Steve Roud was Local Studies Librarian for the London Borough of Croydon and served as Honorary Librarian of the Folklore Society for over fifteen years. He has been researching British folklore for over thirty years and is the joint author of the Oxford Dictionary of English Folklore, plus other books on traditional drama and folk song, and the Penguin Guide to the Superstitions of Britain and Ireland, which won the Katharine Briggs Folklore Award in 2004. His publications include London Lore (2008) and The Lore of the Playground (2010). He also compiles the Folk Song Index and the Broadside Index, two internationally acclaimed computer databases of traditional folk and popular song. He lives in Sussex.

Steve Roud

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Steve Lopez

When Steve Lopez sees Nathaniel Ayers playing his heart out on a two-string violin on Los Angeles's skid row, he finds it impossible to walk away. More than thirty years ago, Ayers was a promising student at Julliard - ambitious, charming and hugely talented - until he gradually lost his ability to function, overcome by schizophrenia. When Lopez finds him, Ayers is homeless and paranoid, but glimmers of his earlier brilliance are still there. 
 
Over time, the two men form a bond, and Lopez imagines that he might be able to change Ayer's life. For each triumph, there is a crashing disappointment, yet neither man gives up. Their friendship will changes both of their lives in ways that neither could predict. Poignant and ultimately hopeful, The Soloist is a beautifully told story of devotion in the face of seemingly unbeatable challenges, and the inspiring power of music.

The Soloist

Jack Dee

In this hilariously frank account of his life, Jack Dee finally reveals what turned a once optimistic young man into this grumpy middle-aged git.It's a journey that takes him from a first gig as a ventriloquist's dummy, to working in an artificial leg factory and delivering incontinence pads for the NHS, before he finally ends up on stage at the Comedy Store.Along the way, Jack shares his laugh-out-loud views on everything from the 'overrated moon landing' to boutique hotels, personal trainers and 'people who hold their cutlery the wrong way'. 
Outrageous, absurd, and full of surprises, this is Jack Dee at his funniest.

Thanks For Nothing

Jessica Pan

‘Funny, emotional and deeply inspiring, this is perfect for anyone wanting to break out of their comfort zone’ Heat 
 
What would happen if a shy introvert lived as an out-and-out extrovert for one year? Jessica Pan is about to find out… 
 
* 
 
When she found herself jobless and friendless, sitting in the familiar Jess-shaped crease on her sofa, she couldn't help but wonder what life might have looked like if she had been a little more open to new experiences and new people, a little less attached to going home instead of going to the pub. 
 
So, she made a vow: to push herself to live the life of an extrovert for a year. She wrote a list: improv, a solo holiday and... talking to strangers on the tube. She regretted it instantly. 
 
Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come follows Jess's hilarious and painful year of misadventures in extroverting, reporting back from the frontlines for all the introverts out there. 
 
But is life actually better or easier for the extroverts? Or is it the nightmare Jess always thought it would be? 
 
* 
 
‘In a world of self-care and nights in, this book will inspire and remind you to do some things that scare you every so often.’ Emma Gannon 
 
‘Tender, courageous and extremely funny, this book will make us all braver.’ Daisy Buchanan 
 
‘A chronicle of Pan’s hilarious and painful year of being an extrovert.’ Stylist

Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come

An Introvert’s Year of Living Dangerously

Brendon Burns

In early October 2004, Brendon Burns - a delusional, god-fearing, drug addict, manic depressive and award-winning comedian - has a vision of happiness. He imagines himself sitting with two friends in a convertible in the middle of a desert, and for once he feels totally in control of his life. With the (slightly inebriated) voices in his head assuring him that he can recreate this perfect moment, he clearly has no choice but to gather the troops and head out to the US of A in pursuit his dream... 
 
Fear of Hat Loss in Las Vegas is the true story of four men - Brendon and his friends Barry Castagnola (the everyman), Paul Provenza (an Italian New Yorker, devout atheist, actor and movie director), and Keith (Barry's dad and best friend) - and their search for happiness and redemption in the heart of the Nevada desert. Demented, depraved, dangerously addictive and yet with a deep heart, soul and spirit, it is a tale of debauchery, mushrooms, fate, hookers, coincidence, stand-up comedy, aliens, Vegas and, ultimately, friendship. Rude, insane, in your face (and off their faces), it is the story of the perfect road trip. 
 
What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas - unless of course it's really funny. Then Brendon will write a f**king book about it...

