Michael Symmons Roberts’s fourth book of poetry, Corpus, was the winner of the 2004 Whitbread Poetry Award, and was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, and the Griffin International Prize. His sixth collection, Drysalter, was the winner of both the Forward Prize and the Costa Poetry Prize in 2013. He collaborated with Paul Farley on Edgelands (Cape/Vintage) and will do so again in The Deaths of the Poets (Cape, 2017). He has also worked many times with the composer James MacMillan. He has published two novels, and is Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Michael Symmons Roberts

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Susan Sallis

An epic tale of love and rivalry from the Sunday Times bestselling author and multi-million copy seller Susan Sallis, perfect for fans of Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher. 
 
READERS ARE LOVING SWEETER THAN WINE! 
"This is a good read with vivid characters and locations." - 5 STARS 
"I'm looking forward to more stories by this author. Hopefully there will be more about these characters in the future." - 5 STARS 
 
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Two families. Two young lovers. Their loyalties divided; their hearts torn in two. 
 
1850, Barbados. A quarrel between two rival families on a sugar plantation sets off years of resentment and rivalry between the Rudolphs and the Martinez. 
 
1927, Bristol. Jack Martinez dances with Maude Rudolph at the Michaelmas Ball. A spark is kindled, a passion grows. 
 
Can the two young lovers bring their families together or will age-old enmities be too deep-rooted...?

Sweeter Than Wine

A heart-warming and uplifting romance from bestselling author Susan Sallis…

Michael Bublé

Michael Bublé is currently the biggest male solo artist in the world. His albums have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. And his live shows fill the world's biggest stadiums to capacity wherever he plays. Now for the first time he has granted his millions of fans an intimate glimpse into the life of the man they adore. 
 
Along with creating great music in the studio, performing on stage is pure paradise for Michael. He is that rare thing - an entertainer of the highest order, worshipped around the globe. Here he puts his words on paper, revealing what really makes him tick, as well as hundreds of gorgeous, exclusively shot photographs from all aspects of his life. 
 
A lot of people are going to be very happy to find Michael Bublé in their stocking on Christmas morning 2011...

Onstage, Offstage

(The Official Illustrated Memoir)

Maggie Campbell-Culver

Given the extent of his influence on 17th-century life, and his lasting impact on the British landscape it is remarkable that no book has been written before about John Evelyn. He was a longstanding friend of Samuel Pepys (who wrote of him, ' A most excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for conceitedness; but he may well be so, being a man so much above others.'), a founder-member of the Royal Society and a prolific writer and diarist. He was an early advocate of the garden city but his most important work was Sylva: a Discourse of Forest Trees. Sylva was presented to the Royal Society to promote the planting of timber trees 'for the supply of the Navy, the employment and advantage of the poor as well as the ornamenting of the nation.' He was responsible for the first great raft of tree-planting and for a great influx of tree introductions to Britain. 
 
Maggie Campbell-Culver's book, like Sylva, has at its core a section detailing the characteristics, history and uses of 33 trees incorporating the advice Evelyn gave and demonstrating its relevance still in the 20th-century. Not only was Evelyn probably the first horticultural writer to show an appreciation of the aesthetic benefits of trees in our landscape, he is shown to be a founder-father of the modern conservation movement.

A Passion For Trees

The Legacy Of John Evelyn

Lissa Evans

'Bloody funny, bloody moving - bloody buy it!' - Meera Syal 
 
Some people live life in the fast lane. Others have stalled and are waiting for assistance on the side of the road, sustained only by the piece of chewing gum they've just found in the glove compartment. 
 
Spencer's ex-lover has died, leaving him a lizard and a list of things to do before the end of the year. 
 
Spencer's friend Fran shares a house and a mortgage with her brother and his girlfriend, a woman with delicate wrists and a bloated cat. 
 
Fran's neighbour Iris is slave to the three men in her life: an aging father who likes the phone and two teenage sons who cannot fathom the washing machine. 
 
Maybe it's not about living life in the fast lane. It's about learning to live at all. 
 
