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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Marie Joseph

Marie Joseph knew that her arthritis was incurable, but still she was determined not to give in to it - to live a 'complete' life. Through both the constant pain and the endless series of cures, she never lost sight of either her own resolve, her love for her family, or her sense of humour. 
 
This is her story. It is the courageous story of learning to live with a crippling illness - made even more remarkable because Marie Joseph went on to become one of our most popular contemporary novelists, the bestselling author of Maggie Craig and A Leaf In The Wind. But above all, this is a story of inspiring strength - an adventure story of the spirit - funny, vivid and intensely moving.

One Step At A Time

Catherine Laylle

In 1984, Catherine Laylle, a Frenchwomen living in London, met and married a German medical student, Dieter. The couple had two sons, Alexander and Constantin. When, however, at Dieter's insistence, they moved back to his home town in Germany, the marriage began to fall apart. Dieter refused to get a job, Catherine found living with his family oppressive and eventually, she returned to London with the children. The boys spent term time with their mother, holidays with their father - until the summer of 1994, when Dieter decided that his sons should be raised as Germans and, with the support of the local judge, defied the London court ruling that gave Catherine custody. Catherine went to the courts in London, Germany and the Hague - but it seemed that no court outside the jurisdiction of Lower Saxony would overrule the decision. Today, Alexander is eleven and Constantin is nine. Catherine has barely seen them in the two years since Dieter kidnapped them - and then only under the supervision of one of his friends. This is the harrowing story of a mother's attempts to regain her children, and of her desperate struggle against a tyrannical family and the blind injustice of the courts in Europe.

Two Children Behind A Wall

Gay Talese

UNTO THE SONS is Gay Talese's stirring epic of his family's exodus from a tiny village in southern Italy, caught up in the tide of young men who crossed the Atlantic to America at the end of the 19th century.

Unto The Sons

Petronella Wyatt

Petronella Wyatt writes: 'The eccentricities of my father, Lord (Woodrow) Wyatt (1918-1997), are a legend.  I, his only daughter, was required to participate in his astonishing behaviour with all the enthusiasm I could muster.  This resulted in a childhood of a kind unknown to the late 20th-century - a mixture of Edwardian extravagance, Victorian whimsicality and a vivid 18th-century haute sophistication.                 'Father was the last of the old school.  Described by his friend and former political rival Roy Jenkins as 'the ultimate original', he was a politician, writer, race-horse owner, womaniser and bon vivant - a unique product of pre-war English civilisation.  His career ensured him a varied circle of friends.  I grew up with such companions as Harold Macmillan, Margaret Thatcher, Rupert Murdoch, Robin Day, Sir James Goldsmith, Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, Princess Margaret, the Duke of Devonshire and much of Debrett's Peerage.                                                              'Each chapter of the book will contain personal and historically important anecdotes about the famous that have never before appeared in print and which will generate considerable news coverage.  What I am writing is a waspish social document - irreverent, satirical, dramatic and scandalous, disclosing how the privileged enjoy their privileges

Father Dear Father

Jilly Cooper

After going to live in the country Jilly Cooper wrote regularly for the Mail on Sunday for several years and this is a selection of her best pieces written at that time. The topics she covers in her inimitable style range from the hunt balls and Henley to love and sex in the ages of AIDS. 
 
She interviews Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, Lord Hailsham, the cast of Eastenders and the proprietress of a famous brothel in the Nevada desert and writes about her fellow human beings and their foibles provocatively, affectionately and sometimes outrageously. Her portraits of family life in the Cooper household remain the most ruthless and hilarious of all.

Turn Right At The Spotted Dog

James Patterson

Cory Friedman was an ordinary fun-loving little boy. That fateful March morning in 1989 started just like any other but later that day, he started to feel very different and the course of his life was set to change. It started with an irresistible urge to shake his head, and before long, his body became a volatile, explosive and unpredictable force. Overtaken by physical urges, tics and compulsions, the bright young boy started to feel and look like a puppet on a string. 
 
