Alison Entrekin

Alison Goldsworthy has been a political adviser and campaigner for more than twenty years. A former Deputy Chair of the Liberal Democrats, she led the team that built the fastest-growing campaigning organisation in the UK. In 2017 she was a Sloan Fellow at Stanford, co-creating its first depolarisation course. A board member of the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust, Alison has won numerous awards for her work. She has written for the Telegraph, Independent, New Statesman, The Times and Financial Times.

Alison Goldsworthy

Alison Goodman lives in bayside Melbourne, Australia with her husband and their indomitable Jack Russell Terrier. Alison was a D.J. O'Hearn Memorial Fellow at Melbourne University, holds a Masters degree, and has taught creative writing at postgraduate level. Her debut novel was the award-winning futuristic thriller, Singing the Dogstar Blues, and her second, the acclaimed adult crime thriller, Killing the Rabbit. She is currently writing full-time and mentoring others through the wild and wonderful process of writing a novel.

Alison Goodman

Alison Gopnik is a professor of psychology and an affiliate professor of philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley. She is an internationally recognised leader in the study of children's learning and development. She writes the Mind and Matter column for the Wall Street Journal and is the author of The Philosophical Baby and co-author of The Scientist in the Crib. She has three sons and lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, Alvy Ray Smith.

Alison Gopnik

Alison Grade is a career freelancer, serial entrepreneur and founder of the company Mission Accomplished, a consultancy that offers training, mentoring and strategic advice to start - ups and established SMEs principally in the creative industries. She is a NESTA-accredited creative enterprise trainer and has delivered international programmes in association with the British Council. She is the CEO of Screen Central which represents the professional screen community in the West Midlands where she lives.

Alison Grade

Adored for her quick wit, big heart and infamous laugh, Alison is one of the UK’s most popular TV presenters, famed for her hilarious celebrity interviews! The Queen of our hearts presents ITV's 'This Morning' alongside Dermot O’Leary, gearing viewers up for the weekend. 
 
Alison also co-hosts the ultimate televised baking battle, ‘The Great British Bake Off’ and ‘The Great Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off’ for C4, receiving a nomination for the ‘Entertainment Performance’ category in the 2024 RTS Programme Awards with Noel Fielding. 
 
As a firm family favourite into the evening TV schedule, Alison is a Team Captain on Sky TV’s ‘Rob Beckett’s Smart TV’ and continues the late, great Paul O’Grady’s legacy hosting ‘For the Love of Dogs’ for Battersea Dogs Home and ITV.

Alison Hammond

Alison Jameson grew up on a farm in the Irish midlands, a secluded and beautiful place that continues to inspire her work. She is the bestselling author of This Man and Me, which was nominated for the IMPAC Literary Award, and Under My Skin. Her third novel, Little Beauty, was published by Doubleday Ireland in 2013. An English and History graduate of University College Dublin, she worked in advertising for many years before becoming an author. Home is Dublin where she lives with her husband and son.

Alison Jameson

Alison Jefferies, MEd, has worked extensively as an educator. She is a former president of the MD Anderson Cancer Center Faculty and Family Organization and works closely with Lorenzo Cohen to foster health and wellness in individuals and their communities.

Alison Jefferies

Alison Joseph

Alison Kennedy

Alison Leonard

Alison Light

Alison Lurie published ten novels, among them Foreign Affairs (which won the Pulitzer Prize), The Truth About Lorin Jones (winner of the Prix Femina étranger), and The Last Resort. She was also the author of many works of non-fiction, including The Language of Clothes, Don't Tell the Grownups, Familiar Spirits, and two collections of essays and reviews, Reading for Fun and Words and Worlds. She taught literature, folklore and creative writing at Cornell University for many years and was the Whiton Professor of American Literature emerita. She lived in upstate New York but also spent much time in Key West, Florida and in London, all of which provided settings for her fiction. She married the writer Edward Hower, and had three sons and three grandchildren. Alison Lurie died in 2020.

Alison Lurie

Alison MacLeod was raised in Canada and has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of three novels, The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, and of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Unexploded was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013. Alison MacLeod is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Chichester University and lives in Brighton.

Alison MacLeod

Alison Maloney has been writing the Strictly Come Dancing annuals for nearly a decade. A multi-faceted and versatile writer, she has also written several other books, including The Mums' Book, Woman's Hour: Words from Wise, Witty and Wonderful Women and The World of Mr Selfridge.

Alison Maloney

Alison Mercer was born in Reading and studied English at University College, Oxford. She lives in Oxfordshire with her husband and two children. She is the author of Stop the Clock and After I Left You. 
 
