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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Andrew Miller

Henry and Miriam were raised in East London, but their families had emigrated from Eastern Europe, and they were not to end their lives in the East End. From a market stall on Petticoat Lane, their story led - from forays into the West End to the success of Henry's underwear business and a remarkable friendship with his upper-class mentor Walter - to a life lived among Astors and Parker-Bowleses, a grand flat on Regent's Park, and a world of Court, club and charity balls. 
 
Andrew Miller's compelling family history tells, elegaically but without nostalgia, of London's many faces. It is a story of immigration and Anglicisation, of the significance of race and class and language and accent in our country, of how it has been possible for people in this country to change themselves and their lives.

The Earl Of Petticoat Lane

Joe Carter

A compelling true story of the reality of undercover police work 
 
For over 20 years, Joe Carter has worked for the police as an undercover cop. Travelling the globe on different passports, fraternising with thieves and international drugs and arms dealers, working alongside dangerous criminals, Carter always knew his life would come crashing down around him at any point. 
 
His story is a gripping account of the secret, solitary work of an undercover officer and the many ‘sticky’ situations he found himself in, as well as the moving confession of the difficulty in reconciling his two identities with his family life. 
 
This book explores the resilience needed to lead a double life, the thrilling challenge of working with the biggest criminals in Britain, and maintaining a sense of justice through the many adventures he encounters.

Undercover

Sean Hogan

Michael Cameron

I don't feel sorry for myself. Today everything is all right. I look at it is this way, it can't ever be as bad as it was then...' 
 
Sean Hogan was just eight years old when he was confined in the notorious Artane Industrial School under the brutal regime of the Christian Brothers. In and out of care throughout his childhood, Sean was so badly neglected by his alcoholic parents that he never even knew what day his birthday fell on, or how old he was - things he only learned as an adult. But when he arrived at Artane, instead of receiving the care he so desperately needed, he entered into months of horrific sexual abuse at the hands of some of the brothers 
 
Now, for the first time, he feels able to tell his story - and reveal the devastating truth of what really happened in Ireland's industrial schools. In Harm's Way is a powerful and moving story of astonishing hardship and near despair, but also of triumph over terrible adversity.

In Harm's Way

Emma Charles

'In many ways we were an ordinary family: mum, dad, two kids, three dogs, one rabbit, two guinea pigs. I stayed at home, studying with the Open University, and dad worked, and the kids went to private schools. We lived in a rather nice semi in a rather nice area of Edinburgh, with a rather nice Volvo in the drive, and took rather nice holidays, wearing rather nice clothes. I loved Daniel deeply and I thought - no, I was sure - he loved me deeply, too. And we both loved our kids deeply (I thought). And that was as it should be. We had it made. 
 
In some ways we weren't a completely ordinary family. There was Daniel, for one; he worked for most of the time we were married as a ship's engineer, and so he was away from home for up to four months and then home on leave for up to two. And Tamsin, our fifteen-year-old daughter, had specific learning difficulties. 
 
But I'm pretty ordinary: an unlikely heroine. I am disabled because of back problems. I'm pretty fat - I've put on a lot of weight through lack of exercise and, yes, comfort-eating! Not the stuff of movies. 
 
But I never for a moment dreamt that my family was all that extraordinary - until that day when Tamsin broke down and told me that her father, my loving husband, had been sexually abusing her.'

How Could He Do It?

Bruce Oldfield

Fanny Blake

Born a mixed-race, illegitimate child to an irresponsible, 'care-free' mother and an anonymous Jamaican boxer, Bruce Oldfield's entry into the world was anything but conventional. As his mother was moved from hospital to mental home to supervision by her mother, likewise Bruce moved through several boy's homes before being fostered for twelve years with a woman who became known as 'Mum' and with three other mixed-race children who became his 'brothers' and 'sisters'. 
 
Bruce's 'family' rarely strayed far from living just above the bread line. To make up the finances Bruce's foster mum worked as a seamstress. It was her talent to make fabulous clothes from scraps of material that captured Bruce's imagination. 
 
