A. Igoni Barrett was born in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, in 1979 and lives in Lagos. He is a winner of the 2005 BBC World Service short story competition, the recipient of a Chinua Achebe Center Fellowship, a Norman Mailer Center Fellowship, and a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency. His short story collection, Love is Power, or Something Like That, was published in 2013. In 2014 he was named on the Africa39 list of sub-Saharan African writers under 40. Blackass is his first novel.

A. Igoni Barrett

The short life of A.J.A. Symons (1900-41) was described by his biographer as an intricate and largely harmless confidence trick. His many interests included the collection of musical boxes and rare books as well as the study and practice of forgery; they left him time to edit an anthology of Edwardian verse and compose studies of H.M. Stanley and other notable figures. He is remembered for The Quest for Corvo, one of the most remarkable biographies ever written, and for co-founding the Wine and Food Society.

A. J. A. Symons

A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy novels and is an ambassador for Wattpad, known as @agatharoza. Entwined is her first novel.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A. T. Emerald lives with her husband and baby daughter in Nottinghamshire. She discovered her love of writing in 2020 and has not shut up about enemies to lovers ever since. She loves iced matcha, torrid love confessions with knives pressed to throats (fictional, of course) and does not accept bills for any therapy her books might incur.

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

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Richard Littlejohn

‘Littlejohn’s large-hearted nostalgia and aggression tempered with humour, remain a necessary tonic.’ The Times 
 
Born when wartime rationing was still in force and children ran free and wild, the world in which Richard Littlejohn grew up feels like it could be another country, let alone another century. 
 
In Littlejohn’s Lost World, he goes in search of his old childhood haunts - and instead finds an England changed beyond recognition. From the covered market that is now a 30-storey Dubai-style tower block to his old primary school, where today twelve different languages are spoken. 
 
From Muffin the Mule to Jimi Hendrix at the Isle of Wight Festival, Littlejohn takes us on a funny and poignant journey to a time and a place we will never see again. 
 
'His is the story of millions of others. If you, like him, feel that world has vanished forever, then you will find it vividly recreated in this captivating memoir.' Daily Mail

Littlejohn's Lost World

Pamela Cox

Annabel Hobley

‘[Go] behind the glamorous shop fronts and the glitzy shop floors of Britain’s department stores... Here the hidden history is revealed.’ Saga Magazine 
 
Meet the shopgirls and hear their incredible true stories of life behind the counter. 
 
In this lively and colourful history, we join shopgirl Chili Bouchier on her journey from the small ladies’ department at Harrods to star of the silver screen, and experience the raw courage of John Lewis’ Miss Austin during the Blitz in the West End. We follow Margaret Bondfield as she goes undercover, fiercely championing the rights of her fellow shopgirls; and stand alongside the impoverished interwar chain store assistants who stole stockings to supplement their meagre wages. And we celebrate with the art school entrepreneurs who kick-started the boutique movement of the swinging ’60s and made the shop floor their own. 
 
Here, these wonderful tales of friendship, hardship and triumph are revealed as never before. 
 
For fans of nostalgic history and memoir, including Call the Midwife; Mollie Moran's Aprons and Silver Spoons; and The Sugar Girls

Shopgirls

True Stories of Friendship, Hardship and Triumph From Behind the Counter

The True Story of Life Behind the Counter

Ellie Laks

The incredible true story of a place where animals heal and children learn to hope 
 
‘When I started The Gentle Barn, some viewed it as a hobby or an obsession, some as an act of selfless devotion. To all of those people, I want to say, You don’t understand. I’m not saving the animals; they’re saving me.' 
 
Ellie Laks was just seven years old when she was abused by her childminder. Through the troubled years that followed, animals were her salvation. 
 
Through near bankruptcy and a devastating fire, Ellie's dedication has not diminished. But it wasn't until she opened up the Barn to at-risk children and children with special needs that she realised how her animals could teach lessons in forgiveness and healing to others. 
 
This is a truly inspirational memoir, full of heartbreaking stories of hope and healing.

My Gentle Barn

The incredible true story of a place where animals heal and children learn to hope

Nigel McCrery

A crime scene. A murder. A mystery. 
 
The most important person on the scene? The forensic scientist. And yet the intricate details of their work remains a mystery to most of us. 
 
