no question that this book will be a source of much debate.

The Autobiography of Jack the Ripper

Jo Bailey-Merritt

When Sam Bailey-Merritt was just two years old, almost overnight he lost the ability to communicate or function. His mother, Jo, was at a loss as to what to do as she saw her son grow increasingly isolated and begin to suffer from uncontrollable meltdowns. Eventually, Sam was diagnosed with autism. 
 
Sam's condition continued to worsen and, just when Jo had all but given up hope of being able to help him, the family went on a day trip to a nearby miniature pig farm. Sam immediately bonded with a tiny ginger piglet called Chester, who stood sad and alone, apart from the rest of the litter. The connection between the boy and the animal was immediate and their unusual friendship blossomed from the moment the family brought Chester home. The tiny pig refused to leave Sam's side - it was as if he knew that Sam needed a friend. And, for the first time in five years, Jo saw her son really laugh. 
 
While Sam's confidence grew, Chester grew in a different way: the micro pig that was supposed to become the size of a Cocker Spaniel in fact ballooned to three times that size - with hilarious consequences for the family! Chester has turned Sam's life around. He now has the ability to communicate his feelings, make friends and is caring and kind towards others. 
 
Sam and Chester is the heart-warming story of how a teacup-sized ginger pig helped to transform the life of a boy with autism. It is the emotional story of a mother's fight to win back her son.

Sam and Chester

How a Mischievous Pig Transformed the Life of My Autistic Son

Johnny Kingdom

When a farmer on Exmoor found a frightened and badly injured red deer calf hanging by the leg from a barbed wire fence, he knew there was only one man he could call. Johnny Kingdom took Bambi home and became her surrogate mother, nursing her through the night after the dangerous operation to amputate her now infected limb. 
 
Against the odds, Bambi survived and, as she grew bigger, became a part of Johnny's family, taking over his garden and developing a taste for custard creams (and Johnny's wife's roses). But it wasn't just Johnny and his family who loved Bambi - friends, neighbours and even complete strangers would occasionally drop by with tasty treats they thought she might enjoy. But the doe in his back garden was by no means Johnny's only contact with the red deer of Exmoor. Over the years he followed the wild herds over moor and farmland as the seasons changed, filming every detail of their lives and trying to understand what Bambi was missing out on. 
 
Millions of viewers fell in love with Bambi during Johnny's BBC television series and accompanying book, but now he tells her full story. Sometimes poignant and sometimes hilarious, this is both the tale of all of Exmoor's wild deer and the story of how one very special animal came to live a very different life.

Bambi and Me

Pip Granger

The only daughter of alcoholic parents, novelist Pip Granger spent much of her childhood outside looking in. 
 
No strangers to the demon booze, her parents were deeply involved in a passionate relationship that rose to exciting highs and plunged to terrible and often frightening lows. Drink explained the series of crises, the furious rows and life-threatening accidents Pip had to contend with, and it also explained why her home life was so very different from that of most other people she knew. Just after her first birthday her family was evicted from their cottage in Sussex for non-payment of rent - a pattern that was to recur throughout her childhood. Home became a place best avoided, and soon Pip was spending time with her ne'er-do-well father in cafes, snooker-halls and other low dives in London's Soho where she made a series of lasting friendships with the unlikeliest of people. 
 
Brave, funny, original and totally authentic, Alone is a heartbreaking book about alcohol abuse, parental neglect, and the courage of a little girl to find her own way through a trouble-filled world.

Alone

Andy Hall

In 1967, twelve young men attempted to climb Alaska’s Mount McKinley – known to locals as Denali, ‘The High One’ – one of the most popular and deadly mountaineering destinations in the world. Only five survived. 
 
Journalist Andy Hall grew up in the mountain’s shadow, the son of the ranger on duty at the time of the tragedy, and has spent years tracking down survivors, lost documents and recordings of radio communications to piece together the chain of events. In Denali’s Howl, Hall reveals the full story of an expedition facing conditions conclusively established here for the first time: At an elevation of nearly 20,000 feet, these young men endured an “arctic super blizzard,” with howling winds of up to 300 miles an hour and wind chill that freezes flesh solid in minutes. All this without the high-tech gear and equipment climbers use today. 
 
As well as the story of the men caught inside the storm, Denali’s Howl is the story of those caught outside it trying to save them - Hall’s father among them. The book gives readers a detailed look at the culture of climbing then and now and raises uncomfortable questions about each player in this tragedy. Was enough done to rescue the climbers, or were their fates sealed when they ascended into the path of this unprecedented storm?

