Alan Duff

Alan Durant is the author of books for a wide age-range, from picture books such as Burger Boy, Angus Rides the Goods Train and Always and Forever to top-end teenage thrillers (Blood, Flesh and Bones). Having worked as a copywriter at Walker Books, he is now a full-time author. 
 
He's married, with three children and lives in Brighton. He does a lot of school visits throughout the UK and abroad and also runs writing workshops.

Alan Durant

Alan Edge

Alan Ereira

Alan Garner

Alan Gilbey

Alan Gordon is the founder and director of the Pain Psychology Center in California, a leading treatment facility for chronic pain sufferers that sees over 1,500 patients from around the world every year. Debilitated by chronic pain throughout his body for several years and frustrated by the lack of effective treatment, Gordon developed the ground-breaking Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) – a highly effective system of psychological techniques that rewire the brain’s neural circuits to turn off “stuck” pain signals. He is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Southern California.

Alan Gordon

Alan Grant

Born in 1926 in New York City, Alan Greenspan worked as a Juilliard-trained professional musician before studying Economics at New York University, where he earned his PhD. From 1974 to 1977, he served as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers under President Gerald Ford. In 1987, President Ronald Reagan appointed him Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, a position he held until his retirement in 2006. He is the author of the bestselling The Age of Turbulence and The Map and the Territory 2.0.

Alan Greenspan

Alan H Guth

Alan Hansen was one of Britain's most respected football players and is now one of the most outspoken and popular football pundits.

Alan Hansen

Alan Harris is a Welsh playwright who has written several plays for BBC radio including The Lighthouse and The Gold Farmer. His play A Good Night Out in the Valleys launched the new National Theatre Wales in 2010 and he has also been awarded a prestigious Creative Wales Award.

Alan Harris

Alan Hill

Alan Hollinghurst was born in 1954. He is the author of one of the most highly praised first novels to appear in the 1980s, The Swimming-Pool Library, and was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists 1993. His second novel, The Folding Star, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize. His novel The Line of Beauty won the Booker Prize in 2004. His most recent novel, The Sparsholt Affair, was published in 2017.

Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hooper is a founder and Honorary Fellow of the Centre for Leadership Studies, 
University of Exeter, and is also a visiting Professor at Bristol Business 
School. He has been a CEO in the public sector and now consults widely on 
senior management development and the management of change.

Alan Hooper

Alan Isler was born in England in 1934, emigrating to the US at the age of 18. After serving in the US army he went on to study literature at Columbia University, and taught for much of his adult life. Isler was the author of several novels including Kraven Images, The Bacon Fancier, Clerical Errors, The Living Proof and The Prince of West End Avenue, which won the National Jewish Book Award in 1994. Isler died in 2010. 
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Alan Isler

Alan J Wilson

Alan Jenkins

Alan Johnson was born in May 1950. He is a British Labour Party politician who served as Home Secretary from June 2009 to May 2010. Before that he filled a wide variety of cabinet positions in both the Blair and Brown governments, including Health Secretary and Education Secretary. Until 20 January 2011 he was Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. Johnson was the Member of Parliament for Hull West and Hessle until his retirement from politics in 2017. 
 His first book, This Boy, won the RSL Ondaatje Prize and the Orwell Prize in 2013. His second, Please Mister Postman, won the National Book Award for Autobiography of the Year in 2014. His third, The Long and Winding Road, was published in 2016 and won the Parliamentary Book Award for Best Memoir.

Alan Johnson

Alan Jones

Belfast-born twins Alan and Gary Keery love cereal. As creators of The Cereal Killer Café, the trendiest new eatery on Brick Lane, they have turned that love of the nation’s favourite comfort food into a thriving business. The opening of their first café saw extraordinary interest with press and broadcast coverage from all over the world. The café was voted best new restaurant by Hot Dinners in 2014. A second café is opening in summer 2015.

Alan Keery

Alan Langford

Alan Lerner

Alan MacDonald

Alan Macdonald

Alan Macfarlane

Alan McDonald

Alan Melville

Alan Moore

Alan Moorehead was born in Melbourne, Australia. He travelled to England in 1937 and became a renowned foreign correspondent for the London Daily Express. Writer, world traveller, biographer, essayist, journalist, Moorehead was one of the most successful writers in English of his day. During World War II he won an international reputation for his coverage of campaigns in the Middle East and Asia, the Mediterranean and Northwest Europe. He died in 1983.