What began as a hobby and desire to ease the family's financial worries became Bruce's life's work as he rose through the ranks of top designers in London, New York and Paris to become one of the best known and best loved figures in the fashion world. 
 
He created the most beautiful clothes for an amazing range of people - from the Princess of Wales to Dame Edna Everage. 
 
'After thirty years in the business it seems an opportune moment to put down an account of my life, as much to evaluate where I've been as to decide where I'm going.'

Rootless

An Autobiography

James Patterson

JAMES PATTERSON'S NON-FICTION MASTERPIECE 
________________________________ 
 
Kennedys were always taught to win at all costs. And they did - but the price they paid was unimaginable . . . 
 
Across decades and generations, the Kennedys have been a family of charismatic adventurers, raised to take risks and excel. Their name is synonymous with American royalty. Their commitment to public service is legendary. But, for all the successes, the family has been blighted by assassinations, fatal accidents, drug and alcohol abuse and sex scandals. 
 
To this day, the Kennedys occupy a unique, contradictory place in the world's imagination: at once familiar and unknowable; charmed and cursed. The Kennedy Curse is a revealing, fascinating account of America's most famous family, as told by the world's most trusted storyteller. 
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Also published as The House of Kennedy in the US. 
 
'When I wrote my first novel after several non-fiction works about politics, James Patterson lovingly lambasted me for infringing on his thriller territory. Now I know how he feels as he crosses into non-fiction politics with this juicy and entertaining look at a political family that continues to wield power and influence. He's too good - it isn't fair!' JAKE TAPPER, CNN anchor and author of The Hellfire Club

The Kennedy Curse

The shocking true story of America’s most famous family

Charles Drazin

‘Patsy, what are you going to be when you grow up? Well?’ 
'A Royal Engineer, Daddy. A Royal Engineer!’ 
 
Charles Drazin knew little about his mother's father – only that he had been a military surveyor who mapped great swathes of the British Empire. But when his mother was told that she was dying, it prompted recollections of her early life that she had never confided before: of the village in the west of Ireland where she had grown up, and of her father, whose death changed the life of an eight-year-old girl for ever. 
 
Soon afterwards her own death left her son to go through alone the relics of her life. They included a box of old photographs, a battered suitcase stamped with the initials of the grandfather he had never known, and the service records of Patrick’s brothers, who, like him, had all enlisted in the Royal Engineers as the nineteenth century became the twentieth. So began an extraordinary journey of discovery that took him from the age of Queen Victoria to the battlefields of the Western Front. 
 
Mapping the Past is the story of five brothers who, mapping the world, lived up to the Royal Engineers’ motto of Everywhere. It is the story of Ireland, and of the Empire from which it broke away. It is the story of conflict, war and its aftermath. And, most of all, it is the story of memory, endlessly carrying the past, for better or worse, into our present and future. It is an imaginative, intimate and powerful work of history, by a writer of rare power.

Mapping the Past

A Search for Five Brothers at the Edge of Empire

Harry Bernstein

On a narrow cobbled street in a northern mill town young Harry Bernstein and his family face a daily struggle to make ends meet. This is the true story of those harsh years, overshadowed by the First World War. 
 
Amidst the hardship and suffering, Harry's devoted mother clings to a dream - that one day they might escape this grinding poverty for the paradise of America. But the regular pleas to relatives in Chicago yield nothing, until one day, when Harry is twelve years old, the family looks on astonished as he opens a letter which contains the longed-for steamship tickets. 
 
But the better life of which they'd dreamed proves elusive. Deprivation follows them to Chicago - and for Harry, life becomes more difficult still as he finds himself torn between his responsibilities to his mother, and his first love...

The Dream

Julia Scheeres

All Julia Scheeres ever wanted was to have a normal, happy family. But when her fanatical mother decides they should all move to rural Indiana, Julia's life begins to unravel. 
 
In the blistering heat of the isolating community, Julia and her adopted brother David struggle together through adolescence. But with a mother who whose first concern is her church missionaries, and a distant father whose rare presence is resented by all and feared by others, home for Julia becomes a place of unspeakable secrets...