Fear of Hat Loss in Las Vegas

John Boyle

John, a teenager, struggles with loneliness and alienation in Ferguslie Park, a rough housing scheme in 1950's Scotland. At school he makes friends with Laff, a Ferguslie boy who shares his dream of escape. Their friendship becomes a fortress against the mockery they face at school and the menace of 'Feegie' - and their dreams are only heightened when rock'n roll, jukeboxes and Teddy Boys erupt like a splash of technicolour into their monochrome lives. They yearn for sex, dream of romance, discover jealousy,get into fights... When tragedy intervenes, John is in danger of 'settling for less' - giving up on their youthful dream. But Laff's influence persists...

Laff

Pamela Druckerman

'Fascinating...gripping...extremely funny...I loved it. It made me want to move to Paris' - India Knight, Sunday Times 
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Do you want to learn the secrets of the parents of France's well-behaved children? 
 
How come French babies sleep through the night? 
Why do French children happily eat what is put in front of them? 
How can French mothers chat to their friends while their children play quietly? 
_______ 
 
Parents are saying MERCI to Pamela Druckerman! 
 
***** ‘Our parenting bible’ 
***** ‘You are not alone! … Brilliantly funny and really helpful.’ 
***** ‘Eye opening … it has changed the way I view and interact with my little one!’

French Children Don't Throw Food

The hilarious NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER changing parents’ lives

Scott Kelly

*As featured on BBC Breakfast, Radio 5Live and Steve Wright in the Afternoon on BBC Radio 2* 
 
From the Nasa astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station – what it’s like out there and what it’s like now, back here. Enter Scott Kelly's fascinating world and dare to think of your own a little differently. 
 
As soon as you realize you aren’t going to die, space is the most fun you’ll ever have... 
 
The veteran of four space flights and the American record holder for most consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few of us ever have and very few of us ever will. 
 
Kelly's humanity, compassion, humour, and passion shine as he describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both existential and banal. He touches on what’s happened to his body, the sadness of being isolated from everyone he loves; the pressures of constant close cohabitation; the catastrophic risks of colliding with space junk, and the still more haunting threat of being absent should tragedy strike at home. 
 
From a natural storyteller Endurance is one of the finest examples the triumph of the human imagination, the strength of the human will, and the boundless wonder of the galaxy. 
 
* 
 
What readers are saying... 
 
'Takes you up into space and lets you be a part of astronaut life' 
'Tough to put down! Tells a side you don't often hear or read about for that matter' 
'Mind blowing . . . up there with Ernest Shackleton for me' 
'My husband said it is the next best thing to going into space yourself' 
'Six stars!'

Endurance

A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery

Carl Hiaasen

"Every weekend, thousands of otherwise rational men and women are cursing, kicking at divots and smashing expensively milled putters against the trunks of immovable hardwood trees. These players go home in a toxic funk to inflict gloom upon their loved ones until the following Saturday, when they rush back to the golf course and do it all over again." 
 
In the summer of 2005, Carl Hiaasen picked up a golf club again for the first time in 32 years. He was not the best of players in 1973, and had certainly not got any younger in the intervening period. Undeterred, and weighed down by an increasing quantity of golf equipment and game-enhancing products acquired from adverts on The Golf Channel, who can see a sucker coming, Carl was soon hacking and shanking his way around the courses of Florida, and his obsession with the sport was rekindled. Animals were harmed during the making of this book. 
 
Over the course of the next 18 months, Carl's game got better, then worse, then slightly better, then much worse again, and he even managed to jinx Tiger Woods. On the way to finally summoning up the courage to compete in an actual tournament himself, Carl details the hilarious consequences of his misguided belief that he could actually play the game. We also learn that Justin Timberlake has a better golf handicap (6) than Bob Dylan (17), that Eagle Trace golf course contains not one trace of an eagle, and that Mind Drive capsules are not necessarily a good idea. 
 
But through all the misery and frustration (save the odd glorious shot), golf took up residence in Carl's heart again. Fairway to Hell is the ultimate tale of the trials and tribulations of the amateur golfer, but also the heart-warming story of how the game brought together the generations of the Hiaasen family.

Fairway To Hell

Bill Bryson

From one of our most beloved and bestselling authors, a vivid, nostalgic, and utterly hilarious memoir of growing up in the 1950s. 
 
