Abilio Estévez

Abir Mukherjee is the bestselling author of the award-winning Wyndham &amp; Banerjee series of crime novels set in 1920s India and the British Book Awards Crime Thriller of the Year 2025 Hunted. His books have been translated into sixteen languages and won various awards including the CWA Dagger for best Historical Novel, the Prix du Polar Européen, and the Wilbur Smith Award for Adventure Writing. 
 
 
He also co-hosts the popular Red Hot Chilli Writers podcast which takes a wry look at the world of books, writing, and the creative arts, tackling everything from bestsellers to pop culture. Abir grew up in Scotland and now lives in Surrey with his wife and two sons. 
 
 
Website: abirmukherjee.com Twitter, Threads &amp; Instagram: @radiomukhers Facebook: AuthorAbir

Abir Mukherjee

Abolqasem Ferdowsi

Abraham Lincoln

Abraham L. Newman is a professor at the School of Foreign Service and Government Department at Georgetown University. He is a 2022-2023 Berlin Prize winner and his work has been published in leading outlets like The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Nature, Science, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Harvard Business Review, and Politico.

Abraham Newman

Abraham Verghese

Absolut Vodka

Ad Putter

Ada Moncrieff is the author of Murder Most Festive, Murder at the Theatre Royale and Murder at Maybridge Castle. She lives and works in London.

Ada Moncrieff

Adam Aleksic is a linguist and content creator posting educational videos as the “Etymology Nerd” to an audience of over two million. As a linguistics student at Harvard College, he founded and served as president of the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. He’s discussed online language on NPR, repeatedly contributed to The Washington Post, and his work has been mentioned in The New York Times, The Economist, and The Guardian. He’s lectured on language and social media at Stanford, Yale, Georgetown, and other top universities, including a TEDx talk at the University of Pennsylvania. Adam is based in New York City, where he spends a lot of time scrolling TikTok for “research.”

Adam Aleksic

Adam Alter is an Associate Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, and holds an affiliated appointment within the Psychology Department. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Drunk Tank Pink: And Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel and Behave and has written for The New York Times, New Yorker, Atlantic, Wired, Popular Science and numerous other publications.

Adam Alter

Professor Adam Balen is lead clinician at one of the UK's largest and most successful IVF units at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. In recognition of his research on fertility and related conditions, he holds a DSc (the highest academic degree in medicine) from the University of Leeds. Adam is internationally renowned, holding roles with the World Health Organisation (WHO), the International Federation of Gyneacology and Obstetrics (FIGO) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gyneacologists (RCOG). He runs both NHS and private fertility clinics so he understands the issues that arise from both sides and he works closely with fertility patient support organisations across the UK. Adam regularly features in the media on all aspects of reproductive health and lectures widely throughout the world.

Adam Balen

Adam Baron

Adam Bornstein

Adam Brookes grew up in the UK and was a journalist with BBC News for many years. As a foreign correspondent he was based in Indonesia, China and the United States. Along the way he reported from many other countries, including Iraq, Afghanistan and North Korea. He lives in Washington DC.

Adam Brookes

Adam Buxton

Adam Christopher is the New York Times bestselling author of Star Wars: Shadow of the Sith and Stranger Things: Darkness on the Edge of Town. He has also written official tie-in novels for the hit CBS television show Elementary and the award-winning Dishonored video game franchise. Co-creator of the twenty-first-century incarnation of Archie Comics superhero The Shield, Adam has also written for the universes of Doctor Who and World of Warcraft, and is a contributor to the internationally bestselling Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View anniversary anthology series and the all-ages Star Wars Adventures comic. Adam’s original novels include Made to Kill and The Burning Dark, among many others, and his debut novel Empire State was both a SciFi Now and Financial Times book of the year.

Adam Christopher

Adam Foulds's most recent books are In the Wolf’s Mouth, The Quickening Maze, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Encore Award and the European Union Prize for Literature, and The Broken Word, which won the Costa Poetry Award and the Somerset Maugham Award. He has recently been awarded the E.M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters and named as one of Granta’s ‘Best of Young British Novelists’.

Adam Foulds

Dr Adam Fox is a highly qualified and respected allergy specialist and consultant paediatric allergist and clinical lead for Allergy at Guy's &amp; St Thomas' Hospitals. The Times recently named him as one of Britain's top 100 children’s doctors. 
 
www.allergyfreebabyandtoddler.com

Adam Fox

Adam Frost

Adam Galinsky is currently the Morris and Alice Kaplan Professor of Ethics and Decision in Management at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He received his PhD from Princeton University in Social Psychology and his B.A. from Harvard University.