Spencer's List is a wonderfully funny tale of life lived on the edge - of reason, of failure and of (just possibly) a brighter future. 
 
Featuring an extract of the next book by Lissa Evans, V FOR VICTORY

Spencer's List

From the bestselling author of Old Baggage

Mitchell Symons

When Mitchell Symons wrote his extraordinary bestsellers This Book, That Book and The Other Book - all neatly combined in one sensational volume, The Ultimate Loo Book - he was judged by many to be the King of Trivia. Now, inThe Bumper Book for the Loo, this supremo of weird and wonderful, astonishing and inexplicable facts, figures, stats and stories returns with a super selection of trivialistic treats - each one more remarkable and, yes, even more trivial than anything he's compiled before. 
 
For example, did you know that... 
 
·The first alarm clock could only ring at 4 a.m... 
·There was once an internet rumour that Belgium doesn't exist... 
·In 1830, King Louis XIX ruled France for just 15 minutes... 
·All mammals have jaws but only humans have chins... 
·Peru has more pyramids than Egypt... 
 
Packed to the rafters with all manner of useful and useless information, lists of the biggest, the smallest, the best and the worst, The Bumper Book for the Loo is a hilarious compendium of endless delights - and a hugely entertaining, unputdownable feat of nonsense!

The Bumper Book For The Loo

Facts and figures, stats and stories – an unputdownable treat of trivia

Michael Cuneo

Conducted by officially appointed exorcists or by maverick priests sidestepping Christian sanctions, by evangelical ministers and Episcopal charismatics, the ancient rite of exorcism is flourishing in the new millennium. In New York alone, four priests have, since 1995, officially investigated over 40 cases of suspected demonic possession, the Archdiocese of Chicago has appointed its first full-time exorcist in over 160 years while exorcists have appeared on television, courtesy of the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Larry King. 
 
Written with objectivity, insight and a healthy amount of irony, AMERICAN EXORCISM is an inside look at this - to some extraordinary, to others preposterous and to many, terrifying - phenomenon. Having attended over 50 exorcisms in person, and interviewed many of the participants - both the exorcists and those who believed themselves to be possessed - Michael Cuneo explores this netherworld of American, and ergo, British, life, and reflects on the meaning of exorcism in the 21st century, and on the relationship between religious ritual and popular culture. As well recounting in gripping detail the ceremonies he witnessed, he touches on such provocative topics as the 'satanic panics' of the 1980s, repressed memory and ritual abuse. 
 
The result is a remarkably revealing, entertaining and fascinating work of cultural commentary.

American Exorcism

Margaret Humphreys

Also published as Empty Cradles. 
 
In 1986 Margaret Humphreys, a Nottingham social worker, investigated a woman's claim that, aged four, she had been put on a boat to Australia by the British government. At first incredulous, Margaret discovered that this was just the tip of an enormous iceberg. Up to 150,000 children, some as young as three years old, had been deported from children's homes in Britain and shipped off to a 'new life' in distant parts of the Empire, right up until as recently as 1970. 
 
Many were told that their parents were dead, and parents often believed that their children had been adopted in Britain. In fact, for many children it was to be a life of horrendous physical and sexual abuse far away from everything they knew. Margaret reveals how she unravelled this shocking secret and how it became her mission to reunite these innocent and unwilling exiles with their families in Britain before it was too late.

Oranges and Sunshine

Empty Cradles

James Hogg

Robert Sellers

Spontaneous, hilarious, irrepressible and, of course, trailblazing - Kenny Everett was revolutionary in television and radio comedy. Chris Evans, Chris Moyles, Rob Brydon and Steve Wright have all cited Kenny as a huge influence on their work - even the great Spike Milligan called him a genius. It was Kenny who developed the radio show format with which we are so familiar today: a mix of music, jingles, funny voices and sound effects. When he seamlessly made the move to television in the seventies, he created unforgettable characters such as Sid Snot, Cupid Stunt and Marcel Wave. 
 
Rarely seen without a smile on his face in public, in reality, Kenny was a deeply insecure man who suffered severe bouts of depression. He also struggled with his sexuality, only coming out to the public in 1985. Diagnosed with HIV in 1987, Kenny died in 1995. 
 