Silent Witnesses looks at the history of forensic science over the last two centuries, during which time a combination of remarkable intuition, painstaking observation and leaps in scientific knowledge have developed this fascinating branch of detection. Throwing open the casebook, it introduces us to such luminaries as 'The Wizard of Berkeley' Edward Heinrich, who is credited with having solved over 2000 crimes, and Alphonse Bertillon, the French scientist whose guiding principle 'no two individuals share the same characteristics' became the core of identification. Along the way, it takes us to India and Australia, Columbia and China, Russia, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. And it proves that, in order to solve ever more complicated cases, science must always stay one step ahead of the killer.

Silent Witnesses

Katie Price

Katie Price: model, businesswoman, author and Celebrity Big Brother 2015 winner, tells all in this explosive autobiography 
 
The last three years of Katie Price's life have been as dramatic as ever. From the highly publicised divorce from Alex Reid to the romance and split from Leandro Penna, and a whirlwind marriage and surprise pregnancy with Kieran Hayler, Katie has been through a lot of changes. And that’s just her love life. 
 
Katie has also dealt with increasingly bitter disputes with first husband Peter Andre and her former manager, as well as her public spats with comedian Frankie Boyle, who made offensive comments about her son Harvey, and Kelly Brook, over her dalliance with Danny Cipriani. 
 
Despite her personal life being played out in the public arena, Katie remains true to her heart by always speaking her mind and living life to the full. This fifth instalment of Katie's roller-coaster life provides intimate access to her side of all the stories with her own special brand of humour, compassion and total honesty.

Love, Lipstick and Lies

Sophia Kingshill

The Estate of Jennifer Westwood

Pirates and smugglers, ghost ships and sea-serpents, fishermen’s prayers and sailors’ rituals – the coastline of the British Isles plays host to an astonishingly rich variety of local legends, customs, and superstitions. 
 
In The Fabled Coast, renowned folklorists Sophia Kingshill and Jennifer Westwood gather together the most enthralling tales and traditions, tracing their origins and examining the facts behind the legends. Was there ever such a beast as the monstrous Kraken? Did a Welsh prince discover America, centuries before Columbus? What happened to the missing crew of the Mary Celeste? Along the way, they recount the stories that are an integral part of our coastal heritage, such as the tale of Drake’s Drum, said to be heard when England was in peril, and the mythical island of Hy Brazil, which for centuries appeared on sea charts and maps to the west of Ireland. The result is an endlessly fascinating, often surprising journey through our island history.

The Fabled Coast

Legends & traditions from around the shores of Britain & Ireland

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

Theresa Flores

Heart-rending, shocking and totally gripping, The Slave Across the Street is the incredible true story of how an ordinary girl was lured into the sinister world of human trafficking - and how she eventually escaped and rebuilt her life. 
 
'Flores puts a different face on human trafficking'-- Guardian 
'An absolute must read...written by a true warrior' -- ***** Reader review 
'A gripping and shocking story' -- ***** Reader review 
'A compulsive read' -- ***** Reader review 
'Absolutely brilliant book - couldn't put it down. Well worth reading' -- ***** Reader review 
'This story truly rocks your foundations to the core' -- ***** Reader review 
 
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IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOU. IT HAPPENED TO THE GIRL NEXT DOOR... 
 
When Theresa was 15 she moved to a new school and fell for an older pupil, Daniel. Theresa was thrilled when one afternoon he asked if he could drive her home. But this simple decision would result in her being forced to work as a sex slave for two long years. 
 
Daniel was part of a criminal ring that bribed and trafficked Theresa whilst she was still living in her own house, unknown to her parents. Theresa would go to school alongside these boys in the day and be called into service at night... 
 
This is the shocking tale of how easily these things can happen. This is the story of her journey from victim to survivor...

The Slave Across the Street

the harrowing yet inspirational true story of one girl’s traumatic journey from sex-slave to freedom

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

Max Decharne

Over seven centuries London has changed dramatically - from walled medieval settlement to bustling modern metropolis. But throughout its history there has been one inescapable constant: murder. It winds through the heart of the capital as surely as the River Thames. 
 