Adam Galinsky

Adam Glasser

Adam Goodfellow

Adam Goodwin

Adam Grant is an organizational psychologist at Wharton, where he has been the top-rated professor for seven straight years. His books have sold millions of copies, his TED talks have been viewed more than 30 million times, and he hosts the hit podcast Re:Thinking. His pioneering research on motivation and meaning has enabled people to reach their aspirations and exceed others' expectations. His viral piece on languishing was the most-read New York Times article of 2021 and the most-saved article across platforms. He has been recognized as one of the world's ten most influential management thinkers and Fortune's 40 Under 40, and has received distinguished scientific achievement awards from the American Psychological Association and the National Science Foundation. Grant received his B.A. from Harvard University and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he is a former Junior Olympic springboard diver. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and their three children.

Adam Grant

Adam and Charlotte met in Zanzibar while working with Voluntary Services Overseas. Upon their return to the UK, Charlotte completed an MA at Oxford Brookes and started her career in publishing. Adam in the meantime became writer-in-residence at the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre before co-founding Storytelling Schools, an international organisation dedicated to training teachers in oracy, literacy and creativity. Adam and Charlotte's first book together was the best-selling and award-winning Spaghetti with the Yeti. Since then, Adam and Charlotte have continued to follow their passion for creating engaging books that inspire interaction and creativity in young readers.

Adam Guillain

ADAM HAMDY is a bestselling author and screenwriter. His most recent novel, The Other Side of Night, was an NPR best book of 2022 and a New York Times best thriller of the year, and has been described as ingenious and deeply moving. He is the author of the Scott Pearce series of modern spy thrillers, Black 13, Red Wolves and White Fire, and the Pendulum trilogy. Keep up to date with his latest books and news at www.adamhamdy.com.

Adam Hamdy

Adam Hart-Davis

Adam Haslett is the author of the story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novels Imagine Me Gone and Union Atlantic. He has twice been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award and his books have been translated into over thirty languages. His journalism on culture and politics has appeared in The Financial Times, Esquire, The New Yorker, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, The Nation, and The Atlantic, among others. He lives in New York City.

Adam Haslett

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Stephan Talty

Discover the truth about the Black Hand, as featured in Peaky Blinders 
 
Beginning in the summer of 1903, an insidious crime wave filled New York City, and then the entire country, with fear. The children of Italian immigrants were kidnapped, and dozens of innocent victims were gunned down. Bombs tore apart tenement buildings. Judges, senators, Rockefellers, and society matrons were threatened with gruesome deaths. The perpetrators seemed both omnipresent and invisible. Their only calling card: the symbol of a black hand. The crimes whipped up the slavering tabloid press and heated ethnic tensions to the boiling point. 
 
Standing between the American public and the Black Hand’s lawlessness was Joseph Petrosino. Dubbed the “Italian Sherlock Holmes,” he was a famously dogged and ingenious detective, and a master of disguise. As the crimes grew ever more bizarre and the Black Hand’s activities spread far beyond New York’s borders, Petrosino and the all-Italian police squad he assembled raced to capture members of the secret criminal society before the country’s anti-immigrant tremors exploded into catastrophe. Petrosino’s quest to root out the source of the Black Hand’s power would take him all the way to Sicily—but at a terrible cost. 
 
Unfolding a story rich with resonance in our own era, The Black Hand is fast-paced narrative history at its very best.

The Black Hand

Hayley McGregor

‘He manipulated me by making me feel special … then duped me into thinking I was to blame.’ 
 
Hayley was just 12 when she met Mr Willson, the new drama teacher at her school. Good looking and charismatic, he was classic schoolgirl-crush material. Hayley was flattered by the attention he gave her, and he soon befriended her parents. Little did they know they were all being groomed. Hayley allowed Mr Willson to do unspeakable things to her, and after the relationship ended it took almost 20 years of guilt and crippling self-esteem issues before a complete breakdown prompted her to tell her parents, and they went with her to the police. 
 
This is the shocking true story of a schoolgirl groomed by her teacher, and her courageous journey to heal the wrongs of her past.

Teacher's Pet

Chris Packham

Voted the UK’s Favourite Nature Book 
 
The memoir that inspired Chris Packham's BBC documentary, Asperger’s and Me 
 
Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence. 
 
An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt at ease in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn’t understand him. 
 
Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever read.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

A Memoir

Neil Woods

'Undercover, you're never just acting; you're only ever a different version of yourself.' 
 
Neil Woods spent fourteen years (1993-2007) infiltrating drug gangs as an undercover policeman, befriending and gaining the trust of some of the most violent, unpredictable criminals in Britain. But Neil was never your stereotypical gung-ho, tough-guy copper. This is the story of how a thoughtful, idealistic character learned to use his empathetic nature to master some of the roughest, most dangerous work in law enforcement. There was no training, no manual and no plan for when things went wrong; he was just dropped at a corner and told to make connections. But, inevitably, having swords thrust against his jugular, witnessing beatings, stabbings, and gangsters burning suspected rats with acid took its toll. 
 
Drawing on Neil’s experiences, with the insight that can only come from having fought on the front lines, GOOD COP, BAD WAR is at once a narrative-driven true crime read and a fascinating story of a character under pressure.

Good Cop, Bad War

Tony Long

Tony Long was the best ‘shot’ the Met ever had. Under the codename ‘Echo 7’, he was ‘licenced to kill’ bringing down scores of targets, sometimes with deadly force. In 1985 he opened fire on a suspect to save a four-year-old girl whose mother had been stabbed to death by her assailant. Two years later he was involved in another high profile shooting while confronting three armed criminals. On both occasions Tony was commended by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. But in the spring of 2005, coming face to face with suspected drug dealer and armed robber Azelle Rodney, a volley of point blank shots would bring his career crashing to an end, tarnish his reputation and leave him fighting a murder charge and possible life sentence. 
 
From life or death cases and botched operations to political fallouts, this book charts the controversial career from rookie seventies beat cop to Long's command of SO19 – the Met’s most elite specialist firearms unit. Long’s personal testimony and professional insight raises serious issues about the duties, pressures and responsibilities that fall on the shoulders of those we task to risk their lives, and take the lives of others, in our name.

Lethal Force

My Life As the Met’s Most Controversial Marksman

The Kennel Club

The Kennel Club's Breed Standards form the basis for judging dogs at all licensed breed shows. This fully revised edition of the authoritative guide outlines the descriptive 'standards' for each of the 201 pure breeds of dog now recognised by the Kennel Club. 
 
The book has been completely updated by a panel of experts to incorporate the latest standards for all breeds in each of the principal categories - Hound, Gundog, Terrier, Utility, Working, Pastoral and Toy. As well as providing a beautiful colour photograph of each dog, each entry contains a history of the breed, including its origins and function, as well as a full description outlining its essential features. There is also useful advice on the nature of each breed and practical information to help guide anyone who is buying a dog, as well as a glossary of canine terms. 
 
This book is essential reading for anyone who owns, or hopes to own, a pedigree dog and is indispensable for breeders, judges and those professionally involved with dogs.

The Kennel Club's Illustrated Breed Standards: The Official Guide to Registered Breeds

Tom Wainwright

Everything drug cartels do to survive and prosper they’ve learnt from big business – brand value and franchising from McDonald’s, supply chain management from Walmart, diversification from Coca-Cola. Whether it’s human resourcing, R&amp;D, corporate social responsibility, off-shoring, problems with e-commerce or troublesome changes in legislation, the drug lords face the same strategic concerns companies like Ryanair or Apple. So when the drug cartels start to think like big business, the only way to understand them is using economics. 
 
In Narconomics, Tom Wainwright meets everyone from coca farmers in secret Andean locations, deluded heads of state in presidential palaces, journalists with a price on their head, gang leaders who run their empires from dangerous prisons and teenage hitmen on city streets - all in search of the economic truth.

Narconomics

How To Run a Drug Cartel

Edwina Dunn

This is a one-of-a-kind book, which will motivate generations of girls and women for years to come, The Female Lead is a collection of portraits - in their own words - of over 50 inspirational women who changed the world around them. With stunning photography and heartfelt, personal interviews, this will inspire a whole generation of young women. 
 
'A truly inspirational book' -- ***** Reader review 
'Beautifully written and illustrated' -- ***** Reader review 
'A beautiful, inspiring book' -- ***** Reader review 
'Loved it! Truly inspiring!' -- ***** Reader review 
'Inspiring and motivating with beautiful images' -- ***** Reader review 
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Over fifty inspirational women, from many walks of life. All have changed the world in a variety of fields. Among them are politicians and artists, journalists and teachers, engineers and campaigners, fire fighters and film stars. Together they form an arresting gallery of portraits, each one illustrated with original photography by Brigitte Lacombe. 
 