This in-depth and affectionate biography has been fully authorised by Kenny's family and contains original interviews with Kenny's sister, Kate and with his former wife, Lee, as well as entertainment figures such as Barry Cryer, Cliff Richard, Chris Tarrant and Paul Gambaccini. Packed with fabulous stories about the highs and lows of Kenny's life, his great friendships with The Beatles and Freddie Mercury, this is a book that any fan of comedy and entertainment must read.

Hello, Darlings!

The Authorized Biography of Kenny Everett

Margaret Mayhew

Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas, Rosie Clarke and Katie Flynn, a heart-warming saga set during World War II from bestselling author Margaret Mayhew. 
 
READERS ARE LOVING OUR YANKS! 
"Omg this book was everything and more than i expected. My ideal book as i love family saga books. Loved that it showed how the Yanks got involved with the girls during wartime . Highs and lows of everyday life. Loved, loved ,loved it" - 5 STARS 
"The type of book where one found it hard to put down until the end." - 5 STARS 
"Excellent book, village life with the Yanks very warming story." - 5 STARS 
"Loved this saga ,drew me right in. I could not put this book down. The small town the characters the Yanks. I loved leaving my world and entering their lives. An author whose books I will be devouring." - 5 STARS 
"As always with Margaret Mayhew books, this one hasn't failed to please..."- 5 STARS 
"Brilliant story, held me in its grasp..."- 5 STARS 
 
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"I STILL REMEMBER THE YANKS, ALMOST MORE THAN I DO THE WAR..." -- A Suffolk Woman. 
 
August 1943. A fighter group of US airmen descends upon the quiet and sleepy village of King's Thorpe in Northamptonshire. The village has never seen the like of them before: they are glamorous, rich, exciting and full of bravado. 
 
While some of the older residents are dismayed, many of the younger ones cannot help but be won over by their charms. 
 
 And for many - including young Sally Barnet from the bakery, Agnes Dawe - the Rector's daughter, and newly-widowed Lady Beauchamp, they will have a long-lasting impact. 
 
It will be a summer many will never forget...

Our Yanks

A feel good wartime romance you won't be able to put down...

'Evans is very funny . . . the Tom Sharpe for the next generation' Sunday Express 
 
Some are born odd, some achieve oddness and some are just in the wrong place at the wrong time… 
 
Netta Lee had always felt like the odd one out growing up. But when, as an adult, she returns to the Midlands to help her family move house, it becomes apparent that perhaps she isn’t the unusual one after all. A brother with a penchant for rubbish collection, a mother who seems to think she’s running the Bolshoi Ballet rather than the local junior dance school and a hoard of questionably competent friends challenge Netta’s ordered world. 
 
Perhaps the life – and the people – she tried so hard to leave behind are not as distant as she thought.

Odd One Out

Sister Stanislaus Kennedy

In Seasons of Hope, the follow up to her bestselling Day by Day, Sister Stan offers words of wisdom to calm the mind and refocus our energies. Through verse and inspirational quotations from many enlightened figures, she offers us a chance to step away from this frantic world – to stop, to look, to think – and be open to new possibilities. 
 
 Also included here are contributions on a range of subjects, such as the gift of life, compassion, meditation and the soul, from influential figures such as writer and playwright, Michael Harding, poets Theo Dorgan and Eavan Boland, and social campaigner, Ruairi McKiernan – each one offering a thought-provoking and unique perspective on our world.

Seasons of Hope

Eric Haney

The story of America's elite military unit told by one of its founding members 
 
They are the U.S. Army's most élite top secret strike force. They dominate the modern battlefield, but you won't hear about their heroics on CNN. No headlines can reveal their top-secret missions; and no book has ever taken readers inside-until now. Here, a founding member of Delta Force takes us behind the veil of secrecy and into the action-to reveal the never-before-told story of 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-D (Delta Force). 
 