You can get in touch with Alison via her blog at http://alisonmercerwriter.com, on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AlisonMercerwriter, or talk to her on Twitter: @AlisonLMercer.

Alison Mercer

Alison Miller

Alison Perry is a journalist and mum of twins (and an older daughter who is 9). She is an award winning blogger with her site Not Another Mummy Blog (notanothermummyblog.com) and also hosts the Not Another Mummy Podcast where she has chatted to guests such as Philippa Perry and Emma Bunton. She lives in London and you can find her on Instagram @iamalisonperry

Alison Perry

Alison Plowden

Alison Prince

Alison Roman is the host of the Home Movies series on YouTube and author of the incredibly popular food newsletter, appropriately titled A Newsletter. Prior to that, she was a columnist for the New York Times Food section and a senior food editor at Bon Appétit. The author of Dining In, Nothing Fancy and Sweet Enough, Alison has worked professionally in kitchens such as New York's Momofuku Milk Bar and San Francisco's Quince. Originally from Los Angeles, she now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their son. She has recently opened her pantry store in Upstate New York called First Bloom. A long-time dream fully realised: a grocery store of her own and a physical manifestation of all her favourite pantry items, curated with love and care. Her platform continues to grow – since her first book, Dining In, her Instagram following has jumped from 66k to 778k.

Alison Roman

Alison Rumfitt is a writer and cultural critic. Her two horror novels Tell Me I'm Worthless and Brainwyrms push the boundaries of both taste and form to the shock of readers everywhere. She has written for Little White Lies and Dazed, and interviewed new Doctor Ncuti Gatwa for Rolling Stone. She's considered herself a fan of Doctor Who ever since her father played her the theme song to scare her when she was about five years old.

Alison Rumfitt

Alison Scott-Wright is a baby-, toddler- and child-sleep expert who also specializes in helping parents with the management of infant and toddler acid reflux and associated dietary intolerances. For over twenty-five years she has worked 'hands-on' with families, sharing her knowledge and expertise with her clients and, most importantly, bringing sleep to thousands of homes. Fifteen years ago, one client named her the Magic Sleep Fairy and the name stuck - in fact, it became the trademarked name of her ever-expanding consultancy business, through which Alison continues to provide practical help, invaluable advice and much-needed support to parents around the world. She is a mother and a grandmother - known by her grandchildren as Mops - and she divides her time between her homes in Turkey and on the south coast of Dorset.

Alison Scott-Wright

Alison Sherlock

Alison Tyler

Alison Uttley

Alison Weir is one of Britain’s top-selling historians. She is the author of numerous works of history and historical fiction, specialising in the medieval and Tudor periods. Her bestselling history books include The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Elizabeth of York and The Lost Tudor Princess. Her novels include Innocent Traitor, Katherine of Aragon: The True Queen and Anne Boleyn: A King's Obsession. She is an Honorary Life Patron of Historic Royal Palaces and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She lives and works in Surrey.

Alison Weir

Alison Wolf

Alison Wood Brooks is the O’Brien Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Her oversubscribed course ‘TALK: How to Talk Gooder in Business and Life’ helps MBA students hone their conversational skills. Her research has featured in two of the twenty most popular TED Talks of all time as well as in Pixar’s film Inside Out 2. She was named an American Psychological Society Rising Star in 2017 and one of the ‘Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professors’ by Poets &amp; Quants

Alison Wood Brooks

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Norman Wisdom

Norman Wisdom's early years could easily have come straight from the pages of a Dickens novel. Left by their frightened mother, ill-treated by a brutal father, Norman and his brother were forced to fend for themselves, sleeping rough in London and stealing food to survive. This is a rags to riches tale of the man Charlie Chaplin said would take his mantle and who went on to make millions laugh around the world for over five decades. Here are the hardships, tragedies and triumphs that gave him his inspiration. From the days working the seasons at Scarborough, to the unforgettable and endearing character Norman Pitkin - the little man in a tight fitting suit, read of his rapid climb up the showbiz ladder.

My Turn

An Autobiography

Lin Cook

An intimate and entertaining portrait of one of comedy's greatest geniuses by those who knew Peter Cook best and can write abut his rare talent. The contributors include Clive Anderson, Alan Bennett, John Cleese, Stephen Fry, William Goldman, Barry Humphries, Eric Idle, Dudley Moore and Michael Palin.

