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.

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Andy McNab

Sergeant Andy McNab recounts the story of the top secret mission that would reveal the secrets of the SAS to the world for the first time. 
 
Their location: Iraq 
Their mission: to sever a vital enemy underground communication link, to find and destroy mobile Scud launchers 
Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero 
 
When eight members of the elite SAS regiment embark on a highly covert operation, they are each laden with 15 stones of equipment, needing to tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. They engage in a fierce battle. They escape on foot to the Syrian border. Three men die. One escapes. 
But four men are captured. For them, the worst is yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they are tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training has prepared them… 
 
This is a story of superhuman courage, strength, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds. It shows just how much it takes to be a member of the SAS. 
_____________________________________________ 
‘The best account yet of the SAS in action’ Sunday Times 
‘One of the best books to emerge from the first Gulf War … Magnificent’ Independent on Sunday

Bravo Two Zero

The original SAS story

the classic true story from an SAS hero

Shauna Reid

In January 2001 Shauna Reid was twenty-three years old and twenty-five stone. Determined to turn her life around, she created the hugely successful weblog The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl and, hiding behind her Lycra-clad roly-poly alter-ego, her transformation from couch potato to svelte goddess began. Today, 8,000 miles, seven years and twelve-and-a-half stone later, the gloriously gorgeous Shauna is literally half the woman she used to be. 
 
In turn hysterically funny and heart-wrenchingly honest, The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl follows the twists and turns of Shauna's lard-busting adventure as she curbs the calories and learns to love the gym. There are travel tales from Red Square to Reykjavik, plus romance and intrigue as she meets the man of her dreams during a pub quiz in Glasgow. As her UK visa rapidly runs out, will she be deported back to Australia or will love triumph? 
 
Entertaining and action-packed, this is the uplifting true story of a young woman who defeated her demons and conquered her cravings to become a weight-loss superhero to inspire us all.

The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl

Philip Collen

Chris Epting

Meet Phil Collen. You may know him as the lead guitarist in Def Leppard, whose signature song Pour Some Sugar on Me is still as widely enjoyed as when it debuted in 1988. Maybe you’ve heard of him as the rock star who gave up alcohol and meat more than 25 years ago. Most likely you’ve seen him shirtless - in photos or in real life - flaunting his impeccably toned body to appreciative female fans. 
 
But it wasn’t always like this. Collen worked his way up from nothing, teaching himself guitar from scratch as a teenager by imitating his heroes. He slogged it out in London-based pub bands for years, long before Def Leppard formed and transformed from unknowns to icons (all thanks to a little album called Pyromania), from playing openers in near-empty arenas to headlining in those same stadiums and selling them out every night. But as Collen discovered, true overnight success is a myth. Like the other band members, he had to struggle and fight his way to the top; in the end, he says, 'our work ethic saved us'. Just as it still does. 
 
This is Collen’s story, starting with his first real taste of success and wild rock and roll excess as a member of the seminal glam rock outfit Girl. But once he joins Def Leppard, it’s also an amazing underdog tale featuring a bunch of ordinary working-class lads who rose to mega-stardom, overcoming incredible obstacles - such as the drummer, Rick Allen, who lost an arm in a car crash, and the tragic death of guitarist Steve Clark, Phil’s musical soul mate, who lost his fight with alcoholism. Featuring personal, never-before-seen photos of Collen and his band mates on stage and off, Adrenalized is a fascinating account of the failures, triumphs, challenges, and rock-hard dedication it takes to make dreams come true.

Adrenalized

Life, Def Leppard and Beyond

Les Pringle

This is a re-issue of Blue Nights and Long Nights ISBN 9780552158527. 
 
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, Dial 999! 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, Dial 999!is an affectionate, warm-hearted look at a world gone by.

Dial 999!

Jeff Bridges

Bernie Glassman

Jeff Bridges is one of the world's most popular actors and his unforgettable performance as The Dude in Coen Brothers film, The Big Lebowski, made him a cult hero. His remarkable career as an actor, performer and songwriter has brought him an Oscar, a Golden Globe and a Critics Choice award. Away from the spotlight, Bridges is a dedicated practitioner of Zen Buddhism and for more than a decade has been close friends with Zen leader Bernie Glassman. It is Glassman who has helped guide Bridges' lessons on the path to enlightenment and the two have spent many hours discussing life, love, the movies, creativity, happiness and death. 
 