INSIDE DELTA FORCE 
 
In this dramatic behind-the-scenes chronicle, Eric Haney, one of the founding members of Delta Force, takes us inside this legendary unit from the beginning. Here, for the first time, are details of the grueling selection process, designed to break the strongest of men, that singles out the perfect soldier, and then the years of training that turns him into the ultimate modern warrior that is the Delta Force Operator. 
 
From fighting guerrilla warfare in Honduras to close VIP protection in Beirut, from rescuing missionaries in Sudan to the abortive attempt to extract American hostages from Tehran, and leading the way onto the island of Grenada, Eric Haney captures the daring and discipline that distinguish the men of Delta Force. Inside Delta Force puts the reader right at the heart of the action and gives a breathtaking glimpse of a life that is as driven, inspiring and terrifying as they come. 
 
Eric L. Haney, Command Sergeant Major, USA (Ret.), served for more than twenty years in the United States Army's most demanding combat units: as a combat infantryman, a Ranger, and ultimately as a founding member of Delta Force. In his retirement, Haney has protected princes, presidents and CEOs alike.

Inside Delta Force

Ian Gregg

When Ian Gregg was just a boy he joined his father at work selling pies from his van to miners’ wives around Newcastle. Now retired, he can look back on a business that began as a husband-and-wife team in the 1930s, and survived a world war and two major recessions to become our favourite bakery, beloved by everyone from children to office workers to soldiers overseas. 
 
Ian Gregg led the family firm as it grew, employing generations of families from around Newcastle and then becoming a public company with bakeries in Scotland and across the North, and now with shops on every high street. This is a story of extraordinary success, but it is also a triumphant tale of how doing right by your people makes for great business. Bucking every trend, Greggs have always put their customers, employees and local communities before quick profits for directors and shareholders. Their astounding record of charitable works includes hardship grants, an environment fund, sponsorship of the North East Children’s Cancer run and over £1 million raised annually for Children in Need. 
 
Ian Gregg will donate all of his royalties and Greggs plc will donate all its profits from the sale of this book to the Greggs Foundation to help fund more Breakfast Clubs for children.

Bread: The Story of Greggs

Robert Crampton

From rom coms to wrestling and fatherhood to fist fights, Robert Crampton's How to Be a Beta Male is a brilliantly funny and sometimes moving insight into being a modern-day bloke. 
 
Robert Crampton has been writing his Beta Male column for The Times since 2001. A much-loved weekly insight into modern masculinity – whatever that might mean – Beta Male strives to unlock the secrets of contemporary relationships in all their frequent glory, occasional frustration and on-going complexity. While by his own admission totally failing in this task, Crampton is at any rate amusing as he goes about his business, as his legions of loyal fans would attest. 
 
How to be a Beta Male is a carefully curated selection, bursting with observational nuggets on the minutiae of daily domestics and disasters in the Crampton household, and offering the very best of a sixteen-year-long account of what it is to be a beta male married to an alpha female. From his attempts at DIY to disciplining their children to trying once in a while to put his foot down to getting involved in a punch-up in the street in her defence, Robert continues to fail to impress his wife but always delights his readers. 
 
It's a very smart, extremely funny and yet surprisingly sensitive exploration of the trials, tribulations – and, ultimately, triumphs – of not being young, free and single.

How to Be a Beta Male

Hannah Fry

Adam Rutherford

'If only Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry were on tap to all of us, all the time . . . The pair have such a gift for making life, numbers and the forces at work in the universe all the richer, stranger, funnier and more marvellous.' Stephen Fry 
 
In Rutherford and Fry's comprehensive guidebook, they tell the complete story of the universe and absolutely everything in it - skipping over some of the boring parts. 
This is a celebration of the weirdness of the cosmos, the strangeness of humans and the fact that amid all the mess, we can somehow make sense of life. 
 
Our brains have evolved to tell us all sorts of things that feel intuitively right but just aren't true: the world looks flat, the stars seem fixed in the heavenly firmament, a day is 24 hours... This book is crammed full of tales of how stuff really works. With the power of science, Rutherford and Fry show us how to bypass our monkey-brains, taking us on a journey from the origin of time and space, via planets, galaxies, evolution, the dinosaurs, all the way into our minds, and wrestling with some truly head-scratching questions that only science can answer: 
 
What is time, and where does it come from? 
Why are animals the size and shape they are? 
How horoscopes work (Spoiler: they don't, but you think they do) 
Does my dog love me? 
Why nothing is truly round? 
Do you need your eyes to see? 
 