Alan Moorehead

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Tony Ross

Joan Charles

Dear Joan comprises a unique series of letters between a young airman, Tony Ross, and Joan Charles, a girl whom he met briefly in England before he was posted to the Mediterranean during the Second World War. Through these letters, the book traces the development of their relationship from friendship to long-lasting love. 
 
 With the enthusiasm of youth, Tony and Joan share their dreams of an ideal life in a reconstructed, post-Second World War Britain. Joan's letters reveal the problems of daily life in wartime Britain and give an insight into her voluntary work for the Fire Guard, the land army and the Red Cross, and the bureaucracy she encounters in her job with the Civil Service. Meanwhile, Tony describes the challenges of life in the desert, his increasing responsibilities in the RAF and his experiences in the numerous countries he visits throughout the Middle East. 
 
 Dear Joan is a touching account of how Tony's and Joan's love began with a chance wartime encounter and quickly blossomed through letters exchanged throughout the Second World War, across the miles that separated them.

Dear Joan

Love Letters from the Second World War

Jackie Cahill

Paddy Russell

Tipperary native Paddy Russell has been one of the leading referees in the GAA for the past 30 years. His story is a remarkable one, following his rise from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of two All-Ireland finals. 
 
Inspired by the late, great John Moloney, Russell took his first steps in refereeing in 1976. He quickly emerged as a leading light and rapidly worked his way to the top of his profession. 
 
Russell has enjoyed a successful career but it is also one laced with drama, most notably that arising from the 1995 All-Ireland senior football final between Tyrone and Dublin. Russell later took charge of the tempestuous National Football League clash between Dublin and Tyrone in 2006, which became known as 'The Battle of Omagh', and the stormy showdown between Leinster rivals Dublin and Meath in April 2008. Just two months later, Russell was in charge of the Munster senior football championship tie between All-Ireland champions Kerry and Clare when Kerry captain Paul Galvin slapped the referee's notebook from his hands, earning a three-month suspension. 
 
In Final Whistle, Russell reflects on his eventful journey, including these controversial matches, and describes vividly the stresses and strains of refereeing modern-day Gaelic games.

Final Whistle

The Paddy Russell Story

Iain Duff

For more than 120 years, Rangers and Celtic have vied for supremacy in one of the world's sporting hotbeds. The rivalry between the two teams is among the fiercest anywhere in sport, making an Old Firm derby much more than a football game. Controversy is rarely far away when the Glasgow giants meet, but amid the fallout that invariably follows their contests, the actual game is often forgotten. 
 
In Follow, Follow, Iain Duff recounts the greatest footballing moments of Rangers' illustrious history in Old Firm clashes, from their very first competitive win over Celtic, in the 1893 Glasgow Cup final, through to the 1-0 victory at Ibrox that was a vital factor in Rangers' 2009-10 SPL title win. 
 
The intervening years saw famous Old Firm contributions from legendary Ibrox names such as Gillick, Meiklejohn, McPhail, Baxter, Johnston, McCoist, Cooper, Laudrup, Ferguson and Novo, all of which are revisited here, along with the goals, the flare-ups and the controversies that make these derby days simply unforgettable for every Rangers fan.

Follow, Follow

Classic Rangers Old Firm Clashes

Chris Welles Feder

Of all the myriad stars and celebrities Hollywood has produced, only a handful have achieved the fame - and, some would say, infamy - of Orson Welles, the creator and star of what is arguably the greatest film ever, Citizen Kane. Many books have been written about him, detailing his achievements as an artist as well as his foibles as a human being. None of them, however, has come so close to the real man as Chris Welles Feder does in this beautifully realised portrait of her father. 
 
In My Father's Shadow is a classic story of a life lived in the public eye, told with affection and the wide-eyed wonder of a daughter who never stopped believing that some day she would truly know and understand her elusive and larger-than-life father. The result is a moving and insightful look at life in the shadow of a legendary figure and an immensely entertaining story of growing up in the unreal reality of Hollywood.

