Aiden Aslin is a British-born resident of Ukraine. Living in Mykolaiv with his fiancé, he joined the Ukrainian marines in 2018 and was called to the frontline ahead of the Russian invasion in February 2022. He was one of over a thousand soldiers who surrendered after the month-long siege at the Mariupol steelworks, whereupon he was singled out for his British passport. His surrender, captivity, treatment and subsequent release received global media attention.

Aiden Aslin

Aiko Bethea is the founder of RARE Coaching &amp; Consulting, a leadership development company that helps aspiring leaders successfully navigate the workplace with more impactful approaches to leadership. She has worked with Fortune 100 companies, research &amp; academic institutes, and global non-profit organisations. Bethea is also Senior Leadership Consultant for the Brené Brown Education &amp; Research Group and was named by Forbes as a leading anti-racism educator. Bethea was a contributing writer in the New York Times bestselling anthology You Are Your Best Thing (2021). Anchored, Aligned, Accountable is her first book.

Aiko Bethea

Ailie Busby

Ailsa McFarlane was born in 1997 in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in Snowdonia in the United Kingdom. After leaving school, she studied veterinary science before dropping out to travel the United States and Europe by road. Highway Blue is her first novel.

Ailsa McFarlane

Aimee Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, a New York Times bestseller, and An Invisible Sign of My Own; and of the collections The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, Willful Creatures and The Color Master. Her work has been widely anthologised and has been translated into sixteen languages. She lives in Los Angeles.

Aimee Bender

Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) was a Martinican poet and politician who played a leading role in the struggle to liberate the French colonies of Africa and the Caribbean. Renowned for co-founding the Négritude movement, Césaire was a pioneer in surrealist poetry. His achievements as a writer were recognised worldwide with awards including the International Nâzim Hikmet Poetry Award, the Laporte Prize, the Viareggio-Versilia Prize for Literature, and the Grand Prix National de Poésie; in 2002, he was made Commander of the Order of Merit of Cote d'Ivoire. His works include the plays A Tempest (1969) and A Season in the Congo (1966), the searing political essay Discourse on Colonialism (1956), and the long poem Return to My Native Land (1950), dubbed "nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of this time" (Andre Breton).

Aimé Césaire

Aingeala Flannery

Aingelda Ardizzone

Ainsley Harriott is nothing short of a cookery legend; a pioneer in quick and easy home cooking, he has hosted some of the UK's most popular culinary series. His love of food and people, together with his natural curiosity and accessible recipes, make him a much-loved British TV personality. Recent popular ITV shows include Ainsley's Caribbean Kitchen, Ainsley Mediterranean Cookbook, Ainsley's Food We Love and now Ainsley's Good Mood Food.

Ainsley Harriott

Air Fryer UK

Aishling Morgan

Aisling Bea

Aisling Fitzsimons

Aislinn Hunter is the author of a novel, Stay; a collection of stories, What's Left Us; and two collections of poetry, Into the Early Hours and The Possible Past. The World Before Us is her first book of fiction in twelve years. After travelling to London and Edinburgh over the past few years to study for a PhD, Aislinn Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Aislinn Hunter

Aiste Gazdar

Ajahn Sumedho

Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

Ajay Chowdhury

Ajaz Ahmed is the CEO of AKQA, the ideas and innovation company he founded aged 21. AKQA today employs over 1,500 people in 15 offices around the world. In 2014 AKQA won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Innovation. Ajaz co-authored Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital. For essays and thoughts visit http://www.akqa.com/ajaz.

Ajaz Ahmed

Akasha Moon is a professional Tarot reader, medium and vocational healer. Under her other pen name Kala Trobe, she has published Invoke the Goddess and Invoke the Gods with Llewellyn. She's passionate about her subject and believes that, although it can bring about some serious benefits, magic can be a lot of fun.

Akasha Moon

Akiyuki Nosaka (1930-2015) was a novelist, singer, lyricist and former member of the House of Councillors in Japan. Born in Kamakura, Kanagawa, his memories of living through the Second World War – including the loss of his adoptive father in the 1945 Kobe bombings – served as the inspiration for his most famous short stories. In 1967, he won the Naoki Prize for Grave of the Fireflies and American Hijiki, both based on the Japanese experience of the War. Nosaka also wrote erotic fiction, including The Pornographers (1963), and in later life he continued his career as a newspaper and TV journalist, as well as a politician and chanson singer.