With wit, charm and profound insight, Bridges and Glassman discover the Zen in iconic scenes and lines from The Big Lebowski. With honesty and humour, Bridges explores how his Zen practice and his life experience inform one another as he discusses his loving relationship with his parents, his marriage, his highly successful career and his warm connection with his fans.

The Dude and the Zen Master

Lee Mack

‘His book is a joy to read, full of homespun wisdom and hilarious asides’ Independent 
____________________ 
 
Where do comedians come from? 
Why is it that one person is a funny bloke down the pub while another actually makes a living by standing up in front of an audience telling jokes? 
And where does all that material come from? 
 
Well, young Lee McKillop used to wonder that too. 
___________________ 
 
Growing up in his parents’ pub, small and wiry in a world of bigger and chunkier specimens, Lee quickly learned that cracking jokes was a way to get attention. After a somewhat random series of jobs, which included being Red Rum’s stableboy and a bingo hall barman, it was as a Great Yarmouth holiday camp entertainer that he had his first crack at telling jokes on stage. It got him some laughs, the sack and a punch in the face.* 
 
Now, as Lee Mack, he’s one of our best loved and most successful comedians, both as a live stand-up and on television. In Mack the Life, Lee tells the story of how he got there and gives extraordinary insight into what really makes comics tick. Hilarious and brilliant, it’s the kind of book which reminds you why you learned to read in the first place. 
 
*Nearly.

Mack The Life

Bridget Harrison

You're about to turn thirty, all your friends are getting engaged and pregnant - and your body-clock is ticking. Then you get an offer to move to New York. So you take a chance and break up with your boyfriend - only to land yourself in the singles capital of the world. 
 
When Bridget Harrison arrived in Manhattan to work for America's most famous tabloid, the New York Post, she was in at the deep end from day one. Dispatched by day to cover murders and muggings in the roughest corners of New York, by night she began to write a column about her search for love in a dating shark tank. So far so Sex and the City - until she realised the one man she was falling for also happened to be her boss (and unfortunately this wasn't fiction). 
 
 
THE HIGHS: 
Being sent out to cover your first breaking news story 
Having the chance to go on a new blind date every week 
Realizing you love your editor 
 
THE LOWS: 
Finding no-one you interview can understand your accent 
Going on a new blind date every week 
Realizing you love your editor

Tabloid Love

RSPCA

AS SEEN ON CHANNEL 5 
 
As a nation, we're big fans of man's best friend. Nearly a quarter of all British homes own a dog. Sadly, not all of them receive the love and care they deserve and some dogs are neglected or, worse, abused. Enter Channel 5's The Dog Rescuers. 
 
Every day, these dedicated and passionate RSPCA inspectors - like Anthony Joynes - contend with dog owners' abandonment and misuse of their pets, and spring into action on behalf of dogs in trouble, returning them to health, happiness and a loving new home. 
 
 This collection of heartbreaking but ultimately heartwarming tales follows the likes of puppy Clover, who suffered damage to her face and lips, and Flint, the Lurcher who'd been used for badger baiting and lost most of his tail. When all seems lost, the RSPCA's dog rescuers are on hand, providing vital support to get Clover, Flint and friends the help they need and into forever families so that they don't just survive, they thrive.

The Dog Rescuers

AS SEEN ON CHANNEL 5

Meg Henderson

Glasgow in the 1950s was a deprived and often violent place. Meg Henderson was part of a large family, and when the tenement block in which they lived collapsed they had to move to the notorious Blackhill district where religious sectarianism and gang warfare were part of daily life. Yet despite appalling conditions , there was warmth, laughter and a remarkable spirit, andMeg's mother and her Aunt Peggy, both idealistic and emotional women, shielded her from the effects of her father's heavy drinking. 
 
A hopeless romantic, Peggy searched for a husband until late in life and then endured a harsh, unhappy marriage. When she died horrifically in childbirth her death devastated the family and destroyed Meg's childhood. Only later, after the death of her own mother, was Meg able to discover the shocking facts behind the tragedy.