Cory had developed a rare combination of Tourette Syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder and other neurological conditions. The life he knew had been torn apart and his family was left watching him suffer. Desperate to help and hopeful of a cure, they embarked on a fifteen year plight which took them beyond breaking point. Cory was seen by thirteen doctors who in total prescribed sixty potent medicines. He was mistakenly sent to a psychiatric ward and. On the brink of utter despair, he and his family decided to try a form of intervention that had never been tried in cases such as Cory's: he was sent to a wilderness survival camp in a bitter, unforgiving snowy Utah winter. This felt like their final chance. 
 
Throughout his young life, Cory struggled to have the same childhood and adolescence as his friends. From time to time an overwhelming anger and frustration overcame him when one doctor after another and an unprecedented number of medicines continually failed him. Still, throughout it all, Cory battled against the extraordinary events that were unfolding, and would take him on one of the most terrifying personal journeys ever recorded. 
 
Torn Apart is a true story of one family's courage, heartbreak, sacrifice and ultimately, triumph.

Torn Apart

The Heartbreaking Story of a Childhood Lost

Charles Handy

Elizabeth Handy

Twenty-eight women, ranging from Anita Roddick and Prue Leith to less well-known names, write their own personal stories which are accompanied by Elizabeth Handy's black and white photographs and an introductory essay by Charles Handy.   This generation of women is entering the sixties more healthy, more educated and more energetic than most of their mothers.    The subjects in this book provide the models for what has become, for the first time, a new age for many women.    Released from most of the cares and responsibilities that accompany midlife for women, they are free to reinvent themselves, to give more time to their career or calling, or to luxuriate in the serenity and friendships that few had time for in the past. Some enter new relationships, some start new careers or go back to study, some find that their work is only now reaching its peak. Many have survived traumas and tragedies, but 'the past is just the prologue' as one of them explains.

Reinvented Lives

Women at Sixty: A Celebration

Colin Wilson

Colin Wilson is the bete-noir of the Oxbridge literary establishment. He never went to university, let alone Oxbridge, yet wrote The Outsider, a brilliant account of the pain of being alive today, when he was just twenty-four. It sold millions of copies around the world, and he was acclaimed as one of the leading intellectuals of the age, finding a huge audience with the anti-establishment, alternative and underground thinkers. Because of his radically new attitudes he was - with John Osborne - dubbed an 'angry young man' in the article that originally coined that phrase. In this way a young man from a working class background suddenly found himself moving in the most colourful literary and artistic circles of the day. In his autobiography he tells stories about, among others, Aldous Huxley, Angus Wilson, John Osborne, Kingsley Amis, Kenneth Tynan, Francis Bacon and Norman Mailer - all observed with a true outsider's eye for absurdity. He is regarded by many as a true literary hero - Julian Cope stopped a recent concert to pay tribute to Wilson who as sitting in the audience and Donovan Leitch dedicates his new autobiography to him - but he also has huge mass market appeal. His insightful, brilliant books on the Occult, the Mysteries and Atlantis and the Sphinx were all huge bestsellers netting millions of copies. In this return to the themes of The Outsider, looked at from the point of his own life story, he again proves himself one of the great intellectuals of our age, never ceasing to wrestle with the great questions of life and death, and writing with an erudition and an easy way with ideas that is rare in English literary life.

Dreaming To Some Purpose

Steve Roud

Pregnancy and childbirth remains a mystical and magical time, characterised by feelings of hope, uncertainty and worry. No matter how many scientific innovations come along, there's still room for home-grown beliefs and traditions handed down through the family. Couples buying a pram may still ask for it to be delivered after the birth, and some grandparents will shrink from tickling the baby's feet in case it grows up to have a stammer. Monday's Child is Fair of Face gathers together these beliefs and customs, explaining how and why they arose, in which parts of the country they have been particularly popular, and to what extent they survive today. Arranged thematically, it's the perfect book to dip into, and its mixture of familiar, unfamiliar and frankly bizarre beliefs makes for compelling reading.