Akiyuki Nosaka

Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche was an experienced meditation master of the Karma Kagyu tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. He was co-founder of the Samye Ling Tibetan Centre and supervised many other centres in Europe, Africa and Asia. He formed several humanitarian organisations for the aid of refugees, the distressed and the poor and was advisor to a large number of people, including therapists in the UK and Europe. He died in 2013.

Akong Tulku Rinpoche

Akshi Singh is an associate editor at Parapraxis and deputy editor at Critical Quarterly, and is the editor of a special collection of Critical Quarterly presenting new writing on Marion Milner. She collaborates regularly with the Derek Jarman lab, and writes for the London Review of Books. Singh moved to the UK from India to study for a PhD in psychoanalysis and literature with Jacqueline Rose. She is currently training to be a psychoanalyst at the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research.

Akshi Singh

Al Ewing

Al Franken

Al Gore

Al Holloway

Al Murray's alter ego, The Pub Landlord, is one of the most recognizable and successful comic creations of the past twenty years, and Murray, who has won numerous awards and accolades, continues to fill arenas and theatres around the world. 
 
He is also the author of many successful books including Watching War Films with My Dad and Command, a sharply entertaining analysis of the key allied military leaders in the Second World War. He is well known for co-hosting the hugely popular Second World War history podcast, We Have Ways of Making You Talk with fellow bestselling military author James Holland. 
 
Arnhem: Black Tuesday is his first history book about a single campaign.

Al Murray

Al Murray is a Perrier Award-winning comic, TV personality and, as 'The Pub Landlord', the author of the bestselling The Pub Landlord's Book of British Common Sense and Think Yourself British. Most recently, he has taken on the leadership of the Free United Kingdom Party (FUKP).

Actor and director Al Pacino is a unique and enduring figure in the world of American stage and film. He grew up in New York City’s South Bronx, attended the School of Performing Art, and studied acting at the Herbert Berghof Studio with Charles Laughton and the Actors Studio with mentor Lee Strasberg. 
 
 
He has been nominated for the Academy Award nine times, for movies including The Godfather, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Godfather Part II, and The Irishman, and won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1992 for Scent of a Woman. He has been nominated for the Golden Globe Award nineteen times, and won four, and has been nominated for three Tonys and won two. 
 
 
Pacino has been awarded the Kennedy Center Honor, the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, the National Merit of Arts from President Obama, and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award for Lifetime Achievement in Motion Pictures.

Al Pacino

Al Pittampalli

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Judy Marks

'I have long wanted to write a book about my life and the extraordinary years I spent with my husband Howard Marks. I feel now is the time. I want to write it from a woman's perspective and describe what it was like to be married to such a charismatic drug smuggler.' Judy Marks 
 
Howard Marks's story has passed into hippie folklore. At one time, the world's then most wanted man had 43 aliases, 89 phone lines and 25 registered companies. Thanks to the technical brilliance of his networking skills, it was estimated that he was trafficking as much as a tenth of all the marijuana smoked in the world. But this is only half the story. Intimately involved throughout was Marks's wife Judy. 
 
From living the high life hobnobbing with movie stars and euro trash to mixing it with the IRA and CIA, then the long, increasingly desperate years on the run, Mr Nice and Mrs Marks is about the exhilaration of their criminal life and the hell of not knowing what's happening when your husband stops telling you the truth. Now, for the first time, Judy tells her own side of the tale.

Mr Nice & Mrs Marks

- Adventures with Howard

Patrick Touher

Sent to an Industrial School in Dublin at the age of seven, Patrick Touher was forced into a tough regime of education and training, prayer and punishment, strict discipline and fearful nights. No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane demanded absolute obedience, absolute submission; Patrick's was an education in cruelty and fear. 
 
Patrick Touher spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of an official inquiry. 
 
This is the inside story of a childhood lived in the most horrific of circumstances. A moving and powerful true account, Fear of the Collar bears testament to the courage and determination of the children that society forgot.