Born in 1951 in the middle of the United States, Des Moines, Iowa, Bill Bryson is perfectly positioned to mine his memories of a totally all-American childhood for 24 carat memoir gold. Like millions of his generation, Bryson grew up with a rich fantasy life as a superhero. In his case, he ran around the house wearing a jersey with a thunderbolt on it and a towel round his neck that served as his cape, leaping tall buildings in a single bound and vanquishing evildoers (in his head) as The Thunderbolt Kid. 
 
Using his childhood fantasy life as a springboard, Bill Bryson recreates the life of his family in the 1950s in all its transcendent normality. In a period that saw the inexorable rise of television, the opening of Disneyland, the testing of the atomic bomb, and the explosion of choice in everything from food to cars, Bill Bryson's days followed in reassuringly cosy succession, enlivened by modest triumphs and disasters. 
 
Warm and laugh-out-loud funny, The Rise and Fall of the Thunderbolt Kid is a modern classic, full of Bill Bryson's inimitable, pitch-perfect observations. 
........................................................................................................................................... 
'Seriously funny' The Sunday Times 
 
'A funny, effortlessly readable, quietly enchanted memoir' Daily Mail 
 
'A wittily incisive book about innocence, and its limits, but in no sense an innocent book... Like Alan Bennett, another ironist posing as a sentimentalist, Bryson can play the teddy-bear and then deliver a sudden, grizzly-style swipe' Independent 
 
'Outlandishly and improbably entertaining... inevitably [I] would be reduced to body-racking, tear-inducing, de-couching laughter' New York Times 
 
'Characteristic mixture of bemused wit, acerbic astonishment and sweet benevolence... His evocation of an era is near perfect: tender, hilarious and true' The Times

The Life And Times Of The Thunderbolt Kid

Travels Through my Childhood

Abbie Ross

In 1972 Abbie Ross’s cosmopolitan parents move the family from London to rural North Wales, exchanging a town house in Islington for a remote farmhouse on a hill. 
Abbie’s Liverpudlian grandparents – dedicated followers of Liberace, sleek in scented mohair and patent leather – are sure they’ve lost their minds. For Abbie, though, the only cloud on the horizon is the nearby hippy commune and its inhabitants. There are worrying signs that this is the sort of ‘better life’ that her parents have in mind. 
Brilliantly evoking a particular time and place, Abbie’s memoir re-creates a world of dens and pineapple chunks, of John Craven’s Newsround and fishing for sticklebacks – and the joy but also the burning powerlessness of being a child. Disgusted by her father’s ‘yogic flying’ and her mother’s taste for brown bread and billowing cheesecloth (with no bra), Abbie is desperate not to be different. Far better, she thinks, to fit in with shouting, pathologically nosy Sara across the fields,or stay close to Philip next door – paralysingly shy and with a preference for orange food and no trousers (‘nice to have a bit of air’) ... 
Rich with detail that reveals a whole world, Hippy Dinners is very funny and full of heart. It is also a delicate and astute portrait of the brutal realities of ‘a simple life’.

Hippy Dinners

A memoir of a rural childhood

Tom Cox

As a teenager in Nottingham, Tom Cox was possessed. Despite the best endeavours of his frankly rather groovy parents, nascent fashion sense and regular exposure to credible music from an early age, he was inexorably drawn into the bizarre, esoteric world that is golf, with its male-bonding rituals and strange trousers. And thus a strange hybrid was born -- from 1988 to 1995, Tom was Midlands golf's answer to Iggy Pop. 
 
Assisted by his fellow junior members at the local club, he cut a swathe through the golfing establishment, putting dead animals in his fellow golfers' shoes, setting fire to the club professional's shop, bringing Colin Montgomerie close to tears and repeatedly wearing the wrong colour of socks. On the golf course he felt simultaneously at home and somehow alienated. But Tom also wanted to be (and became) the best, taking five years out of normal adolescent existence to live, breathe, walk and talk nothing but the sport he loved. 
 
Nice Jumper is the story of how Tom tried to fit in, failed, got down to a handicap of two, tried to fit in again, got suspended from the club, got corrupted by rock and roll, then attempted to corrupt golf itself. Original, poignant and highly entertaining, it's a book about one teenager's obsessive attempts to attain sporting nirvana - despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fashion.