In My Father's Shadow

A Daughter Remembers Orson Welles

Phil Hay

The 2007-08 season for Leeds United Football Club will have been anything but regular. At the end of the previous season, one of England's most famous football clubs was relegated to what is in effect the Third Division. Still stricken with mountains of debt accumulated under an earlier regime, the club was put into administration, then hit with a 15-point penalty for the coming season due to alleged financial irregularities. With a young manager on board and a squad of players made up of trainees, reserves and cheap buy-ins or free transfers, the future looked bleak for a club that only five years ago was challenging for the Premiership and the Champions League. 
 
But can dreams come true for their long-suffering and fiercely loyal fans? Thus far Leeds have won more games than any other team in League One and look more than likely to gain promotion at the first attempt. The club is on a roller-coaster ride to gain back its self-respect and an appetite for further glories in 2008 - so will the story run to a happy ending? 
 
Yorkshire Evening Post journalist Phil Hay has followed the team since the pre-season friendlies last summer and through their league and cup matches this season. He has interviewed players, coaching staff, board members and fans to get a true warts-and-all picture of life at Leeds United as they struggle for redemption. This is as dramatic a story of football as you will ever read.

Leeds United - From Darkness into White

The Year of Resurrection

Matt Rendell

Restlessly vital and possessed of great physical strength, José Beyaert lived many lives. During the Second World War, he boxed and trafficked arms for the Resistance on his bicycle. After it, he became an international cyclist. In 1948, a mile from the end of the Olympic road race around Windsor Park, he broke away alone to take the gold medal and started an adventure that would last the rest of his life. 
 
 A Tour de France rider in the sport's golden age, José was invited to open a new velodrome in Colombia, South America. He travelled, intending to stay a month. Instead, driven by his thirst for adventure, he stayed for fifty years, becoming by turns athlete, coach, businessman, emerald-trader, logger, smuggler, perhaps even hired killer. 
 
 Matt Rendell, who knew José Beyaert and met many of his family, friends and associates, tells the fascinating story of an almost-forgotten sporting hero who, incapable of living by other people's rules, lived his many lives on his own terms.

Olympic Gangster

The Legend  of José Beyaert - Cycling Champion, Fortune Hunter and Outlaw

Hector MacLeod

Malcolm McLeod

Peter Manuel was an icy-eyed psychopath and sexual predator, a petty thief and a relentless liar given to violent and uncontrollable rages. His unprecedented crimes presented the Scottish police and public with a new sort of criminal: the ruthless serial killer. 
 
Manuel was hanged at the age of thirty-one and convicted of seven murders, but suspected of many more. He slew many of his victims as they lay sleeping in bed, while others were picked up in lonely places and strangled or savagely beaten to death. Right up to his final arrest, he played a taunting game with the police, mocking their bungling attempts to trap him and continuing to kill with impunity - that is until he was trapped by his own vanity and arrogance. 
 
This definitive definitive biography recounts Manuel's chilling story from his birth in the USA to the moment the hangman's rope snapped his spine in Glasgow's notorious Barlinnie Prison.

Peter Manuel, Serial Killer

John Hartson

In July 2009, former Celtic and Wales soccer star John Hartson was diagnosed with testicular cancer, which had also spread to his lungs and brain. But before his treatment even began, John came to the brink of death after contracting pneumonia, ceasing to breathe and undergoing emergency brain surgery. Against all the odds, he pulled through, and in Please Don't Go he documents his incredible fight for life. 
 
Profoundly moving, John's own story is interwoven with the poignant recollections of his pregnant wife, Sarah, as well as with extracts from his sister Victoria's personal diary. This remarkable book covers the five-week period during which John's survival was most in jeopardy. 
 
John's truly inspirational account of how he has managed to overcome a very aggressive form of cancer will offer hope and courage to others affected by the disease. It is a touching and ultimately uplifting insight into the bravery of the popular football hero, who has fought back to full health in the face of adversity.

Please Don't Go

Big John's Journey Back to Life

Patrick Scott Hogg

Following the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns (1759-96), Patrick Scott Hogg presents the greatest of Scotland's poets within the true context of his times. Exploding the Burns myth, Robert Burns: The Patriot Bard replaces the ram-stam lad of popular cliché with the real, living Burns - a Scottish patriot of the heart, an idealist who wished for 'Freedom and Liberty' for his beloved country, but also a man who was pragmatically a British patriot and risked his life for democratic reform. Here Burns is painted in his native colours as a highly complex, hyper-intelligent writer in both prose and poetry, not the semi-confused, contradictory simpleton of previous biographies. The fascinating legend of Burns as a ladies' man is placed where it should be - as less important than the message of the bard. 
 