Capital Crimes tells the story of crime and punishment in the city, &shy;from the killing of infamous 'questmonger' Roger Legett during the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 through to the hanging of Styllou Christofi in 1954. Along the way we encounter such shocking characters as railway murderer Franz Muller, the ‘baby farmers’ of Finchley and the notorious political assassin John Bellingham. Some are well known, some obscure; the lives and fates of all, however, have much to tell us, providing a glimpse into the workings of London’s mysterious underworld and reminding us that dark deeds are not so far removed from everyday life as we would perhaps like to believe.

Capital Crimes

Seven Centuries of London Life and Murder

Diane Atkinson

Caroline Norton, born in 1808, was a society beauty, poet and pamphleteer. Her good looks and wit attracted many male admirers, first her husband, the Honourable George Norton, and then the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. 
 
After years of simmering jealousy, George Norton accused Caroline and the Prime Minister of a ‘criminal conversation’ (adultery) resulting in a trial referred to as ‘the scandal of the century’. 
 
Cut off and bankrupted by George Norton, she went on to become one of the most important figures in changing the law for wives and mothers.

The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton

Jonathan Goodman

Collected together in The Daily Telegraph Murder File are nerve-jangling accounts from a century of murder. Taken intact from the Telegraph's superlative domestic crime pages, they range from the lurid, through the chilling, to the touching and sometimes tragic. 
Linking these fascinating contemporary extracts is commentary by crime expert Jonathan Goodman. He looks at the background to the murders and the evolving ways of reporting them, and introduces some of the influential figures, from judges to executioners, responsible for their trial and sometimes capital punishment.

The Daily Telegraph Murder File

Jon Edwards

Luisa Edwards

Brought up as female for fifteen years, Jon can remember feeling different from other girls since he was only five years old. 
 
But it will take years of depression, incessant bullying, self-harm and isolation before he discovers why. 
 
When Jon eventually confides to his mother that he feels like a boy, Luisa commits herself unconditionally to helping her child. 
 
For Jon, the changes that follow are his path to happiness. But for Luisa, this means coming to terms with the enormous loss of her daughter.

The Boy Who Was Born a Girl

One Mother’s Unconditional Love for Her Child

President Bill Clinton

In Back to Work, Bill Clinton offers a plan to get America out of its economic crisis and "back into the future business." 
 
Clinton details how to lay a foundation for long-term prosperity, offering specific recommendations on how to boost employment rates, increase bank lending and corporate investment, and double exports. 
 
He emphasises that antigovernment sentiments in the public rarely contribute to a prosperous growth. Conflict between the government and the private sector has given the U.S. a weak economy, growing income inequality, and a decline in its competitive position. Cooperation, he stresses, is more conducive to success than conflict. 
 
To Clinton, America “at its core is an idea – the idea that no matter who you are or where you're from, if you work hard and play by the rules, you'll have the freedom and opportunity to pursue your own dreams.” Back to Work is an effort to rejuvenate the idea that is America.

Back to Work

Why We Need Smart Government for a Strong Economy

Clarissa Dickson Wright

In this magnificent guide to England's cuisine, the inimitable Clarissa Dickson Wright takes us from a medieval feast to a modern-day farmers' market, visiting the Tudor working man's table and a Georgian kitchen along the way. 
 
Peppered with surprises and seasoned with wit, A History of England Food is a classic for any food lover.

A History of English Food

Neil Root

Murder has transfixed the popular press for centuries. But it was only in the second half of the twentieth century that murder began saturating front pages and making these monsters what we today recognise as modern celebrities. 
 
It was three serial killers, caught and executed in the few years after the end of the Second World War, who precipitated a level of public furore never seen before. Neville Heath, a 'charming' sadist who killed two women; John George Haigh, the Acid Bath Killer who killed between six and nine men and women; and John Christie, the ineffectual necrophile, who killed between six and eight women. The modern news coverage finds its roots with these three men whom the crime historian Donald Thomas called the 'Postwar Psychopaths'. Their crimes were the first to generate a tabloid frenzy the like of which we see all around us today. It was not only the murderers who captured the public's imagination. It was the detectives who hunted them down, the judiciary who tried them, and the man who executed them, the legendary hangman Albert Pierrepoint. 
 
This book tells the stories of these three infamous serial killers against the backdrop of the tabloid frenzy that surrounded them.

Frenzy!

How the tabloid press turned three evil serial killers into celebrities

Bruce Dessau

Beyond a Joke is a celebration of comedy - one of the modern world's most dominant and compelling art forms - but it is also the story of comedy's dark side, homing in on the scandals that have surrounded some of light entertainment's biggest stars, and telling it as it is, featuring insight from one who was there at the time. 
 