Finding Peggy

Lost Voice Guy

Lee Ridley

- 'A truly eye-opening book from a fantastic comedian.' ADAM KAY 
- 'The funniest book I've read in years.' DAVID WALLIAMS 
_______________ 
 
Lee Ridley won the hearts and minds of the nation on Britain's Got Talent. Now the much-loved comedian opens up on what it's like to be him. I'm Only In It for the Parking is a wonderful journey through Lee's extraordinary life, by way of the people who like to pray for him, the comparisons with Stephen Hawking, some perilous falls, some epic fails and more information about Lee's private life than you probably need. This is the wickedly funny story of the stand-up who struggles to stand up, but who learns to finds his feet. The Geordie without the accent. The entertainer who really can't speak at all, but who has something important to say. 
 
What readers are saying: 
 
***** 'Such a brilliant and honest book.' 
***** 'The funniest book I've read this year.' 
***** 'Written with poignancy and humour.' 
***** 'Had me laughing out loud all the way from start to finish.'

I'm Only In It for the Parking

Everything I know about life, laughter and disability

Life and laughter from the priority seats

Johnny Kingdom

When a farmer on Exmoor found a frightened and badly injured red deer calf hanging by the leg from a barbed wire fence, he knew there was only one man he could call. Johnny Kingdom took Bambi home and became her surrogate mother, nursing her through the night after the dangerous operation to amputate her now infected limb. 
 
Against the odds, Bambi survived and, as she grew bigger, became a part of Johnny's family, taking over his garden and developing a taste for custard creams (and Johnny's wife's roses). But it wasn't just Johnny and his family who loved Bambi - friends, neighbours and even complete strangers would occasionally drop by with tasty treats they thought she might enjoy. But the doe in his back garden was by no means Johnny's only contact with the red deer of Exmoor. Over the years he followed the wild herds over moor and farmland as the seasons changed, filming every detail of their lives and trying to understand what Bambi was missing out on. 
 
Millions of viewers fell in love with Bambi during Johnny's BBC television series and accompanying book, but now he tells her full story. Sometimes poignant and sometimes hilarious, this is both the tale of all of Exmoor's wild deer and the story of how one very special animal came to live a very different life.

Bambi and Me

Russell Kane

'Brilliantly written. Very funny and heartbreaking.' Davina McCall 
 
From one of Britain's most popular and prolific comedians comes a hilarious and deeply moving memoir of life lived under the rule of a Silverback dad. 
 
The Silverback is considered the undisputed king, a creature whose authority is never challenged and who does not yield to compromise. He walks proudly, feeds greedily, grafts tirelessly, mates voraciously, swears constantly and is threatened all too easily. The Silverback is known to nestle in the misty peaks of central Africa but can also be found in Barking, Essex. Meet Dave Kane, the disappointed, steroid-ingesting, metal-wielding, bouncer father of slight, effete Gamma Male, Russell Kane. 
 
SON OF A SILVERBACK is a story about fathers and sons, class and education and how one scrawny, sensitive, fake-tan-applying 'ponce' stepped out of his father's shadow and became a man - whatever that means. 
 
What readers are saying: 
***** 'This is so much more than a comedian's life story.' 
***** 'I read this book in about two days. It was gripping, funny, sad, and it felt deeply honest.' 
***** 'An exposing and candid exploration of Russell's family and foundations and all the better for its frankness . . . Full of laughs, poignancy and appropriate introspection.'

Son of a Silverback

Growing Up in the Shadow of an Alpha Male

Jimmy Lerner

You are convicts. Your job here is to lie, cheat, steal, extort, get tattoos, take drugs, sell drugs, shank and sock each other. Just don't let us catch you - that's our job. We catch you, you got nothin' coming. 
 
It is your worst nightmare. You wake up naked in an eight-by-ten-foot steel cell designated 'Suicide Watch #3'. The cell is real. Jimmy Lerner, former family man and corporate strategic planner, has become a prison 'fish', or green new arrival. Taken to a penitentiary in the Nevada desert to serve a twelve-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter, this previously nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn ends up sharing a claustrophobic cell with Kansas, a hugely muscled skinhead with a swastika tattooed on his neck and a serious set of issues. 
 
You Got Nothing Coming takes us into a corrupt world powered by violence, drugs, rape, fear and racial hatred. With brash, dark humour Jimmy Lerner tells us how the techniques learnt in management seminars have helped him survive in this hostile environment, and how a lethal act of self-defence landed him in this circle of American prison hell in the first place. Bracingly cynical and perceptive, this terrifying story is all truth.