Fear of the Collar

The True Story of the Boy They Couldn't Break

Craig Brown

An awful lot has happened since that bright, fateful May morning in 1997 when New Labour swept to power. Things, we were told, Could Only Get Better. Instead, things took a turn for the worse... 
 
To console Tony Blair as he embarks on his long, grinning journey into oblivion, Craig Brown has packed a special time-capsule of Britain during the Tony Years: from Cool Britannia to ASBOs and from Posh and Becks to Charles and Camilla, the nation's funniest satirist makes sense - and nonsense - of it all.

The Tony Years

Katherine Shellduck

'This morning I found this bag. I had been looking for sweets. I put my hand in the bag and felt a sticky liquid on my fingers, then I looked at it. A red smear. Then I looked in the bag: bloody knives and clothes. It didn't feel good. What did it mean? I don't know. There are no answers; I daren't ask the questions' 
 
Growing up in poverty in London's East End, Kathy was eight years old when her father forced her mother into prostitution. When their mother fled, leaving Kathy and her sisters behind, the girls stuck fiercely together while being passed from children's homes to boarding schools. Then, on a rare trip home, Kathy looked out the window to see a man firing four shots into a Rolls-Royce. It took several seconds for her to realise the victim was her mother's lover, and the gunman was her father. 
 
Kathy began her haunting memoir when, as an adult, she travelled back to London, to find out who her gangster father really was. A compelling memoir of an extraordinary childhood, Dance for your Daddy is a true story of the effects on one family of poverty and affluence, violence and love.

Dance for your Daddy

The True Story of a Brutal East End Childhood

Rohan Candappa

Rohan Candappa, author of bestselling humour books such as the Little Book of Stress and The Curious Incident of the Weapons of Mass Destruction, is the son of a Sri Lankan father and Burmese mother. He grew up small and round in South London, riding his chopper bike and supporting Leeds United. But every day his mother would conjur delicious meals out of thin air. His father cooked too, with fiery flavourings, black curries and green coriander chutneys. Their home became the focus for family gatherings and feasts of such delicacy and exoticism that you'd never have known Norwood lay outside the window. 
 
Yet somewhere in his twenties Rohan forgot his culinary heritage and it wasn't until he was bringing up his own young family that he began to think more about his identity as a second generation immigrant and the binding, identifying power of the family meal caught his imagination. 
 
And so he began this beautifully written, funny, poignant memoir of his heritage and his home. Of curry leaves and curried chips. Hot chillis and hot dogs. Pataks and Heinz. About the past and the present - and the place where time should cease to matter... the family kitchen.

Picklehead

From Ceylon to suburbia; a memoir of food, family and finding yourself

Mark Thomas

Mark Thomas is one of the UK's most effective and best-known political activists, as well as being a highly successful stand-up comedian. His show, The Mark Thomas Product, ran for six highly acclaimed series on Channel Four. Amazingly, this is his first book. 
 
As Used On the Famous Nelson Mandela is a deeply funny, deeply disturbing account of Mark's rampage through the arms trade. Under a fairly flimsy disguise and with the use of some worryingly poor accents, Mark set off on a journey of discovery in the company of arms dealers, torture victims, politicians, cops, crusties and geeks. The result is a shockingly entertaining read. 
 
Embedded within the sharpness of his humour is the truth of an industry fraught with loopholes, complacency and greed; that allows corrupt regimes to kill, maim and displace, but whose deals are often subsidised by the British taxpayer. 
 
Hard-hitting, laugh-out-loud funny and extremely unsettling, As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandela is never anything less than compulsive.

As Used On the Famous Nelson Mandela

Underground Adventures in the Arms and Torture Trade

Phil Ball

When Phil Ball left university with a workmanlike English degree to his name and no discernible ambitions, he wasn't entirely sure what to do next. So like many before him he thought he'd giving teaching a go. Why not? 
 