Denali's Howl

The Deadliest Climbing Disaster on America's Wildest Peak

Mike Rossiter

'We believed in ourselves so much, no one ever panicked, even when the situation looked so desperate. We all believed that our best chance of staying alive was to stick together.' 
 
Flying Lancaster bombers was one of the most dangerous missions of the war. Yet night after night Flight Lieutenant Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie risked their lives in the skies over Germany. Together they faced incredible dangers, flak damage, close encounters with the fighter planes of the Luftwaffe, and crash landings. 
 
Against this background a friendship was formed that bound the crew of C Charlie together against all odds. 
 
Geoffrey King and the crew of C Charlie are unique in having flown together for fifty missions and living to tell the tale. Bomber Flight Berlin is the story of a group of ordinary men, from different walks of life, thrown together by the forces of war. It is the story of those missions above Berlin, as they flew into what seemed certain death, and aircraft all around them were blasted out of the sky. It is also a testament to a remarkable friendship.

Bomber Flight Berlin

Tom Abraham

Tom 'Bud' Abraham was one of the very few Englishmen to serve in Vietnam. As an officer in the 1st Cavalry Division during 1967/8, he saw combat in some of the fiercest encounters of the war. His gallantry earned him a chestful of medals, including the Silver Star, one of the highest decorations awarded by the American Army. 
 
During the Tet Offensive, Tom was captured by the Vietcong. The suffering he endured during his interrogation and torture tested him to the limits, and yet his daring escape into the surrounding jungle was the beginning of a new ordeal. His struggle to survive, naked and alone, would drag him down to the level of a primitive beast. 
 
After he returned to England from Vietnam, Tom made a new life. He married, became a father, and started a successful career in business. It seemed that he had forgotten the nightmare of the past. But more than thirty years later, a trivial encounter with the police began a catastrophic chain of events. He lost everything - his family, his home, his self-respect. It became all too obvious that the psychological and emotional wounds he received in Vietnam were still festering. 
 
In trying to rebuild his life, Tom had once more to confront those traumatic memories that he had buried so deep. If he were to have any chance of a future, he would have to relive the past. His terrifying yet inspiring journey is the story of this book.

The Cage

Andy McNab

Immediate Action is a no-holds-barred account of an extraordinary life, from the day Andy McNab was found in a carrier bag on the steps of Guy's Hospital to the day he went to fight in the Gulf War. 
 
As a delinquent youth he kicked against society. As a young soldier he waged war against the IRA in the streets and fields of South Armagh. As a member of 22 SAS Regiment he was at the centre of covert operations for nine years - on five continents. 
 
Recounting with grim humour and in riveting, often horrifying, detail his activities in the world's most highly trained and efficient Special Forces unit, McNab sweeps us into a world of surveillance and intelligence-gathering, counter-terrorism and hostage rescue.There are casualties: the best men are so often the first to be killed, because they are in front. 
 
By turns chilling, astonishing, violent, funny and moving, this blistering first-hand account of life at the forward edge of battle confirms Andy McNab's standing in the front rank of writers on modern war.

Immediate Action

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 brainwashed those around him. 
 
Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and 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. 
 
Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.

The Girl in the Shadows

My Life in a Cult

Kate McCann

'The decision to publish this book has been very difficult, and taken with heavy hearts ... My reason for writing it is simple: to give an account of the truth ... Writing this memoir has entailed recording some very personal, intimate and emotional aspects of our lives. Sharing these with strangers does not come easily to me, but if I hadn't done so I would not have felt the book gave as full a picture as it is possible for me to give. As with every action we have taken over the last five years, it ultimately boils down to whether what we are doing could help us to find Madeleine. When the answer to that question is yes, or even possibly, our family can cope with anything ... Nothing is more important to us than finding our little girl.' 
 
Kate McCann

Madeleine

Our daughter's disappearance and the continuing search for her

Dalai Lama

Victor Chan

The Wisdom of Compassion offers rare insights into the Dalai Lama’s life as he interacts with remarkable people from all walks of life. In these deeply engaging behind-the-scenes stories we see not only the Dalai Lama at his most human, and most humane, but also the way he approaches the world with humour and optimism. 
 