You Got Nothing Coming

Robert Kugler

For fans of Nala's World and Arthur, this is an uplifting and unforgettable true story about how the love of a good dog can save your life. 
 
Rob Kugler adopted his chocolate Lab Bella as a puppy - a bundle of fun and love to keep his girlfriend company as he headed off to war. But when Rob's brother died and his relationship fell apart, it was Bella who was there to help heal the wounds, and make Rob's life worth living again. So when Rob was told Bella had cancer - first in her leg, which had to be amputated, and then in her lungs - he was devastated. 
 
With only months of Bella's life left, he knew just what he had to do for his furry best friend. Determined to show her the same unconditional love she had always shown him, Rob decided to give Bella the farewell adventure of her doggy dreams. Criss-crossing the USA from coast to coast, making many new friends along the way, Bella taught Rob never to give up and to live each day as though it's your last. 
 
A heartbreaking but ultimately uplifiting true tale, A Dog Named Beautiful is full of hope, love, tears and laughter. Enjoy the journey. 
_______________ 
 
'Teaches the reader a wealth about the value of making human connections.' FORBES

A Dog Named Beautiful

The true story of the Labrador who taught a Marine to love life again

Leslie Morgan Steiner

When Leslie met her husband Conor she felt she'd found the man of her dreams. Smart, attentive and devoted to her, he was all she'd ever hoped for and it wasn't long before they were married. 
 
But worrying cracks began to appear in this seemingly perfect relationship. For whilst Conor could sometimes make Leslie feel loved and cherished, at other times his abrupt, violent mood swings left her deeply troubled. And as the violence escalated, Leslie felt trapped in a world of terror - a world from which she knew she had to escape. 
 
Harrowing and yet compulsively readable, Crazy Love throws a spotlight on a brutal, hidden world of abuse. As it takes you on a rollercoaster ride through hell, it tells the story of how one woman was forced to confront a painful truth: the man she loved seemed determined to kill her.

Crazy Love

Maggie Groff

'Over time, I nursed victims of war, the posh, the poor, the famous and the infamous... Oh, the stories I can tell!' 
 
 To a young girl the life of a nurse sounds exciting, but with long hours and short shrift it’s never easy. So when Maggie Groff embarks on her training at London’s King’s College Hospital she must quickly get to grips with a demanding career. It’s sink or swim. 
 
From the watchful gaze of stern sisters and the trials of nursing on a poor south-east London housing estate, to the explosive dramas of staff health checks at sophisticated Selfridges, Maggie shares warm and witty stories of mistakes and mayhem, tea and sympathy, and the life-affirming moments that make it all worthwhile. 
 
 Played out against the march of feminism and fashion, IRA bombings and the iconic music and movies of almost half a century ago, Not Your Average Nurse is a delightful romp through time.

Not your Average Nurse

The Entertaining True Story of a Student Nurse in 1970s London

Pauline Collins

In 1964, in a bare room in Waterloo, a young actress gave her baby for adoption.They were to be parted for more than twenty years.The actress was Pauline Collins.The baby was her daughter Louise. 
 
Letter to Louise is a poignant, yet often funny, memoir of the months leading up to that day in Waterloo.In it, Pauline Collins recalls the idyllic time spent in rep in Killarney, playing in a different play every night, seven days a week, living in digs - and falling in love.After the season had finished, she found she was pregnant.Frightened and alone now, she decided to have the baby, hiding the fact from family, agents and friends. 
 
Going to ground, she waited for the baby to be born in a home for unmarried mothers, buoyed up by the kindness and humour of the other residents, and the nuns who cared for them.Yet she soon came to realise that she had no choice but to give her daughter away. 
 
Reluctantly she got on with life, finally achieving success and personal happiness.But she never forgot Louise and their story has the ultimate happy ending - the day they were reunited twenty-two years later.

Letter To Louise

Alan Johnson

'The best memoir by a politician you will ever read' Philip Collins, The Times 
 
School on the Kings Road, Chelsea in the Swinging 60s, the rock-and-roll years, the race riots; this boy has seen it all. 
________ 
 
Alan Johnson's childhoodwas not so much difficult as unusual, particularly for a man who was destined to become Home Secretary. Not in respect of the poverty, which was shared with many of those living in Britain's post-war slums, but in its transition from being part of a two-parent family to having a single mother and then to no parents at all... 
 