Something Like Fire

Peter Cook

William Cook

For his many friends and fans, Peter Cook was quite simply the funniest man they'd ever encountered. And nearly eight years since his death, his status as one of Britain's greatest comedians shows no sign of shrinking. Despite his reputation for idleness, Peter Cook was a great comedy writer, who created countless outrageous sketches and articles and was famed for his prolific role in the satire boom of the 1960s. The very best, the most famous and some of the most unusual of his comic masterpieces are collected here. Some of these pieces have never been published before, others are out of print, a few only survive in print, and many have only ever been seen or heard - never read. This collection ranges from Cook's first writing, at school and university, via Beyond The Fringe, with Dudley Moore, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller, his dualogues with Moore as Pete &amp; Dud and Derek &amp; Clive, and their brilliant TV series, Not Only But Also, to transcripts of his late, great TV appearances, and a selection of his journalism for the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard and Private Eye.

Tragically I Was an Only Twin

The Comedy of Peter Cook

Kristina Downing-Orr

This is the book for anyone who: --Forever finds themselves expecting the worst - both from themselves and others--Finds the very thought of public speaking, travelling on the tube or confronting a difficult situation sends them into a blind panic--Despite real achievement still finds themselves hankering after that ever elusive something that will make them truly happyWearing the Ruby Slippers is the first guide to adopt the revolutionary principles of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy - the leading therapy in the treatment of unhappiness and anxiety disorders. Clinical psychologist Dr Kristina Downing-Orr shows how, by using the exercises and tasks included, we can all learn to respond positively and confidently to even the most difficult situations -  and all in just 9 weeks. Drawing on the well-loved characters of  The Wizard of Oz,  this book will show how to replace old negative thought patterns with positive ones. Just as the  cowardly lion would never have believed in his courage had he not been given his medal for bravery and while the scarecrow only realised his intelligence when he was awarded a diploma, Kristina Downing-Orr shows how, once given the right tools, we are all capable of true happiness - it's simply a matter of getting the habit.

Wearing The Ruby Slippers

9 Steps to Happiness

Jonny Bealby

While in Islamabad investigating the possibilities of setting up an adventure travel company, Jonny Bealby met the woman of his dreams. Not only that, but Rachel was the person with whom he could live out his dream -- to travel the Old Silk Road on horseback. On his return to Pakistan that Christmas, however, Jonny was faced with those dreadful words: 'I've met somebody else...' 
 
With his heart fixed on this journey and the possibility of a TV deal, Jonny set out to find a Quixotic stranger as his companion. In no time he found Sarah -- attractive, warm and funny -- the perfect candidate for a possible romance. Unfortunately, though, during their search for the Heavenly Horses that would carry them across the Mountains of Heaven, their fledgling friendship was beset by problems of communication, inexperience and the difficulty of adapting to radically different cultures and surroundings. 
 
A breathtaking travelogue, and an intriguing and heart-warming illustration of human relationships as they are tested to their limits.

Silk Dreams, Troubled Road

Peter Stanford

Talk of the Devil has become distinctly unfashionable.  Our sceptical age has pensioned off Satan, for centuries the face and name put to the abstract reality of evil.  However, the creation of Popes, archbishops and priests will not so easily accept his fate, and Satan continues to serve as a metaphor for evil throughout society.  His scaly black skin, horns, cloven hoof and red eyes have become embedded in popular psyche. In The Devil: A Biography, Peter Stanford traces the development of the character and role of Satan through the ages and examines how we tackle evil today.

The Devil

A Biography

Brian Cruver

Brian Cruver was a first-hand witness to the disturbing, surreal and hilarious moments of American business giant Enron's long dance with death. When he first entered Enron's office complex, 'the Death Star', he was the epitome of the classic Enron employee: young, brash, obscenely overpaid and sporting a brand-new MBA. From his first day, however, when he was told that some colleagues hadn't really wanted to see him hired, he found himself in the middle of a venal greed machine whose story unfolded with Kafka-esque absurdity and frustration. The Anatomy of Greed examines the accounting tricks, the insider stock trading - and in a special section, how the grossly lucrative fraudulent partnerships were structured and funded - as well as everyday life as an Enronian. Working at Enron meant cocky wheeling and dealing, parties on the trade floor, casual conversations at the shredder and the insidious group think that made Enron employees unquestioningly accept the propaganda spoon-fed to them by Enron bosses Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. A portrait of the author as a young Enronian, The Anatomy of Greed reveals the sting of reality, humility and pain felt by a man whose idols turned out to be fools and scoundrels and who learned that there is more to life than stock options.

Enron

The Anatomy of Greed The Unshredded Truth from an Enron Insider

Clara Olink Kelly

"Why didn't you try to escape?" That was all she said. I had imagined my grandmother telling us how lovely it was to see us at last. I saw again in my mind's eye the barbed wire fences and the soldiers with the glistening bayonets, and felt once more that excruciating fear in the pit of my stomach. Try to escape? Lots of people had tried to escape. 
 