Some have led their professions; some have broken new ground for women; some have inspired changes through relentless endeavour. All were chosen for their ambitions and achievements and all tell their stories in their own words. 
 
Includes portraits from Meryl Streep, Tina Brown, Lena Dunham, Jo Malone, Laura Bates, Yeonmi Park, Lucy Bronze, Julie Bentley and Michaela DePrince, amongst many others. 
 
For girls, it can be hard to identify role models in our society. This book will help and inspire women everywhere to realize their hopes and ambitions.

The Female Lead

Women Who Shape Our World

Madeleine Vibert

Toni Maguire

'Lying in the prison of my bed, his dark silhouette closes in, a pillow in his hands. My throat tightens in fear…’ 
 
At the tender age of five, Madeleine was living a daily nightmare. In a dark, grey building on Jersey, she was just another orphan, defenceless and alone. She was also an easy target. 
 
Unbeknownst to the outside world, the care home manager was abusing her, using her like she was his toy. “Say nothing, no one will believe a nasty little kid like you,” he’d whisper. Terrified, Madeleine would keep quiet. And, worse still, the home was selling the children to men who would inflict on them the worst possible abuse. No one cared. 
 
This is Madeleine’s heart-breaking story and her fight to survive.

They Stole My Innocence

The shocking true story of a young girl abused in a Jersey care home

Emma Gannon

Emma Gannon was born in 1989, the year the World Wide Web was conceived, so she’s literally grown up alongside the Internet. There’ve been late night chat room experiments, sexting from a Nokia and dubious webcam exchanges. And let’s not forget catfishing, MSN, digital friendships and #feminism. She was basically social networking way before it was a thing – and she’s even made a successful career from it. 
 
Ctrl Alt Delete is Emma’s painfully funny and timely memoir, in which she aims to bring a little hope to anybody who has played out a significant part of their life online. Her confessions, revelations and honesty may even make you log off social media (at least for an hour).

Ctrl, Alt; Delete

How I Grew Up Online

Ian McMillan

I’m going to define the essence of this sprawling place as best I can. I’m going to start here, in this village, and radiate out like a ripple in a pond. I don’t want to go to the obvious places, either; I want to be like a bus driver on my first morning on the job, getting gloriously lost, turning up where I shouldn’t. I’m going to confirm or deny the clichés, holding them up to see where the light gets in. Yorkshire people are tight. Yorkshire people are arrogant. Yorkshire people eat a Yorkshire pudding before every meal. Yorkshire people solder a t’ before every word they use... 
 
If there were such a thing as a professional Yorkshireman, Ian McMillan would be it. He’s regularly consulted as a home-grown expert, and southerners comment archly on his ‘fruity Yorkshire brogue’. But he has been keeping a secret. His dad was from Lanarkshire, Scotland, making him, as he puts it, only ‘half tyke’. So Ian is worried; is he Yorkshire enough? 
 
To try to understand what this means Ian embarks on a journey around the county, starting in the village has lived in his entire life. With contributions from the Cudworth Probus Club, a kazoo playing train guard, Mad Geoff the barber and four Saddleworth council workers looking for a mattress, Ian tries to discover what lies at the heart of Britain’s most distinct county and its people, as well as finding out whether the Yorkshire Pudding is worthy of becoming a UNESCO Intangible Heritage Site, if Harrogate is really, really, in Yorkshire and, of course, who knocks up the knocker up?

Neither Nowt Nor Summat

In search of the meaning of Yorkshire

Stuart Maconie

Factory, mine and mill. Industry, toil and grime. Its manufacturing roots mean we still see the North of England as a hardworking place. But, more than possibly anywhere else, the North has always known how to get dressed up, take itself out on the town and have a good time. After all, working and playing hard is its specialty, and Stuart Maconie is in search of what, exactly, this entails what it tells us about the North today. 
 
Following tip offs and rumour, Stuart takes trip to forgotten corners and locals’ haunts. From the tapas bars of Halifax to the caravan parks of Berwick Upon Tweed, from a Westhoughton bowling green to Manchester’s curry mile, via dog tracks and art galleries, dance floors and high fells, Stuart compares the new and old North, with some surprising results. 
 
The Pie at Night could be seen as a companion to the bestselling Pies and Prejudice, but it is not a sequel. After all, this is a new decade and the North is changing faster than ever. This is a revealing and digressive journey and a State of the North address, delivered from barstool, terrace, dress circle and hillside.