This is essentially the story of two incredible women: Alan's mother, Lily, who battled against poor health, poverty, domestic violence and loneliness to try to ensure a better life for her children; and his sister, Linda, who had to assume an enormous amount of responsibility at a very young age and who fought to keep the family together and out of care when she herself was still only a child. 
 
This Boy is one man's story, but it is also the story of England and the West London slums which are hard to imagine in the capital today. No matter how harsh the details, Alan Johnson writes with a spirit of generous acceptance, of humour and openness which makes his book anything but a grim catalogue of miseries. 
________ 
PRAISE FOR THIS BOY: 
'Moving and unforgettable' Sunday Times 
'Poignant' Telegraph 
'Eloquent' Guardian 
'Wonderful' Spectator 
'Tribute to two strong women' Daily Mail

This Boy

Tim Bauerschmidt

Ramie Liddle

'A life-affirming book' Daily Mail 
 
'An uplifting personal story of a year lived like no other' Daily Express 
 
Two days after her husband of sixty-seven years dies, nonagenarian Miss Norma is diagnosed with cancer. When given her treatment options - surgery, chemo and radiotherapy - she rises to her full five feet and says in the strongest voice she can muster: 'I’m ninety years old. I’m hitting the road!' 
 
 Driving Miss Norma is the story of her inspirational road trip across the US in a thirty-six-foot motorhome with her son, Tim, his wife, Ramie and their Poodle, Ringo - showing us that it's never too late to begin an adventure, inspire hope or become a trailblazer. As the journey unfolds, Miss Norma finally spreads her wings and lives life on her own terms for the very first time. With each adventure a once timid Miss Norma says YES to living in the face of death - whether it's experiencing her very first pedicure or taking the hot air balloon ride her late husband never found time for. 
 
 With each passing mile - and one hilarious visit to a cannabis dispensary - Miss Norma’s health improves and conversations that had once been taboo begin to unfold. Norma, Tim and Ramie bond in ways they could never have anticipated and their definitions of home, family and friendship are rewritten as strangers become friends and shower them with kindness. 
 
Bursting with Miss Norma’s generous spirit, Driving Miss Norma ignites a renewed sense of life, family, fun and self-discovery - at any age.

Driving Miss Norma

Karyn Bosnak

What would you do if you owed $20,000? Would you: 
 
a) Not tell your parents? 
b) Stop colouring your hair, having pedicures and buying Gucci? 
c) Start your own website that asks for money without apology? 
 
If you were Karyn Bosnak, you'd do all three... 
 
In New York for the first time, with the dream job and the smart flat, Karyn starts spending...and spending. But when it all goes horribly wrong, and her credit card balance mounts in a terrifying manner, Karyn knows that she has to take control. She starts her website www.savekaryn.com on which she fearlessly asks for donations to help pay off her debts. The website receives over 2 million hits and has replies from all over the world - some supportive, many abusive. But after four months, Karyn has become a new woman- debt-free, grateful and happy. This is the hilarious and touching true story of how she does it.

Save Karyn

Danielle Steel

This is the story of an extraordinary boy with a brilliant mind, a heart of gold and a tortured soul.' 
 
From the day he was born, Nick Traina was his mother's joy. By nineteen, he was dead. This is Danielle Steel's powerful story of the son she lost and the lessons she learned during his courageous battle against darkness. Sharing tender, painful memories, Steel brings us a haunting duet between and singular young man and the mother who loved him - and a harrowing portrait of a masked killer called manic depression. 
 
Nick rocketed through life like a shooting star. He spoke in full sentences at the age of one. He was a brilliant, charming child who never slept. His gift for writing was extraordinary, his musical talent promised a golden future. But by the time he entered junior high, he was hurtling towards disaster. His mother tried desperately to get him the help he needed - the opening salvos for what would become a ferocious battle for his life. 
 
At once a loving legacy and an unsparing depiction of a devastating illness, Danielle Steel's tribute to her lost son is a gift of life, hope, healing and understanding to us all. 'I want to share the story, and the pain, the courage, the love, and what I learned in living through it...My hope is that someone will be able to use what we learned, and save a life with it'

His Bright Light

David Merron

As Hitler’s bombs threatened London during World War Two, eight-year-old David Merron was removed from his family and close-knit Jewish community in the East End and evacuated to the safety of the English countryside. 
 
Placed into the car of strangers, life was sometimes unpredictable and lonely. But, with time, the rural world became an exciting adventure playground in which he flourished. 
 