'A wonderfully engaging blend of wit, enthusiasm, clarity and knowledge.' Bill Bryson 
'Like the universe itself, this book is multi-faceted, surprising and full of wonders. It's also funny, wise and exceedingly brainy. You really owe it to yourself to read it.' Tim Harford, author of How To Make The World Add Up

Rutherford and Fry’s Complete Guide to Absolutely Everything

Bear Grylls

Bear Grylls is no stranger to extremes. During a three-year stint in the SAS he was involved in a horrific parachuting accident in Africa and broke his back in three places. Months of rehabilitation followed but, never losing sight of his childhood dream of climbing Everest, Bear went on to become the youngest Briton ever to reach the summit and survive. It was a close-run thing, however, as during the descent he was almost killed in a crevasse, his life saved only by his team-mate and a rope. In 2003 Bear completed another world-record-breaking expedition, leading his team through freezing spray and icebergs across the North Atlantic Ocean in a small inflatable boat. More drama followed as Bear, a karate black belt, set out to show the viewers of Channel 4 what it is really like to complete the gruelling basic training of the Foreign Legion. 
 
Now, in Born Survivor which accompanies a brand new eight-part series for Channel 4, the world's ultimate survivor shows us how to stay alive in the most unforgiving conditions on Earth. From crossing piranha-infested rivers and finding fresh food to building bush fires and fighting off grizzly bears - all manner of survival techniques from our most dangerous environments are covered. So, whether you find yourself stranded on a desert island in the Pacific, lost in the Lake District, or stuck in the snow on Greenland, once you've read this book, you too will be able to beat the elements and survive the wild.

Born Survivor: Bear Grylls

Shoba Narayan

MONSOON DIARY weaves a fascinating food narrative that combines authentic vegetarian recipes from South India with tales from Shoba Narayan's life, stories of her delightfully eccentric family, and reflections on Indian culture. 
 
Shoba recounts her childhood in South India, a portrait of small-town life richly populated by characters like the flower woman who brings jasmine for the gods, the milkman who names his cows after his wives, and the iron-man who picks up red-hot coals with his bare hands. Food is so important to her family that when Shoba wins a scholarship to study in America, they only agree to let her go if she prepares a successful banquet. She returns home to an arranged marriage - to her surprise, the family have chosen well - and later there are visits from her many relatives, old and new, to her home in New York City. 
 
In MONSOON DIARY, Shoba Narayan's culinary talent is matched by stories as varied as Indian spices - at times pungent, mellow, piquant and sweet. Her characters, like Shoba herself, have a thing or two to say about cooking and about life.

Monsoon Diary

Reveries And Recipes From South India

Timothy Ferriss

Timothy Ferris, bestselling author of Coming of Age in the Milky Way, brilliantly synthesizes inner and outer space with a penetrating examination into the nature of the universe and the human brain that perceives it. Through the lenses of two innovative fields of scientific research - neuroscience and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI - Ferris brings into focus a startling new vision of the relationship between mind and universe. 
 
Whether he is contemplating the possibility of otherwordly life-forms or pondering the consequences of virtual reality computer technology, Timothy Ferris captures our sense of wonder with a lucid and imaginative look at one of modern science's greatest challenges; how we can understand, interpret and, ultimately, reconcile the equally mysterious realms of mind and universe. From ancient Stone Age burial mounds to today's state-of-the-art laboratories, solving this eternal riddle has been the goal of philosophers and mystics, occultists and poets, alchemists and scientists. In The Mind's Sky, Ferris examines the 'dance' between mind and cosmos, showing how the universe is partly a construct of the mind itself and asking whether intelligence - far from being a product of our world alone - may have universal currency. 
 