The Pie At Night

In Search of the North at Play

Jude Angelini

Jude Angelini’s tales of depravity are uncompromising, brutally honest and shocking. From growing up poor in a factory town outside Detroit to his adult life as a popular radio personality on Sirius XM, Hyena charts Angelini’s descent into ever more debauched sexual and drug-fuelled exploits, from one-armed strippers, women with abuse-fantasies and a night on dust that he thinks he’ll never wake up from. 
 
Yet underneath this series of deplorable autobiographical stories is an echo of heartbreak, loneliness, and the eternal poetry of a man struggling to be heard. Vividly told in his distinctive voice, Jude Angelini’s fi rst book is a blackly comic masterpiece.

Hyena

Ronnie Barker

Ronnie Barker has long been known as one of Britain’s greatest comedy performers. But he was also responsible for writing much of the material he performed, often hiding the fact from the public by using a number of pen names. Showcasing the complete work of a true comic icon, All I Ever Wrote is a laugh-out-loud collection of sketches, monologues, songs, poems and scripts from every strand of Ronnie’s long and brilliant career. 
 
 
With gems like ‘Fork Handle’s,’ Three Classes’ and ‘Pismonouncers Unanimous', Ronnie’s clever writing, double entendres and spoonerisms will bring a smile to your face, as you rediscover some of the twentieth century’s finest comedy moments.

All I Ever Wrote: The Complete Works

Nicholas Pileggi

The Stardust… The Fremont… The Marina. 
They ran them all. 
And they lost. 
Big time. 
 
No one knew more about casinos than Frank 'Lefty' Rosenthal, the gambling mastermind who, along with his best friend and partner, Anthony 'the Ant' Spilotro, virtually ran Las Vegas for the mob. For years it was the perfect arrangement – Lefty provided the smarts, while Tony kept the bosses happy with weekly suitcases filled with millions in skimmed cash. It should have lasted forever but Lefty’s obsessions with running the town – and Tony’s obsession with Lefty’s beautiful showgirl wife, Geri – eventually led to betrayals and investigations that exploded into one of the greatest scandals in mob history. 
 
Casino is the shattering inside account of how the mob finally lost its stranglehold on Las Vegas, the neon money-making machine it had created.

Casino

The Rise and Fall of the Mob in Las Vegas

Helen Batten

‘Oh my goodness – another girl Mrs Swain!’ 
 Clara’s normal iron composure broke and she screamed, ‘No! That’s not the bloody deal!’ 
And that is how my nanna, Bertha Swain, entered the world. 
 
When Helen Batten’s marriage breaks down, she starts on a journey of discovery into her family’s past and the mysteries surrounding her enigmatic nanna’s early life. 
 
 What she unearths is a tale of five feisty red heads struggling to climb out of poverty and find love through two world wars. It’s a story full of surprises and scandal – a death in a workhouse, a son kept in a box, a shameful war record, a clandestine marriage and children taken far too soon. It’s as if there is a family curse. 
 
 But Helen also finds love, resilience and hope – crazy wagers, late night Charlestons and stolen kisses. As she unravels the story of Nanna and her scarlet sisters, Helen starts to break the spell of the past, and sees a way she might herself find love again.

The Scarlet Sisters

My nanna’s story of secrets and heartache on the banks of the River Thames

Bobby Cummines

'I am not a gangster,' I spat. 'I'm a businessman trying to make a hard-earned crust. Understood?' 
 
I didn't give him time to reply. I took the barrel out of his mouth and smashed him in the face with the butt. His lip split, but he wasn't a dead man. He seemed to appreciate that his life had been spared. 
 
He spluttered his thanks: 'Ok, you’re not a gangster. You are not a gangster.' 
 
This is the gripping true story of how one man ruled his north London manor with an iron fist – and a sawn-off shotgun called Kennedy. It’s a shocking insight into a society where the rules are made by gangland leaders and if anybody dare break them, they have to deal with the consequences. 
 
Bobby was sent to prison for the first time in 1967, aged 16, and over the next decade he established himself as a hardened criminal running protection rackets and robberies against a backdrop of all-out gang warfare, where doorstep slayings and bloody shoot-outs were common. 
 
Eventually Bobby was sentenced to 12 years in Britain’s most notorious prisons, along with the Krays, Charlie Richardson and the Yorkshire Ripper. Inside, he was introduced to the Open University and on his release he soon got down to business again. Only this time his efforts saw him go from custody of Her Majesty’s Prison Service to meeting with the Queen herself... 
 
