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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Nell Frizzell

'My favourite person on the politics of parenthood' Pandora Sykes 
 
'Exhilarating, infuriating, urgent and human' Daisy Buchanan 
 
'A blazing, brilliant read ... compassionate, convincing, funny!' Amy Liptrot 
 
'Honest, unflinching and necessary' Sara Pascoe 
 
'Funny and brisk ... urgent and incisive' Rob Delaney 
 
'A timely and important book' Clover Stroud 
 
It's time to share the motherload. 
 
A memoir culminating in a manifesto, Holding the Baby sets out to understand why we still treat early parenthood as an individual slog rather than a shared cultural responsibility. Tracing her own journey to the nadir of sleeplessness via social retreat and murderous rage, Frizzell draws on the latest research to explore: 
 
- What effect does parenting have on your career? 
 
- How can we make childcare affordable and fit for purpose? 
 
- If parenting is so hard, why does anyone ever do it more than once? 
 
Funny, reassuring and radically ambitious, Holding the Baby sheds light on the ways in which we fail new parents, and offers a rallying crying that we fight for a better alternative.

Holding the Baby

Milk, sweat and tears from the frontline of motherhood

Shane Dunphy

Four extraordinary true stories ... 
 
Bobby and Micky, six and four, controlled from beyond the grave by their evil father ... 
 
Mina, seventeen, who has Downs Syndrome, desperate to be like everyone else, falling into the hands of men who abuse her trust ... 
 
Sylvie, a fourteen-year-old mother being pimped by her father ... 
 
Twins Larry and Francey, ten, scarcely human after an upbringing of savage and unimaginable cruelty ... 
 
One inspiring account of how one man got to know these wounded children and tried to give them hope - and a future.

Crying in the Dark

Ann Ingle

At 20 Londoner Ann Ingle fell madly in love with an Irish fellow she met on holiday in Cornwall. At the church to arrange their shotgun wedding she discovered that he hadn't even told her his real name. 
 
Sixty-odd years later Ann looks back and considers what she has learned from the life that followed - bringing eight children into the world, their father's years of mental illness and tragic death at 40, being a cash-strapped single mother in 1980s Dublin, coming into her own in her middle years - going to college, working and writing, and continuing to evolve and learn into her ninth decade, even as she accepts the realities of being 'old'. 
 
Candid about everything that matters - love, sex, heartbreak, money, class, religion, mental health, rearing children (and letting them go), reading and writing, ageing - Openhearted is a compelling story about living life in a spirit of curiosity and delight and with a willingness to look for good in others.

Openhearted

Eighty Years of Love, Loss, Laughter and Letting Go

Malena Ernman

Greta Thunberg

Beata Ernman

Svante Thunberg

This is the story of a happy family whose life suddenly fell apart, never to be the same again. Of two devoted parents plunged into a waking nightmare as their eleven-year-old daughter stopped speaking and eating, and her younger sister struggled to cope. 
 
This crisis was not theirs alone: they were burned-out people on a burned-out planet. 
 
Our House is on Fire is the story of how one family found ways to strengthen, heal, and gain courage from the love they had for each other - and for the living world. It is a parable of hope and determination in an emergency that affects us all.

Our House is on Fire

Scenes of a Family and a Planet in Crisis

Caitríona Palmer

Caitriona Palmer had a happy childhood in Dublin, raised by loving adoptive parents. When she was in her late twenties, she established contact with her birth mother, Sarah, and they developed a close attachment. But Sarah set one painful condition to this joyous new relationship: she wished to keep it - to keep Caitriona - secret from her family, from her friends, from everyone. 
 
 Who was Sarah, and why did she want to preserve a decades-old secret? An Affair with My Mother tells the story of Caitriona's quest to answer these questions, and of the intense, furtive 'affair' she and her mother conducted in carefully chosen locations around Dublin. By turns heartwarming and heartbreaking, An Affair with My Mother is a beautifully and tenderly written account of a remarkable relationship that has survived seemingly intolerable pressures.