The real day-to-day Burns was irascible, stubborn-minded, independent, controversial and opinionated. He detested many of his social superiors within the feudal order and attacked them as hypocrites and oppressors of the common people. The voice of Burns, always in the language of the people, and his idealist vision of a better world endeared him as a poet of humanity 'the world o'er'. Drawing from Burns' existing canon of poetry and letters, plus some newly attributed works suppressed for over two centuries, this life story is a roller-coaster narrative that charts the success and untimely death of the greatest songwriter of all time, the real Robert Burns.

Robert Burns

The Patriot Bard

Shane Williams

Delme Parfitt

Shane Williams has spent almost a decade thrilling the rugby world with his evasive running skills and a box of tricks that has left the best defences grasping thin air, disproving the notion that size matters in modern professional rugby. He's been called the little wizard, the artful dodger and a whole host of other superlatives, and wherever Williams has played, the crowd have been on the edge of their seats. 
 
As his teenage years came to an end, Williams looked set for a life of relative obscurity playing scrum-half for his local side, Amman United, and scratching around in a variety of day jobs. All that changed, however, when he was plucked from nowhere by then Neath coach Lyn Jones, and his rise to become Wales's most dangerous strike runner was meteoric. Following his international debut aged 21, Williams lit up Wales's 2003 World Cup campaign and went on to become an integral part of the Grand Slam-winning side of 2005, a year in which he also toured with the British Lions to New Zealand. In 2008, when Wales took the Grand Slam once more, he made a sensational contribution to the side's glorious victory. 
 
After leading the great Bryan Habana a merry dance on the way to two mesmerising tries on Wales' tour to South Africa just two months later, Williams became the first Welshman crowned IRB World Player of the Year that autumn. He then completed the 2008-09 season with a second Lions tour, touching down twice in the 28-9 third Test victory against the Springboks. 
 
In Shane, Williams reveals the inside story of his incredible rugby career so far, the personal trials that have come with success and how he has managed to defy the odds to become a living Welsh rugby legend.

Shane

My Story

Shane Warne

With a flamboyant approach to the game on and off the pitch, Australia's greatest bowler Shane Warne is an irresistible cricketing force. In Shane Warne's Century, he candidly profiles 100 players from every Test nation who have had the most significant impact on his cricketing life. 
 
Warne is famous for having never scoring a Test century, although he came tantalisingly close on several occasions. He now wants to set the record straight by writing about a century of cricketing stars he has encountered during his illustrious career, The famous names featured here include fellow Australian legends Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Ricky Ponting and Glenn McGrath, as well as adversaries such as Brian Lara, Sachin Tendulkar, Jonty Rhodes and Freddie Flintoff. Warne also puts together a dream Test match of those he would have loved to have played alongside versus a team of international legends. Pulling no punches and giving a fascinating insight into the game, Warne serves up highly readable anecdotes and opinions. 
 
Throughout the book, Warne covers the serious issues affecting cricket today, such as cheating and match-fixing, and assesses a large number of professional relationships he has enjoyed and endured, including those with Sri Lankan star Arjuna Ranatunga and South African captain Graeme Smith. 
 
Shane Warne's Century is a genuine page-turner by one of cricket's most popular stars and is a must-read for all cricket fans.

Shane Warne's Century

My Top 100 Test Cricketers

Stephen Jones

Simon Roberts

Since making his national debut in 1998, Stephen Jones has emerged from the shadows of the true greats of Welsh rugby, such as Barry John, Phil Bennett, Jonathan Davies and Neil Jenkins, to make the fly-half position his own. In this revealing autobiography, he provides a rare insight into the demands and pressures of wearing the almost mythical number 10 jersey that has such a pre-eminent status in the Welsh psyche. 
 
As well as playing an integral role in Wales's two Grand Slam victories, Jones has appeared in three Rugby World Cups and was part of the 2005 British and Irish Lions squad. He has witnessed at first hand how the Welsh rugby establishment has struggled with the transition to professionalism, and in this candid memoir he recounts the many highs he has experienced, as well as the challenges he has faced, throughout his career so far. 
 
Jones gives an intriguing account of how he became one of the few Welsh players to play in France, recalling the brutality of the game there and how he became a cult figure amongst fans of Clermont Auvergne, where he was twice voted fly-half of the season. 
 