Ferris considers the intriguing complexity of the human brain and what constitutes real intelligence. Laughter, near-death experiences, athletic performance ('Joe Montana's Premotor Cortex'), the neurobiology of mystical experience, and a subtle mental program called 'the interpreter' are all part of his freewheeling quest into the nature of consciousness. 
 
Ferris advances the provocative thesis that SETI, our current search for life on other planets, could reward the human race with the fruit of cosmic knowledge - or prove as cataclysmic as Eve's desire for the apple. And he gives us an inside look at IT - information theory - a new philosophy of knowledge and communication. 
 
Filled with the combination of scientific fact, human anecdote, and provocative insight that has become his trademark, Timothy Ferris's The Mind's Sky offers a rare, life-enhancing perception of our world and our cosmos and underscores the unique choices we face as a species capable of deciding our own fate on the planet - and among the stars.

The Mind's Sky

Human Intelligence in a Cosmic Context

Robbie Coltrane

Tired of the endless tarmac and Little Chefs, and keen to see more on his travels than the tail-lights of the car in front of him, Robbie Coltrane has set himself quite a challenge. Instead of scaling the Himalayas, trekking across the Antarctic or hacking through the Brazilian rainforest, he has decided to explore strange and exotic areas that are somewhat closer to home. Armed only with a map, an inquisitive mind and one of his favourite classic cars - a Carmen-red drophead Jaguar XK150S - he ventures off the beaten track and on to the B-roads of deepest, darkest Britain. 
 
Travelling from London to Glasgow in search of the impressive, the eccentric and, sometimes, the downright ridiculous, Robbie's journey takes us through stunning countryside into the heart of Great Britain. From wing walking in Gloucestershire and bottle kicking in Leicestershire to pigeon fancying in Sunderland and ale brewing in Stirling, Robbie delves deep into our local communities to uncover strange festivals, inspirational people and treasured traditions that reveal exactly what it is that makes our country so incredible, so bizarre and so, well, British ...

Robbie Coltrane's B-Road Britain

Lucy Irvine

Eighteen years later, in 1999, Lucy took her three children to the farthest corner of the Solomons to live for a year on remote Pigeon Island. This time the invitation had come from an intrepid eighty-year-old, Diana Hepworth, who, in 1947, set sail from England and embarked on a hazardous journey to find a faraway paradise where she and her husband Tom could raise a family. 
 
Faraway is the fascinating tale of two extraordinary worlds - 'primitive' and modern 'colonial' - in which tragedy, heroism, danger and pure joy combine in one remarkable story. This is a classic account by a writer who has dug deep into her psyche to illuminate the darkest reaches of our own.

Faraway

Lee Lipsenthal

Lee Lipsenthal had a charmed life: married to the love of his life, the proud father of two remarkable children, working as medical director of the Preventive Medicine Research Institute. In his personal relationships and with his patients, Lee was committed to living his life fully and gratefully each day. 
 
The power of those beliefs were tested in July 2009 when he was diagnosed with esophageal cancer, leaving him with a 90 percent chance of dying within five years. As Lee and his wife Kathy navigated his diagnosis, illness and treatment, he discovered that he did not fear death, and even as he faced his own mortality, he felt more fully alive than ever before. 
 
In the bestselling tradition of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff and The Last Lecture, Enjoy Every Sandwich distils everything Lee learned about how we find meaning, purpose and peace in our lives. Told with humour and heart, this deeply inspiring book will help readers embrace their humanity, accept uncertainty and live a life of gratitude - whether they are facing the end now or not.

Enjoy Every Sandwich

Living Each Day As If It Were Your Last

Les Pringle

This book has been re-issued as Dial 999! ISBN 9780552165310. 
 
Card-playing corpses, unfaithful husbands and 'flying' ladies - life as an ambulance driver in the 1970s was certainly varied ... 
 
At the age of twenty-three, Les Pringle decided to escape from office life, broaden his horizons and become an ambulance driver. Little did he realize how broad those horizons would turn out to be. 
 