When the Japanese invaded the beautiful Indonesian island of Java during the Second World War Clara Kelly was four years old. Her family was separated, her father sent to work on the Burma railway, and she together with her mother and her two brothers, one a six-week-old baby, was sent to a 'women's camp'. They were interned there until the end of the war. Clara's descriptions of the appalling deprivations and impersonal brutality of the camp, easily recognisable as the same techniques used in the infamously cruel Japanes prisoner of war camps - standing in the baking heat for hours of 'Tenko' role-call, living on one cup of rice a day - are countered by the courage and resilience shown by all the internees, most poignantly her own mother.

The Flamboya Tree

Memories of a Family's War Time Courage

Julianna Baggott

The best day of Pixie's life was the day she won the Miss New Jersey beauty pageant. Her dreams stretched in front of her: a Miss America could go anywhere, be anyone. Fame and fortune were at her fingertips - until she fell pregnant. Now, the mother of a teenager, on her second marriage, she is beset by memories of her glittering career. 
 
Ezra, her sixteen-year-old son, notices none of this. It's the start of the long summer holiday and his main preoccupation is the girl next door and his quest to lose his virginity. Engaging and honest, he tells his own story of what it means to be the child of a woman whose American dream went nowhere. 
 
Soulful and mordantly funny in the vein of American Beauty, Pixie and Ezra unfold a story of the American family that is at once touching and fiercely honest.

The Miss America Family

Ruth Reichl

In this delightful sequel to her bestseller Tender at the Bone, the beloved food writer Ruth Reichl returns with more tales full of love, life, humour and marvellous meals. Ruth Reichl's pursuit of good food and good company leads her to New York and China, France and Los Angeles.  She cooks and dines with world-famous chefs and the three star aristocracy of French cuisine, and her accounts of these meetings range from the madcap to the sublime.  Reichl lovingly recreates all her marvellous meals in such succulent detail that readers will yearn from truffles in Provence and shrimp in Beijing. Throughout it all, Reichl is unafraid, even eager, to poke holes in the pretensions of food critics, making each and every course a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike.  She shares some of her first recipes so readers can make the Dry-Fried Shrimp she first tasted in China, or the Dacquoise served at the end of a magical visit to a Paris bistro.  Reichl also shares the intimacies of her personal life in a style so honest and warm that readers will feel they are enjoying a cosy dining-table conversation with a friend. In Comfort Me With Apples, Reichl again demonstrates her inimitable ability to combine food writing, humour and memoir into an art form.

Comfort Me With Apples

Love, Adventure and a Passion for Cooking

John Wilsey

'A remarkable book - a worthy tribute both to the man John Wilsey calls "an unusual hero" and to the ethos of the British Army in which he lived and died.' John Keegan in his ForewordThis is the biography of the Falklands War hero whose death in the battle for Darwin and Goose Green was one of the turning points in the whole campaign. It is written with the consent of H Jones's widow, Sara, and is published to coincide with the twentieth anniversary of his death at the climax of the Falklands War.  It is the story of an emblematic but complex war hero whose family history was unusual, whose army life included exposure to most of the military problems which Britain has encountered since the Second World War  (including security in Northern Ireland, where H Jones was responsible for the search for Robert Nairac), and whose dramatic death and subsequent posthumous VC symbolised an extraordinary campaign which was truly the end of an era.

H Jones VC

The Life & Death of an Unusual Hero

David Hughes

In one spring month of 1856 Archibald Campbell Tait (later to be Archbishop of Canterbury) and his wife Catharine suffered the loss of five daughters, aged between two and ten, in an epidemic of scarlet fever. In his diary Tait refers to these beloved children as 'the lent jewels'. The couple bore their bereavement with a fortitude that could be sustained only by faith. Without similar convictions, but in the hope of laying bare a comparable belief for himself, David Hughes explores the themes of love and loss, intermingling his own experience, both as child and father, with the story of another of Tait's contemporaries, someone with a different but nonetheless powerful focus on life, a man known only as 'Walter', author of the erotic memoir My Secret Life. At the same time Catharine was drowning her grief in words by writing a heartbreaking account of her children's deaths. All these presences, and more modern ones, haunt the chapters of this many-layered documentary. With a dexterity of style and abundance of sympathy that have made him so appealing a writer, Hughes now delves into two centuries of underlying attitudes to sex, dreams and mortality, in an effort to reconcile them in his own daily life. The result of his sometimes sad but always eager search is splendidly uplifting.