While Beyond a Joke explores the extremes of this world it also addresses another question. Are comedians naturally dysfunctional, or does the stress and pressure of the job make them dysfunctional? Ruby Wax once told the author that she had builders in her house who were just as emotionally unstable as most stand-up comedians she had worked with. But they don't want to go on stage and plead with an audience to love them. 
 
Bruce Dessau is the only person who could write this book. From Russell Brand slashing his chest onstage to Jo Brand trashing a friend's car on the motorway, he has heard it all. Bruce Dessau knows where the bodies are buried.

Beyond a Joke

Inside the Dark World of Stand-up Comedy

Albert Jack

Did you know that an assassin is a hashish-eater and a yokel a country woodpecker? 
 
That Dr Mesmer mesmerised patients back to health or that Samuel Pepys enjoyed a good game of handicap? 
 
While we're at it, what have spondulics to do with spines or lawyers with avocados? 
 
In It's a Wonderful Word, bestselling author Albert Jack collects over 500 of the strangest, funniest-sounding and most delightful words in the English language, and traces them back to their often puzzling origins. While brushing up on your gibberish or gobbledygook, discover why bastards should resent travelling salesmen, why sheets should remain on tenterhooks and why you should never set down a tumbler before finishing your drink. 
 
From blotto to bamboozle and from claptrap to quango, Albert Jack's addictive anecdotes bring the world's most colourful language to life and are guaranteed to surprise and entertain.

It's a Wonderful Word

The Real Origins of Our Favourite Words

William C. Rempel

AN IMPOSSBLE CHOICE 
 
Jorge Salcedo was trapped. For years, he had climbed the ladder inside the Cali drug cartel, the world's most powerful crime syndicate, and risen to Head of Security. But he'd kept clean, avoided the dirty work, managed to sleep at night. Until now. He'd finally received the order he'd long dreaded, and it meant one thing: kill or be killed. 
 
THE HARD WAY 
 
Salcedo was a family man, a man with a conscience, a father - he was no cold-blooded murderer. He was left with the last resort. It meant risking his life, his family's life, and the lives of everyone he cared for. He would have to take the whole syndicate down. It was the price to pay for salvation. 
 
WOULD YOU RISK YOUR LIFE TO SAVE YOUR SOUL?

At The Devil's Table

The Man Who Took Down the World's Biggest Crime Syndicate

Inside the fall of the Cali cartel. The world's biggest crime syndicate

Alasdair Wickham

THE SUPERNATURAL IS EVERYWHERE 
 
In your home, on the street, in the countryside, around the world: 
 
In Denmark, the ghost of the White Lady, who freezes her quarry with an intense chill. 
In Germany, a succubus, who seduces and devours its prey. 
In New Zealand, the ghost of a murdered girl, who scrabbles and scratches at a cubicle wall. 
In Japan, the sea-dwelling Kappa, who drags young children into the icy depths. 
In Chile, the Chupacabra, a supernatural creature who kills in our world, before leaving for another. 
In the UK, Satanic cults inhabit the Cornish countryside, awaiting their next unsuspecting victim. 
 
No longer can we ignore the signs. Enter the Black Book if you dare to believe.

The Black Book of Modern Myths

True Stories of the Unexplained

Robert Sellers

Alan Bates, Michael Caine, Sean Connery, Tom Courtenay, Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Robert Shaw and Terence Stamp: They are the most formidable acting generation ever to tread the boards or stare into a camera, whose anti-establishment attitude changed the cultural landscape of Britain. 
 
This was a new breed, many culled from the working class industrial towns of Britain, and nothing like them has been seen before or since. Their raw earthy brilliance brought realism to a whole range of groundbreaking theatre from John Osborne's Look Back in Anger to Joan Littlewood and Harold Pinter and the creation of the National Theatre. And they ripped apart the staid, middle-class British film industry with kitchen-sink classics like Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, A Kind of Loving and Billy Liar before turning their sights on international stardom: Connery with James Bond, O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia, Finney with Tom Jones and Caine in Zulu. 
 
Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down brings alive the trail-blazing period of theatre and film from 1956-1964 through the vibrant energy and exploits of this revolutionary generation of stars who bulldozed over austerity Britain and paved the way for the swinging 60s. What Peter Biskind's Easy Riders Raging Bulls did for American cinema writing so Don't Let the Bastards will do for the British cinema.

Don't Let the Bastards Grind You Down

How One Generation of British Actors Changed the World

Molly Molloy

Charles Bowden

MEET EL SICARIO. 
 
A fugitive in the US with a $250,000 price tag on his head. 
 
He has executed hundreds of people, is an expert in torture, spent years working for the state police, and received training from the FBI. 
 
In grim and graphic detail he offers a series of confessions: 
 
-- Why he first became involved with the cartels and how they operate 
-- The most effective way to torture your victim 
-- The corrosive experience of looking into someone's eyes as you strangle them to death 
 
To read this book is to enter a world of terror and corruption and to understand the man who has seen it all and, for now, lived to tell the tale.

El Sicario

Confessions of a Cartel Hit Man

Julie Gregory

From early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother's mind: Munchausen by Proxy, the world's most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse. Sickened is her story. Readers of Educated, The Glass Castle and The Memory Palace will want to read this. 
 
'An appalling, fascinating story, expertly told' -- Sunday Times 
'It blazes with truth and anger - a true story of survival and achievement against the odds' -- Sunday Telegraph 
'Extraordinary - shocking and moving' -- Woman &amp; Home 
'Horrifying but compelling' -- Cosmopolitan 
'Gripping right from the start and I struggled to put it down' -- ***** Reader review 
'A brilliant read' -- ***** Reader review 
'Beautifully written' -- ***** Reader review 
'Unputdownable' -- ***** Reader review 
 
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THE TRUE STORY OF A LOST CHILDHOOD 
 
A young girl is perched on the cold chrome of yet another doctor's examining table, missing yet another day of school. Just twelve, she's tall, skinny, and weak. It's four o'clock, and she hasn't been allowed to eat anything all day. 
Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to 'get to the bottom of this.' She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans... 
 
Sickened is the story of one girl's fight for survival...

Sickened

Stacey Lannert

On July 4, 1990, eighteen-year-old Stacey Lannert shot and killed her father, who had been sexually and emotionally abusing her since she was eight. 
 
She suffered terrifying abuse at the hands of her unstable, alcoholic father for ten years until the night she realised he was turning his attention towards her younger sister, who was on the verge of becoming his next victim. 
 
Stacey's trial went horribly wrong and she was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of early release. But - after spending as many years behind bars as she had outside of them - her sentence was finally reviewed and she was freed. 
 
I Shot Daddy is Stacey's heartrending memoir of her harrowing childhood and the pain and protective love of her sister that led her to that horrifying night. An incredibly moving and gripping story which tells of an extraordinary recovery of a woman determined to fight for her freedom.

I Shot Daddy

She killed her father to protect her sister

Liz Murray

____________________________________ 
Liz Murray never really had a chance in life. Born to a drug-addicted father who was in and out of prison, and an equally dependent mother who was in and out of mental institutions, she seemed destined to become just another tragic statistic; another life wasted on the brutal streets of New York. 
 
By the age of 15, Liz found herself homeless with nowhere to turn but the tough streets, riding subways all night for a warm place to sleep and foraging through dumpsters for food. But when her mother died of AIDS a year later, Liz's life changed for ever. With no education, with no chance at a job or a home, she realised that only the most astonishing of turnarounds could stop her heading all the way down the same path her parents took. And so she set her mind to overcoming what seemed like impossible odds - and in the process, achieved something extraordinary. 
 
Told with astounding sincerity, Breaking Night is the breathtaking and inspirational story of how a young women, born into a world without hope, used every ounce of strength and determination to steer herself towards a brighter future. Beautifully written, it is a poignant, evocative and stirring portrait of struggle, desperation, forgiveness and survival.

Breaking Night

Jim Dwyer

Kevin Flynn

________________________________________ 
The only book on 9/11 to focus solely on the remarkable testimony of those inside the Twin Towers during the attacks. 
 
At 8.46 am on September 11, 2001, 14,000 people were inside the Twin Towers in New York - reading emails, making calls, eating croissants... over the next 102 minutes each would become part of the most infamous and deadly terrorist attack in history, one truly witnessed only by the people who lived through it - until now. 
 