This is the comic story of one man's painfully slow metamorphosis into a teacher at an everyday comprehensive and his encounters with other remarkable teachers and pupils along the way. The good, the bad, the violent, the victimised and the clinically insane: from his first teaching practice nemesis, Alan Plant, who knows his dark secret, to the pupil who believes he is a reincarnation of the poet Andrew Marvell. It is a tale of the highs and lows of attempting to teach: from the joy of really making a difference to young minds to being physically set upon by a teenage horde. 
 
And that's just what happens in the classroom. Beyond it is the real world of teachers behind staff-room doors: desperate lives, unseemly professional competition, a diet of cigarettes, alcohol and cold coffee, casual sex and general social dysfunction. Not a great example, but the truth...

The Hapless Teacher's Handbook

Carla Van Raay

Traumatised by a terrible event in her childhood, Carla van Raay entered a convent at the age of eighteen. Expecting to find understanding and inner peace amongst her fellow nuns, she instead became trapped in a web of cruel regulations that drove her to the brink of insanity. Finally released from her vows, she escaped back into the outside world even more damaged than she had been before. 
 
A hasty marriage and separation left Carla with a daughter to support. With few professional skills to rely on from her years as a nun, she turned to another age-old profession - prostitution. She worked as an escort to learn the ropes, then struck out on her own, setting up a massage service. God's Callgirl was born. At first she relished her new-found sexuality, but when eventually the darker side of the business began to assert itself, Carla was forced to confront the dark secrets of her past.

God's Callgirl

Heidi Postlewait

Kenneth Cain

Andrew Thomson

What it’s really like on the frontline of humanitarian aid 
 
It's the early 1990s and three young people are looking to change their lives, and perhaps also the world. Attracted to the ambitious global peacekeeping work of the UN, Andrew, Ken and Heidi's paths cross in Cambodia, from where their fates are to become inextricably bound. Over the coming years, their stories interweave through countries such as Rwanda, Bosnia, Somalia and Haiti - war-torn, lawless places where the intervention of the UN is needed like nowhere else. Driven by idealism, the three struggle to do the best they can, caught up in an increasingly tangled web of bureaucracy and ineffectual leadership. As disillusionment sets in, they attempt to keep hold of their humanity through black humour, revelry and 'emergency sex'. 
 
Brutal and moving in equal measure, Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) explores pressing global issues while never losing a sense of the personal. Deeply critical of the West's indifference to developing countries and the UN's repeated failure to intervene decisively, the book provoked massive controversy on its initial publication. Kofi Annan called for the book to be banned, and debate was sparked about the future direction of the UN. Brilliantly written and mordantly funny, it is a book that continues to make waves.

Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures)

True Stories from a War Zone

Lyn Smith

Following the success of Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Lyn Smith visits the oral accounts preserved in the Imperial War Museum Sound Archive, to reveal the sheer complexity and horror of one of human history's darkest hours. 
 
The great majority of Holocaust survivors suffered considerable physical and psychological wounds, yet even in this dark time of human history, tales of faith, love and courage can be found. As well as revealing the story of the Holocaust as directly experienced by victims, these testimonies also illustrate how, even enduring the most harsh conditions, degrading treatment and suffering massive family losses, hope, the will to survive, and the human spirit still shine through.

Forgotten Voices of The Holocaust

A new history in the words of the men and women who survived

George Best

'We were the first generation to have to deal with the modern stardom of football. Some handled it better than others' George Best 
 
Written in the months before he died, Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths is George's farewell letter to the great footballing era in which he burned so brightly - a personal history of the golden years before TV and agents changed everything. From the breaking of the maximum wage to the cusp of the first million-pound player, it follows the triumphs and tragedies of every season from 1960 to 1974. It is the story of our greatest footballing generation - Greaves, Moore, Law, Charlton, Osgood, Lorimer, Jennings, Hurst and, of course, Best himself.

Hard Tackles and Dirty Baths

The inside story of football's golden era

Nick Barham

'I wanted to discover what young people are really up to. To see how far they've come - and where they think they're going. Today's young generation don't want reality. They want disconnection - a world of novelty, velocity and volume. A world without implications or responsibilities, where your personality is defined by how you dress, who you listen to, and which kind of celebrity you want to be. Their values and behaviour are changing at an unprecedented rate. They are not inheriting our culture - they're moving into a new improved version, with a permanent soundtrack (that you don't like), a new language (that you don't understand) and a radical morality (that you don't accept).' Nick Barham 
 
Confronting crime, underage sex, fame obsession, violence, ambition, learning and friendship, Nick Barham's compelling investigation finds that this disconnection from what adults understand to be substantial or real is creating a radical new youth culture.

