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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Rabia Chaudry

AFTER 23 YEARS IN PRISON, ADNAN'S CONVICTION HAS FINALLY BEEN OVERTURNED - BUT HAE MIN LEE'S REAL KILLER IS STILL OUT THERE. 
 
'This book provides a far stronger argument . . . than Syed's defence lawyer did in 1999' INDEPENDENT 
 
'The first letter I received after being arrested in 1999 was from Rabia. Since that time until now, she has believed in my innocence and been committed to my exoneration . . . There is no one better to help tell my story, and no one that I trust more to tell it, than Rabia.' ADNAN SYED 
_________________________________________________ 
THE CASE THAT INSPIRED THE PODCAST PHENOMENON SERIAL, AND THE HBO DOCUSERIES THE CASE AGAINST ADNAN SYED 
 
On February 28, 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus thirty years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. From the moment of his arrest, Syed has consistently maintained his innocence. Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, always believed him and has never given up the hope that he might someday be released. By 2013, however, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, things looked bleak. That's when Rabia contacted Sarah Koenig, a producer at This American Life, in the hopes of finding a journalist who would bring greater attention to Adnan's story and might shed new light on the case. Koenig's investigation turned into Serial, an international phenomenon and Peabody Award-winning podcast. 
 
In 2022, after 23 years in prison, Adnan's conviction was overturned, and he was finally freed. But Hae Min Lee's real killer is still out there. 
 
Adnan's Story re-examines the investigation that led to Adnan Syed's arrest, shares his life in prison, covers new evidence and possibilities that have since come to light, and reviews the recent court successes - including a ruling by a Maryland judge to reopen Syed's case. Woven with personal reflections from Adnan himself, including new never-before-seen letters he penned from prison, the story of his family, community, and public advocate Chaudry, the book gives brilliant insight into the story that captivated the attention of millions as his legal team and investigatory team, along with countless others who have crowd-sourced an investigation like never before, seek to exonerate him and find out the truth of what really happened on that day in 1999. 
 
But this is not only a personal story, but a testament to a thoroughly broken system that convicts tens of thousands of innocent people, and how the power of the media and public can move rigid institutions to bring about justice.

Adnan's Story

The Case That Inspired the Podcast Phenomenon Serial

Samantha Phillips

Charlotte Christie is under no illusion about her job: at Fitzgerald Denton greed is good and you watch your back. But as she learns to handle the jokes and the backstabbing and prove her worth as a broker. Charlie unearths a scam. Almost untraceable, it could strike a deathblow to Lloyd's of London and bring the government to its knees. By avoiding Charlie, her opponents have made their single mistake. She has one chance to strike back.

Blonde Ambition

Richard Bacon

Have you ever been stitched up to the national press by your best mate? 
 
Or unintentionally upset a band with a slip of the tongue on a live TV show? 
 
Or ruined a dinner party by transforming everything alcoholic into water? 
 
Hello. I’m Richard Bacon and this is A Series of Unrelated Events. All of the stories are true. All of them happened to me. I’ve made the mistakes so you don’t have to (you’re welcome). 
 
So now, if you should ever find yourself sobbing on top of a box of gherkins in the stockroom of a Mansfield McDonald’s… having a Twitter conversation with your mum while she’s pretending to be an illiterate dog… performing stand-up to an audience who are funnier than you are… or just letting down all of the children of Great Britain… 
 
…you’ll know exactly what to do.

A Series of Unrelated Events

Ryan Mathews

Watts Wacker

In The Deviant's Advantage, Ryan Mathews and Watts Wacker demonstrate how ideas create increasingly profitable markets as they move from The Fringe, to the Edge, to the Realm of the Cool, to the Next Big Thing, to Social Convention. The book tracks the products and people haunting the fringes of sex, science, art, language, faith, war and marketing, branding and macro-economics. Tomorrow's commercial success is an obsession in the mind of today's deviant. Las Vegas is a perfect example: it morphed from a bus stop in the desert to a neon 'Sin City' and finally into a family vacation destination. In 1945 a handsome, murderous sociopath called Benny 'Bugsy' Siegel decided to build a luxury gambling oasis in the desert. At the time, Las Vegas was a crossroads in the middle of the desert. Siegel understood the emerging desire for escape in the American psyche - and out of nothing, created what became an enormous gambling haven. Las Vegas has now transformed itself into a gigantic family-oriented theme park, albeit one with slots and roulette wheels. It's become a holiday destination for the entire family, not just a place that fathers sneak off to. Las Vegas moved from the Fringe (Bugsy's original vision), to the Edge (the first hotel), to the Realm of the Cool (where everyone wanted to go), to the Next Big Thing (where everyone went), to Social Convention.