Another Hour On A Sunday Morning

Maureen Flanagan

40 YEARS WITH THE KRAYS is the untold, intimate history of the twins and the woman who raised them. Told with humour and insight, it looks back across the decades at the life of this close knit, notorious East End family. 
 
Maureen Flanagan, a then 20 year old hairdresser started visiting the Kray family home in Vallance Road each week to give the twins’ mother, Violet, her weekly shampoo and set. Over the cups of tea and the rollers and hairpins, Violet began to confide in ‘Flan’ about her life, her incredible pride in her twins, the celebrities who visited her at their humble East End home - and her troubled relationship with her husband.

One of the Family

40 Years with the Krays

Reg Kray

_______ 
 
The shocking, gripping autobiography from one of the UK's most infamous criminals and gang leaders, and one half of the legendary Kray Twins, Reggie Kray. 
 
Reggie Kray is one of Britain's most notorious criminals. Together with his brother Ronnie, he rose through the ranks of London's East End gangland to run an evil empire of vice and villainy. But, after half a lifetime behind bars, Reg wants to set the record straight. 
 
Here, in his own words, is the true story of his life as one half of a criminal double act with his brother Ronnie, the chilling career of two street-wise kids who became standard-bearers of violence - from fire-bombings to shootings and cold-blooded murder. But here too is the inner voice of a one-time mobster who learned compassion through his own struggle to come to terms with a life sentence.

Born Fighter

David Hughes

In one spring month of 1856 Archibald Campbell Tait (later to be Archbishop of Canterbury) and his wife Catharine suffered the loss of five daughters, aged between two and ten, in an epidemic of scarlet fever. In his diary Tait refers to these beloved children as 'the lent jewels'. The couple bore their bereavement with a fortitude that could be sustained only by faith. Without similar convictions, but in the hope of laying bare a comparable belief for himself, David Hughes explores the themes of love and loss, intermingling his own experience, both as child and father, with the story of another of Tait's contemporaries, someone with a different but nonetheless powerful focus on life, a man known only as 'Walter', author of the erotic memoir My Secret Life. At the same time Catharine was drowning her grief in words by writing a heartbreaking account of her children's deaths. All these presences, and more modern ones, haunt the chapters of this many-layered documentary. With a dexterity of style and abundance of sympathy that have made him so appealing a writer, Hughes now delves into two centuries of underlying attitudes to sex, dreams and mortality, in an effort to reconcile them in his own daily life. The result of his sometimes sad but always eager search is splendidly uplifting.

The Lent Jewels

Ray Jenkins

One of the last major untold stories of the war, this is the first-hand account of a conscientious objector born into a famous artistic family who, after the death of his brother on active service, decides to fight the Nazis and joins SOE. Barely 28 years of age he ends up as a leader of French resistance, set up by Jean Moulin, whose horrific death features in the story, and heads a massive underground movement of some 20,000 men. 
 
The book has been compiled by Ray Jenkins, a distinguished TV, film and radio dramatist from first-hand interviews, with the drama of raids, torture and sudden death ever present - at one point Francis Cammaerts is captured by the Gestapo. There is also an emotional theme as Francis's relationship with his wife, whom he has been able to tell nothing, suffers and he lives closely with the beautiful and legendary agent, Countess Krystina Skarbeck. 
 
A genuinely original contribution to the history of the resistance, Ray Jenkins's beautifully told story has been praised by the official historian of wartime intelligence, MRD Foot. 
 
Francis Cammaerts died in 2006 at the age of 90 after a distinguished career in education.

A Pacifist At War

The Silence of Francis Cammaerts

Timothy Knatchbull

Winner of the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Literary Award, and nominated for the PEN/JR Ackerley prize. 
 
The powerful memoir of a Mullaghmore bombing survivor 
___________________________________ 
On the August bank holiday weekend in 1979, 14-year-old Timothy Knatchbull went on a boat trip off the shore of Mullaghmore in County Sligo, Ireland, with many members of his family. 
 
By noon, an IRA bomb had destroyed the boat, leaving four dead. 
 