I Am Not A Gangster is an explosive account of life in the criminal underworld by one of Britain’s most dangerous men, but above all it’s a remarkable tale of redemption with the biggest turnaround in gangland history.

I Am Not A Gangster

Dick Lehr

Gerard O'Neill

From the bestselling writers of Black Mass, now a major film, comes the definitive biography of Whitey Bulger – the most brutal modern day mafia boss since Gotti. 
 
 Drawing on previously classified material, Whitey tells the story of James J. ‘Whitey’ Bulger, the crime boss, psychopath and killer who brought the FBI to its knees. From his childhood on the streets of South Boston and his cell in Alcatraz in the 1950s, to the corrupt pact with the FBI and the fifteen years he hid in plain sight as one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted, Whitey is the story of corruption, greed and an insatiable hunger for power and control. A sadistic crime boss who liked to get his hands dirty even at the top, this explosive biography creates a portrait of a monster, and one of the most successful organised crime careers of all time.

Whitey

Every man knows that certain tasks earn you man points. Using an angle grinder, changing a tyre, starting a fire, getting the gunk out of the bottom of the sink… These are the things that separate the men from the boys. But how many man points you get is often the subject of heated debate. Finally such arguments can be laid to rest forever, with this definitive handbook. 
 
Starting with everyday acts of manliness all the way through to the very heights of man-chievement, this is the ultimate guide to earning man points. From growing a beard to breaking down a door, getting the cap off a beer without a bottle opener to flying a plane, or from building a shed to firing a gun, Man Points allows you to rate and record your manly accomplishments. 
 
Of course man points can be lost as well as won. Got something in your eye mate, or are you crying at The Notebook? Is that an instruction manual you’re reading? And I hope that’s not a hairdryer in your bottom drawer… Use the last section of this book to make sure you’re not letting yourself down. 
 
Includes a handy score sheet to tot up your man points, and a quick quiz to should you need to assess your manliness in a hurry.

Man Points

The Definitive Guide to Measuring Your Manliness

Lara McDonnell

At the vulnerable age of 12, Lara McDonnell was picked out by a gang of men who befriended her, showered her with attention and gained her trust. Manipulated and groomed, her life quickly spiralled out of control as the men trafficked her around the country, deliberately keeping her compliant with drink and drugs. Deeply disturbed, and frightened about what the gang would do to her if she tried to break free, it would take over 4 years for Lara to find the strength to fight back, flee Oxford and escape her nightmare. 
 
This is her heartbreaking story.

Girl for Sale

The shocking true story from the girl trafficked and abused by Oxford’s evil sex ring

Victoria Spry

As a child, Victoria Spry was brutally beaten, neglected and starved by the woman she called Mummy. 
 
To the outside world Eunice Spry was a devoted parent, but behind closed doors she was an evil tyrant. Instead of protecting, loving and caring for Victoria, she forced bleach and urine down her throat, knocked out her teeth, tied her up naked and made her live in squalor. It took eighteen years of heartache and despair before she found the courage to expose her mum. 
 
Tortured is Victoria’s gripping story of survival.

Tortured

Abused and neglected by Britain’s most sadistic mum. This is my story of survival.

Denise Williams

Losing a child is a mother’s worst nightmare, but when you lose two children – your innocent sons – at the hands of the man they should have trusted the most, it’s almost unimaginable. 
 
For Denise Williams this was her reality – her very real nightmare. In her harrowing yet inspiring memoir, she tells her personal story of falling under the spell of her control-freak husband, suffering a decade of domestic violence, finding the strength to leave and then his despicable act of revenge. Denise endured agonising grief and heavy guilt, but she has slowly rebuilt her life without her beautiful boys – learning to live, love and trust again. 
 
This is her heartbreaking memoir.

Mummy’s Little Angels

A mother’s agonising story of losing her sons to a murderous father

Hunter Davies

Ivy, Dulcie, Barbara, Ann, Dorothy and Jean all had different reasons for applying to work at Carr’s biscuits, but once they had put on their overalls and walked through the factory gates they discovered a community full of life, laughter and friendship. 
 
To those who didn’t know, the biscuit factory that towered over Carlisle might look like just another slice of the industrial North, a noisy and chaotic place with workers trooping in and out at all hours. For the biscuit girls it was a place where they worked hard, but also where they gossiped, got into scrapes and made lifelong friends. Outside the factory walls there might be difficult husbands or demanding kids, and sometimes even heartbreak and tragedy, but they knew there would always be an escape from their troubles at Carr's. 
 