Disconnected

Why our kids are turning their backs on everything we thought we knew

Koren Zailckas

The day Koren turned fourteen she tasted alcohol for the first time. At fifteen she was piecing together forgotten fragments of drink, men and misplaced clothes. At sixteen she was being carried through hospital doors unconscious. And so it began... 
 
Brought up by loving parents in a stable middle-class home, Koren was a sweet and altogether normal child. Yet from her mid-teens until her early twenties, she thought nothing of regularly drinking herself into a state of amnesia. Alcohol became her safeguard and prop, providing her with a self-confidence she couldn't otherwise feel. And whilst drinking to excess was perfectly acceptable, even actively encouraged, amongst her friends, it quickly reached a destructive monotony that bordered on dependency. It took a number of terrifying incidents - from stumbling home alone covered in vomit to waking up naked in bed unsure of whether she had lost her virginity - before Koren could finally say to herself enough was enough and seek help for her problem. 
 
Smashed is the shocking but all-too-recognisable story of a young woman coming of age within a society that finds it easier to turn a blind eye to binge-drinking than address the problem head on. Beautifully written and brutally honest, compelling without preaching, this is a book that demands to be read.

Smashed

Growing Up A Drunk Girl

Chris Turner

Astute, funny, literate, politically and culturally aware; in this analysis of The Simpsons, Chris Turner, a provocative new writer, dissects the world's favourite TV show - its genesis, past, characters and influence. Bart, Homer and Marge have entered the lexicon of iconic, global characters. Bart has the highest recognition factor amongst kids in the UK &amp; US, way above that of Harry Potter. The British voted it their favourite TV programme ever. The Archbishop of Canterbury called it 'one of the most subtle pieces of propaganda around in the cause of sense, humility and virtue.' 
 
Yet The Simpsons is thoroughly subversive and irreverent. Bringing the savvy insight to The Simpsons that has been brought to publishing on global politics, the internet and the fast-food industry, Chris Turner looks at how teh programme is created and the unique two-way relationship of inspiration and influence it has with the real world. From Marge and moral values to Lisa and the environment, from Homer and consumerism to Citizen Burns and corporate villainy - this is the first book to be written that is as intelligent, subversive, wide-ranging and funny as the show itself.

Planet Simpson

How a cartoon masterpiece documented an era and defined a generation

Max Arthur

The Imperial War Museum holds a vast archive of interviews with soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians of most nationalities who saw action during WW2. As in the highly-acclaimed Forgotten Voices of the Great War, Max Arthur and his team of researchers spent hundreds of hours digging deep into this unique archive, uncovering tapes, many of which have not been listened to since they were created in the early 1970s. The result will be the first complete oral history of World War 2. 
 
We hear at first from British, German and Commonwealth soldiers and civilians. Accounts of the impact of U.S. involvement after Pearl Harbour and the major effects it had on the war in Europe and the Far East is chronicled in startling detail, including compelling interviews from U.S. and British troops who fought against the Japanese. Continuing through from D-Day, to the Rhine Crossing and the dropping of the Atom Bomb in August 1945, this book is a unique testimony to one of the world's most dreadful conflicts. One of the hallmarks of Max Arthur's work is the way he involves those left behind on the home front as well as those working in factories or essential services. Their voices will not be neglected.

Forgotten Voices Of The Second World War

A New History of the Second World War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Were There

Simon Garfield

In 1936 anthropologist Tom Harrison, poet and journalist Charles Madge, and documentary filmmaker Humphrey Jennings set up the Mass Observation Project. The idea was simple: ordinary people would record, in diary form, the events of their everyday lives. An estimated one million pages eventually found their way to the archive - and it soon became clear this was more than anyone could digest. Today, the diaries are stored at the University of Sussex, where remarkably most remain unread. In Our Hidden Lives, Simon Garfield has skilfully woven a tapestry of diary entries in the rarely discussed but pivotal period of 1945 to 1948. The result is a moving, intriguing, funny, at times heartbreaking book - unashamedly populist in the spirit of Forgotten Voices or indeed Margaret Forster's Diary of an Ordinary Woman. 
 