In Stephen Jones - A Thinking Man's Game: My Story, the Welsh rugby star reveals how his steely resolve, utter determination and sheer passion for rugby have allowed him to bounce back from numerous setbacks to become one of the most popular and respected figures in the game today.

A Thinking Man's Game: My Story

Mark Ramprakash

Mark Ramprakash is arguably the greatest English batsman of his generation, but he is also an enigma. He is among an elite group of players who have scored 100 first-class centuries, yet has never flourished as he should have done at Test level. To many people in the UK, he is just as well known for his exploits on the dance floor: he won Strictly Come Dancing in 2006 and went on to win the Champion of Champions final in 2008 for Sport Relief. 
 
In Strictly Me, Ramprakash covers in detail all aspects of his cricket career - from the hot-headed cricketing prodigy who made his Test debut for England at the age of 21 to finally being cast aside by his country in 2002. He discusses how he has become one of the UK's best celebrity dancers and how his newfound status as a media celebrity has flourished since then.

Strictly Me

My Life Under the Spotlight

David Fulton

No one feels the heat of an Ashes battle more than the captains of England and Australia. The weight of national expectation, and more than 120 years of history, is on their shoulders from the moment they walk out to toss a coin and start a Test match that is like no other. 
 
The Captains' Tales offers a unique insight into the minds of a generation of captains from two great nations, who share with the reader what it feels like to call the shots in Test cricket's greatest cauldron. From Mike Brearley's cajoling of Ian Botham during the famous summer of 1981 to Ricky Ponting's revenge mission of 2006-07, each Ashes captain from the last quarter-century reveals what made him tick, his vision of where he wanted to take his team and how he handled key characters within the dressing-room. The author, former Kent captain David Fulton, delves behind the scenes for clues about how these sporting generals constructed their battle plans and uses his own experience to determine their strengths and weaknesses as leaders of men. 
 
 The Captains' Tales will strike a chord not just with cricket lovers but with sporting captains of all abilities and readers who seek a greater insight into the broader issues of management and leadership.

The Captains' Tales

Battle for the Ashes

Paul Rees

Wales were written off as no-hopers at the start of the 2008 Six Nations. They had failed to reach the World Cup quarter-finals the previous October and had reacted by appointing their 13th coach in 19 years, New Zealander Warren Gatland. 
 
On the opening weekend, success appeared unlikely when they trailed World Cup finalists England at Twickenham by ten points at half-time. Their second-half comeback, to earn their first victory at the ground for 20 years, set them on their way, and there was no looking back. In a blistering campaign, they set a new Six Nations record by conceding just two tries in their five matches. 
 
The Resurrection Men looks back over the glorious 2008 tournament but also examines the reasons why the foundations laid by Gatland look more secure than those established by Mike Ruddock before his controversial departure from the role less than a year after the side's last Grand Slam triumph in 2005. 
 
Wales imploded after Ruddock left, winning only one match in each of the 2006 and 2007 campaigns. His successor Gareth Jenkins asked to be judged on the team's performance in the World Cup. And he was, sacked hours after the defeat to Fiji which meant that, for the third time in five tournaments, Wales failed to make the knock-out stage. 
 
Little more than a week later, Welsh Rugby Union officials boarded a plane to New Zealand to meet Gatland and other candidates for head coach. Just two minutes into the meeting, they were ready to offer him the job. He promised them that if Wales won at Twickenham on the opening weekend, the slam would be on. They did and it was.

The Resurrection Men

Wales' Grand Slam 2008

Derek Flory

Blanche Le Fleur

Sybil Le Fleur

When Sybil and Blanche Le Fleur were growing up in idyllic Burma in the 1920s and '30s, little did they realise the changes and challenges that they would face during their lives. With the death of first their mother and then their father, they had to cope with enormous personal tragedy, including the loss of all their family wealth. Then the Japanese bombed Rangoon on 23 December 1941. Sybil managed to get out of the city, but there was no way for her to return to her sister, or even to know if Blanche was still alive, as the death toll was so high. 
 
While Sybil escaped from Burma and settled in Scotland after marrying a Scottish soldier, Blanche lived for over three years under Japanese occupation. After leaving for India in 1958, Blanche made a new life while still thinking of and praying for her sister. Decades later, a chance set of circumstances led to the discovery by Sybil's son that Blanche was alive and living in India. 
 