The author survived, but his grandparents, a family friend, and his 14-year-old twin brother did not. Lord Mountbatten, his grandfather - and uncle to the Duke of Edinburgh - was the target, and became one of the IRA's most high-profile assassinations. 
 
In telling this story for the first time, Knatchbull is not only revisiting the terrible events he and his family lived through, but also writing an intensely personal account of human triumph over tragedy. It is a story of recovery, not just from physical wounds but deep emotional trauma. Knatchbull and his parents were too badly injured to attend the funerals of those killed, a sadness that intensified their profound sense of loss. 
 
Taking place in Ireland at the height of the Troubles, it gives a compelling insight into that period of Irish history. But more importantly it brings home that although tragedy can strike at any moment, the human spirit is able to forgive, to heal and to move on. It will resonate with readers the world over. 
___________________________________ 
'One of the most intensely moving stories I have ever read, and I was gripped from the first page.' Barbara Taylor Bradford, bestselling author 
 
'From a Clear Blue Sky is a minute by minute story of what happened that day, and what happened afterwards. It is a proper four-hanky bawler, and the exactitude of the story is what makes it so moving ... He provides a convincing account of the extent to which he has been able to accept, forgive and move on. His narrative power is such that the reader can't always share his equanimity. It is a book that is as saddening as it is sad - but much more angering than it is angry' Daily Mail 
 
'This is an extremely moving book. Beyond providing a phenomenally detailed evocation of his own family's trauma, Knatchbull has lots of wise things to say about how we survive horrors - of all kinds - in our lives. He writes with great tenderness and an admirable lack of sentimentality' Zoe Heller 
 
'Affecting and intimate' Mail on Sunday 
 
'Testament to a remarkable, benevolent soul ... With this public love letter he has found a way to say goodbye' The Sunday Times

From A Clear Blue Sky

Surviving the Mountbatten bomb

John Pearson

_____________________________ 
At Ronnie Kray's funeral, London crime expert John Pearson saw a man he didn't recognise - but who all the notorious criminals present deferred to. 
 
This is the remarkable true story of that man: 'the Englishman'. 
 
Investigations revealed that the Englishman was never mentioned in any of the previous books on organised crime, not because he wasn't involved, but because everyone was too scared to speak his name. Moreover, he was as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of London. 
 
Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him - and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one else dared to tell. 
_____________________________ 
John Pearson's The Profession of Violence created the myth of the Kray twins, and remains a classic of true crime and the principal work on East London criminals.

One Of The Family

Gregg Hill

Gina Hall

The CWA Gold Dagger for Non-Fiction Award winning true story behind Goodfellas 
 
By the son and daughter of Henry Hill - immortalised in the book Wiseguy and the Martin Scorsese film Goodfellas - On The Run is the harrowing account of a childhood spent coping with an explosive father whilst dodging Mafia payback. Henry Hill's business partner, Jimmy Burke has whacked every person who could possibly implicate him in the infamous Lufthansa robbery at JFK airport. On his way to prison, lifelong ganster Henry is given two options: sleep with the fishes, or enter the FBI's Witness Protection Program. Gregg and Gina are dragged along for the ride. Like nomads, they're forced to wander from state to state, constantly inventing new names and finding new friends, only to abandon them at a moment's notice. Living under constant fear of being found and killed. But Henry, the rock Gregg and Gina so desperately need, is a heavy cocaine user and knows only the criminal life. He is soon up to his old tricks and consistently putting their identities in jeopardy. And so it continues until the kids, now almost grown, can no longer ignore that the Mob might be less of a threat to them than remaining under the roof of their increasingly unbalanced father.

On The Run

Gordon F Sander

'A major contribution to our understanding of the Second World War in all its complexity.' John Keegan in his Introduction. 
 