The Deviant's Advantage

How Fringe Ideas Create Mass Markets

James Young

A marvellously funny and sharply observed account of a journey to Russia by one of Britain's most talented young writers. Moscow - a labyrinth where the humans try to keep one step ahead of the roaches. Everyone on the move, some in search of the quick buck, and others just trying to survive. All dazzled by the neon glare of the western dream. The soviet monolith has broken down in tribalism, tribes who go to war not just on the streets but in overheated rooms, with drugs, vodka and Cindy Crawford carrier bags. James Young gives an unparalleled account of today's Moscow from the bottom side up. He takes us on a odyssey through this strange no man's land where East meets West, where the old certainties have gone, the KGB men wear Italian suits, the Mafia tycoonskis style themselves on the Godfather flicks and the rest are queuing to change dollars.

Moscow Mule

Lynda King Taylor

Lynda King Taylor interviews 30 of the UK's top businesspeople, including some of Britain's toughest bosses, and talks to them about how they survived the recession and plan for continued success. As well as the most traditional captains of industry she meets trendsetters - the 'gold-collar' workers constituting the new generation of bright, young and highly motivated managers, and top figures from sport (Graham Gooch, Will Carling), the arts (Kenneth Branagh), finance, leisure, media, charities etc - plus outstandingly successful figures from the public sector.

Corporate Excellence In The Year 2000

:A Framework for Success

Colin Chapman

Selling the Family Silver is, moreover, the controversial 'warts and all' story of Britain's privatization programme, past and future. The chairmen, the cheats, the fanfares and the flops - from all sides of the political, social and economic coin, the author examines the contentious demise of nationalization and the real effectiveness of the private giants that have replaced it, finally posing the fundamental question: Has privatization worked?

Selling The Family Silver

Has Privatization Worked?

Paul Donovan

All Our Todays is the first book about the BBC's most influential news and current affairs programme, published to celebrate Today's 40th anniversary in October 1997. Paul Donovan tells the programme's story from the early days of Jack de Manio, through the great partnership of Brian Redhead and John Timpson, to the current triumvirate of Jamies Naughtie, John Humphrys and Sue MacGregor. He analyses the reasons for the programme's success, examines its ofter fiery relationship with prominent politicians, and takes the reader behind the scenes in the Today studio. Full of funny and touching anecdotes, this book will be essential reading for Today's five million listeners.

All Our Todays

Elizabeth Handy

Charles Handy

The world needs new ideas, now products, new kinds of associations and institutions, new initiatives, new art and new designs. But these new things seldom come from established organisations. They come from individuals - the New Alchemists. What drives people to create something from nothing? Is it ambition, the need for self-fulfilment? Is it to do with money, power, or even genes? Is there a mood of the time that encourages people? Can anyone do it? Charles Handy has talked to a range of extraordinary characters - from Trevor Baylis and Richard Branson to Jane Tewson and Terence Conran. And Elizabeth Handy has used her new style of composite portraits to highlight aspects of all the different alchemists in their particular environments. The New Alchemists is a fascinating and inspirational investigation into the creative and entrepreneurial process.

The New Alchemists

Catherine Laylle

In 1984, Catherine Laylle, a Frenchwomen living in London, met and married a German medical student, Dieter. The couple had two sons, Alexander and Constantin. When, however, at Dieter's insistence, they moved back to his home town in Germany, the marriage began to fall apart. Dieter refused to get a job, Catherine found living with his family oppressive and eventually, she returned to London with the children. The boys spent term time with their mother, holidays with their father - until the summer of 1994, when Dieter decided that his sons should be raised as Germans and, with the support of the local judge, defied the London court ruling that gave Catherine custody. Catherine went to the courts in London, Germany and the Hague - but it seemed that no court outside the jurisdiction of Lower Saxony would overrule the decision. Today, Alexander is eleven and Constantin is nine. Catherine has barely seen them in the two years since Dieter kidnapped them - and then only under the supervision of one of his friends. This is the harrowing story of a mother's attempts to regain her children, and of her desperate struggle against a tyrannical family and the blind injustice of the courts in Europe.

Two Children Behind A Wall

Nicholas Coleridge

Paper Tigers is a riveting, authoritative and in-depth study of newspaper barons of the world – men and women who wield immense power, and whose ever-changing media empires make compelling case studies of business success and failure. 
 
From Rupert Murdoch to Robert Maxwell, Conrad Black to Lord Rothermere, Katharine Graham to Punch Sulzberger, Coleridge interviewed them all. The results confirm his status as a devastatingly astute observer of our times, one with few equals today.

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