'I love these diaries. They have the attraction of being stories, but REAL stories - Better than any novel.' Margaret Forster 
 
'A lovely book. It will appeal to anyone who appreciates the richness and diversity of human experience.' Tony Benn 
 
'Utterly engrossing, better than any kind of reality TV.' Gavin Esler 
 
'Funny, vivid, touching, angry, thoughtful - every page is a delight. This is definitely no. 1 on my present list to give to everyone in the coming year.' Jenny Uglow, author of The Lunar Men

Our Hidden Lives

The Remarkable Diaries of Postwar Britain

June Goulding

'I promised that I would one day write a book and tell the world about the home for unmarried mothers. I have at last kept my promise.' 
 
In Ireland, 1951, the young June Goulding took up a position as midwife in a home for unmarried mothers run by the Sacred Heart nuns. What she witnessed there was to haunt her for the next fifty years. It was a place of secrets, lies and cruelty. A place where women picked grass by hand and tarred roads whilst heavily pregnant. Where they were denied any contact with the outside world; denied basic medical treatment and abused for their 'sins'; where, after the birth, they were forced into hard labour in the convent for three years. But worst of all was that the young women were expected to raise their babies during these three years so that they could then be sold - given up for adoption in exchange for a donation to the nuns. 
 
Shocked by the nuns' inhumane treatment of the frightened young women, June risked her job to bring some light into their dark lives. June's memoir tells the story of twelve women's experiences in this home and of the hardships they endured, but also the kindness she offered them, and the hope she was able to bring.

The Light In The Window

Richard McCann

One October night in 1975 Richard, aged five, was alone in the house with his three sisters. It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. Next morning, the police arrived to take the children away. Their mother had become the first victim of a serial killer soon to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. 
 
Passed from one violent home to another, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the salacious headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to recover from their mother's murder. Whilst Richard tried to handle the terror of his violent upbringing, his sister struggled to deal with memories of sexual abuse. Without love or support they spiralled away from help or happiness. 
 
Then one day Richard McCann, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided no one was going to rescue their lives but him. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal. A heartbreaking, uplifting story of survival and hope.

Just A Boy

The True Story Of A Stolen Childhood

Chris Heath

The publication of Feel: Robbie Williams by Chris Heath in September 2004 caused shockwaves of controversy and delight. Not only was its publication trumpeted in tabloids, on TV and the radio, but it was also critically lauded by the broadsheets. Finally, a book had been written on the subject of celebrity and the modern world which had intelligence, honesty and humour. 
 
Written by Chris Heath, who spent nearly two years working with Robbie on this book, every word is imbued with Robbie's humour, charisma, talent, memories and complexity. But more than ever before, this book tells the truth about his extraordinary life. You may have seen his face a million times, heard his music every day, followed him from the beginning of Take That, but this is a man with some serious surprises in store. 
 
After years of rumour and lies, the complete, intimate story of Robert P. Williams had been written. 
 
This is a groundbreaking book.

Feel

Robbie Williams

Andrew Collins

'Higher education comes at exactly the right time: in the twilight of your teens, you're just starting to coagulate as a human being, to pull away from parental influence and find your own feet. What better than three years in which to explore the inner you, establish a feasible worldview, and maybe get on Blockbusters.' 
 
After an idyllic provincial 1970s childhood, the 1980s took Andrew Collins to London, art school and the classic student experience. Crimping his hair, casting aside his socks and sporting fingerless gloves, he became Andy Kollins: purveyor of awful poetry; disciple of moany music, and wannabe political activist. What follows is a universal tale of trainee hedonism, girl trouble, wasted grants and begging letters to parents. 
 
A synth-soundtracked rite of passage that's often painfully funny, it traces one teenager's metamorphosis from sheltered suburban innocent to semi-mature metropolitan male through the pretensions and confusions of trying to stand alone for the first time in your own kung fu pumps in a big bad city.