The inspiring story of a German-Jewish family named Frank which, like Anne Frank's family and 25,000 other Dutch and other 'stateless' Jews, 'dived under' in Nazi-occupied Holland in 1942 - but miraculously survived. Told by the grandson of the head of the family, this is the gripping odyssey of the other Frank family: from childhood in an assimilated German-Jewish family at Breitenheim, through the deceptively good life of Berlin in the 1920s, to the rise of Hitler and their flight to apparently safe Holland, the nightmarish ordeal of their thousand day long 'submersion' in a small apartment in The Hague, and the joy and pain of liberation and their final journey to America, the same route Anne Frank might have taken had she not been betrayed. Based on personal testaments, records and family interviews, the book describes their life behind closed curtains in constant fear of discovery. In 1945, after many adventures and appalling vicissitudes, they finally emerged to face the uncertainties of postwar Holland and the promise of the New World.

The Frank Family That Survived

Dinah O'Dowd

Cry Salty Tears is the tale of a mother's survival and eventual triumph over almost unbelievable domestic hardship. Not only did Dinah O'Dowd face the harsh and unforgiving elements of her background - an upbringing in poverty-stricken 50s Dublin, teenage pregnancy and a lone journey to London, but she also fought like a tigress against the shadows cast across four decades of her life by the dark central figure of her existence, her psychotically abusive husband Gerry. 
 
Over the years Dinah suffered repeated physical assault, prolonged mental torture and destructive ignorance, yet successfully raised a family of six and nurtured the unique personality of a world superstar, her son Boy George. Finally she has reached equilibrium in the wake of the death of her husband, and is now ready to tell her story, striking a chord with women everywhere. 
 
Unflinchingly honest, heart-rending in the telling and packed with inconsolable tragedy and biting wit, Cry Salty Tears recounts the long and painful journey Dinah had to take. From the moment when she first set eyes on the charming, blue-eyed Gerry, to the first blow he struck when she was pregnant with their child, the suicide attempt that depression and all encompassing fear led her to and ultimately to her release from his psychotic clutches, Cry Salty Tears tells how, despite it all, this extraordinary woman could at last reclaim her life.

Cry Salty Tears

Tim Pat Coogan

Far more Irishmen live outside Ireland than within it. This fascinating study, by Ireland's best known and most controversial contemporary historian, reveals why this is, how it has come about and what the realities are today - political, economic, religious and cultural - for the populations of the 'Irish Diaspora' and the countries they now inhabit. Based on first-hand research in America, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and throughout Europe (including, of course, the UK), this book reveals the workings of Irish communities throughout the world, some with great political and economic power (such as in the US, where the Irish political tradition has dominated politics from the 19th century Tammany Hall to presidents Kennedy and Clinton), some with enormous moral authority (including Irish religious communities in Africa) and others living in poverty on the fringes of society.

Wherever Green Is Worn

The Story of the Irish Diaspora

Richard Leigh

Michael Baigent

In this enthralling historical detective story, the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail trace the flight after 1309 of the Knights Templar from Europe to Scotland, where the Templar heritage was to take root, and would be perpetuated by a network of noble families. That heritage, and the Freemasonry that arose from it, became inseparable from the Stuart cause. The Temple and the Lodge charts the birth of Freemasonry through the survival of Templar traditions, through currents of European thought, through the mystery surrounding Rosslyn chapel, and through an elite cadre of aristocrats attached as personal bodyguards to the French king. Pursuing Freemasonry through the 17th and 18th Centuries, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh reveal its contribution to the fostering of tolerance, progressive values, and cohesion in English society, which helped to pre-empt a French-style revolution. Even more dramatically, the influence of Freemasonry emerges as key facto in the formation of the United States of America as an embodiment of the ideal 'Masonic Republic'.

The Temple And The Lodge

Don Winslow

THE HIGH-OCTANE PREQUEL TO SAVAGES 
 
In Savages, Don Winslow introduced Ben and Chon, twentysomething best friends who risk everything to save the girl they both love, O. 
 
This is the story of how Ben, Chon and O became the people they are. Spanning fifty years forward from 1960s Southern California, The Kings of Cool is an intergenerational epic of drug dealers and crooked cops, friends and lovers, blood and death - and a young generation's future inextricably linked with their parents' history. 
 
A series of breakneck twists and turns puts the two generations on a collision course, culminating in a stunning showdown that will ultimately force Ben, Chon and O to choose between their real families - or each other...