As he empathizes with those who are suffering, and demonstrates the tangible benefits of practising forgiveness and compassion, the Dalai Lama reveals the many lessons he has learned, including how 
 
* his collaborations with leading neuroscientists, psychologists, teachers and students from around the world have taught him how to educate the heart; 
 
* his inspiring friendship with a blind Irishman, the only person he calls his hero, has taught him how one can overcome adversity; 
 
* through his encounters with illiterate grandmothers learning how to harness solar power for their communities, a beggar girl, and his soulmate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, he has discovered how compassion can be translated into action. 
 
Enhanced by the Dalai Lama’s seven decades of practice and illuminated through captivating anecdotes, The Wisdom of Compassion can help readers to lead more fulfilling lives. The Dalai Lama also shows how, when we open our hearts and minds to others, we are on the surest path to true happiness.

The Wisdom of Compassion

Stories of Remarkable Encounters and Timeless Insights

Betty Mahmoody

'You are here for the rest of your life. Do you understand? You are not leaving Iran. You are here until you die.' 
 
Betty Mahmoody and her husband, Dr Sayyed Bozorg Mahmoody ('Moody'), came to Iran from the USA to meet Moody's family. With them was their four-year-old daughter, Mahtob. Appalled by the squalor of their living conditions, horrified by what she saw of a country where women are merely chattels and Westerners are despised, Betty soon became desperate to return to the States. But Moody, and his often vicious family, had other plans. Mother and daughter became prisoners of an alien culture, hostages of an increasingly tyrannical and violent man. 
 
Betty began to try to arrange an escape. Evading Moody's sinister spy network, she secretly met sympathisers opposed to Khomeini's savage regime. But every scheme that was suggested to her meant leaving Mahtob behind for ever...

Not Without My Daughter

John McCarthy

Jill Morrell

On 17 April 1986 John McCarthy was kidnapped in Beirut. For the next five years he was cut off from everything and everybody he knew and loved, from family, friends, and, perhaps above all, from Jill Morrell, the girl he was going to marry. 
 
For five years, John McCarthy had to endure the deprivation - both physical and psychological - of captivity; the filth and squalor of the cells in which he was kept; the agony of isolation and repeated self-examination; and the pain of ignorance, of not knowing if those he loved even realized he was alive. 
 
For Jill Morrell, the five years of John's captivity were a different kind of hell: the initial shock and disbelief; the gradual acceptance that John had been taken and that her life had changed irrevocably, that all their plans had been shattered. 
 
But Jill refused to give up hope. For five years she and a group of friends worked ceaselessly on behalf of John and all British hostages in the Middle East, until the extraordinary day in August 1991 when John McCarthy stepped down from an aeroplane at RAF Lyneham. A day when they could begin again. 
 
This is their story, a remarkable account of courage, endurance, hope and love.

Some Other Rainbow

Malcolm McPherson

Their mission was straightforward - to set up an Al Qaeda observation post in the south-eastern mountains of Afghanistan. No-one was expecting any difficulties. 
 
Instead three men - a Navy SEAL, an Air Force Combat Air Controller and an Army Ranger platoon commander - were pinned down by hostile fire on top of Takur Ghat mountain. Only one of them survived to recall the horrors of what became a truly terrible day . . . The resulting rescue mission turned into a seventeen hour battle that left seven soldiers dead. 
 
Roberts Ridge is the visceral story of those seventeen hours. With access to Pentagon generals, the SEALS and the survivors, Malcolm MacPherson takes the reader deep into the heart of the battle of Takur Ghat and brings us face to face with the reality of the new war against terrorism.

Roberts Ridge

Maggie Groff

'Over time, I nursed victims of war, the posh, the poor, the famous and the infamous... Oh, the stories I can tell!' 
 
 To a young girl the life of a nurse sounds exciting, but with long hours and short shrift it’s never easy. So when Maggie Groff embarks on her training at London’s King’s College Hospital she must quickly get to grips with a demanding career. It’s sink or swim. 
 
From the watchful gaze of stern sisters and the trials of nursing on a poor south-east London housing estate, to the explosive dramas of staff health checks at sophisticated Selfridges, Maggie shares warm and witty stories of mistakes and mayhem, tea and sympathy, and the life-affirming moments that make it all worthwhile. 
 
 Played out against the march of feminism and fashion, IRA bombings and the iconic music and movies of almost half a century ago, Not Your Average Nurse is a delightful romp through time.

Not your Average Nurse

The Entertaining True Story of a Student Nurse in 1970s London

Abandoned as a baby, Andy McNab's start in life was tough. Growing up in South London with foster parents, and surrounded by poverty, he attended seven schools in as many years, disillusioned and in remedial classes. It wasn’t long before his life descended into petty crime. By the age of sixteen, he was in juvenile detention. 
 