Monday's Child is Fair of Face

and Other Traditional Beliefs about Babies and Motherhood

Azar Nafisi

Azar Nafisi, author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.A girl's pain over family secrets; a young woman's discovery of the power of sensuality in literature; the price a family pays for freedom in a country beset by political upheaval - these and other threads are woven together in this beautiful memoir. 
 
Nafisi's intelligent and complicated mother, disappointed in her dreams of leading an important and romantic life, created mesmerising fictions about herself, her family, and her past.But her daughter soon learned that these narratives of triumph hid as much as they revealed.Nafisi's father escaped into narratives of another kind, enchanting his children with classic tales like the Shahnameh, the Persian Book of Kings.When her father began to see other women, young Azar began to keep his secrets from her mother.Nafisi's complicity in these childhood dramas ultimately led her to resist remaining silent about other personal - as well as political, cultural, and social - injustices. 
 
Reaching back in time to reflect on other generations in the Nafisi family, Things I've Been Silent About is also a powerful historical portrait of a family that spans the many periods of change leading up to the Islamic Revolution of 1978-79.It is, finally, a deeply personal reflection on women's choices, and how Azar Nafisi found the inspiration for a different kind of life.This unforgettable portrait of a woman, a family, and a troubled homeland is a stunning book that readers will embrace, a new triumph from an author who is a modern master of the memoir.

Things I've Been Silent About

Memories

'Men, according to legend, want only one thing, are deceivers ever, are not interested in gossip, like a cosy armful, need two eggs, and seldom wash behind their ears.' 
 
Whatever their grading, Super Man or Slob, Jilly submits all men to remorseless scrutiny. In public and in private, home, office or bed, none escapes her beady eye - from painters to politicians, guardsmen to gigolos, stockbrokers to sex-fiends, this is Jilly Cooper's brilliantly funny guide to the male sex.

Men and Supermen

Randy Blythe

The incredible memoir from Lamb of God frontman, Randy Blythe. 
 
In 2010, a nineteen-year-old super-fan rushed the stage during a Lamb of God concert in Prague. To protect himself, singer Randy Blythe pushed the fan away. Unbeknownst to Blythe, the young man hit his head on the floor when he fell and later died from the injury. Blythe was promptly incarcerated on charges carrying a prison term of five to ten years. Thirty-seven days later, he was released on bail to await trial. Although legal experts told him not to return to the Czech Republic to face the charges, Blythe explained that he “could not run away from this problem while the grieving family of a dead young man searched hopelessly for answers that [he] might help provide.” 
 
After a five-day trial, he was acquitted on March 5, 2013. 
 
In Dark Days, Blythe tells the story of his incarceration and the wild life that led up to it. As he explains, “Most substance abuse books end with the author getting sober. My book starts there.”

Dark Days

How has Gay Talese found his subjects? How has he gotten them onto the page? What drives him to write? These are some of the questions at the heart of the narrative that combines memory, reflection, explanation and a satisfying obsession. I his trademark prose - precise, beautifully crafted, elegant - Talese traces the paths his passionate interests have made through his life and writing. He talks about first becoming absorbed in issues of race as a student in Alabama, about covering the civil rights struggle and about a recent interracial wedding in Selma. He reflects on the changing American sexual mores he has written about over the last 50 years, and gives an incisive examination of the lives of Lorena and John Bobbitt. He talks about his legendary Esquire profile of Frank Sinatra - judged by the magazine to be the finest in its long history - and about the ordinary men and women whose stories led to some of his most memorable work. And as he delves into the life of a young female Chinese soccer player, we see his consuming interest in the world in its latest manifestation. In these and other recollections and stories, he gives us a fascinating picture of both the serendipity and meticulousness involved in getting a story, and getting it right. 
 
Candid, humorous, deeply impassioned - a dazzling book about the nature of writing in one man's life, and of writing itself.

A Writer's Life

Christine Longaker

Many books have been written on the subject of death and dying over the last twenty-five years, yet none provides a comprehensive spiritual paradigm combined with practical guidance for resounding effectively and compassionately to be most common difficulties and challenges of the dying. Christine's Longaker's uncompromising and uplifting book does it all, and is based on her own personal experiences, her study and work with Sogyal Rinpoche and on the workshops she now holds all over Europe and the USA.