The Kings of Cool

Britain's foremost writer on crime turns to the disappearance of Lord Lucan. The basis of the upcoming ITV drama, Lucan, starring Rory Kinnear and Christopher Eccleston 
 
For over thirty years, John Pearson has provided us with literary exposures of some of the most enigmatic people and underground organisations of our modern world. The Gamblers follows the fortunes of five men at the centre of the ultra-fashionable Clermont Set: the Clermont Club's eccentric founder John Aspinall; Dominic Elwes, who was to betray the Set's code of silence; the socialite owner of Annabel's, Mark Birley; the womanising, multi millionaire James Goldsmith; and the infamous Lord 'Lucky' Lucan. 
 
At the heart of the Set lay a belief that risk-takers are the people who make civilisation tick.Cruel, heartless and snobbish, they gambled with their fortunes and kept a stiff upper lip when they lost.This and a loyalty to each other that transcended everything else enabled them to rise above crises such as the long affair between Birley's wife and James Goldsmith, and the facial mutilation of the Birley's son by one of Aspinall's tigers.Pearson revels in the charisma, charm and wit of these dastardly but debonair millionaires, and reveals how their code led to one of the great unsolved mysteries of the twentieth century.

The Gamblers

Ireland's bestselling popular historian tells the story of contemporary Ireland - controversial, authoritative and highly readable. Tim Pat Coogan's biographies of Michael Collins and DeValera and his studies of the IRA, the Troubles and the Irish Diaspora have transformed our understanding of contemporary Ireland, and all have been massive bestsellers. Now he has produced a major history of Ireland in the twentieth century. Covering both South and North and dealing with cultural and social history as well as political, this enthralling work will become the definitive single-volume account of the making of modern Ireland.

Ireland In The 20th Century

Bill Buford

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THE BESTSELLING ACCOUNT OF FOOTBALL VIOLENCE 
 
Welcome to the world of football thuggery. 
 
They have names like Bonehead, Paraffin Pete and Steamin’ Sammy. They like lager, football, the Queen, and themselves. They love England. They dislike the rest of the known universe. 
 
The beautiful game remains ugly. 
 
From following Manchster's Red Army to drinking with skinheads, acclaimed writer Bill Buford enters this alternate society and records both its savageries and its sinister allure with the social imagination of George Orwell and the raw personal engagement of Hunter S. Thompson. 
 
Among the Thugs is a terrifying, malevolently funny, supremely chilling book about the experience, and the eerie allure, of crowd violence and football culture.

Among The Thugs

Charlie Richardson

Charlie Richardson, one of Britain's most notorious gangland bosses, sheds light on his extraordinary life story completed just weeks before his death in September 2012. 
 
Notorious Charlie Richardson was the most feared gangster in 1960s London. Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies. 
 
The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box. 
 
Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

The Last Gangster

My Final Confession

Bertie Ahern

Bertie Ahern, three times Irish Taoiseach, is often described as an enigma. The Old IRA man's son who delivered peace in Northern Ireland. A working class boy responsible for the Celtic Tiger. The man of faith who ushered in progressive, cosmopolitan secular Ireland. An ardent nationalist admired by European leaders. 'I know 25 per cent of Bertie Ahern', said his finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, 'and that's 24 per cent more than anyone else.' 
 
Now in this frank and revealing autobiography, Ahern gives his own account of a remarkable political life and the personal story that accompanies it. He shows the cost to his family of a life played out in the public eye and, for the first time, discloses what really happened in his final weeks in power. 
 
Here for the first time is the truth behind the man who is Bertie. 
 
Ahern has been at the cutting edge of Irish politics for over three decades. He was first elected to Dáil Éireann in the Fianna Fáil landslide victory in 1977 that saw Jack Lynch returned as Taoiseach. In 1982, Charles Haughey appointed him Government Chief Whip. In volatile political times, he strongly supported Haughey during three challenges to his leadership of Fianna Fáil. 
 