Filled with warmth and humour, Blue Lights and Long Nights takes us back to a time when lonely old ladies could call 999 and have a cup of tea waiting when the drivers turned up for a chat; when learning to drive the ambulance meant going out for one test drive and managing not to hit a pedestrian; and every day brought a glimpse into other people's lives. 
 
Gripping, poignant and darkly funny, Blue Lights and Long Nights is an affectionate, warm-hearted look at a world gone by.

Blue Lights and Long Nights

Joanne Harris

Fran Warde

Try me . . . test me . . . taste me . . . 
 
Joanne Harris’s Chocolat trilogy has tantalized readers with its sensuous descriptions of chocolate since it was first published. Now, to celebrate the much-loved story of Vianne Rocher’s deliciously decadent chocolaterie, Joanne Harris and Fran Warde have created the ultimate book of chocolate lore and recipes from around the world, bringing a touch of magic to your kitchen.

The Little Book of Chocolat

Patrick Robinson

Daniel Topolski

WINNER OF THE FIRST WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK AWARD Strikingly reminiscent of Chariots of Fire, this classic bestseller tells the story of the sporting event which shook both Oxford University and its Boat Club to the very foundations during the harsh winter of 1986/7. 
 
A group of American students arrives at Oxford, hoping to put some steel into a Boat Race crew still reeling from their recent humiliating defeat at the hands of Cambridge. But disagreements over training methods soon bring to a head a bitter clash between the elected President of the Dark Blues and a fiery-tempered rower from California. 
 
Much more than the race is at stake in this clash between the amateur sporting tradition of the Boat Race and New World big-star sportsmanship. In the resulting battle, which made headline news worldwide, the rebels, having failed to remove the Boat Club President, pull out six weeks before the race. 
 
Can Oxford Coach Topolski, against all odds, mould an inexperienced and demoralized reserve crew of no-hopers into a winning team?

True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny

June Vendall Clark

Starlings Laughing is a vivid memoir of life during the waning phase of colonial Africa. June Vendall Clark came to love passionately the wildlife, people and land of Southern Africa during the forty-three years she spent there. Living with her philandering husband, Robert Kay, on Far Lamorna, a farm in the Rhodesian bush, June surrounded herself with animals, befriended the local Africans and steeped herself in tribal legends. Despite the hardships of farm life and a stormy marriage, the magical quality of the land itself, reflected in the beauty of the changing seasons and in the wild animals, gave her a sense of purpose and belonging. 
 
On a whim, Robert decreed the move to the remote Okavango delta on the edge of the Kalahari Desert. Shaku Zulu, a converted army surplus amphibious transporter, made an eccentric but practical home and for eight years they organised safaris, hunted crocodiles for a living and learned the practical lessons of survival in the wild. June became foster mother to lion cubs and other orphan animals, including a serval kitten, a jackal and a buffalo calf – ‘all of which either died or bit people’. 
 
It was an enthralling but difficult existence. On top of endless financial problems, there were tropical diseases, terrifying encounters with killer lions and crocodiles and the final disintegration of the marriage to contend with. But then Robert and June found common cause in a battle to curb the random slaughter of wild animals, mostly by visiting ‘sportsmen’. Decades in advance of today’s concern for conservation, they embarked on a campaign to persuade local hunting tribes to create the Moremi Wildlife Reserve. 
 
This, however, is not just another animal book. Beautifully written, in the tradition of Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa and Elspeth Huxley’s The Flame Trees of Thika, Starlings Laughing is the richly rewarding chronicle of a courageous woman’s extraordinary times, told with honesty and humour.

Starlings Laughing

J Maarten Troost

Fantasized about quitting the 9-5? Walking away from credit card debt and student loans? Think living in the South Pacific for two years sounds like a perfect solution and perhaps even a winning idea for your first novel? Maarten Troost does just that, setting up as a devil-may-care islander while his girlfriend, Sylvia, gets to work on saving the planet, or at least a little part of it on an end-of-the-world atoll, Tarawa. 
Life on Tarawa resembles not so much paradise as a theatre of the absurd where planes fly with the aid of masking tape, Coconut Stalinism prevails as national government and Sylvia is co-opted by the CIA to spy on the Chinese. But abandoning continental hang-ups like barbequeing the local dogs and watching on as international industrial fishing trawlers plunder the world's richest tuna supply aren't so easy. Perhaps only by following the locals and letting go, one just might find a better way to live...

