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Clare Gee

In Hooked, reformed addict Clare Gee draws on her own experiences of cocaine addiction, alcoholism and prostitution in telling the sensational story of a woman living on the edge. 
 
Emotionally scarred by having never known her mother, Katie escapes to London and immerses herself in a seedy world of drugs, drink and sex, chasing happiness in the pubs and clubs, and snorting cocaine in private members' bars with her rich punters. 
 
Finding herself in a cycle of prostitution and unable to break free, she turns to drug smuggling and becomes embroiled in a bigamous marriage in an attempt to secure some emotional stability. From this dark emotional pit, Katie starts her painful journey back to 'wellness' and attempts to rid herself of her addictions for good. 
 
Hooked is a graphic tale of how life as a prostitute really is and what can happen when we search for happiness outside of ourselves. It is a poignant reminder that things can always get better, as long as we remember that when it's time to leave the party, it's time.

Hooked

Confessions of a London Call Girl

Jackie Todd

It was love at first sight: the huge pale-green eyes, the ruffled tawny hair and the cute way he held his head to one side. What really swung it, though, was his feet being way too big for his body, his ears too big for his head and that, while trying to look brave, he was obviously terrified. Charly was the first of what grew to be a large family of abandoned Spanish dogs taken in by Jackie Todd and her husband Stephen after they emigrated in 1997 to Frigiliana, a picturesque Spanish village in Andalucia. By the time Charly was four, something magical had happened: the people of the village had become close friends and the Todds' memories of their old lives were as weak as British sunshine. 
 
Fourteen years on from that first arrival they have ten dogs and eight cats of their own and regularly foster tiny strays that need bottle-feeding until they can be found homes. In 2007, 123 puppies and kittens passed through their door; in 2008, it was 119; and the tragic procession continues today. 
 
Millions of people dream of turning their summer holiday into permanent reality. Dog Days in Andalucía is the heart-warming and inspirational story of an ordinary British couple who did just that, making a mighty impression on the village, its people and its surrounding animal population along the way.

Dog Days in Andalucía

Tails from Spain

John Cairney

'Clutching in my hand my seven copper pennies, I ran down the two flights of stone stairs from our tenement flat and through the East End to Kinloch Street, where, puffing a bit, I joined the queue of other wee boys lining up to place their coins on the brass plate above the iron turnstile, push hard against it, then climb up onto the dirt terracing and into Paradise. The rest of the world called it Celtic Park.' 
 
This is a story seen through green-and-white spectacles. It begins when nine-year-old Glaswegian John Cairney walks through the boys' gate at Celtic Park and embarks on a series of adventures that, over the years, take him all over Scotland and beyond. 
 
The Sevenpenny Gate is about a search for heroes, Celtic heroes. It is also the tale of an East End club of humble Irish origins that has developed into a worldwide brand and continues to command the devotion of its fans, even with the Celtic diaspora now spread across the globe.

The Sevenpenny Gate

A Lifelong Love Affair with Celtic FC

Nicholas Parsons

Nicholas Parsons enjoyed a long and varied career encompassing theatre, television, film and radio. He was perhaps best known as the straight man to Arthur Haynes in the '60s, as the presenter of Sale of the Century in the '70s and as the chairman of the long-running Radio 4 panel game Just a Minute. 
 
 Along the way, he performed impersonations in the lavatories of a Clydebank engineering yard during the war, was the voice of a Gerry Anderson Texan sheriff, roller-skated in Charlie Girl at the Victoria Palace and appeared in a series of Doctor Who. His comedy chat show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival ran for eighteen consecutive years. 
 
In My Life In Comedy, Nicholas recalls an extraordinary career that led him to star on the West End stage, work with some of Britain's finest comedians, including Kenneth Williams, Tony Hancock, Benny Hill and Paul Merton, and appear in stockings and suspenders in The Rocky Horror Show. 
 
 Funny, thoughtful and at times moving, Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation celebrates a fascinating life in comedy.

Nicholas Parsons: With Just a Touch of Hesitation, Repetition and Deviation

My Life in Comedy

Kate Barlow

The Abode of Love is Kate Barlow's remarkable account of growing up within the remnants of a religious cult. 
 