Torn Apart is the heart-rending, inspirational account of how the Le Fleur sisters lived separate lives for more than 65 years before an emotional reunion brought them together again in 2007.

Torn Apart

How Two Sisters Found Each Other After Sixty-Five Years

Lyn Smith

Based on nearly 200 personal testimonies from the Imperial War Museum's Collections, this landmark book tells the stories of those of those who participated in anti-war protest from the First World War 1914-18 to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
Voices Against War is a compelling, emotional and very moving human story, essential for understanding war in its entirety.

Voices Against War

A Century of Protest

Sean Potts

Voices from Croke Park charts the journeys of 12 true greats of the Gaelic games, each of whom has helped shape the rich history of football and hurling. These are men who pursued glory in Ireland's greatest sporting arena, players whose passion and vision were embodied in their performances in their county's jersey. 
 
 The footballers featured are Bernard Flynn (Meath), Mikey Sheehy (Kerry), Ciarán Whelan (Dublin), Anthony Molloy (Donegal), Peter Canavan (Tyrone), Liam McHale (Mayo) and Cork footballer and hurler Jimmy Barry-Murphy. From hurling, Eamonn O'Donoghue (Cork), Tony Keady (Galway), DJ Carey (Kilkenny), Gerard McGrattan (Down) and Michael Duignan (Offaly) are interviewed. 
 
 This collection is a celebration of their achievements in the GAA, with their stories brought vividly to life by Ireland's leading sportswriters.

Voices from Croke Park

The Stories of 12 GAA Heroes

Tam Henderson

John Hunt

Warrior is the powerful true story of a British soldier's heroism during the Iraq War that reveals how he was ruthlessly sacrificed by the Establishment. 
 
Captain Tam Henderson was adopted as a baby in Glasgow. His family moved to England and he grew up on a violent council estate in Birmingham. At 16, he chose to join the famous Black Watch regiment. In a career spanning 23 years, he rose through the ranks and was deployed to conflicts in Northern Ireland, the Balkans and the Middle East. 
 
During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Tam was in the thick of ferocious fighting and, amidst Basra's chaos, he set up camp for the 200 men of Charlie Company, who were put in charge of the city's most volatile districts. Having fought to recover the body of one of his men killed in action, Tam was horrified when the chain gun on his Warrior tank malfunctioned, suddenly firing of its own accord and seriously injuring a comrade. He was told to take the rap but refused, insisting that the dangerous fault on the gun needed fixing. He was convicted by a kangaroo court at Saddam's palace and sent home in disgrace. But Tam fought back and embarked upon the biggest battle of his life - against the Ministry of Defence and international arms companies. 
 
Pacy and starkly authentic, Warrior takes the reader on an exhilarating journey that is by turns horrific, humorous and poignantly reflective.

Warrior

A True Story of Bravery and Betrayal in the Iraq War

Phil Rostron

Brian Clough's forty-four-day tenure as manager of Leeds United in 1974 is one of the most infamous episodes in British football history. 
 
 While the bestselling The Damned United was a fictional account of Clough's short-lived but controversial reign at the club, We Are the Damned United reveals the true story, as told by the players he managed at the time. 
 
 It includes candid contributions from legendary names such as Peter Lorimer, Eddie Gray and Terry Yorath, who reveal what it was like to make the transition from the relatively smooth management style of Don Revie to a constant crossing of swords with the outspoken Clough, who left the club flailing at the foot of the league upon his premature departure. 
 
 We Are the Damned United tells it how it really was rather than how it might have been.

We Are the Damned United

The Real Story of Brian Clough at Leeds United

Christopher Andersen

They exploded onto the national political scene in 2004 and within four years captured the ultimate prize. In so doing, they became a First Couple like no other: he the biracial son of a free-spirited Midwesterner and her brilliant-but-troubled Kenyan husband, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia; she brought up on Chicago's hardscrabble South Side by working-class African American parents who sacrificed so she could achieve her dreams of an Ivy League education and a job at one of America's top law firms. 
 
By the time they claimed the White House in one of the most hotly contested presidential races in modern history, Barack and Michelle Obama were seen by millions around the world as the new Jack and Jackie Kennedy - brilliant, attractive, elegant, youthful and exciting. The marriage of Barack and Michelle stands as one of the great personal and political partnerships, and by the time he was sworn in, Barack and Michelle Obama were indisputably the First Couple not only of America but of the world. Yet, incredibly, the true nature of that relationship has remained a mystery. Until now. 
 