An Affair with My Mother

A Story of Adoption, Secrecy and Love

Hannah Azieb Pool

In 1974 Hannah Azieb-Pool was adopted from an orphanage in Eritrea and brought to England by her white adoptive father. She grew up unable to imagine what it must be like to look into the eyes of a blood relative until one day a letter arrived from a brother she never knew she had. Not knowing what to do with the letter, Hannah hid it away. But she was unable to forget it, and ten years later she finally decided to track down her surviving Eritrean family and embarked upon a journey that would take her far from the comfort zone of her metropolitan lifestye to confront the poverty and oppression of a life that could so easily have been her own.

My Fathers' Daughter

Charlotte Moore

A new updated edition of the classic book 
 
Charlotte Moore has three children: the two oldest, George and Sam, are autistic; the youngest Jake is not. In this extraordinary book, which combines personal memoir with the most recent known information on this most fascinating and elusive of conditions, she describes the circumstances of their birth, behaviour, diagnosis, treatment - and brilliantly conveys what daily life is like for a family with autism. It's an invaluable book for anyone with an interest in childhood and child development. 
 
George and Sam was published to huge acclaim by Viking Penguin in 2004 - it was immediately regarded as one of the key books on autism. In this new edition Charlotte Moore brings the story up to date by describing the boys' passage through adolescence and its impact on her family.

George and Sam

Ian Clayton

'An astonishing work' - Joanne Harris 
 
Every parent's worst nightmare became a reality for Ian Clayton. On a short holiday break in Hay-on-Wye he took his nine-year-old twins canoeing, and in a freak accident his daughter Billie was drowned. In a remarkably frank and vivid way Clayton describes what happened on that spring day, his desperate attempts to save his two children, and then what it felt like two years later to come face to face with the men who hired out the canoe. 
 
But Our Billie is not a story of bitterness and recrimination. Instead it's the story of how a family attempts to come to terms with something which makes no sense at all. Through his memories of Billie and his wonderfully affectionate portrait of the small town in Yorkshire where the family has lived for generations, he weaves a story of loss and remembering, of gratitude and forgiveness.

Our Billie

Rio Hogarty

When she was still a child in the 1940s Rio Hogarty rescued an unhappy school mate. Rio decided that her friend must get away from her violent father and that the solution was simple - Rio's own family must open their home and their hearts to the fearful young girl and help to sort out her problems. 
 
Nearly seven decades on and Rio is still at it - opening her home and her heart to children in need. She has fostered more than 140 children and in 2010, in an award created specially for her, she was named Mother of the Year at Ireland's annual People of the Year Awards. 
 
However, Rio is no saintly madonna. Along the way she stood up to armed robbers, hijacked a taxi to drive herself to the hospital when in the throes of labour, caroused in New York bars with stars of the folk music scene, was the first Irish woman to get a HGV licence, smuggled contraband ... When she had to, she cut corners to get what she wanted. And she also surrendered to alcoholism and nearly lost it all. But ultimately her courage, feistiness and zest for life triumphed. 
 
A Heart So Big is the story of a woman who just couldn't turn her back on a child who needed a home. It is also the story of the children whose lives she affected so deeply and a heart-breaking reminder of the price children pay for the failures of adults. But most of all, it is a moving, vivid, uplifting and searingly honest account of an amazing life lived to the full.

A Heart So Big

Alex James

There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still. 
 
One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run. 
 
This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. 
 
Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

Over the Rainbow

Tales from an Unexpected Year

St John Greene

'Kiss boys two times after I have gone' 
'Please teach the boys to say what they mean' 
'Mummy loved orange Club biscuits, jam and jelly and lemon curd' 
 
On her deathbed, Kate Greene's only concern was for her two little boys, Reef and Finn, and her loving husband, Singe. She knew she'd be leaving them behind very soon. 
 
Over her last few days, Kate created Mum's List. The couple talked and cried together as she wrote her thoughts and wishes down, trying to help the man she loved create the best life for their boys after she was gone. 
 
It wasn't the first time Singe and Kate had faced the spectre of death. Four years earlier, doctors discovered a large lump in baby Reef 's abdomen. Kate, pregnant with Finn, was so distressed that she gave birth dangerously early. Both boys pulled through, but afterwards Kate received the diagnosis that every woman dreads . . .