Some, like Barbara, only applied because she needed the extra cash, until things got a bit easier at home. Her supervisor cross examined her about who would be looking after the kids while she was at work, but let her have the job. Like many of the women who joined up ‘temporary’ Barbara went on to stay at Carrs for 32 years. 
 
Beginning in the 1940s, these heartwarming and vividly-remembered stories have all been told by the women themselves to Hunter Davies.

The Biscuit Girls

Max Arthur

This unique landmark oral history uses first-hand accounts from ordinary men and women who were there. Gripping, poignant, surprising and even humorous, the personal experiences of these soldiers, civilians, marines and medics from both sides tell us what it was really like to live through what was supposed to be the war to end all wars. Skilfully assembled by acclaimed author and historian Max Arthur using the IWM’s remarkable sound archive, Forgotten Voices of the Great War became an instant classic on first publication with close to half a million copies sold. 
 
In 1972, the Imperial War Museum began a momentous and important task. A team of academics, archivists and volunteers set about tracing First World War veterans and interviewing them in order to record the experiences of ordinary individuals in war. Since then the Sound Archive has grown to become the largest and most important oral history collections in the world. It now contains over 34,000 recordings, including interviews with veterans of both world wars – both service personnel and non-combatants – recordings relating to Britain and the Empire in the inter-war period 1919–1939, conflicts since 1945 and the Holocaust. 
 
In 2002, Ebury Press published the first edition of Forgotten Voices of the Great War. It was both the first time many of these recordings had been transcribed and published, and the only comprehensive oral history of the First World War. Twelve further books covering aspects of the Second World War, the Falklands and the Victoria Cross followed, selling well over a million copies to date.

Forgotten Voices Of The Great War

James Bannon

'Of course I'm a f**king hooligan, you pr**k. I am a hooligan...there I've said it...I'm a hooligan. And, do you know why? Because that's my f**king job.' 
 
In 1995, a film called I.D., about an ambitious young copper who was sent undercover to track down the ‘generals’ of a football hooligan gang, achieved cult status for its sheer brutality and unsettling insight into the dark and often bloody side of the so-called beautiful game. 
 
The film was so shocking it was hard to believe the mindless events that took place could ever happen in the real world. Well, believe it now... 
 
Almost twenty years on, the man behind the film has explosively revealed that the script was largely a true story. That man, James Bannon, was the ambitious undercover cop. The football club was Millwall F.C. and the gang that he infiltrated was The Bushwackers, among the most brutal and fearless in English football. 
 
In Running with the Firm, Bannon shares his intense and dangerous journey into the underworld of football hooliganism where sickening levels of violence prevail over anything else. He introduces you to the hardest thugs from football’s most notorious gangs, tells all about the secret and almost comical police operations that were meant to bring them down, and, how once you’re on the inside, getting out from the mob proves to be the biggest mission of all. 
 
A disturbing but compelling read, this is the book that proves fact really is stranger than fiction.

Running with the Firm

With a foreword by Ronnie Corbett. 
 
Loved by millions and collected here for the first time is the very best of Ronnie Barker’s classic sketches, monologues, songs and, of course, the brilliant two-handers that he wrote for The Two Ronnies. Celebrating his genius for comic wordplay, this wonderful collection includes ‘Pismonouncers Unanimous’, ‘An Appeal for Women’ ‘Swedish for Beginners’ and the nation’s favourite sketch, ‘Fork Handles’. 
 
As talented a writer as he was performer, Ronnie Barker was behind the best known Two Ronnies’ material. His comedy writing was so prolific that he began using the pseudonym Gerald Wiley while working on Frost on Sunday, which he continued when making The Two Ronnies, so eager was he to ensure that his writing was judged on its merit alone. 
 
Showcasing the work of a true comic icon, and one of the best writers and comedians of the twentieth century, Fork Handles is every bit as warm and funny as Ronnie Barker himself.

Fork Handles

The Bery Vest of Ronnie Barker

These are the songs that we have listened to, laughed to, loved to and laboured to, as well as downed tools and danced to. 
 
Covering the last seven decades, Stuart Maconie looks at the songs that have sound tracked our changing times, and – just sometimes – changed the way we feel. Beginning with Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’, a song that reassured a nation parted from their loved ones by the turmoil of war, and culminating with the manic energy of ‘Bonkers’, Dizzee Rascal’s anthem for the push and rush of the 21st century inner city, The People’s Songs takes a tour of our island’s pop music, and asks what it means to us. 
 