Set against a dramatic wartime backdrop, Goodbye East End is about the conflict between a London boy’s unexpected love of the countryside and his guilt about not missing home as much as he might. It’s the moving story of a childhood experience that changed a young boy’s life forever.

Goodbye East End

An Evacuee's Story

Jamie Carragher

For the Anfield faithful, Jamie Carragher represents everything that is great about Liverpool Football Club, prompting the Kop to sing 'we all dream of a team of Carraghers'. The club's vice-captain, longest-serving player and one of a select band of players to have made more than 500 appearances for the Reds, Carra never gives less than 100 per cent for the cause. He is the embodiment of old-fashioned football values - a rarity in the modern game - honest and uncompromising. 
 
In Carra: My Autobiography, the Liverpool defender takes us deep into the heart of Anfield, into the club's past glories and its uncertain future. In his typically down-to-earth style, Carra reveals what made him discard his blue Evertonian roots to become a fully fledged Red, how he mended his wild ways to become a true professional and a multiple trophy-winner, and the truth about a succession of managers - Evans, Houllier, Benítez - in the hottest seat in football. A Scouser through and through, Carra also has some forthright views on the England team, and tells why he rejected calls to return to the international fold. 
 
Full of sensational stories and controversial opinions, of glory and heartbreak on and off the pitch, Carra: My Autobiography is a football book unlike any other. The authentic voice of Anfield, Carra is one of the Bootroom Boys in true Liverpool tradition, and is as committed on the page as in every game he has played.

Carra: My Autobiography

Deborah Wearing

Clive Wearing has one of the most extreme cases of amnesia ever known. In 1985, a virus completely destroyed a part of his brain essential for memory, leaving him trapped in a limbo of the constant present. Every conscious moment is for him as if he has just come round from a long coma, an endlessly repeating loop of awakening. A brilliant conductor and BBC music producer, Clive was at the height of his success when the illness struck. As damaged as Clive was, the musical part of his brain seemed unaffected, as was his passionate love for Deborah, his wife. 
 
For seven years he was kept in the London hospital where the ambulance first dropped him off, because there was nowhere else for him to go. Deborah desperately searched for treatments and campaigned for better care. After Clive was finally established in a new special hospital, she fled to America to start her life over again. But she found she could never love another the way she loved Clive. Then Clive's memory unaccountably began to improve, ten years after the illness first struck. She returned to England. Today, although Clive still lives in care, and still has the worst case of amnesia in the world, he continues to improve. They renewed their marriage vows in 2002. 
 
This is the story of a life lived outside time, a story that questions and redefines the essence of what it means to be human. It is also the story of a marriage, of a bond that runs deeper than conscious thought.

Forever Today

A Memoir Of Love And Amnesia

Katy Morgan-Davies

'I was the shadow child no one ever saw...' 
 
From the day she was born until she escaped aged 30, Katy Morgan-Davies knew nothing but a life in captivity. Her father was the deluded and cruel leader of a cult based in South London who brainwashed those around him. 
 
Her father's paranoia and his need to completely control others led to Katy being imprisoned indoors and denied any kind of love or friendship. From a young age, Katy's father subjected her to violence and mental abuse. She was not permitted contact with anyone outside the house and on the rare occasions she did have to go out, she was always chaperoned. 
 
Katy never gave up hope of one day breaking free from her father's cruel clutches and finally found her freedom. This is her true story of endurance and survival.

The Girl in the Shadows

My Life in a Cult

Ronald L Mallett

Bruce Henderson

Ron Mallett was just 10 when his father died suddenly. Devastated, he found solace in the science fiction of H.G. Wells, believing that if he could build a time machine, he could go back into the past, warn his father and perhaps save his life. 
Ronald Mallett is now a professor of theoretical physics. Remarkably, this working-class African American boy from the Bronx stuck with his vision, overcoming poverty and prejudice in the pursuit of his obsession. This is the story of his extraordinary journey of self- and scientific discovery. With simple language and elegant metaphor he lays out his theories and presents the reader with what is an actual blue print for a time machine.A dramatic and compelling memoir, it is also a brilliant introduction to a riveting but generally baffling subject, and a truly inspirational account of astonishing achievement.