Mum's List

Natascha McElhone

Natascha McElhone was away filming in LA, with her two sons and pregnant with her third child when she received news that her beloved husband, Martin, had died suddenly of a heart attack. 
 
Unable to accept this devastating loss, she began writing letters to her husband, telling him how she felt, and how she and her children were adapting to life without him. The result is After You, a triumphant testament to the resilience of the human spirit. It is a profoundly moving tribute to Natascha McElhone's three sons, whose appetite for life led the author through her darkest moments, and to their remarkable father.

After You

Delia Ephron

When Delia's beloved first husband Jerry died of cancer in 2015, after thirty-three years of marriage, she struggled without him. Floored by grief, it never occurred to her she would find love again. But fate had other ideas. An article she published about the pain of shutting down Jerry's landline sparked a series of emails with a widower she'd dated in college fifty years ago, and they fell deeply in love. 
Delia and Peter found themselves soul mates but as their whirlwind romance came into bloom, Delia was diagnosed with leukaemia - the same that had claimed the life of her sister Nora. 
See-sawing between tears and laughter, Left on Tenth is the spirited story of Delia's second chance at love, and a heartfelt and inspirational account of life after cancer. 
 
'A tale of brilliant hope, of heartache and uplift, so refreshing - it is a wonderful read.' Mariella Frostrup 
'Illuminating, generous, sparkling with wit, wisdom, humanity and wonder' Rachel Joyce 
 
'I absolutely loved this book. All of life and death and everything in between is in the pages' Clover Stroud

Left on Tenth

A Second Chance at Life

Tracy King

When Tracy King was twelve she was exorcised. 
Unfortunately, the demons that beset Tracy could not be so easily displaced. 
While her life was filled with creativity, curiosity, and love, it was also constricted by poverty, by Tracy’s father’s alcoholism and her mother’s agoraphobia. 
 
By the time she turned twelve Tracy’s father had been killed, her sister taken into care and her mother ensnared by the promises of born-again Christianity. 
 
This is the story of an ordinary family trapped in a broken system. It is a story that could happen to anyone without the tools to transform their circumstances. 
But it is also a tale with a twist. And one full of humour and hope. 
Because with courage, perseverance and self-education, Tracy learnt to think for herself and found her way out.

Learning to Think.

make believe, injustice and searching for truth – a memoir

A memoir about hardship, education, hellfire, family, finding a way to break free

Suzanne Lambert

When Suzanne was left, two weeks old, at the door of Nazareth House orphanage, it was Nancy the nanny who fought for the right to adopt Suzanne. Now, 60 years later, Suzanne is sharing the untold story of all the many orphans that her mother Nancy saved throughout the 1940s and 50s. 
 
As a teenager, Nancy accompanied the orphans to the other side of the country when they were evacuated during the war years. When they finally returned, 6 long years later, she vowed never to leave Nazareth House again. Right until her dying day, when the House had become a care home, she kept her promise. 
 
A Christmas Angel at the Ragdoll Orphanage, tells the story of a remarkable woman, who worked tirelessly to give society's most vulnerable children a chance of home and happiness. Full of touching, tear-jerking and unforgettable stories, this is a book about motherhood, childhood and Christmas, and everything that comes between.

A Christmas Angel at the Ragdoll Orphanage

Natascha McElhone, star of The Truman Show and Californication, was filming in LA, seven months pregnant with her third child with her other two young children playing in the gym across the road when she got a call from a friend that would change her life forever. Her husband, Martin, the love of her life and father to her delightful children and an apparently healthy man in his early 40s had died suddenly of a heart attack. 
 
In the weeks and months that followed the devastating shock Natascha continued to write her diary and letters to Martin (something she had always done as, due to her work, she was used to being far from home). They were letters of love, letters about their gorgeous boys, letters about the birth of the new baby and diary entries detailing the mundane and heartbreaking details of her new life: house repairs and terrifying family finances; trying to keep the children's lives as normal as possible in the face of such abnormal new circumstances. 
 