The Sex Lives Of Cannibals

David Hall

In 2004, after felling his last chimney and retiring from steeplejacking, Fred took to the road on his beloved traction engine for the BBC series Made in Britain. Travelling the length and breadth of the country, the intention was to seek out the remarkable achievements of the craftsmen, engineers, inventors and industrial workers whose endeavour made engines like Fred's possible. It was a journey that took him to Britain's most iconic engineering marvels as well as less familiar sites: from the Forth Bridge and the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge to Europe's last deep-working iron ore mine in Cumbria and a local castings workshop in Bo'ness. 
 
This behind-the-scenes account of that ambitious journey is made all the more remarkable by Fred's heroic efforts to complete it while suffering from terminal cancer. It is not only a glorious testament to our nation's industrial achievements but also a story of the friendships, unfailing courage and determination of the nation's favourite steeplejack.

Fred Dibnah - Made in Britain

'This is a comic novel, but far warmer in tone and broader in scope than that label would suggest....Gloriously observed... Delicious.' - Times (London) 
 
In a man's world, it's up to Catrin Cole to lift the spirits of a nation... 
 
 It's 1940. In a small advertising agency in Soho, Catrin writes snappy lines for Vida Elastic and So-Bee-Fee gravy browning. But the country is in peril, all skills are transferable and there's a place in the war effort for those who have a knack with words. 
 
 Catrin is conscripted into the world of propaganda films. After a short spell promoting the joy of swedes for the Ministry of Food, she finds herself writing dialogue alongside scriptwriter Tom Buckley, for a heart-warming but not-quite-true story of rescue and romance on the beaches of Dunkirk. 
 
And as bombs start to fall on London, she discovers that there's just as much drama, comedy and love behind the scenes as there is in front of the camera . . .

Their Finest

A heart-warming, touching novel from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Pip Granger

Perfect for fans of Donna Douglas and Nancy Revell, a heart-warming saga set in post war London from Sunday Times bestselling author Pip Granger. 
 
"She brings the East End to life..." - Barbara Windsor 
"Read it straight through..." - ***** Reader review. 
"Love her writing." - ***** Reader review. 
 
*************************** 
 
1945: The end of the war spreads joy through London, but for Zelda Fluck the news isn't all good. The end to hostilities will bring her violent husband Charlie home. It also sets off a chain of events that brings more strife and destruction to the people of Paradise Gardens in Hackney than did the Blitz. 
 
 That's not all. Zelda's nephew, Tony, is hanging around Brian Hole, a one-boy crime wave and only child of Ma Hole, leader of the local spivs. 
 
 But Tony can sing - he has, in fact, the voice of an angel - and Zelda's friend, Zinnia knows a voice coach in Soho whose lessons may be able to straighten Tony out. 
 
The people Zelda meets there change her life. Will she find a way out of Hackney and her failed marriage? 
 
Trouble in Paradise is a prequel to Pip Granger's Rosie novels...

Trouble In Paradise

A fantastically funny and feel-good tale from the East End…

John Irving

John Irving's memoir begins with his account of the distinguished career and medical writings of the novelist's grandfather Dr Frederick C. Irving, a renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist, and includes Mr Irving's incisive history of abortion politics in the United States. But My Movie Business focuses primarily on the thirteen years John Irving spent adapting his novel The Cider House Rules for the screen - for four different directors. 
 
Mr Irving also writes about the failed effort to make his first novel, Setting Free the Bears, into a movie, about two of the films that were made from his novels (but not from his screenplays), The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire; about his slow progress at shepherding his screenplay of A Son of the Circus into production. 
 
Not least, and in addition to its qualities as a memoir - anecdotal, comic, affectionate and candid - My Movie Business is an insightful essay on the essential differences between writing a novel and writing a screenplay.

Showing results for: ‘Michael Symmons Roberts’

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