The Lent Jewels

Brian Bates

Alyce Faye Cleese

Guilt. Affection. Embarrassment. Friendship. Anger. Love -- who can bring out all these feelings, and often in the same day? Your mother. No matter how mature or successful we are in our adult lives, with one word our mothers can somehow send us scurrying back to childhood. Can mothers and adult children ever learn to set aside their earlier relationship and talk to each other as adults? In this warm, funny book, dozens of revealing stories from well known personalities from politics and show business show that it is possible to improve your relationship with your mother- or at the very least begin to understand it. Alyce Faye Cleese and Brian Bates include a practical ten-step plan and questionnaire to help you get back on track with your mother. You will learn to address specific issues and develop valuable insights that will help you start thinking about your mother in a profoundly new way.

How To Manage Your Mother

Carl Zimmer

Carl Zimmer tells the story of the theory of evolution from Darwin's journey on the Beagle to the controversies of modern evolutionary theory, the understanding of the lethal resurgence of antibiotic resistant diseases and the wave of species extinctions that face us today. The result is a wonderfully accessible account of a remarkable scientific journey, from the emergence to the triumph of an idea.

Evolution

The Triumph of an Idea

Gordon G. Chang

Fully revised and updated edition covering China's new membership of the WTO and with a new introduction.  'Damning data and persuasive arguments that should set some Communist knees a-knocking.' Kirkus Reviews'A compelling account of the rot in China's institutions and the forces at work to end the Communist Party's monopoly on power.' James A. Dorn, Cato Institute, Washington D. C., Co-Editor of China's future: Constructive Partner or Emerging Threat?  'Quite simply the best book I know about China's future.  Gordon Chang writes marvellously and knows China well.  I hope everyone concerned with that country will pay careful consideration to what he sees ahead.' Arthur Waldron, Director of Asian Studies, American Enterprise Institute; Lauder Professor of International Relations, University of Pennsylvania.'A tour de force not to be missed.' Willy Wo-Lap, Senior China Analyst at CNN's Hong Kong office and author of The Era of Jiang Zemin.'When he warns that China's two centuries of troubles are still not over, we had better take notice.' Andrew J. Nathan, Professor of Political Science, Columbia University; Co-Editor, The Tiananmen Papers.

The Coming Collapse Of China

Gene Simmons

KISS has released thirty-seven records and sold 80 million albums worldwide. Gene Simmons has also acted in films and on television, has written and produced albums for other recording artists, has managed the recording career of, among others, Liza Minelli, and was founder and president of his own recording label, Simmons Records/RCA. He also launched his film and TV producing career with Detroit Rock City for New Line Cinema. Gene Simmons lives in Beverley Hills, California, and was recently the rock star teacher on Channel 4's Rock School. 
 
Here for the first time Gene Simmons, the notorious mainman of the explosive rock and roll group KISS, tells his story. Delivered in Gene's own honest, outrageous and uncensored voice, he tells of his early beginnings in Israel, of his arrival in New York at the age of eight, his first taste of 1950s pop culture and his developing thirst for fame, fun and girls. Undoubtedly one of the most infamous rock and roll legends alive, Gene tells the never before revealed story of KISS's reign as the biggest and most popular band in the world. Finally, the real story of the man behind the make-up.

Kiss and Make-Up

Herbert Asbury

The Gangs of New York is a tour through a now unrecognisable city of abysmal poverty and habitual violence centred around the infamous slum of Five Points, with its rival Irish and American gangs. Cobbled from legend, memory, police records, the self-aggrandizements of aging crooks, popular journalism, and solid historical research, this is a powerful account of New York City's tumultuos past. Asbury presents the definitive work on this subject, an illumination of the gangs of old New York that ultimately gave rise to the modern Mafia and its depiction in cult films like The Godfather.

The Gangs Of New York

Tom Sharpe

When Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park kills her Zulu cook in a sensational crime passionel, the gallant members of the South African police force are soon on the scene: Kommandant van Heerden, whose secret longing for the heart of an English gentleman leads to the most memorable transplant operation yet recorded; Luitenant Verkramp of the Security Branch, ever active in the pursuit of Communist cells; Konstabel Els, with his propensity for shooting first and not thinking later - and also for forcing himself upon African women in a manner legally reserved for male members of their own race. 
 
In the course of the strange events which follow, we encounter some very esoteric perversions when the Kommandant is held captive in Miss Hazelstone's remarkable rubber room; and some even more amazing perversions of justice when Miss Hazelstone's brother, the Bishop of Barotseland, is sentenced to be hanged on the ancient gallows in the local prison. 
 
Not a 'political' novel in any previously imagined sense, Riotous Assembly provided a completely fresh approach to the South African scene - an approach startling in its deadpan savagery and yet also outrageously funny.