Christopher Andersen draws on those who know the Obamas best to examine in detail the unique partnership and the grace, courage and humour that defines it. An inspiring, sympathetic and compelling look at two remarkable individuals, Barack and Michelle is, above all else, a revealing and stirring love story.

Barack and Michelle

The Love Story

Bruce Dover

When China's reformers eased open the communist giant's doors to the world, they found Rupert Murdoch standing outside in his best suit with a bunch of flowers. Used to being courted by those in power, Murdoch made a clumsy suitor. If the billionaire media mogul thought he could swagger into China and add the world's biggest audience to his News Corp empire, he quickly discovered that things worked differently in the Middle Kingdom. The communist leadership kept the 'ultimate capitalist' at arm's length. 
 
Nonetheless, amid many blunders and much wasted money, News Corp managed to connect China to the world through the Internet and to transform its staid television service into a popular-entertainment medium. But was Beijing simply using Murdoch to help the country modernise and to rehabilitate its image in the wake of Tiananmen Square? 
 
Bruce Dover, Murdoch's man on the ground in China for much of the 1990s, delivers a rollicking insider's account of doing deals at the highest level of business and politics. In this intimate portrait of the impulsive billionaire in his prime, Dover describes fatefully introducing his boss to Wendi Deng, the woman who would become his second wife - News Corp's future has a Chinese face after all.

Rupert's Adventures in China

How Murdoch Lost a Fortune and Found a Wife

Kenny Macdonald

In this, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed first volume of quotations about our national sport, Kenny MacDonald delves once more into Scotland's sweaty, smelly football dressing-rooms and emerges with a batch of statements which are profond, amusing, acerbic and sometimes plain bizarre.

Scottish Football Quotations

Colin Shindler

Before the Thai millions and Abu Dhabi billions, Manchester City was always a club that attracted fierce controversy. 
 
July 1965: Manchester City are on the scrapheap, managerless and languishing in Second Division mediocrity. Desperate to reverse the club's fortunes, the board turns to Joe Mercer, a respected football veteran hungry for a final chance to achieve management glory. Yet age and ill health are against Joe: he needs an assistant, and volatile, ambitious coaching genius Malcolm Allison is his man. Recently sacked from managing Plymouth, Malcolm is out to prove that his innovative tactics can breathe new life into the staid English game. City is the perfect opportunity to show off his talents - especially since Joe promises him the manager's job in two years' time . . . 
 
July 1970: City rule supreme, having just won their fifth trophy in as many seasons. The Mercer-Allison partnership is the most successful management team in the club's history. But, unwilling to let go of his success, Joe breaks his word and refuses to step aside. In order to fulfil his self-proclaimed destiny as the greatest manager in English football, an embittered Malcolm engineers a boardroom takeover that risks everything he and Joe have worked for. 
 
Based on real events, Colin Shindler's novel explores the clash of personalities that led to the spectacular rise and fall of Manchester City's 'Golden Age'. Malcolm and Joe's story is a cautionary tale of how ambition and betrayal brought down two men who had the world at their feet and of how two of the greatest management partners in British football history became the worst of friends.

The Worst of Friends

The Betrayal of Joe Mercer

Frank McGarvey

Ronnie Esplin

During a glorious but controversial career, Frank McGarvey won every major trophy in Scottish football. Under Alex Ferguson at St Mirren in the 1970s, he inspired a young Saints team to victory in the First Division - an effort that attracted the attention of English giants Liverpool and Scotland manager Jock Stein. 
 
After a frustrating spell at Anfield, he headed back north to join boyhood heroes Celtic, with whom he won five medals in five seasons. However, he was shown the door by Davie Hay just days after scoring the winner for the club in the 1985 Scottish Cup final. 
 
McGarvey then returned to St Mirren, with whom he won the Scottish Cup two years later, and he continued his success after a move into management, helping Clyde to win the Second Division trophy. But this is only half of Frank McGarvey's story. Throughout his remarkable career and beyond, McGarvey fought and, for the most part, lost a battle with gambling, which cost him his marriage, home and self-respect. 
 
In Totally Frank, McGarvey chronicles his many highs and lows, and reveals how he finally succeeded in overcoming his gambling addiction.