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

My Difficult 80s

Stephen Arnott

Crossing continents and centuries Stephen Arnott brings us invaluable information about all kinds of bizarre regional customs - from sexual practices to the received wisdom on cannibalism - that could save you from embarrassing local faux pas while travelling. 
 
Did you know that amongst the Tartars, relations of the bride and bridegroom would traditionally divide into two groups and fight each other until some had suffered bleeding wounds? It was thought that causing blood to flow in this way would ensure the couple had strong sons; or that in Hungary, a cure for infertility was to beat a barren woman with a stick? The stick having previously been used to separate mating dogs; or that amongst some Aboriginal tribes of New South Wales that men who had any contact with their mothers-in-law would suffer terrible hard luck? The threat was so great that married men even avoided looking in their mother-in-law's general direction.

Eating Your Auntie Is Wrong

The World's Strangest Customs

N E Genge

Filled with intriguing true stories, and packed with black-and-white illustrations and photographs, The Forensic Casebook draws on interviews with police personnel and forensic scientists - including animal examiners, botanists, zoologists, firearms specialists, and autopsists - to uncover the vast and detailed under workings of criminal investigation. 
 
Encyclopaedic in scope, this riveting, authoritative book leaves no aspect of forensic science untouched, covering such fascinating topics as securing a crime scene, identifying blood splatter patterns, collecting fingerprints, and feet, lip and ear prints and career paths in criminal science. 
 
Lucidly written and spiked with real crime stories, The Forensic Casebook exposes the nitty-gritty that other books only touch upon.

Forensic Casebook

The Science of Crime Scene Investigation

Andrew Collins was born 37 years ago in Northampton. His parents never split up, in fact they rarely exchanged a cross word. No-one abused him. Nobody died. He got on well with his brother and sister and none of his friends drowned in a canal. He has never stayed overnight in a hospital and has no emotional scars from his upbringing, except a slight lingering resentment that Anita Barker once mocked the stabilisers on his bike. Where Did It All Go Right? is a jealous memoir written by someone who occasionally wishes life had dealt him a few more juicy marketable blows. The author delves back into his first 18 years in search of something - anything - that might have left him deeply and irreparably damaged. With tales of bikes, telly, sweets, good health, domestic harmony and happy holidays, Andrew aims to bring a little hope to all those out there living with the emotional after-effects of a really nice childhood. Andrew Collins kept a diary from the age of five, so he really can remember what he had for tea everyday and what he did at school, excerpts from his diary run throughout the book and it is this detail which makes his story so compelling.

Where Did It All Go Right?

Growing Up Normal in the 70s

Richard Herring

It has been known by many different names to many different people: Knob, dick, schmuck, tool, percy, John Thomas, the bald headed mouse. It inspires lust, fear, awe and laughter. And yet, it is an object of shame and when engorged, indecency. It can be a pound of flesh or an ounce of wrinkles. It can be used to express both love and hate. It can create life. It can condemn us to death. And it can do wees as well. How can one little flap of sponge and sinew be all these things? You will be surprised how little you know about the skin chimney, because although men may constantly brag and exaggerate about their little chap, they rarely talk about their feelings for it. At last, Richard Herring, reveals the truth about man and his manhood in the 21st Century.

Talking Cock

A Celebration of Man and his Manhood

Going to college or university can be a daunting experience. There are so many new experiences to try, so many new responsibilities to handle. What you really need is a best friend who'll show you the ropes, hold your hand and make sure you get to your lectures on time...This book, unfortunately, isn't that friend. 
 
This book, even more unfortunately, is more akin to the kind of mate who doesn't get up till half past two, nicks your food from the fridge and when you're both well wasted at some awful party you've gate crashed convinces you that Malibu, cider and Worcestershire sauce is a real cocktail. Frankly, if you have even the slightest ambition to emerge from your time in 'higher' education with any kind of qualification whatsoever, it's best that you stop reading now. 
 
If however, you insist on perusing the wisdom contained within this thoroughly disreputable tome, then please note that the author accepts no responsibility for the fact that you'll get a crap qualification, your parents will disown you and your subsequent career will go nowhere. But all that lies way off in the future. So let's talk about Freshers Week...'