Riotous Assembly

Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business. 
 
One day, a manuscript for a book called Pause O Men for the Virgin arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has carte blanche on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year old woman and a 17-year old youth. 
 
The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of Pause from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.

The Great Pursuit

When Lockhart Flawse is catapulted out of his upper-class and rapunzel-esque life with the curmudgeonly Flawse Senior, he must enter the world of suburbia, and marriage. Rendered an absolute twit in modern society by his medieval upbringing, Lockhart must resort to drastic tactics in his attempt to return to Flawse House. Faced with the horrors of suburbia, he must either terrorise, blackmail and potentially kill an entire street of his tenants, or attempt to find his unknown and elusive father in order to inherit the estate. 
 
However, with the belief that he was dropped into his mother's arms by a stork, killing a street of people may be the wiser option for the socially inept young man. He is also under mounting pressure, as it may all be in vain if his gold-digging mother-in-law has her way. Now the wife of Flawse Senior, she has decided that if Lockhart's wealthy grandfather can't have the decency to die on his own, she will take matters into her own hands.

The Throwback

Outrageous, darkly comic, and packed with calamity on top of calamity, Henry Wilt's misadventures will take you to places you never realised you wanted to visit.

Henry Wilt, tied to a daft job and a domineering wife, has just been passed over for promotion yet again. Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers and the like. And things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless and unpredictable fits of enthusiasm - for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. 
 
But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he realises he can do something about his wife - and as each day passes, his fantasies grow more murderous and more real.

Wilt

(Wilt Series 1)

Betty Boothroyd

The enormous respect and affection of the British public for Betty Boothroyd has its roots in a strong belief in what she stands for: fair play, an unshakeable sense of honour and a passionate belief in the sovereignty of Parliament. Her convictions, she has said, are set in 'Yorkshire granite'. Born into a working class family in Dewsbury in 1929, there was little money, but Betty grew up in a home that radiated love and warmth. Betty was popular and a talented dancer who eventually went on to become one of the celebrated Tiller Girls - the full story of which she tells here for the first time. But by the age of twenty-five, Betty's dreams of taking the West End by storm had crashed - and her father's ambition of seeing her settled with a nice safe job had been abandoned. Undaunted, she won a national speaking award, stood for election to the local council and became a full-time worker for the Labour Party. Nothing would ever part Betty Boothroyd from politics again. In 1953 Betty began work at the House of Commons for Barbara Castle and Geoffrey de Freitas. 
 
She speaks candidly about the devastation of losing two by-elections and the time she spent in America campaigning for JFK. Back in Britain, Betty landed a top job with millionaire Labour Minister Lord Harry Walston and the Yorkshire girl became part of the inner circle of the socialist elite, which included Hugh Gaitskell and Roy Jenkins. She describes the elation she felt on becoming an MP at last in 1973, the huge debt she owes her mother for her support, and the full story behind her role in the struggle to save the Labour Party from the hard left. Betty Boothroyd's long political career reached its apogee in 1992 when she was appointed the first woman Speaker of the House of Commons with overwhelming support from both sides of the House. Her term of office coincided with John Major's attempts to defend his slim majority. Detailing many of the true stories behind the headlines, she writes of the sleaze scandals that beset the Major government, her feelings when Labour won their landslide election in 1997 and her strongly held views on the role of Parliament. 
 
Finally, she tells why she decided to retire, her plans for the future and - in retrospect - what she feels about her decision to put public service above marriage.

Betty Boothroyd Autobiography

The British Association For The Advancement Of Science

In September 2001 the British Association for the Advancement of Science (the BA) embarked on the world's largest, and most unusual, scientific experiment. The aim of the project was to find the world's funniest joke, and answer important questions about the psychology of humour. For example, Do men and women find the same jokes funny? Does our sense of humour change as we get older? What is the best time of day to tell a joke? Do different nations laugh at the same jokes? The experiment was called LaughLab and was carried out as part of Science Year in the UK. An Internet site was established containing two sections: in the first, people submitted their favourite jokes; in the second they answered a few simple questions about themselves - male or female, age, nationality, etc - and then rated how funny they found a random selection of jokes. The experiment captured the imagination of individuals throughout the world. 40,000 jokes were received and evaluated by 350,000 people. At the end of the project the information was carefully examined and discoveries made about the jokes that made men giggle and women groan, those that tickled kids but not adults, and the jokes that were the most popular in different countries. Along the way the 'winning' jokes in different categories were uncovered, including the best 'doctor' jokes

Laughlab

The Scientific Quest for the World's Funniest Joke

Stella Rimington

'The story of MI5's transformation - is fascinating. So, too is Rimington's account of her rise in what was very definitely a man's world.' Guardian 
____________________________ 
 
The eye-opening memoir from the first female Director-General of MI5 
 
Stella Rimington worked for MI5 between 1969 and 1996, one of the most turbulent and dramatic periods in global history. Working in all the main fields of the Service's responsibilities - counter-subversion, counter-espionage and counter-terrorism - she became successively Director of all three branches, and finally Director-General of MI5 in 1992. 
 