Nice Jumper

Jenni Murray

At sixty-four, Jenni Murray's weight had become a disability. She avoided the scales, she wore a uniform of baggy black clothes, refused to make connections between her weight and health issues and told herself that she was fat and happy. She was certainly fat. But the happy part was an Oscar-worthy performance. In private she lived with a growing sense of fear and misery that her weight would probably kill her before she made it to seventy. Interwoven with the science, social history and psychology of weight management, Fat Cow, Fat Chance is a refreshingly honest account of what it's like to be fat when society dictates that skinny is the norm. It asks why we overeat and why, when the weight is finally lost through dieting, do we simply pile the pounds back on again? How do we help young people become comfortable with the way they look? What are the consequences of the obesity epidemic for an already overstretched NHS? And, whilst fat shaming is so often called out, why is it that shouting 'fat cow' at a woman in the street hasn't been included in the list of hate crimes? Fusing politics, science and personal pain, this is a powerful exploration of our battle with obesity.

Fat Cow, Fat Chance

The science and psychology of size

John O'Farrell

'…as the Labour candidate I prepared for every possible question on the local radio Election Phone-In. What I had not prepared for was my mum ringing up to say that she agreed with John O’Farrell. On EVERYTHING.' 
 
Where Did We Go Right? is the personal story of one political activist helping Labour progress from its 1997 landslide to the unassailable position it enjoys today. 
Along the way, he stood for Parliament against Theresa May but failed to step into her shoes; he was dropped from Tony and Cherie’s Christmas card list after he revealed he always sent their card on to a friend from the SWP; and he campaigned for a new non-selective inner-city state school, then realised this meant he had to send his kids to a non-selective inner-city state school. 
 
The long-awaited sequel to the best-selling Things Can Only Get Better is for everyone who could use a good laugh after Brexit, Boris and Trump. A roller-coaster ride through the last two decades via the very best political jokes (excluding the ones that keep getting elected).

Things Can Only Get Worse?

Twenty confusing years in the life of a Labour supporter

Matthew Todd

'This is an essential read for every gay person on the planet' - Elton John 
'A really brilliant and moving read for everybody, especially LGBTQI+ people' - Olly Alexander, star of It's A Sin 
 
Straight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, their friends and family. Part memoir, part ground-breaking polemic, it looks beneath the shiny facade of contemporary gay culture and asks if gay people are as happy as they could be - and if not, why not? 
 
Meticulously researched, courageous and life-affirming, Straight Jacket offers invaluable practical advice on how to overcome a range of difficult issues. It also recognizes that this is a watershed moment, a piercing wake-up-call-to-arms for the gay and wider community to acknowledge the importance of supporting all young people - and helping older people to transform their experience and finally get the lives they really want. 
 
WINNER BOYZ BEST LGBT BOOK 2017 
SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2017 
 
'Insightful, inclusive, clever and engaging' - Jeremy Langmead 
'Utterly brilliant' - The Guardian

Straight Jacket

David Hepworth

As heard on BBC 6 Music with Shaun Keveny, BBC Radio 5 Live and Talk Radio with Eamonn Holmes 
 
The age of the rock star, like the age of the cowboy, has passed. Like the cowboy, the idea of the rock star lives on in our imaginations. 
 
What did we see in them? Swagger. Recklessness. Sexual charisma. Damn-the-torpedoes self-belief. A certain way of carrying themselves. Good hair. Interesting shoes. Talent we wished we had. 
 
What did we want of them? To be larger than life but also like us. To live out their songs. To stay young forever. No wonder many didn’t stay the course. 
 
In Uncommon People, David Hepworth zeroes in on defining moments and turning points in the lives of forty rock stars from 1955 to 1995, taking us on a journey to burst a hundred myths and create a hundred more. 
 
As this tribe of uniquely motivated nobodies went about turning themselves into the ultimate somebodies, they also shaped us, our real lives and our fantasies. Uncommon People isn’t just their story. It’s ours as well.

Uncommon People

The Rise and Fall of the Rock Stars 1955-1994

Edward Stourton

‘If you are accompanied by a dog you can talk to anyone, and anyone can talk to you – about anything …’ And they do. Edward Stourton’s walks with, Kudu, his dog, become an opportunity for wonderfully unlikely encounters, and reflecting on the world from the dog-walker’s perspective proves remarkably illuminating. Ed and Kudu’s small trips to the park offer up big insights into romantic attachment, honour and heroism, guilt and depression, our sense of duty, beauty and the hard facts of life’s pecking order. Diary of a Dog-Walker is witty, wise and will be utterly irresistible to any man or woman with a dog.

