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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Peter FitzSimons

Love him or loathe him, Ned Kelly has been at the heart of Australian culture and identity since he and his Gang were tracked down in bushland by the Victorian police and came out fighting, dressed in bulletproof iron armour made from farmers’ ploughs. 
 
Historians still disagree over virtually every aspect of the eldest Kelly boy’s brushes with the law. Did he or did he not shoot Constable Fitzpatrick at their family home? Was he a lawless thug or a noble Robin Hood, a remorseless killer or a crusader against oppression and discrimination? Was he even a political revolutionary, an Australian republican channelling the spirit of Eureka? 
 
Peter FitzSimons, bestselling chronicler of many of the great defining moments and people of Australian history, is the perfect person to tell this most iconic of all Australian stories. From Kelly’s early days in Beveridge, Victoria, in the mid-1800s, to the Felons Apprehension Act, which made it possible for anyone to shoot the Kelly Gang, to Ned’s appearance in his now-famous armour, prompting the shocked and bewildered police to exclaim ‘He is the devil!’ and ‘He is the bunyip!’. FitzSimons brings the history of Ned Kelly and his Gang exuberantly to life, weighing in on all the myths, legends and controversies generated by this compelling and divisive Irish-Australian rebel.

Ned Kelly

Wayne Johnston

I am foreborn of spud runts who fled the famines of Ireland in the 1830s, not a man or woman among them more than five foot two, leaving behind a life of beggarment and setting sail for what since Malory were called the Happy Isles . . .' 
 
So begins Baltimore's Mansion, Wayne Johnston's story of his grandfather Charlie, his father Arthur and of the small community of Ferryland on Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, founded as a Catholic community by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s. Charlie, a fisherman and blacksmith, is an ardent Newfoundland nationalist. His son Arthur, forced from boyhood to fish the freezing seas with his father, vows never to earn his living from Newfoundland's dangerous waters, and leaves the island in the heady months leading to the fateful 1948 referendum held to decide Newfoundland's future. While Arthur is away Charlie dies and Newfoundland cedes its independence to Canada, plunging Arthur into a lifelong battle with the personal demons that haunted the end of their relationship. 
 
In 1981, aged 23, Wayne Johnston himself leaves Newfoundland and old patterns threaten to repeat themselves. At times harrowing, at others both moving and funny, Baltimore's Mansions speaks to us all about the hardships, blessings and power of family relationships, of leaving home and returning.

Baltimore's Mansion

Will Davies

When Will Davies discovered the manuscript for Somme Mud he knew he had found a lost treasure. Private Lynch's powerful, personal story of his time in the trenches of the Somme has become a classic. 
 
In this new book, Will Davies meticulously follows in the footsteps of Lynch and his battalion, the 45th - from their long route marches to lice ridden billets, into the frontline and seeing action at such infamous battles as Messines, Dernancourt, Stormy Trench and Villers Bretonneux, and on the last great push to final victory after August 1918. 
 
The author assesses the impact Lynch and those like him had both on the battlefield and in the greater context of the war on the Western Front. Written in a lively and accessible style, it sheds light on the campaigns and offensives, the weapons and the equipment, the food, the living conditions and the neglected minutiae of war and in so doing brings to life the young men who sacrificed their youth over 90 years ago.

In The Footsteps of Private Lynch

Margaret Humphreys

Also published as Empty Cradles. 
 
In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire, right up until as recently as 1970. 
 
Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents often believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. In fact, for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Margaret reveals how she unravelled this shocking secret and how it became her mission to reunite these innocent and unwilling exiles with their families in Britain before it was too late.

Oranges and Sunshine

Empty Cradles

Diana Preston

In 44 bc, Julius Caesar was murdered on the Ides of March. His mistress, Cleopatra of Egypt, fled back to Alexandria with their little son. Mark Antony, Caesar's friend and henchman, who, according to some accounts, was already besotted by the beautiful Cleopatra, took up her son's case before the Senate. But they refused to recognize him as one of Caesar's heirs. 
Civil war broke out, and after the defeat of Caesar's murderers, Antony took control over the East. Summoned to his headquarters in present-day Turkey, Cleopatra made her entry at dusk on a scented, candlelit barge: and so began one of the greatest love stories of all time - an eleven-year love affair that created the ancient world's most famous celebrity couple. The affair became all-consuming and fired the lovers with the ambition to create a new order. Had they succeeded, our world today might have been very different. 
Filled with murder, intrigue, civil war and great battles, the tragedy of Cleopatra and Antony has fascinated the world for two millennia, and has been depicted by everyone from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the iconic 1960s film. 
Now Diana Preston has gone back to the original sources and delved into the real history behind the propaganda and the myth, to breathe new life into this epic love story.

Cleopatra and Antony

Eric Haney

The story of America's elite military unit told by one of its founding members 
 
They are the U.S. Army's most élite top secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions; and no book has ever taken readers inside-until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force). 
 