She was the first woman to hold the post and the first Director-General whose name was publicly announced on appointment. In Open Secret, she continues her work of opening up elements of the work of our security services to public scrutiny, revealing the surprising culture of MI5 and shedding light on some of the most fascinating events in 20th century history from the ultimate insider viewpoint. 
____________________________ 
 
Stella Rimington is also the author of the novels At Risk and Secret Asset.

Open Secret

The Autobiography of the Former Director-General of MI5

Trevor Norton

This is the funny and touching story of a menagerie of eccentric and talented ecologists who, mainly as a hobby, spent forty summers at Lough Ine, a stunning marine lough in a corner of Ireland, where myths seep from the ground like will o' the wisps and, in one of the most unlikely projects in the history of science, were responsible for the reinvention of marine biology. Among the stars of the book are the marine creatures that occupy the lake: sea urchins that won't dine unless they wear a hat, otters that steal experiments, and worms that will only mate by order of the moon. The creatures' eccentric behaviour is matched only by that of the ecologists themselves, whose antics and interactions with their Irish neighbours are all lovingly described with Norton's keen eye for both the wonderful and the absurd. But for all its humour, the book is also a moving account of two ecologists who collaborated for forty years until their friendship came to a tragic end. The book brings together all the rich flavours of Ireland, the wonders of natural history and the magic of being a marine biologist just for the fun of it.

Reflections On A Summer Sea

Nick Cook

In 1966 a group of highly respected aerospace engineers revealed that US scientists were perfecting ways to control gravity. They predicted a breakthrough would come by the end of the decade, ushering in an era of limitless, clean propulsion for a new breed of fuelless transport systems - and weapons beyond our imagination. Of course it never happened. Or did it? Forty years later a chance encounter with one of the engineers who made that prediction forces a highly sceptical aerospace and defence journalist, Nick Cook, to consider the possibility that America did indeed crack the gravity code - and has covered up ever since. His investigations moved from the corridors of NASA to the dark heartland of America's classified weapons establishment, where it  became clear that half a century ago, in the dying days of the Third Reich, Nazi scientists were racing to perfect a Pandora's Box of high technology that would deliver Germany from defeat.  History says that they failed.  But the trail that takes Cook deep into the once-impenetrable empire of SS General Hans Kammler - the man charged by Adolf Hitler with perfecting German secret weapons technology - says otherwise. In his pursuit of the true facts behind Kammler, Cook finally establishes the truth: America is determined to hang onto its secrets, but the stakes are enormous and others are now in the race to acquire a suppressed technology.

Hunt For Zero Point

Suzanne Finstad

Born Natasha Zakharenko, Natalie Wood continues to haunt us 20 years after her tragic and mysterious death.  Her dark hypnotic beauty and passionate performances made her a movie star legend, appearing in over fifty films including West Side Story  and Rebel Without a Cause for which she was Oscar nominated. The story of her life is tinged with tragedy and drama. Pushed by her domineering, frustrated mother - an alcoholic determined to make her child a star at whatever cost,  Natalie grew up fast -  lonely and a misfit, uncertain of her identity.  At fifteen she had embarked on an affair with a director 30 years her senior, she was brutally raped by a leading Hollywood star when she was sixteen -an attack which her mother forbade her to report.  Her leading men frequently became her lovers including Elvis Presley, James Dean , Warren Beatty and the real love of her life, Robert Wagner whom she eventually married twice. Her fear of being alone and the years of exploitation and abuse led to an addiction to sleeping pills and several suicide attempts and for the first time, this book looks at evidence, yet to be published, surrounding her premature and controversial death - drowning at the age of 43. Suzanne Finstad has spent 3 years researching this, the first substantive biography of Natalie Wood, conducting over 400 interviews with friends, family, lovers, co-stars and the police officials who investigated her death.