Recruited into the Army from there, it soon became apparent that he had the reading age of an eleven year old. The next six months in the Army education system changed his course of his life forever. Today Everything Changes is the inspiring story of when life changed for Andy McNab.

Today Everything Changes

Quick Read

Matt Gallagher

Iraq, late 2007. Lieutenant Matt Gallagher arrives just as US policy shifts from lethal operations to counter-insurgency. He encounters a world where nothing is as it seems. Friends are enemies, reconciliation is war, roads are bombs and silence is deadly. Nothing left to do except 'embrace the suck'... 
 
...and blog about it. Matt Gallagher's response was to write an on-line journal (called Kaboom) which quickly went viral. Read by thousands of soldiers who recognised its unflinchingly honest portrayal of the real war, as well as high-ranking Pentagon officials and interested parties around the world, Kaboom was shut down by the US Army in June 2008. Now you can read the whole story, based on that brilliant, acerbic, banned blog. Kaboom paints a shockingly original and uncompromising portrait of a savage war the world is still struggling to understand.

Kaboom

Evan Ratliff

‘Meth, murder and pirates: the coder who became a crime boss. A world that lurks just outside of our everyday perception, in the dark corners of the internet we never visit’ – Wired 
 
The Mastermind tells the incredible true story of Paul Le Roux, the frighteningly powerful creator of a twenty-first century cartel, and the decade-long global manhunt that finally brought his empire to its knees. 
 
Le Roux’s business evolved from an online prescription drug network into a sprawling multinational conglomerate engaged in almost every conceivable aspect of criminal mayhem. All tied together with encryption programs so advanced that government agencies were unable to break them. 
 
Tracing Le Roux’s vast wealth and his shadowy henchmen around the world, award-winning journalist Evan Ratliff spent four years piecing together this intricate network. His investigation reveals a dark parable of ambition and greed, and exposes a new age of crime in which a reclusive entrepreneur can build an empire in the shadows of our networked world.

The Mastermind

The hunt for the World's most prolific criminal

Robert Mason

'I read this as a young pilot about to embark on a career flying military helicopters. It should have put me off for life. Robert Mason tells a gripping account of the relentless courage and heroism amidst the insanity of the Vietnam war. The final few pages are the most shocking I have read in any book.' Tim Peake 
________ 
 
A stunning book about the right stuff in the wrong war. 
 
As a child, Robert Mason dreamed of levitating. 
 
As a young man, he dreamed of flying helicopters - and the U.S. Army gave him his chance. 
 
They sent him to Vietnam where, between August 1965 and July 1966, he flew more than 1,000 assault missions. In Chickenhawk, Robert Mason gives us a devastating bird's eye-view of that war in all its horror. 
 
He experiences the accelerating terror, the increasingly desperate courage of a man 'acting out the role of a hero long after he realises that the conduct of the war is insane,' says the New York Times. 
 
'And we can't stop ourselves from identifying with it.' 
 
CHICKENHAWK contains the most vivid, astoundingly intense descriptions of flying ever written. It is a devastating account of men at war, of courage and cowardice, boredom and exhilaration, lasting friendship and sudden death. It is not a book for weak stomachs, but its powerful message will stay in the memory long after the last page is turned.

Chickenhawk

Richard Dannatt

General Sir Richard Dannatt's distinguished career in the army has spanned thirty-eight years and seen him serve in many different theatres of conflict, from Northern Ireland (where he was awarded the Military Cross) to Bosnia and Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. His experiences have forged an unwavering loyalty to the fighting British soldier. 
 
As Chief of the General Staff, he was given overall command of the British army at a time when the fighting was fiercest in Afghanistan. But from his very first day in the job, General Dannatt proved himself a courageous leader and a forceful advocate for his men, never shying from controversy to tell the truth as he found it. 
 
More than any leader in recent times, Dannatt has used his position of command to get a better deal for the British soldier - the right equipment, the right conditions, the right reward - to do the job we ask of them. His leadership and example have shaped the debate about the role of the professional army in modern warfare. 
 
Leading from the Front is General Sir Richard Dannatt's reflections on a life of military service which offers a characteristically frank analysis of whether Britain's defence strategy is fit to deal with the numerous threats we will face in the 21st century.

Leading from the Front

An autobiography

Russell Kane

'Brilliantly written. Very funny and heartbreaking.' Davina McCall 
 
From one of Britain's most popular and prolific comedians comes a hilarious and deeply moving memoir of life lived under the rule of a Silverback dad. 
 