Protected from the truth about her family's past by a wall of secrecy, it was years before Kate unearthed her grandfather's controversial claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and learned of the rumours that had circulated within the local Somerset community of sexual scandals, 'spiritual brides' and peculiar rituals. 
 
This is the gripping story of how one woman pieced together a hidden family history and uncovered a more shocking truth than she ever imagined.

The Abode of Love

The Remarkable Tale of Growing Up in a Religious Cult

Eileen Munro

Carol McKay

When Eileen Munro's mother became pregnant at 16, she was told to give her baby away to a 'good family', but the couple who paid the fee at the Salvation Army mother-and-baby home in Glasgow in 1963 turned out to be alcoholics who neglected and physically abused Eileen. Then, when their marriage broke down, they failed to protect her from sexual abuse at the hands of a family friend. 
 
After watching her adoptive mother drown on inhaled vomit, Eileen and her younger sister were taken into care, but her nightmare was to continue as she was subjected to further physical, sexual and emotional abuse. 
 
At the age of only seventeen, seven months into a secret pregnancy, she decided that the only way out was through a bottle of painkillers; when she survived and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, he became her lifeline.

As I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Claudia Joseph

With her glossy dark hair, classic looks, natural appearance and cut-glass accent, Kate Middleton displays all the poise and breeding expected from the wife-to-be of the heir to the throne. Sophisticated beyond her years, Kate has charmed William's louche circle of friends as well as the House of Windsor. Yet behind her polished veneer lies the extraordinary tale of an impoverished working-class family that overcame deprivation and adversity to rise to the upper echelons of society. 
 
Claudia Joseph has spoken to members of Kate's family and friends, who have provided an intriguing insight into the extraordinary journey her family has made from the mining villages of Durham to the gates of Buckingham Palace. 
 
Drawing on exclusive interviews and containing previously unpublished photographs, this is the authoritative account of Kate Middleton's life so far.

Kate

The Making of a Princess

Colin MacFarlane

In his last book, The Real Gorbals Story, Colin MacFarlane detailed how he witnessed a once great area, home to wonderful characters and grand old buildings, disappear before his eyes. By the time MacFarlane's tenement was knocked down in the early 1970s, he had left school and been rehoused in another part of the city. In an attempt to extricate himself from his Gorbals gang days, he took a job as an apprentice chef at one of Glasgow's top restaurants, where he soon discovered that his colleagues were just as insane as those he had mixed with on the city streets. Meanwhile, MacFarlane struggled to integrate into the more affluent area that his family had been moved to and soon found himself returning to his old haunts and back in trouble again. 
 
In No Mean Glasgow, MacFarlane charts his eventful, fun-packed passage from Gorbals street boy to grown man on the brink of a new beginning. He describes his adventures with a mixture of humour, sadness and delight. It is a book for those people living all over the world who remember the old Glasgow - a city teeming with warmth, passion, patter and characters who could brighten up even the darkest of days.

No Mean Glasgow

Revelations of a Gorbals Guy

Bernard O'Mahoney

Mick McGovern

Following Michelle and Lisa Taylor's conviction of the savage murder of Alison Shaugnessy, Bernard O'Mahoney embarked on a successful crusade to prove their innocence. Michelle - who had been having an affair with Alison's husband - had been found guilty of murdering Alison in a jealous rage, and her sister, Lisa, was convicted of aiding her in the brutal attack. During the appeal to clear their names, Bernard O'Mahoney and Michelle began a passionate affair. Then, his suspicions aroused by her obsessive behaviour, O'Mahoney stumbled across a letter which could only mean one thing - Michelle was guilty. Following a heated confrontation, she finally broke down and admitted her guilt. The Dream Solution tells of two dramatic legal battles - one to free the sisters, and the other to prove their guilt.

The Dream Solution

The Murder of Alison Shaughnessy - and the Fight to Name Her Killer

Andy Coogan

Andy Coogan was born in Glasgow in 1917, the oldest child of poor Irish immigrants. He was tipped for Olympic glory, but a promising running career was interrupted by war service. His capture during the fall of Singapore marked the beginning of a three-and-a-half-year nightmare of starvation, torture and disease. 
 