Diary of a Dog-walker

Time spent following a lead

Like bubonic plague and stone cladding, no-one took Margaret Thatcher seriously until it was too late. Her first act as leader was to appear before the cameras and do a V for Victory sign the wrong way round. She was smiling and telling the British people to f*** off at the same time. It was something we would have to get used to.' 
 
Things Can Only Get Better is the personal account of a Labour supporter who survived eighteen miserable years of Conservative government. It is the heartbreaking and hilarious confessions of someone who has been actively involved in helping the Labour party lose elections at every level: school candidate: door-to-door canvasser: working for a Labour MP in the House of Commons; standing as a council candidate; and eventually writing jokes for a shadow cabinet minister. 
 
Along the way he slowly came to realise that Michael Foot would never be Prime Minister, that vegetable quiche was not as tasty as chicken tikki masala and that the nuclear arms race was never going to be stopped by face painting alone.

Things Can Only Get Better

Sarah Langford

'As thrilling as a detective novel.' The Times 
'Powerful, moving and often captivating.' Financial Times 
'A compelling read for anyone who cares about fairness, justice and humanity.' Observer 
 
The Sunday Times bestseller 
 
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Sarah Langford is a barrister. Her job is to stand in court representing the mad and the bad, the vulnerable, the heartbroken and the hopeful. She must become their voice. Sarah weaves their story around the black and white of the law and tell it to the courtroom. These stories may not make headlines but they will change the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary ways. They are stories which, but for a twist of luck, might have been yours. 
 
With remarkable candour, Sarah describes eleven cases which reveal what goes on in our criminal and family courts: these are tales of domestic fall out, everyday burglary, sexual indiscretion, and children caught up in the law. They are sometimes shocking and they are often heart-stopping. She examines how she feels as she defends the person standing in the dock. She also shows us how our attitudes and actions can shape not only the outcome of a case, but the legal system itself. 
 
___ 
 
 
What readers are saying: 
 
***** 'Absolutely fascinating . . . thought provoking, powerful and a compelling read.' 
***** 'This book broke my heart at times but also contained humour and such poignant insights into the criminal justice system.' 
***** 'Sarah writes incredibly well - she's informative while maintaining suspense and tension, and conveys so much emotion in her writing

In Your Defence

True Stories of Life and Law

Brian Castner

Brian Castner served three tours of duty in the Middle East, two of them as the commander of an Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit in Iraq. He and his team – his brothers – disarmed bombs. Sometimes they used robots and remote controls. Sometimes they set off controlled explosions. Sometimes one of the team would have to put on the eighty-pound Kevlar suit, take the Long Walk, and disarm the device by hand. Often they were simply too late; arriving just in time to pick up the pieces. 
 
In a hailstorm of bullets, bomb fragments, body parts and the endless wailing of innocent civilians, the days rolled into nights, yesterday turned into tomorrow, and today never even happened. But after the tour, the celebrations and the long plane ride home, the real war was just beginning. The war against the fear, the confusion, the guilt and the memory loss. The war against the Crazy. 
 
This exhilarating, heartbreaking, searingly honest memoir exposes two harrowing and simultaneous realities: the terror, excitement and camaraderie of combat, and the lonely battle against the enemy within.

The Long Walk

A Story of War and the Life That Follows

Beck Dorey-Stein

_____________________________ 
‘If you’ve ever felt like you were out of your element, in over your head or working without a net, you will love this book. Funny, fast-paced, and so emotionally true it hurts.’ Piper Kerman, author of Orange is the New Black 
_____________________________ 
Guidelines for aspiring stenographers: 
· Neutral tones set the tone 
· Be discreet and neat – like a librarian or well-paid prostitute 
· Breathe quietly or not at all 
· Above all else, keep the secrets to yourself… 
 
In 2012, Beck Dorey-Stein was just scraping by in Washington DC when an unusual job interview landed her in the Oval Office as one of Barack Obama's stenographers. She joined the elite team who accompanied the President wherever he went, recorder and mic in hand. On whirlwind trips across time zones, Beck forged friendships with a tight group of fellow travellers - young men and women who, like her, left their real lives behind to hop aboard Air Force One in service of the President. But as she learned the ropes of protocol, Beck became romantically entangled with a colleague, and suddenly, the political became all too personal. 
 
 Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters and discovering her voice in the process. 
_____________________________ 
Praise for From the Corner of the Oval Office 
'Who knew the West Wing could be so sexy? Beck’s unparalleled access is obvious on every page, along with her knife-sharp humour... Lots of books claim to give real insider glimpses, but this one actually delivers.' 
Lauren Weisberger, author of The Devil Wears Prada 
 
'This memoir is good and gossipy, will make you wish that you got to hang out with Barack and Michelle on a daily basis and is the missing link between The West Wing and Bridget Jones’s Diary.' Red 
 
'Set against the backdrop of a White House full of glamour, drama and intrigue, this is the story of a young woman making unlikely friendships, getting her heart broken, learning what truly matters and discovering her voice in the process.' GLAMOUR's Best Books of 2018

From the Corner of the Oval Office

A searing summer 2019 holiday read

One woman’s true story of her accidental career in the Obama White House

Rubina Ali

My name is Rubina Ali. I don't know when my birthday is, and nor does my father, but I do know that I am nine years old. 
 
Rubina is a one-in-a-million-star. After being plucked from among the five-hundred slum children who auditioned for Danny Boyle's multi-Oscar-winning film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, she saw her fairytale dream of stardom come true. But what does the future hold for a little girl now trapped between Hollywood glamour and the bleak poverty of her Mumbai slum? 
 
Now she tells her own incredible story, from playing marbles with her friends beside the sewers of Garib Nagar , to dancing along to the Bollywood films she and her family watch on their old television set. Rubina brings alive a world of wastelands and rat-infested shanty dwellings, and shows us her home near the raliway line where she lives with her beloved father and siblings. 
She tells us how her co-star came to be covered head to toe in chocolate, and how she came to meet a tall pale lady named Nicole Kidman. But how has this little girl's intimate world changed since Hollywood came knocking? And what will happen to her next? 
 
Royalties from this book will be shared with the author and Medecins du Monde in India.

Slumgirl Dreaming

My Journey to the Stars

Candida Lycett Green

1949: one year in the childhood of Candida Lycett Green in the remote village of Farnborough in Berkshire. Here she lives with her father John Betjeman and her mother Penelope Chetwode, in one of the bleakest and highest spots on the windswept downland.Candida runs wild with the 'gang' of village children. Stimulated by regular excursions to the cinema in Wantage, Candida and her best friend June became fascinated by the idea of love. Their romantic imagination is fuelled by the beautiful Ruby Mason, who cleans the cottage of a reclusive scientist, Dr Fox, employed at the neighbouring Harwell Atomic Research Centre. They stealthily engineer a romance between the two - until it is revealed that none of the children's special adult friends are what they seem, and the real world shockingly intervenes to overturn their innocence.

The Dangerous Edge Of Things

Carrie Fisher

When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved - plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Now her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon is indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her co-star, Harrison Ford. 
 With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time – and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candour and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into the type of stardom that few will ever experience.

The Princess Diarist

Mary Portas

* THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * 
 
Young Mary Newton, born into a large Irish family in a small Watford semi, was always getting into trouble. When she wasn’t choking back fits of giggles at Holy Communion or eating Chappie dog food for a bet, she was accidentally setting fire to the local school. Mary was a trouble magnet. And, unlike her brothers, somehow she always got caught… 
 
Britain in the 1970s was a world where R White's lemonade was drunk in secret, curry came in a cardboard box marked Vesta and Beanz meant Heinz. In Mary’s family, money was scarce. Clothes were hand-me-downs, holidays a church day out to Hastings and meals were variations on the potato. But these were also good times which revolved around the force of nature that was Theresa, Mary’s mum. 
 
When tragedy unexpectedly blows this world apart, a new chapter in Mary’s life opens up. She takes to the camp and glamour of Harrods window dressing like a duck to water, and Mary, Queen of Shops is born…

Shop Girl

John Irving

From a novelist known for the complexity of his novels - they are also long - comes an autobiography of compelling simplicity; it is also short. Dedicated to the memory of two wrestling coaches and two writer friends, The Imaginary Girlfriend is a lucid portrait of the writers and wrestlers who played a mentor role in John Irving's development as a novelist, a wrestler and a wrestling coach. Moreover, this candid memoir portrays a father's dedication to his children: Irving coached his sons Colin and Brendan to New England championship titles - a championship that, as a competitor, he himself was denied. 
 
John Irving began writing and wrestling when he was fourteen. He competed as a wrestler for twenty years, he was certified as a referee for twenty-four and he coached the sport until he was forty-seven. His thirty-three years in wrestling are three times those he spent as a student and a teacher of Creative Writing; yet his concise autobiography details the interrelationship of the disciplines of writing and wrestling - from the days when Irving was a beginner at both pursuits until his fourth wrestling-related surgery at the age of fifty-three. 
 