Natasha

The Biography of Natalie Wood

Noreena Hertz

The way we are governed is changing; so is our economy. Government has less and less power to influence how we live our lives, while the private sector has more power than ever to control what we do and what we think. Yet the business pages of the newspapers still come as a supplement, while the activities of governments dominate the front pages and the headlines. To understand the new world in which we are living, we need to learn to challenge long-held assumptions about the nature of power in society; The Silent Takeover is an essential guide to that new understanding as we progress through the 21st century: a time in which we can no longer rely on politicians - of whatever stripe - to meet our needs; a time in which business, rather than political parties, offers the way forward; a time in which we can make more of an impact through our pockets than we have ever done through the ballot box. In the wake of an economic recession, Hertz's eye-opening book reveals much about early 21st century politics and its effects on society.

The Silent Takeover

Michaelbaden & Marion Roach

Michael Baden and Marion Roach take readers to the autopsy table in the morgue and practically place the scalpel in their hands to show how advances in forensic science are solving crimes as never before.  They visit cases both famous and ordinary to explain why the first hour at a crime scene is crucial.  They reveal, for the first time, how a key clue to the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson was lost during the transportation of her body to the morgue.  In another case, they show how something as obscure as the imprint of a button on a dead man's skin was overlooked until months later when, while reviewing the crime-scene photos, Dr Baden saw it, causing the case to take an astonishing turn. Baden and Roach invite readers to be present at the analysis of soil, plant matter, insects, blood spatters, bone, teeth, hair, weather and other crime-scene evidence to witness how the startling accuracy of science can improve the chances of a just verdict. Dead Reckoning has already been hailed, before publication, as a classic of rigorous an enlightened writing about forensic pathology, both in its principles and in its practice.

Dead Reckoning

The New Science of Catching Killers

Frank Skinner

A hilarious autobiography from one of Britain's funniest and most successful comedians. 
 
Born Chris Collins in 1957, Frank Skinner he grew up in the West Midlands where he inherited his father's passion for football - and alcohol. 
 
Expelled from school at 16, Frank had been nurturing a serious drink problem from the age of 14, but managed to go teetotal in 1987. 
 
Along with personal revelations, it helped turn his life around. His first television appearance in 1988 was met with raucous laughter from the audience - and 131 complaints, including one from cabinet minister Edwina Currie. 
 
He met fellow comedian David Baddiel in 1990, and the two went on to share a flat throughout the early 90s and to create the hit TV series Fantasy Football League. Winner of the prestigious Perrier Award at the Edinburgh Festival, Skinner's comedy is a groundbreaking mix of laddish and philosophical humour, one which has helped shape the British comedy scene ever since. 
 
From The Frank Skinner Show to co-writing the football's-coming-home classic Three Lions, his career has never been boring. Here, for the first time, Frank candidly tells us of the highs and lows of his fascinating life.

Frank Skinner Autobiography

My Brother's Famous Bottom

My Kitchen

My Love Story with Yamada-kun at Lv999

My Secret Unicorn

My Secret World

My Struggle

My Totally Secret Diary

Myron Bolitar

NYPD Red

Nat the Cat

Natalie Haynes Stands Up For the Classics

Natural Histories

Negima

Neil Gaiman Full-Cast Radio Adaptations

New Beginnings

New History of Britain

New Voices in Food

Nexus Confessions

From the turn of the century, through two world wars and a depression, the Neyler family face heartbreak and tragedy together.

Neyler Quartet

Tough, resourceful, ruthless - as an SAS trooper Nick Stone was one of the best. Now he's back on the streets, working for British Intelligence as a deniable operator. It's the dirtiest job in a very, very dirty world. 
 
Andy McNab's blistering Nick Stone thrillers are bestsellers whose landscape is so compellingly close to the truth that they had to be vetted by the Ministry of Defence, and could only be published as fiction. . .

Nick Stone

Set in modern-day Moscow, an ancient race of humans with supernatural powers have maintained an uneasy truce for centuries. But an ancient prophecy decrees that one supreme "Other" will rise up and tip the balance, plunging the world into a catastrophic war…

Night Watch

A fascinating journey into the historical world of the Nurses of Nightingale Hospital. Follow their story as together they cope with the demands of war, love and loss, and traumas both in and out of the Hospital.

Nightingales

Nightweaver

Nordlys

Norfolk Series

Journey through the reign of William the Conqueror and his sons as they fight to keep civil war at bay and their line on the throne.

Norman Series

Malorie Blackman's ground-breaking, award winning series charts the lives and loves of generations as it takes on race and equality with breathtaking drama and heart wrenching sadness. Set in an alternate reality, where the inferior Noughts live as second class citizens in a world run by Crosses, the four books explore the violent politics of a unstable world, and the ordinary lives caught up in in its terror. Beginning with Noughts and Crosses - and the romance of Seph and Callum - and ending with Double Cross, it is a gripping sequence, and an important, relevant story for our time.

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