Andy was imprisoned in the notorious Changi camp before being transported to Taiwan, where he worked as a slave in a copper mine and was twice ordered to dig his own grave. He was later taken to Japan on a hellship voyage that nearly killed him, but Andy’s athleticism and spirit enable him to survive an ordeal in which many died. 
 
From his poverty-stricken boyhood in the slums of the Gorbals to the atomic wasteland of Nagasaki, Andy’s life story is vividly recounted in Tomorrow You Die, an epic, compassionate tale that will shock, enthral and inspire.

Tomorrow You Die

The Astonishing Survival Story of a Second World War Prisoner of the Japanese

Colin Fry

When Ron and Reg Kray were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1968, most people thought that was the last they'd hear of two of the most notorious and vicious criminals Britain has ever produced. Instead, the twins and their evil doings have since achieved almost iconic status. Simultaneously, they have become 'Ronnie and Reggie', cuddly Robin Hood characters, little more than a couple of bad lads who loved their mum. 
 
 The Kray Files is an explosive investigative work which strips away the myths that have grown up around the brothers. It examines why the twins were put away, the true extent of their crimes and the truth about the last 30 years, which Ron and Reg spent at the expense of the country while making a quiet fortune through duplicitous dealings from behind bars. It looks at why their brother Charlie turned to drugs as his only way out of a life of deprivation and misery, and tries to discover the reason why some women have found the Krays fatally attractive. 
 
 For the first time ever, The Kray Files goes behind the scenes, painting a vivid picture of the brothers' world through psychological profiling, studying the sociology of the East End of London with the help of academics, and investigating the violent legacy the brothers have left behind.

The Kray Files

The True Story of Britain's Most Notorious Murderers

Sal Polisi

Steve Dougherty

The Mob was the biggest, richest business in America – until it was destroyed from within by drugs, greed and the decline of traditional crime-family values. And by guys like Sal Polisi. 
 
Born into one of the New York Mob’s feared Five Families, Polisi ran an illegal after-hours gambling den, The Sinatra Club, that was a hangout for up-and-coming mobsters like John Gotti and the three wiseguys immortalised in Goodfellas: Henry Hill, Jimmy Burke and Tommy DeSimone. Yet for Polisi, the glory days spent robbing banks and pulling heists were fleeting. When he was busted, and already sickened by the bloodbath that had engulfed the Mob as it teetered towards extinction, he flipped and became one of a breed he had loathed all his life: a rat. 
 
In this riveting first-person chronicle of his brazen crimes, wild sexual escapades and personal tragedies, Polisi tells his story of life inside the New York Mob. With shocking candour, he draws on a hard-won knowledge of Mob history to paint a revelatory picture of the inner workings of the Mafia and its larger-than-life characters.

The Sinatra Club

My Life Inside the New York Mafia

The Krays were a product of their age, nurtured by a doting mother and created by their community, the East End of London. Their name alone conjures up images of power, violence and greed - and even brother Charlie couldn't steer the twins Ron and Reg clear of murder mayhem as they killed their way to the top of the criminal tree. They lived by their own rules. And they died by them. The three brothers will never be forgotten. They are an indelible part of our history, whether we like it or not. And from media manipulation to control freak paranoia, The Krays were masters of deception. Even at the end Reg Kray was still portraying himself as just an ordinary East Ender - mistreated by the Home Office and the police, misunder-stood and mistakenly labelled `Godfather of Crime' by the media. The Kray Anthology traces their history from childhood and early adolescence to manhood and death. This book explores the brothers' fantasy lives, full as they were of mind games and false memories. Whatever you want to know about the Krays and the real reasons behind their success, you can read it here for the first time. Only now can the truth be revealed - without fear of intimidation, retribution or revenge. The Krays are dead and buried, but the myth lives on.

The Krays - The Final Countdown

The Ultimate Biography Of Ron, Reg And Charlie Kray

Herbert Breslin

Anne Midgette

In 1967, Luciano Pavarotti was an up-and-coming young tenor with a voice far more impressive than his stage technique or presence. So Decca, his record company, told him, 'Luciano, you're a real nice guy. So you need a real bastard to do your publicity.' Enter Herbert Breslin. The two of them hit it off and thus began a professional association and a friendship that lasted over 36 years. 
 