University Challenged

Mary Contini

Written by leading cookery author Mary Contini, this delightful narrative is in the bestselling tradition of Anthony Bourdain and Annie Hawes. It tells the tale of the Di Ciacca family, tracing their journey from the barren Abruzzi mountains to the chilly streets of post-war Edinburgh. Addressing her daughter Francesca as she embarks on independent life, this is a compelling, often moving, family history in which Contini describes her ancestors' loves and lives in their adopted homeland where traditions were kept alive around the dinner table. With characters as colourful as in any novel, this is a book that will appeal to anyone who loves Italian food and wishes to share in a sense of family. It adds up to one of the most original books for food lovers in recent years, blending great narrative with heartwarming recipes and recollections.

Dear Francesca

An Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted with Love

Sarah Brown

Crossroads, turning point, impulse, inspiration, instinct, influence - call it what you will. Each and every one of us have made crucial decisions, and if we're lucky been helped with the right words at the right time. Over 50 of our most talented and courageous figures, from JK Rowling to David Beckham, have come together to give the stories behind their defining moments. From mentors to mothers, impulses to instincts, these moving, honest stories will inspire you to take a fresh look at your own direction-

Moving On Up

Inspirational advice to change lives

Does your mother think it's really charming to talk to every rose bush on the street? Has your father taken up obsessive fundraising for a donkey sanctuary on retirement? Does he collect elastic bands because 'you never know when you'll need one'? Do your parents make jokes about sheltered housing? Have they guessed that you've already sent off for the brochures? Do they seem to be having too much fun for a couple with two fake hips, a pacemaker and three steel pins between them? Then you need Rohan Candappa. 
 
The man who bought you The Little Book of Stress, The Little Book of Wrong Shui and The Autobiography of a One Year Old has hit the nail on the head once more. Full of wit and wisdom, Rohan will give you a much needed laugh in the face of your parents' increasingly barmy behaviour. Just one thing, you'll probably find your parents have bought it too. And they'll probably think its really funny.

Growing Old Disgracefully

How to upset and perplex your children with increasingly erratic and unreasonable behaviour

Wladimir Kaminer

Born in Moscow, Wladimir Kaminer emigrated to Berlin in the early '90s when he was 22. Russian Disco is a series of short and comic autobiographical vignettes about life among the émigrés in the explosive and extraordinary multi-cultural atmosphere of '90s Berlin. It's an exotic, vodka-fuelled millennial Goodbye to Berlin. The stories show a wonderful, innocent, deadpan economy of style reminiscent of the great humorists. [Several of his European editors make a comparison with current bestseller David Sedaris.] Kaminer manages to say a great deal without seeming to say much at all. He speaks about the offbeat personal events of his own life but captures something universal about our disjointed times.

Russian Disco

An adorable paperback edition of a popular hardback by bestselling humorist Rohan Candappa. 
 
It's an extraordinary world out there and The One Year Old is here to share his revelatory journey through babyhood. From full and frank explanations as to why he sometime blows snot bubbles through his nose (because he can) to the mystery of the stalker (if someone had just explained to him about mirrors). From the frustrating stupidity of his parents (Hairy and Smooth) to delights of running around naked on the kitchen table, it's a truly enlightening and delightfully funny read. To every parent who's ever wearily wiped food from the floor and said 'Is this your idea of a game?' - beware. The One Year Old is about to reveal just how much he's been playing with you.

Autobiography Of A One Year Old

Detective Konrad

Detective Luc Moncrief Series

Dexter Procter

Diary of a Submissive

The adventures of wise-cracking middle school student Greg Heffley who must somehow survive the scariest time of anyone's life: middle school. The hilarious and internationally bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Diddly Squat

Dino Dad

Dino Racers

Dinosaur Train

Discworld Graphic Novel Universe

The Discworld is undoubtedly Sir Terry Pratchett's most famous creation. A universe teeming with dwarves, trolls, witches, and social and cultural issues that parallel those in our own world, all wrapped up in Pratchett's inimitable comic delivery. This iconic series will make you laugh, then make you think.

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