The result is a powerful, honest and moving story of a magical love affair and all-consuming grief, of being a mother alone and trying to live for the future.

Letters of Love, and Loss, to a Husband and Father

Susan Lewis

In 1960s Bristol, a family is overshadowed by heartbreak. 
 
Feisty seven year old Susan and her mother, Eddress, are living in a world darkening by tragedy. 
While Susan is being brave, Eddress is struggling for courage. 
 
How does a child cope when faced with a wall of adult secrets? What does a mother do when her biggest fear starts to become a reality? 
 
Set in the sixties, when it was considered shameful to acknowledge your emotions and a fridge is a luxury, Just One More Day is a deeply moving true-life account, told by mother and daughter, of how the spectre of death moved into their family, and how hard they tried to pretend it wasn't there. 
 
Praise for Susan Lewis: 
 
‘A multi-faceted tear-jerker’ Heat 
 
‘Expertly written to brew an atmosphere of foreboding, this story is an irresistible blend of intrigue and passion, and the consequences of secrets and betrayal’ Woman 
 
‘Utterly compelling’ Sun 
 
‘Spellbinding! You just keep turning the pages, with the atmosphere growing more and more intense as the story leads to its dramatic climax’ Daily Mail 
 
‘One of the best around’ Independent on Sunday 
 
‘Sad, happy, sensual and intriguing’ Woman’s Own

Just One More Day

A Memoir

Sheila Tofield

It was a different, less tolerant age . . . 
 
 Sheila grew up in Rotherham, the daughter of an uncaring mother who made her believe she was useless, stupid and - most painfully of all - unlovable. As a young woman, her worst childhood fears were confirmed when her fiancé broke off their engagement without an explanation. Heartbroken and vulnerable, Sheila was easy prey to the worst type of man - a man who turned his back on her when she told him she was carrying his child. 
 
 In Fifties Britain, an unmarried, pregnant girl received,not sympathy but censure and contempt. Shunned by most of her family, Sheila ended up in a Church of England home for unmarried mothers, with no apparent alternative than to give up her child for adoption. But when she held her newborn daughter in her arms for the first time, Sheila knew she had to do the unthinkable: bring up her baby on her own in a society that would condemn her for it.

The Unmarried Mother

Rosamund Stone Zander

Ben Zander

In this powerful and inspiring book, family systems therapist and executive coach Rosamund Stone Zander invites readers to shed the childhood stories that hold us back, and enter a realm of true maturity and fulfilment, where limitless growth becomes possible. 
 
As children, we develop stories about how the world works, most of which get improved upon and amended over time. But some do not, even as we mature in other ways. Opinionated, self-centered and fear-driven, these child stories are the source of the behavioural and emotional patterns that hold us back. When we learn to identify and rewrite these stories, limitless growth becomes possible. 
 
In her groundbreaking and inspiring new book, Rosamund Stone Zander shows us that life is a story we tell ourselves, and that we have the power to change that story. She illuminates how breaking old patterns and telling a new story can transform not just our own lives, but also our relationships with others whether in a marriage, a classroom, or a business. Finally, she demonstrates how, with this new understanding of ourselves and our place within an interconnected world, we can take powerful action in the collective interest, and gain a sense of deep connection to the universe. 
 
This galvanizing book expands our notions of how much we can grow and change, whether we can affect others or the world at large, and how much freedom and joy we can experience. Stimulating and profound, it is the perfect companion to her beloved first book, The Art of Possibility.

Pathways to Possibility

Transform your outlook on life with the bestselling author of The Art of Possibility

David Coleman

The popular RTÉ series Teens in the Wild showed David Coleman doing what he does best: taking families who were locked in conflict and turning things around. It wasn't always easy, but the results were dramatic, moving and inspiring. 
 
The key to a successful journey through adolescence centres on the recognition that parenting styles have to develop and progress through this period. In Parenting is Child's Play: The Teenage Years, David Coleman explains why adolescence gets such a bad press and, reassuringly, why parents don't have to dread it. Even if affection, respect and cooperation seem to be replaced by contempt, rejection and recalcitrance, there is an explanation for these changes and they don't have to cause irreparable damage. 
 