The King and I is the story of that relationship, during which Breslin guided what he calls, justifiably, 'the greatest career in classical music', moving Pavarotti out of the opera house and into the arms of the mass public. He and Pavarotti changed the landscape of opera and Breslin relates the story of their journey in a candid, witty fashion that is often hysterically frank and profane. His portrait of his friend and client is full of hilarious details that could only come from a true insider. 
 
The King and I is the ultimate backstage book about the greatest opera star of the past century - and the last word comes from none other than Luciano Pavarotti himself.

The King and I

The Uncensored Tale of Luciano Pavarotti's Rise to Fame by his Manager, Friend and Sometime Adversary

Jacqueline Pascarl

Can you imagine what it would be like to be swept off your feet by a royal prince to live a charmed life in the marble palaces of an oil-rich nation - and then to watch your fairy-tale romance turn into a nightmare of Islamic superstition, isolation, betrayal and abuse? What would you do if you managed to escape your life of torment - and then your children were kidnapped by their own father? This is what happened to Jacqueline Pascarl. 
 
In Once I Was a Princess, Jacqueline recounts her part in this controversial, headline-grabbing international drama with heart-rending honesty.

Once I Was a Princess

A Mother's Worst Nightmare

Alexander Shannon

David Leslie

Alexander Shannon escaped a shady past to enjoy a glittering career in the army, only to end up back in the thick of criminal activity. 
 
Shannon's time as a soldier saw him posted to the Falklands, Northern Ireland and war-torn Bosnia. The rigours of army life took their toll and he found himself drawn into a series of ruthless gang wars. He used the skills he'd learned in the forces to hide weapons, work for drugs racketeers and plot a massacre, and he was offered a fortune to work as a Mafia-style contract assassin. 
 
He was questioned over brutal killings and accused of a triple murder attempt, yet his dedication and determination to succeed in the army brought him accolades and a series of promotions. In The Underworld Captain, Shannon explains how he managed to combine a successful army career with dangerous gangland dealings for so long and how he finally broke free for good.

The Underworld Captain

From Gangland Goodfella To Army Officer

For almost four decades, Margaret 'Mags' McGraw was a keeper of secrets. Her husband, Tam, the notorious 'Licensee', amassed a fortune by leading a safe-cracking gang before masterminding a spectacular £50-million drugs racket. 
 
Mags was a devotee of Tarot cards and fortune telling, so when Tam and his associates wondered whether luck would be with them, it was to her that they turned. But Mags discovered that the cards warned of much more than years in prison cells: they predicted death. She learned that her own husband was also doomed to a fate that was unexpected by everyone but her: Tam died in the arms of the wife he called his 'rock' while her secret lover frantically tried to save him. 
 
In The Gangster's Wife, Mags reveals her gripping life story, from being a London clippie through often hilarious days running an ice-cream van during the infamous Glasgow Ice Cream Wars to managing a notorious bar, being agony aunt to the toughest criminals around, hiding a secret love and sharing a life with The Licensee.

The Gangster's Wife

An Empire Built on Cards

Chris Anderson

A cult figure among loyalists, despised and feared by nationalists, Billy 'King Rat' Wright is reputed to have been involved in a number of sectarian murders before he himself was shot dead by republican gunmen inside the Maze 
Prison in 1997. 
 
Wright became involved with loyalist paramilitaries at the age of 16, and in the early 1990s he emerged as the UVF commander in the Mid-Ulster area. The Billy Boy documents Wright's role in the Drumcree dispute of 1995-96 and his split from the UVF, recounting how he ignored both a death threat and an order to leave Northern Ireland, only to remain in Portadown and form the Loyalist Volunteer Force. It covers Wright's trial and subsequent imprisonment for a crime it has been claimed was set up by the State; recounts the circumstances of his killing inside a top-security prison; and investigates the allegations of State collusion in Wright's death. 
 
Terrifically gripping and often disturbing, The Billy Boy is an exhaustive account of a notorious figure of the Troubles, whose life and death were surrounded by controversy and political debate.