Of the millions of words written about that unforgettable day when Al Qaeda attacked the western world, most have been from outsiders. New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn have taken the more revealing approach - using real-life testimonies to report solely from the perspective of those inside the towers. 102 Minutes is the epic account of ordinary men and women whose lives were changed forever in this kamikaze act of terrorism. This unique book about unique people, includes incredible stories of bravery, courage and overcoming unbelievable odds. Immortalised in this non-fiction masterpiece are the construction manager and his colleagues who pried open the doors and saved dozens of people in the north tower; the police officer who was a few blocks away, filing his retirement papers, but grabbed his badge and sprinted to the buildings; the window washer stuck in a lift fifty floors up who used a squeegee to escape; and the secretaries who led an elderly man down eighty-nine flights of stairs. 
 
Chance encounters, moments of grace, a shout across an office shaped these minutes, marking the border between fear and solace, staking the boundary between life and death. Crossing a bridge of voices to go inside the infernos, seeing cataclysm and herosim one person at a time, Dwyer and Flynn tell the affecting, authoritative saga of the men and women - the 12,000 who escaped and the 2,749 who perished at Ground Zero on September 11th 2001 - as they made 102 minutes count as never before.

102 Minutes

Steve Roud

From conkers to marbles, from British Bulldog to tag, not forgetting 'one potato, two potato' and 'eeny, meeny, miny, mo', The Lore of the Playground looks at the games children have enjoyed, the rhymes they have chanted and the rituals and traditions they have observed over the past hundred years and more. 
 
Each generation, it emerges, has had its own favourites - hoops and tops in the 1930s, clapping games more recently. Some pastimes, such as skipping, have proved remarkably resilient, their complicated rules carefully handed down from one class to the next. Many are now the stuff of distant memory. And some traditions have proved to be strongly regional, loved by children in one part of the country, unknown to those elsewhere. All are brilliantly and meticulously recorded by Steve Roud, who has drawn on interviews with hundreds of people aged from 8 to 80 to create a fascinating picture of all our childhoods.

The Lore of the Playground

The Children's World - Then and Now

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?

Fiona Phillips

Fiona Phillips is one of our best-loved television presenters. Well-known for being warm, chatty and down to earth, she attended her local comprehensive in Southampton before studying English in Birmingham. For over twelve years she presented GMTV, during which time she interviewed some of the most famous and influential people on the planet, from film stars to royalty, politicians to local heroes. But in August 2008 Fiona announced that she was to quit the job she loved, revealing that her father, Phil, had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's just a year after her mother had died of the same disease and that she had decided to devote more time to him and to her family. 
 
Before I Forget is a wonderfully honest account of growing up in the 1960s and 70s within a complex family. During her childhood her father could sometimes be distant and demanding which both saddened her and drove her to succeed, her mother always the devoted wife and the steady heart of the family. When Fiona lands the job at GMTV she revels in how proud they are of her achievement. When her mother and then her father succumb to Alzheimer's we share in Fiona's sadness as she movingly describes watching them fade away, one moment interviewing George Clooney the next taking a call from Pembrokeshire Social Services to say that her mother had wandered away from her care home. 
 
Before I Forget is an extraordinary book which will resonate with Fiona's millions of fans and the millions of people who day-by-day are going through, or have gone through, the same experiences.

Before I Forget

Andrew Rimas

Evan D. G. Fraser

For thousands of years we have grown, cooked and traded food, and over that time much has changed. Where once we subsisted on gritty, bland grains, we now enjoy culinary creations and epicurean delights made with vegetables from the New World, fish trawled from the deep sea, and flavoured with spices from the Orient. 
 
But how did we make that change from eating for survival to the innovations of modern cuisine? How has food helped to shape our culture? And what will happen when global warming and peak oil have their inevitable effect on agriculture? 
 
Empires of Food is an authoritative exploration of the innumerable ways that food has changed the course of history. The earliest cities, after all, were founded on the creation and exchange of food surpluses, and since then trade routes of ever greater sophistication have developed. We've built complex societies by shunting corn and wheat and rice along rivers, up deforested hillsides, and into the stockpots of history. 
 
But we cannot go on forever. As Evan D. G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas compellingly show, the abundance that we all enjoy comes at a price, and unless we think of a more sustainable way to grow, eat and enjoy food, we may find that our civilization reaches its best before date.

Empires of Food

Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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