In 1987, Bertie Ahern received his first cabinet portfolio as Minister for Labour. It was a time when the Irish economy was in crisis. Ireland had a higher debt per head than Ethiopia or Sudan. Unemployment stood at 16%. Ahern negotiated Ireland's first social partnership agreement, which underpinned economic recovery and put in place the foundations for a period of sustained growth. In 1991, he was appointed Minister for Finance. International commentators first began to refer to 'Ireland's Tiger economy' in this period. When Bertie Ahern left the Department of Finance in late 1994, for the first time in almost 30 years, Ireland had a budget surplus. 
 
Bertie Ahern succeeded Albert Reynolds as leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1994. Following the General Election in 1997, he became Ireland's youngest ever Taoiseach. The Ahern Era was a time of unprecedented progress in Irish society. Over the course of his tenure in office, Ireland's economy out-performed that of every other European country. For the first time ever, the number of people in employment in the State reached 2 million. 
 
Working closely with Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, Ahern won widespread acclaim for his perseverance and skill in negotiating the Good Friday Agreement, which has provided the political framework for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland. 
 
On the international stage, he was a respected figure who enjoyed an acclaimed Presidency of the European Council in 2004. He presided over the completion of the largest ever expansion of the EU and concluded negotiations on a European constitution. He is one of only five visiting statesmen to have addressed both the United States Congress and the Houses of Parliament in Westminster. 
 
At home, Ahern enjoyed phenomenal electoral support. He was the first Taoiseach since 1944 to win three successive General Elections. 
 
Bertie Ahern resigned on 6th May, 2008. He had served for ten years, ten months and ten days as Taoiseach.

Bertie Ahern Autobiography

Brendan Behan

'I have him bitched, balloxed and bewildered, for there's a system and a science in taking the piss out of a screw and I'm a well-trained man at it.' 
 
So writes Brendan Behan, poet, writer and literary legend, of the episode that coloured his life. Arrested in Liverpool as an agitator for the IRA, he was tried and sent to reform school. He was sixteen years old. 
 
The world he entered was brutal and coldly indifferent. Conditions were primitive, and violence simmered just below the surface. Yet Brendan Behan found something more positive than hate in Borstal: friendship, solidarity and healing flashes of kindness. Extraordinarily vivid, fluent, and moving, this is a superb and unforgettable piece of writing. Borstal Boy was adapted into a film in 2000.

Borstal Boy

Lorenzo Carcaterra

An unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty, violence and revenge, set against the unmistakable backdrop of New York City. Now a major film starring Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro and Kevin Bacon. 
 
Four boys - lifelong friends who shared everything - in the confines of New York City's Hell's Kitchen, content with playing as many pranks as they can without getting caught. Until one disastrous afternoon. 
 
When a harmless scheme goes terribly wrong, the boys are left facing a year's imprisonment in the Wilkinson Home for Boys, and the beatings and abuse they find there will change their lives forever. 
 
In the years that follow, one will become a lawyer, one a reporter, and two will grow to become hitmen for-hire. But for all of them, the legacy of Wilkinson - the pain, fear and anger - still rages on within. Only revenge will erase it. 
 
One final, audacious stand against a corrupt system. If they are caught this time, the only thing to lose is their lives.

Sleepers

Jean-Yves Le Naour

The remarkably powerful and moving true story of a soldier who lost his memory and identity during World War I, and of a people in mourning, who found in him the symbol of a lost generation. 
 
Released from a German POW camp with no memory of his name or his past life and no documents or distinguishing marks to identify him, the soldier was given the name Anthelme Mangin, and sent to an asylum for the insane. With the end of the Great War, a newspaper advertisement placed in the hope of finding his lost family found instead a bereaved multitude ready to claim him as the father, son, husband or brother who had never come home. 
 
With humane sympathy and the skill of a novelist, Jean Yves Le Naour meticulously recreates the twenty-year court battles waged over the Living Unknown Soldier. Poignant, psychologically penetrating, and profoundly revealing of the human cost of war, this remarkable book portrays not just the fate of one individual but a nation's inconsolable post-war grief and profoundly illuminates the nature of mourning.

The Living Unknown Soldier

Damien Lewis

This book chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two - Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets - an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers. Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued - over 150 of the enemy were killed. Operation Certain Death is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy. A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.

Operation Certain Death

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