The Billy Boy

The Life and Death of LVF Leader Billy Wright

William Roache

In 50 Years on the Street: My Life with Ken Barlow, William Roache reflects on half a century of treasured memories accumulated during his time working on the long-running soap. He revisits the programme's most memorable moments and ponders the secret of its success while exploring the history of the show from its very early days of live broadcasts to the current demands of the Street's schedule. 
 
Roache reveals what it is like to have played the perennially popular role of Ken Barlow since the very first episode in December 1960 and reflects upon the actors he has worked with during the past 50 years, using his unique perspective to provide insights and anecdotes galore. 
 
50 Years on the Street: My Life with Ken Barlow is a celebration of William Roache's acting career following a year that marked a very special anniversary both for him and for Coronation Street.

50 Years on the Street

My Life with Ken Barlow

Elaine C Smith

'How did I end up here?' A question Elaine C. Smith asked herself when sitting in the dressing-room of a top theatre in London's West End, about to go on stage with one of the UK's most successful plays. 
 
In Nothing Like a Dame, Elaine reflects on a 50-year journey that took her to the peak of the entertainment world. She recounts her long struggle to make it in a male-dominated, working-class society when women were supposed to just shut up and stay thin, especially in the sexist world of theatre and television, where she was told, 'Look, women just aren't funny.' 
 
Despite many highs and lows, she proceeded to forge a stellar career in show business, hosting her own TV series and becoming a household name thanks to her comic portrayal of Mary Nesbitt, the long-suffering wife in the award-winning BBC comedy Rab C. Nesbitt. 
 
Nothing Like a Dame is a heart-warming memoir: candid, outspoken, hilarious and at times deeply sad.

Nothing Like a Dame

My Autobiography

At seventeen, Jacqueline Pascarl married a royal prince and embarked on what she believed would be a fairy-tale existence. But it soon became a nightmare. After years of abuse at the hands of her husband, Jacqueline escaped with her children, hoping to leave her past behind. But what followed would haunt her for the next fourteen years. 
 
In this heart-rending story, Jacqueline describes how her husband kidnapped their two young children and forced them to cut off all contact with her. She tells of the pain and helplessness she felt at their loss but also of how she channelled her grief, forging an existence as an aid worker and humanitarian ambassador, all the while desperately hoping to hear news of them. 
 
In 2006, she was reunited with her long-lost children, and in Abducted she reveals the dramatic events that led to their meeting. This is a candid, compelling account of living under the shadow of child abduction. It is an unforgettable ride through tragedy, loss and, finally, triumph.

Abducted

The Fourteen-Year Fight to Find My Children

Chelsea Haywood

Step into the surreal world of a Tokyo hostess club and gain an exclusive underground pass courtesy of Chelsea Haywood as she sets out to explore a vocation where £400 dinners, Harajuku shopping sprees and first-class trips to Kyoto are just part of the job. 
 
This is the true story of one girl's immersion in the world of hostessing, a late-night entertainment for wealthy Japanese men drawn from the traditional institution of the geisha. In an attempt to make the foreign familiar, Chelsea's initial fascination takes an unexpected turn as she struggles to maintain sanity in an illusory world full of empty flattery, unrelenting temptation and material excess.

90-Day Geisha

My Time as a Tokyo Hostess

David Lister

Hugh Jordan

A mindless sectarian psychopath or a loyalist folk hero who took the war to the IRA's front door? The name Johnny 'Mad Dog' Adair is synonymous with a killing spree by loyalist terrorists that took Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war. 
 
From humble beginnings as a rioter and glue-sniffer on Belfast's Shankill Road, Adair rose through the ranks of the outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters to head its merciless killing machine, 'C Company'. Surrounded by a group of trusted friends, his reign of terror in the early 1990s claimed the lives of up to 40 Catholics, picked out at random as Adair's hitmen roamed Belfast. Determined to lead from the front, his men even fired a rocket at Sinn Fein's headquarters, writing themselves into loyalist mythology and embarrassing the IRA in its republican heartland. Its desperate attempts to kill Adair culminated in October 1993, when a bomb on the Shankill Road, intended for the loyalist godfather, claimed the lives of nine Protestant civilians. 
 
Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' describes in graphic detail Adair's criminal empire and an egomaniac's bloody war against Catholics and anybody else who got in his way. Adair's friends and enemies talk for the first time about the murders he ordered, his sordid personal life, and his attempts - ultimately disastrous - to become Northern Ireland's supreme loyalist figurehead.

Mad Dog

The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company'

Samantha Bailey

When Sam Bailey tells people that she used to take her clothes off for money, three questions usually follow. 
 
The first is 'Why?' The simple answer is that she enjoyed it. She liked showing off, being desired and earning a lot of money. The second is 'How did you get started?' Sam was 17, had a poorly paid job that she hated and couldn't bear to think that was all there was for her in life. The third question is: 'So, Sam, what was it like?' 
 
 In Stripped, Sam Bailey reveals all about her experiences, taking us behind the scenes and introducing us to the other strippers and the punters, aged 18 to 80. She recounts a series of episodes that shine a light on the simultaneously sexy and seedy, glamorous and grotty world of lap-dancing clubs. 
 
 Stripped takes you down the steps and through the double doors to reveal some of the night's darkest secrets and expose the reality of life in the strip-club underworld.

Stripped

A Life of Strip and Tease in Clubland

Jack Milburn

Written by his own son, Jackie Milburn: A Man of Two Halves gives an unprecedented insight into the life and career of the legendary Newcastle United forward. To this day, 'Wor Jackie' remains the Magpies' top goalscorer, having notched up 238 goals in 492 appearances in the black-and-white shirt throughout the 1940s and '50s. Milburn also won the FA Cup with Newcastle three times in five years. 
 
Jackie Milburn delves beneath the surface glory to reveal how, in spite of his remarkable success as a player, Milburn was constantly tortured by his lack of self-belief. It details his days across the Irish Sea after becoming player/coach at Protestant Linfield FC and explains why he felt the need to move on after receiving menacing threats directed at his family. It reveals how, as newly appointed manager of Ipswich Town, he had a totally unexpected falling out with the departing England supremo, Alf Ramsey. We also learn how the pressures of work took their toll on Milburn and how he spent his post-football days working in a scrapyard, before being rescued by the world of sports journalism. 
 
Later in life, many honours continued to be bestowed upon Milburn, and when he died in 1988 huge crowds lined the streets for his funeral parade. 
 
Few people had a bad word to say about Jackie Milburn, and this candid biography, with contributions from Sir Bobby Robson and Alan Shearer, expertly demonstrates why he is still held in high esteem half a century after the peak of his career and 16 years after his death.

Jackie Milburn

A Man of Two Halves

Frank Maloney

Kevin Brennan

From the streets of Peckham to the neon-lit strip of Las Vegas, Frank Maloney's life has been a roller-coaster ride that even he finds hard to believe at times. The Cockney-born son of Irish parents, who once harboured thoughts of becoming a priest, instead went on to manage Lennox Lewis for 12 years and help him become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.In No Baloney, Frank lifts the lid on the world of big-time boxing and its household names, and gives a remarkable account of his time with Lewis, revealing stories and offering opinions that can only come from a true insider. He also gives an insight into the way money, sex, drugs, politics, bribery and corruption have played their part in the sport. But Maloney's story is not just about boxing. It is also about one of life's characters, whose colourful story is told with a brand of humour and emotion that makes it compelling reading. Before settling on a career in boxing, he tried his hand at being a jockey, street trader, chef, pub landlord, cab driver and greengrocer. Along the way there have been girls, fights, a murder investigation and a broken marriage, but through it all there has also been a determination to succeed against the odds. Once dubbed a 'Mental Midget' and 'Pugilistic Pygmy' by Don King, Frank Maloney has gone on to have the last laugh over the flamboyant American promoter and over those who believed he would fail. For, above all, No Baloney is the story of a man who has been lucky enough to experience the kind of life he could not have imagined in his wildest dreams all those years ago in south-east London - and Maloney has made sure he's lived it to the full.

No Baloney

A Journey From Peckham To Las Vegas

Phil Sparrowhawk

Martin King

Martin Knight

Grass is the incredible story of Phil Sparrowhawk, a working-class boy with gambling in his blood. Like most punters, he enjoyed an incredible run of luck, but finally rolled the dice once too often. 
 