Parenting is Child's Play: The Teenage Years provides key information about what is going on with your child, and is brimming with helpful advice and down-to-earth strategies. For parents supporting their children on one of the most important journeys they'll ever undertake - the journey from childhood to adulthood - it is essential reading.

Parenting is Child's Play: The Teenage Years

Mary Pols

Mary Pols had always wanted children, but Mr Right had never come along. Then one day she met a guy. Cute. Much younger. Definitely unsuitable. But she went home with him anyway. What was the worst that could happen? 
 
Well, nine months later she was going to find out... 
 
As time unfolds, Mary's problems seem to grow as rapidly as her bump. Money. Childcare. How to tell her large, respectable family (especially her dad). Above all, what is she to do about the baby's father? He's sexy but hopeless - almost as much of a boy as her baby-to-be. 
 
Accidentally on Purpose is a funny, heartwarming true story about becoming a mother, finding happiness in the unexpected and compromising in the name of love.

Accidentally on Purpose

A one-night stand, my unplanned pregnancy, and loving the best mistake I ever made

Jilly Cooper

In 1969 when Jilly Cooper, then a young Sunday Times journalist, was asked to write a book on marriage, she had been married to Leo Cooper for a mere seven years. Although the institution of marriage has changed a great deal since this book was first written, much of Jilly's advice - frank, fearless, often hilarious, but always wise - still holds good. 
 
From the wedding and the honeymoon to life afterwards, including how to deal with the in-laws and how to tell if your other half is having an affair, she dispenses anecdotes, jokes, common sense and endless optimism and fun. 
 
Whether you are contemplating marriage, living together, or have been married as long as Jilly and Leo were, you will find plenty of good advice and humour in How to Stay Married.

How To Stay Married

Kathryn Maris

But back to the summer day the spike 
grazed my brother's scalp: I slept beside him 
in his racing car bed and my father woke me 
and slapped my face, thinking, I assume, of sex, 
whereas I was already thinking about death. 
 
Urban, suburban, observant, obsessive and wickedly witty, the poems in Kathryn Maris's third book range over such subjects as parenthood, marriage, adultery, the politics of children's sports contests, female incarceration and psychoanalysis. The House with Only an Attic and a Basement is that rare thing: a darkly funny collection of poems that courses with keen intelligence, yet carries its sophistication lightly so that it is a pleasure to stride along with every poem.

The House with Only an Attic and a Basement

Professor Dame Sally Davies

Jonathan Grant

Mike Catchpole

This is a story that affects us all: our friends, our family and our children. Antibiotics add, on average, 20 years to everyone's lives. Since the manufacture of penicillin in 1943, for over 70 years we have survived extraordinary operations and life-threatening infections. We are so familiar with these wonder drugs that we take them for granted. The truth is that we have been abusing them: as patients; as doctors; as travellers; in our food. 
 
No new class of antibiotic has been discovered for 26 years and the bugs are fighting back. If we do not take action now, in a few decades we may start dying from the most commonplace of ailments that can today be treated easily. This book is vital in raising awareness for the future health of our children and our grandchildren.

The Drugs Don't Work

A Global Threat

Jamie Oliver

Jamie revolutionises delicious healthy family meals by going back to basics in the kitchen. In this beautiful reissue here, you'll find everything you need to make cooking inspiring and accessible to everyone. 
 
In 'Family Tree' he takes recipes several different ways, giving you confidence whilst at the same time hoping to get you hooked on learning more. He also reveals the world's most-loved food from a global website survey he conducted: the Top Ten dishes that families love to eat together. 
 
From exciting dishes inspired by Jamie's travels including Southern Indian Rice and Seafood Soup to family favourites like flaky Chicken and sweet Leek Pie and Banana and Blueberry French Toast, there's something in Jamie's Dinners for everyone (even the most fussy eaters)! 
 