The Time Traveller

One Man's Mission To Make Time Travel A Reality

Bernard Sumner

Founding member and guitarist of Joy Division and the lead singer of New Order, Bernard Sumner has been famous over the years for his reticence. Until now… An integral part of the Manchester music scene since the late 1970s, his is the definitive version of the events that created two of the most influential bands of all time. 
 
Chapter and Verse includes a vivid and illuminating account of Bernard’s Salford childhood, the early days of Joy Division, the band’s enormous critical and popular success, and the subsequent tragic death of Ian Curtis. Bernard describes the formation of New Order, takes us behind the scenes at the birth of classics such as 'Blue Monday' and gives his first-hand account of the ecstasy and the agony of the Haçienda days. 
 
Sometimes moving, often hilarious and occasionally completely out of control, this is a tale populated by some of the most colourful and creative characters in music history, such as Ian Curtis, Tony Wilson, Rob Gretton and Martin Hannett. Others have told parts of the story, in film and book form. Now, for the first time, Bernard Sumner gives you chapter and verse.

Chapter and Verse - New Order, Joy Division and Me

The Unmumsy Mum

She's back! The Unmumsy Mum has put pen to paper (or fingers to the keyboard!) once more to bring you the next instalment of her life as mum to two young boys, documenting motherhood exactly as she finds it. Her words have made mums, dads and grandparents everywhere laugh and cry in equal measure. 
 
In The Unmumsy Mum Diary Sarah shares with us a year in her life as a mum, wife, blogger and bestselling author. With her trademark candour and wit, she documents the good days and the bad days, the giggles and the tantrums. She'll also share poignant, life-changing moments from her year, such as her older son heading off through the school gates for the first time. 
 
The Unmumsy Mum Diary is as honest as it is hilarious and a peek into Sarah's innermost thoughts will leave you in no doubt that, on those days when you feel you are not quite cut out for the job, you are most definitely not alone.

The Unmumsy Mum Diary

Paddy Doyle

The past they tried to hide. 
 
His mother died from cancer in 1955. His father committed suicide shortly thereafter. Paddy Doyle was sentenced in an Irish district court to be detained in an industrial school for eleven years. He was four years old... 
 
Paddy Doyle's prize-winning bestseller, The God Squad, is both a moving and terrifying testament of the institutionalised Ireland of less than fifty years ago, as seen through the bewildered eyes of a child. During his detention, Paddy was viciously assaulted and sexually abused by his religious custodians, and within three years his experiences began to result in physical manifestations of trauma. He was taken one night to hospital and left there, never to see his custodians again. So began his long round of hospitals, mainly in the company of old and dying men, while doctors tried to diagnose his condition. This period of his life, during which he was a constant witness to death, culminated in brain surgery at the age of ten - by which time he had become permanently disabled. 
 
The God Squad is the remarkable true story of a survivor, told with an extraordinary lack of bitterness for one so shockingly and shamefully treated. In Paddy Doyle's own words: 'It is about a society's abdication of responsibility to a child. The fact that I was that child, and that the book is about my life, is largely irrelevant. The probability is that there were, and still are, thousands of 'me's.'

The God Squad

Christabel Bielenberg

Following the extraordinary success of her wartime memoirs, The Past Is Myself, Christabel Bielenberg received thousands of letters from readers begging her to describe what happened next. The Road Ahead takes up the story at the moment the first volume left off - with the outbreak of peace. 
 
Germany was devastated by war and its aftermath, while Britain seemed grey and exhausted to Christabel. She was soon appointed the Observer's special correspondent in Germany, and, reunited with her husband, Peter (technically an enemy alien), she joined the struggle for reconciliation with, and the rebuilding of, a defeated nation. It was Peter's near-fatal accident and her own illness which decided the young couple to turn their backs on England and Germany and make a new start farming in Ireland. 
 
Life was harsh at first, but predictably Christabel found humour in the accidents of poverty and the many mishaps of country life. The beautiful scenery of the Wicklow Mountains provided a haven for the family and for the hosts of young people from all over the world who joined them each summer. Christabel became involved with the Peace Women of Northern Ireland and learned as much as she could about the adopted country she had grown to love so passionately. Taking her seventieth birthday as a stopping point for a life that even now, some fourteen further years on, is as rich and full as it ever was, she looks back with characteristic modesty and gratitude. Her readers will be enchanted by this second volume of memoirs, as clear-sighted and generous, as honest, funny, touching and brave as The Past Is Myself.

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