Facing Death And Finding Hope

A Guide to the Emotional and Spiritual Care of the Dying

Cherry Chappell

Long before modern medicines became so widely available, families treated everyday illnesses with home-made remedies. Reused and refined year after year, they were handed down through the generations then lovingly copied into personal 'receipt' books. Grandma's Remedies brings together a beguiling collection of them, gathered from dusty medicine chests found in attics, recalled from childhoods long past, or discovered in family archives and libraries. 
 
Many of them are surprisingly effective. Did you know, for example, that drinking two cups of strong black coffee will alleviate an asthma attack? Or that chewing toasted fennel seeds will help combat indigestion? Or that rosehip syrup is a terrific source of vitamin C? 
 
But Grandma's Remedies is more than a guide to these traditional treatments, it also paints a vivid portrait of the world of our grandparents and great-grandparents. It shows how inventive and resourceful they were with the materials near to hand, how they made the most of everything in the store-cupboard, from bread through to vinegar, and how it was the women of the household who, despite being barred from the medical profession, were relied on to safeguard family health. 
 
In these days of antibiotics and painkillers, it's easy to forget how people survived when all they had to rely on was a garden, a larder and a healthy dose of common sense.

Grandma's Remedies

A Guide to Traditional Cures and Treatments from Mustard Poultices to Rosehip Syrup

Nick Barratt

London's suburbs may stretch for well over 600 square miles, but in historical accounts of the capital they tend to take something of a back seat. In Greater London, historian Nick Barratt places them firmly centre stage, tracing their journey from hamlets and villages far out in the open countryside to fully fledged urban enclaves, simultaneously demonstrating the crucial role they have played in the creation of today's metropolis. 
 
Starting in the first century AD, he shows how the tiny settlements that grew up in the Thames Valley gradually developed, and how they were shaped by their proximity to the city. He describes the spread of the first suburbs beyond the city walls, and traces the ebb and flow of population as people moved in to find jobs or away to escape London's noise and bustle. He charts the transformation wrought by the coming of the railways, the fight to preserve Hampstead Heath, Epping Forest and other green spaces and the struggle to create a London-wide form of government. He gives an account of wartime destruction and peacetime reconstruction, and then brings the story to the present with a description of the very varied nature of today's suburbs and their inhabitants. In the process, he evokes Tudor Hackney and Georgian Hampton, explains why Victorian Battersea and Finchley were so different from one another, and follows Islington's fall from grace and subsequent recovery. 
 
Magnificently illustrated throughout with contemporary engravings and photographs, this is the essential history for anyone who has ever lived in London.

Greater London

The Story of the Suburbs

Nikesh Shukla

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of The Good Immigrant, read by the authors. 
 
How does it feel to be constantly regarded as a potential threat, strip-searched at every airport? 
 
Or be told that, as an actress, the part you’re most fitted to play is ‘wife of a terrorist’? How does it feel to have words from your native language misused, misappropriated and used aggressively towards you? How does it feel to hear a child of colour say in a classroom that stories can only be about white people? How does it feel to go ‘home’ to India when your home is really London? What is it like to feel you always have to be an ambassador for your race? How does it feel to always tick ‘Other’? 
 
Bringing together 21 exciting black, Asian and minority ethnic voices emerging in Britain today, The Good Immigrant explores why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a country that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms. 
 
Inspired by discussion around why society appears to deem people of colour as bad immigrants – job stealers, benefit scroungers, undeserving refugees – until, by winning Olympic races or baking good cakes, or being conscientious doctors, they cross over and become good immigrants, editor Nikesh Shukla has compiled a collection of essays that are poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking, polemic, weary and – most importantly – real.

The Good Immigrant

Whatever their grading, Super Woman or Slut, Jilly submits all women to remorseless scrutiny. In public and private, home, office or bed, none escapes her beady eye- from debs to divorcees, models to maiden aunts, tarts to Tory ladies, this is Jilly Cooper's brilliantly funny guide to the female sex.

Women And Superwomen

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