Before he had come of age, Phil had accumulated a small fortune from street trading. He then staked his entire capital on Njinsky in the 1970 Derby - and won. With his now large capital base, he launched a business importing clothes. Enter Howard Marks (aka Mr Nice), who was enthused by Phil's Far East connections and introduced him to the far more lucrative world of the 'movement of beneficial herbs' - or drug smuggling, as it is known to the authorities. 
 
Phil struck out on his own and from his new base in Thailand became involved in many large-scale cannabis deals, whilst at the same time developing highly successful legitimate businesses. Read of his encounters with Greenpeace, Mother Teresa, gangsters and leading politicians, Lord Moynihan, religious cults, former pop singers and many other diverse characters as his life became more and more surreal. 
 
The winning streak came to an end in 1988 when the US Drug Enforcement Agency closed in. Phil's £30m fortune was promptly confiscated and he spent the next four years in two of Thailand's most notorious jails before being extradited to the US, where he served further time in a series of penitentiaries. 
 
Grass details the life of an ordinary young man with a taste for adventure, who ended up on the most extraordinary journey. Sit back, take a deep breath and enjoy.

Grass

Robert Potter

Izzy Hammond

'It is my dearest hope that this book will allow me to reach out to others in pain and give them hope, for they too can choose to be a survivor.' 
 
Izzy Hammond's deaf and partially blind parents attracted sympathy from the outside world, but no one knew of the horrific abuse their daughter was subjected to inside the family home. 
 
In Someone To Watch Over Me, Izzy is now able to reveal how the vicious childhood abuse she suffered, first at the hands of her father and then by subsequent predators, cast a shadow over three generations of her family and led to a violent assault upon Izzy by her eldest daughter. Finally able to break the cycle, she has at last reclaimed a life free from the demons that have haunted her for so long.

Someone To Watch Over Me

The True Tale of a Survivor Haunted by the Demons of Abuse

Jeff Connor

From the heights of the Grand Slams to a near whitewash in the 2000 Six Nations championship, one factor has remained constant in Scottish rugby - its huge resource of characters. 
 
Early in the year 2000, Jeff Connor set out on a mission to track down some of Scotland's best-known players, the true giants of the game, and discover whether there is life after international rugby. The result was 40 exclusive interviews and a book that is enlightening, hilarious and moving in equal measure. 
 
 There are rare and extended interviews with Ken Scotland, Jim Telfer, Ian McLauchlan, Sandy Carmichael and Andy Irvine. There is the Hawick humour of Jim Renwick, the history of Finlay Calder's greatest wind-ups and the emotive story of Gordon Brown's battle with his most vicious opponent of them all, cancer. Bruce Hay's confrontation with the Duke of Edinburgh, Iain Paxton's disgust at the attitude of some English players on a British Lions tour and David Leslie's fearsome pre-match preparations are all vividly described, along with frankly expressed views from active modern-day players like Gregor Townsend. 
 
All rugby fans will find something to treasure in Giants of Scottish Rugby.

Giants Of Scottish Rugby

In Once I Was a Princess, Jacqueline Pascarl related the gripping story of her abusive childhood and her subsequent teen marriage to a prince. What should have been a fairy tale with a happy ending deteriorated into a nightmare of deceit and betrayal - ending in the kidnapping of her two small children by her former husband, who spirited them back to Malaysia. 
 
In Since I Was a Princess, Pascarl peels back the layers of her life after the abduction. She tells how she channelled her grief, forging an existence as an aid worker and humanitarian ambassador in war-torn countries and working with refugees and the dispossessed. She describes how she persuaded some of the world's most influential figures to support her aid work and became a human rights activist on the international stage, championing the cause of other parents whose children had been kidnapped and reuniting scores of families. 
 
Pascarl also explains how she lived frenetically as she painfully rebuilt her life and re-evaluated her relationships, grappling with the emotional complexities of a new pregnancy and beginning a second family. And she reveals for the first time the dramatic details of how, at last, she was able to be reunited with her long-lost children and make her family whole. 
 
Candid and compelling, Since I Was a Princess is an unforgettable ride through tragedy, loss and, finally, triumph.

Since I Was a Princess

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