The Silverback is considered the undisputed king, a creature whose authority is never challenged and who does not yield to compromise. He walks proudly, feeds greedily, grafts tirelessly, mates voraciously, swears constantly and is threatened all too easily. The Silverback is known to nestle in the misty peaks of central Africa but can also be found in Barking, Essex. Meet Dave Kane, the disappointed, steroid-ingesting, metal-wielding, bouncer father of slight, effete Gamma Male, Russell Kane. 
 
SON OF A SILVERBACK is a story about fathers and sons, class and education and how one scrawny, sensitive, fake-tan-applying 'ponce' stepped out of his father's shadow and became a man - whatever that means. 
 
What readers are saying: 
***** 'This is so much more than a comedian's life story.' 
***** 'I read this book in about two days. It was gripping, funny, sad, and it felt deeply honest.' 
***** 'An exposing and candid exploration of Russell's family and foundations and all the better for its frankness . . . Full of laughs, poignancy and appropriate introspection.'

Son of a Silverback

Growing Up in the Shadow of an Alpha Male

Jimmy Lerner

You are convicts. Your job here is to lie, cheat, steal, extort, get tattoos, take drugs, sell drugs, shank and sock each other. Just don't let us catch you - that's our job. We catch you, you got nothin' coming. 
 
It is your worst nightmare. You wake up naked in an eight-by-ten-foot steel cell designated 'Suicide Watch #3'. The cell is real. Jimmy Lerner, former family man and corporate strategic planner, has become a prison 'fish', or green new arrival. Taken to a penitentiary in the Nevada desert to serve a twelve-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, this previously nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn ends up sharing a claustrophobic cell with Kansas, a hugely muscled skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his neck and a serious set of issues. 
 
You Got Nothing Coming takes us into a corrupt world powered by violence, drugs, rape, fear and racial hatred. With brash, dark humour Jimmy Lerner tells us how the techniques learnt in management seminars have helped him survive in this hostile environment, and how a lethal act of self-defence landed him in this circle of American prison hell in the first place. Bracingly cynical and perceptive, this terrifying story is all truth.

You Got Nothing Coming

Amanda Berry

Gina DeJesus

'We have written here about terrible things that we never wanted to think about again . . . Now we want the world to know: we survived, we are free, we love life.' 
 
On May 6, 2013, Amanda Berry made headlines around the world when she fled a Cleveland home and called 911, saying: “Help me, I’m Amanda Berry . . . I’ve been kidnapped, and I’ve been missing for ten years.” 
 
 A horrifying story rapidly unfolded. Ariel Castro, a local school bus driver, had separately lured Berry and two other young women, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, to his home, where he trapped them and kept them chained. In the decade that followed, the three girls were frequently raped, psychologically abused and threatened with death if they attempted to escape. Years after she was taken, Berry had a daughter by their captor, a child she bravely raised as normally as possible under impossible conditions. 
 
 Drawing upon their recollections and the secret diary kept by Amanda Berry, Berry and Gina DeJesus describe the unimaginable torment they suffered and the strength and resourcefulness that enabled them to survive. Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post reporters Mary Jordan and Kevin Sullivan interweave the events within Castro’s house with original reporting on the efforts to find the missing girls. The full story behind the headlines – including details never previously released on Castro’s life and motivations – Hope is a harrowing yet inspiring chronicle of two women whose courage and ingenuity ultimately delivered them back to their lives and families.

Hope

A Memoir of Survival

Sergeant Andy McNab recounts the story of the top secret mission that would reveal the secrets of the SAS to the world for the first time. 
 
Their location: Iraq 
Their mission: to sever a vital enemy underground communication link, to find and destroy mobile Scud launchers 
Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero 
 
When eight members of the elite SAS regiment embark on a highly covert operation, they are each laden with 15 stones of equipment, needing to tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. They engage in a fierce battle. They escape on foot to the Syrian border. Three men die. One escapes. 
But four men are captured. For them, the worst is yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they are tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training has prepared them… 
 
This is a story of superhuman courage, strength, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds. It shows just how much it takes to be a member of the SAS. 
_____________________________________________ 
‘The best account yet of the SAS in action’ Sunday Times 
‘One of the best books to emerge from the first Gulf War … Magnificent’ Independent on Sunday

Bravo Two Zero

The original SAS story

the classic true story from an SAS hero

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