'Superb, fabulous, brilliant' Daily Mail 
 
'Whether you're a seasoned pro or a complete novice, this book should be a vital ingredient on your kitchen shelves' Company 
 
'The Jamie Effect is being felt not just in schools but in households all over Britain. We must rejoice in the national treasure he is' Vanessa Feltz, Daily Express

Jamie's Dinners

Shon Faye

Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both. Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realize that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture. 
 
Love, she argues, is as much a collective question as a personal one. Yet our collective ideals of love have developed in a society which is itself profoundly sick and loveless; in which consumer capitalism sells us ever new, engrossing fantasies of becoming more loved or lovable. In this highly politicized terrain, boundaries are purposefully drawn to keep some in and to keep others out. Those who exist outside them are ignored, denigrated, exiled. 
 
In Love in Exile, Shon Faye shows love is much greater than the narrow ideals we have been taught to crave so desperately that we are willing to bend and break ourselves to fit them. Wise, funny, unsparing, and suffused with a radical clarity, this is a book of and for our times: for seeing and knowing love, in whatever form it takes, is the meaning of life itself.

Love in Exile

Susan was only nine when her beloved mother died. Not long after, still a tiny child, she was sent away to school. In just one year her entire world had fallen apart. 
 
Struggling to cope so far from home, Susan pushed away the one person she loved best: her father. 
 
Years passed, and the legacy of her tragic childhood remained as poignant as ever. But slowly, Susan understood that to overcome her grief, she had to learn to love - and trust – again. 
 
And so began a journey of reconciliation that would change her world once more… 
 
Praise for Susan Lewis: 
 
‘A multi-faceted tear-jerker’ Heat 
 
‘Expertly written to brew an atmosphere of foreboding, this story is an irresistible blend of intrigue and passion, and the consequences of secrets and betrayal’ Woman 
 
‘Utterly compelling’ Sun 
 
‘Spellbinding! You just keep turning the pages, with the atmosphere growing more and more intense as the story leads to its dramatic climax’ Daily Mail 
 
‘One of the best around’ Independent on Sunday 
 
‘Sad, happy, sensual and intriguing’ Woman’s Own

One Day at a Time

Elizabeth Emens

This book will give you many hours of your life back. 
 
Scheduling doctor's appointments. Planning a party. Buying a present. Filling out paperwork. These are the kind of secretarial and managerial tasks necessary to run a life and a household. Elizabeth Emens was a working mother with two young children, swamped like so many of us, when she realised that 'life admin' was consuming her. Desperate to survive and to help others along the way, she gathered favourite tips and tricks, admin confessions, and the secrets of admin-happy households. 
 
Drawing on her research and writing in a wholly original manner, she shows how admin affects our lives; how we might reduce, redistribute and even prevent it; what 'admin personalities' we might have; and how to deal with it in relationships. The Art of Life Admin teaches us all how to do less of it, and to do it better.

The Art of Life Admin

How To Do Less, Do It Better, and Live More

Helen Charman

When we talk about motherhood and politics together, we usually talk about isolated moments - the policing of breastfeeding, or the cost of childcare. But this is not enough: we need to understand motherhood itself as an inherently political state, one that poses a serious challenge to the status quo. 
 
In Mother State, Helen Charman uses this provocative insight to write a new history of Britain and Northern Ireland. Beginning with Women's Liberation and ending with austerity, the book follows mothers' fights for an alternative future. Alongside the mother figures that loom large in British culture, from Margaret Thatcher to Kat Slater, we meet communities of lesbian squatters, anti-nuclear campaigners, the wives of striking miners and teenage mothers protesting housing cuts: groups who believed that if you want to nourish your children, you have to nourish the world around them too. 
 
Here we see a world where motherhood is not a restrictive identity but a state of possibility. 'Mother' ceases to be an individual responsibility, and becomes an expansive collective term to organize under, for people of any gender, with or without children of their own. It begins with an understanding: that to mother is a political act.

Mother State

A Political History of Motherhood

Arundhati Roy

‘Heart-smashed’ by the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen and shaken by the intensity of her response, Arundhati Roy began this remarkable memoir – a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is: shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother, Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’. 
 
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.

Mother Mary Comes To Me

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