INSIDE DELTA FORCE 
 
In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary unit from the beginning. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process, designed to break the strongest of men, that singles out the perfect soldier, and then the years of training that turns him into the ultimate modern warrior that is the Delta Force Operator. 
 
From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to close VIP protection in Beirut, from rescuing missionaries in Sudan to the abortive attempt to extract American hostages from Tehran, and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force puts the reader right at the heart of the action and gives a breathtaking glimpse of a life that is as driven, inspiring and terrifying as they come. 
 
Eric L. Haney, Command Sergeant Major, USA (Ret.), served for more than twenty years in the United States Army's most demanding combat units: as a combat infantryman, a Ranger, and ultimately as a founding member of Delta Force. In his retirement, Haney has protected princes, presidents and CEOs alike.

Inside Delta Force

Dennis Smith

When disaster struck at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, Dennis Smith was among the first to arrive on the scene. Report from Ground Zero is his insider's account of the heroic efforts of the firefighters, police and emergency workers who rushed to downtown New York to face the greatest challenge of their lives. 
 
In all, 343 firefighters gave their lives. Entire companies were lost. Among the dead were a father and son; the department's beloved chaplain; commanders and rookies. Smith, author of the classic bestseller Report from Engine Company 82 and once described as 'the Poet Laureate of firefighters' by the New York Post, tells their stories and those of their families, the camaraderie in their companies and the massive recovery efforts following the catastrophe. 
 
As the world tries to come to terms with the horror of what happened, the firefighters' courage and fortitude in the face of enormous personal danger and bereavement offers a beacon of hope and redemption. Report from Ground Zero is a tribute to those heroes for our troubled times.

Report From Ground Zero

Sarah Ryle

From one man’s Hackney market stall to a company serving fifty million customers in thirteen countries every week, this is the extraordinary story of one of Britain’s most remarkable companies. Told by those who themselves feature in it – Tesco’s own employees – it relates a fascinating social history as well as an epic business venture. 
 
Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews with Tesco staff, collected by National Life Stories at the British Library, these personal accounts from across the decades are frank, insightful, sometimes funny and, above all, very human. 
 
How, then, did Tesco grow from Jack Cohen’s barrow in Hackney to the hypermarkets in Hungary and Thailand and a home-delivery service to customers from Cheshire to the Czech Republic? Why and how did Tesco survive and (mostly) thrive where other British companies stalled? And what impact has Tesco’s success had on its employees and consumers? Here is Tesco’s authentic story, carefully researched and engagingly written by Sarah Ryle, told for the first time by the people at the very heart of the business.

The Making of Tesco

A Story of British Shopping

Melody Ermachild Chavis

Meena founded the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan in 1977 as a twenty-year-old Kabul University student. She was assassinated in 1987 at the age of thirty, and lives on in the hearts of all progressive Muslim women. Her voice, speaking for freedom, has never been silenced. The compelling story of Meena's struggle for democracy and women's rights in Afghanistan will inspire young women throughout the world. 
 
MEENA: HEROINE OF AFGHANISTAN is a compelling portrait of a courageous mother, poet and leader who symbolizes an entire movement of women that can influence the fate of nations. It is also a riveting account of a singular political career whose legacy has been inherited by RAWA, the women who hold the keys to a peaceful future for Afghanistan. RAWA has authorized this first-ever biography of their martyred founder.

Meena: Heroine Of Afghanistan

Mary Gwynn

Do you remember the arrival of the fish finger, the rise and fall of Angel Delight, Vesta curries and Wimpy hamburgers? Did you own a fondue set or host a Tupperware party, or were you starving yourself on the Cabbage Soup Diet? Was life always too short to stuff a mushroom? And what was the point of Nouvelle Cuisine? 
There has been a revolution in our kitchens. In 1950, the average housewife worked a seventy-five-hour week. No one owned a fridge or had seen a teabag, let alone an avocado or a Curly Wurly . Ten years later, sugar consumption had rocketed: we ate more biscuits for dinner than vegetables and fruit. It was not until the mid 1990s that we started to worry about ‘five a day’. And now, nearly twenty years on from the first vegetable-box delivery scheme, we are fatter than ever before . . . Has there ever been a golden age of the family meal? 
 Full of delicious detail, this marvellous companion to the BBC series is rich with nostalgia and provides a feast of extraordinary factual nuggets. Who can guess the filling of the first pre-packed sandwich in 1984? And who could have foreseen then that a kitchen robot that can write your shopping list is now just around the corner? 
Reflecting all the fads and fashions that have graced our table, Back in Time for Dinner is much more than a book about dinner; it holds a mirror to our changing family lives.

Back In Time For Dinner

From Spam to Sushi: How We've Changed the Way We Eat

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

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