The Imaginary Girlfriend is both a work of the utmost literary accomplishment and a paradigm for living.

The Imaginary Girlfriend

Tom Courtenay

'I suppose my luck is You, Ann and Dad and more so if I could really write.' Annie Eliza Courtenay 
 
Tom Courtenay was born in Hull in 1937 and brought up near the fish dock where his father worked. When he left home for university, his mother, Annie, wrote to him every week and when her letters became more searching and more intimate in response to Tom's unhappiness he kept every one, not knowing that after her early death they were to become his most treasured possession. 
 
Tom has selected the best of them to go in this book and interwoven with them a portrait of what was going on in his life at the time, in the heady days of the early Sixties when successful young working-class actors were coming to the fore for the first time. Annie's letters are astonishing - wise, funny, with a natural instinct for words, but also deeply painful. She knows she's worthy of a better, more creative life, but she hasn't been given the chance. 
 
Partly a memoir of a working-class way of life that has gone for ever, partly a powerfully moving record of the love between mother and son, partly a portrait of the artist as a young actor, Dear Tom is sure to excite admiration and delight in equal measure.

Dear Tom

Susannah Walker

What do our possessions say about us? Why do we project such meaning onto them? What becomes of the things we leave behind? 
 
Only after her mother's death does Susannah Walker discover how much of a hoarder she had become. Over the following months, Susannah has to sort through a dilapidated house filled to the brim with rubbish and treasures - filling bag after bag with possessions. But what she's really in search of is a woman she'd never really known or understood in life. This is her last chance to piece together her mother's story and make sense of their troubled relationship. What emerges from the mess of scattered papers, discarded photographs and an extraordinary amount of stuff is the history of a sad and fractured family, haunted by dead children, divorce and alcohol. The Life of Stuff is a deeply personal exploration of mourning and the shoring up of possessions against the losses and griefs of life, which also raises universal questions about what makes us the people we are.

The Life of Stuff

Possessions, obsessions and the mess we leave behind

A memoir about the mess we leave behind

Lucy Dent

At the curtain call of her thirties, Lucy Dent finds herself in a marriage where meaningful communication, sexual contact and friendship have all but disappeared. Craving comfort and attention, she turns to the internet to find companionship and finds fulfilment in online sexual liaisons. 
 
Lucy details her sexual encounters with searing honesty - but this book is so much more than a 'sex memoir'. It explores marital disharmony, loneliness, addiction and the ramifications of making the choice not to have children. In an age in which lives are played out via social networks, this compelling book exposes how the supposed security of online interaction doesn't, in fact, stay safe for very long.

Turned On

Liza Campbell

Liza Campbell was the last child to be born at Cawdor Castle, as featured in Macbeth. Her father Hugh, the 25th Thane of Cawdor, inherited good looks,wealth, an ancient title, three stately homes and 100,000 acres of land. But increasingly overwhelmed by his enormous responsibilities, Hugh turned to drink, drugs, and extramarital affairs. Until the castle was transformed into an arena of reckless profligacy, abuse and terrifying domestic violence, leading to the abrupt termination of a legacy that had been passed down through the family for six hundred years. 
 
Title Deeds is a dark yet funny, contemporary fairy story about growing up in an old family where ancient curses and grisly past events are matched by the turmoil of a confusing and frightening present. Liza Campbell shows how even enormous wealth and privilege can hide unspoken abuse and misery: and what it is like to watch your father destroy himself and everything he holds dear.

Title Deeds

John Boyle was born and raised in Scotland but he could never feel Scottish. His parents were poor immigrants from the West of Ireland who came to Scotland to find work and eventually settled in Paisley, where John was the first of six children. 
 
Galloway Street beautifully captures the poverty and the rough humour of the family's life in the Paisley tenements, the songs and stories of their Irish Catholic relatives and the often uneasy relationships with their Scottish Protestant neighbours. It also shows how the boy is marked at the age of ten by an extended stay with his spinster aunt on the remote island of Achill, as he begins to understand the life his parents left behind. 
 
This is a book about exile and belonging, about the poignancy of growing up Irish in Scotland, so close to the place your mother still calls home. It is a truthful, funny and moving evocation of a unique place and time, experienced through the eyes of a child.

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