This is not a rock critique about the 50 greatest tracks ever recorded. Rather, it is a celebration of songs that tell us something about a changing Britain during the dramatic and kaleidoscopic period from the Second World War to the present day. Here are songs about work, war, class, leisure, race, family, drugs, sex, patriotism and more, recorded in times of prosperity or poverty. This is the music that inspired haircuts and dance crazes, but also protest and social change. 
 
The companion to Stuart Maconie’s landmark Radio 2 series, The People’s Songs shows us the power of ‘cheap’ pop music,­ one of Britain’s greatest exports. These are the songs we worked to and partied to, and grown up and grown old to – from ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ to ‘Rehab', ‘She Loves You’ to ‘Star Man’, ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’ to ‘Radio Ga Ga’.

The People’s Songs

The Story of Modern Britain in 50 Records

Marian Hughes

No Cake, No Jam is the heart-warming true story of a little girl’s London childhood during the Blitz, and of how she rose above adversity through sheer guts and strength of character. 
 
Marian Hughes was born in the same year as her father committed suicide. She spent most of her early childhood with her elder sisters and brother in Spurgeon’s Orphanage in South London. There she learned to love extravagant hymns and to receive regular beatings. 
 
Suddenly, when Marian was ten, her mother appeared. All four children were swept up by their mother to live in a damp and filthy flat off Baker Street. There began a life of moonlight flits, camping and squats. Marian’s mother forgot to feed her children, and paid no attention to school or the bombing. Marian soon turned to begging and stealing to help the family get by. 
 
Marian’s brother and elder sisters left home as soon as they could, but Marian remained to support her deranged and frequently violent mother, evading Care and Protection Orders and often running away. Then the day finally came when Marian had to sign the papers to have her mother committed. From that moment, 14-year-old Marian had to find out if she was strong enough to live for herself ... 
 
Throughout all the twists and turns of her childhood, Marian never lost her spirit and never faltered in her loyalty. Full of vigour, truth, humour and curiosity, No Cake, No Jam is a passionate celebration of a life and love.

No Cake, No Jam

Hardship and happiness in wartime London

Anonymous (Girl A)

**THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BBC DRAMA ‘THREE GIRLS’ ** 
 
What do they find attractive about me? An underage girl who just lies there, sobbing, looking up at them...as they come to me one by one. 
 
This is the shocking true story of how a young girl from Rochdale came to be Girl A – the key witness in the trial of Britain’s most notorious child sex ring. 
 
Girl A was just 14 when she was groomed by a group of nine Asian men. After being lured into their circle with free gifts, she was plied with alcohol and systematically abused. She was just one of up to fifty girls to be 'passed around' by the gang. The girls were all under-16 and forced to have sex with as many as twenty men in one night. 
 
When details emerged a nation was outraged and asked how these sickening events came to pass. And now, the girl at the very centre of the storm reveals the heartbreaking truth.

Girl A

The truth about the Rochdale sex ring by the victim who stopped them

Gemma Collins Limited

Blonde, bubbly and ballsy, Gemma Collins has had fans of The Only Way Is Essex glued to their TVs since her arrival in series two. Her larger-than-life personality makes people cry with laughter as she haphazardly navigates through one romantic crisis after another. 
 
Gemma tries hard when it comes to finding 'Mr Right' – baking love pies and sexy texting – yet it never seems to work out. But does she care? Of course she doesn't. She always has the upper hand, leaving men quaking in their boots and women looking on in admiration. But finding her confidence has been a long and heartbreaking journey for Gemma. 
 
Inside, she opens up about the life events she endured before finding fame and feeling comfortable in her own skin. From breaking up with the love of her life and miscarrying a baby, to a drastic weight gain and depression; life for a real Essex girl is far from just an endless cycle of spray tans and vajazzles. 
 
Basically... is the touching yet riotously funny story of how a young girl with a big heart finally found what she’d been looking for. Herself.

Basically...

My Life as a Real Essex Girl

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BBC Radio’s The Lord of the Rings

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Bear Mountain Rescue Series

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The complete boxed collection of Beatrix Potter's beloved Peter Rabbit books

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Belle

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Tim and Biscuit, two unlikely friends, always seem to get themselves into difficult situations. From their first meeting in Cliffhanger, where bookish Tim is forced to endure an activities camp, to Buried Alive, where a quiet camping holiday turns out to be full of surprises, there is never a dull moment with these two around.Jaqueline Wilson’s hilarious duo of books catalogues their escapades, triumphs and failures, with a good helping of snacks along the way!

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