Totally Frank

The Frank McGarvey Story

Robin Barratt

Bouncers and Bodyguards is a collection of astonishing true stories about the tough world of personal protection and nightclub doors from some of Britain's most notorious figures. 
 
Read how Charlie Bronson helped his friends out on the doors of his local in the early '70s before being banged up for well over 30 years; how Dave Courtney misses the violent world of the doors; how ex-football hooligan Mickey Francis ran most of Manchester's doors back in the '80s; and how an ex-Foreign Legion bodyguard spent over a week cooped up in a bleak warehouse guarding Iraqi votes in central Baghdad. 
 
By turns funny, sad and shocking, these candid accounts were written exclusively for this publication by individuals who have spent much of their working lives in what is a volatile, violent and frequently unpredictable industry. 
 
Compiled by former bodyguard, ex-mercenary and well-known nightclub bouncer Robin Barratt, Bouncers and Bodyguards is an exposé of an infamous twilight world about which rumours have often circulated but the truth has never really been uncovered - until now.

Bouncers and Bodyguards

Tales from a Twilight World

James Bailey

James Bailey's form of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) was as bizarre as it was unbearable. He was obsessed by a fear of drugs and their effects, believing himself to be in constant danger of becoming insanely high through people spiking his food, or even by just touching a photograph of a marijuana leaf. 
 
The treatment programme he went through at a specialist American clinic was challenging, to say the least. He was asked to shake hands and mingle with the local junkies, fighting his anxieties and the urge to go and wash for as long as possible in order to 'expose' himself to his fears. 
 
Man, Interrupted gives us a glimpse into the tortured world of a man suffering from what is an increasingly common disorder. But far from being a doom-laden account of mental illness, the result is uniquely revealing, hilariously entertaining and wonderfully rewarding.

Man, Interrupted

Welcome to the Bizarre World of OCD, Where Once More is Never Enough

Jack Alexander

McCrae's Own was the 'Heart of Midlothian Battalion' mentioned all too briefly in Martin Middlebrook's classic book The First Day on the Somme. Raised in Edinburgh shortly after the start of the Great War, it was perhaps the finest unit in Lord Kitchener's volunteer army - a brotherhood of sportsmen, bound together by their extraordinary colonel and their loyalty to a quaintly named Association Football club, the famous Gorgie 'Hearts'. McCrae's were blooded in the Battle of the Somme, losing three-quarters of their strength on the first day alone. The Colonel himself was invalided home. In time the battalion recovered. It came of age at Arras, endured the muddy horror of Passchendaele, and held the line unbroken in the face of furious German attacks on the Lys in 1918. For almost a century their story remained untold. It was all but lost forever. Now, after 12 years of exacting historical detective work, Jack Alexander has reclaimed the 16th Royal Scots for posterity. In this stirring book he draws upon interviews with veterans and a unique archive of letters, diaries and photographs, assembled from the families of more than 1,000 of Sir George McCrae's men.

McCrae's Battalion

The Story of the 16th Royal Scots

Christopher Ling

At a time when the influence of Islam and the Arab world dominate newspaper headlines as a result of bloodshed and terrorist threats, it will come as a welcome relief to learn of Sultan Qaboos. The very term 'Sultan' conjures up shades of peacock thrones and riches beyond the dreams of avarice. This incredible scene has almost vanished . . . but not quite.In today's oil-rich Arabia, one Sultan remains. He is one of the world's very last absolute rulers and presides over daily rituals the Ottomans of old Istanbul would recognise immediately. Arabia's sole surviving Sultan is, however, an arch exponent of the very British practice of discretion and reserve, which is far from surprising given that he owes his throne to the machinations of a very British coup. Indeed, so wide ranging is the cloak of Sultan Qaboo's reticence that his country has been described as the world's most secretive state. It would be quite impossible to divorce the man from the land which he has ruled for the past 33 years, so immediate is his authority, so absolute is his exercise of unfettered power. But who exactly is Qaboos bin Said Al Said? What of the journey without maps which led him to be complicit in the betrayal and overthrow of his own father? What role did he personally take in the Dhofar war of the 1970s, when he became the first Arab monarch to defeat the armed exponents of Marx and Lenin? And what of his hitherto secret connections with Margaret Thatcher and the incident that became known as the 'Thatcher necklace affair'?

Sultan In Arabia

A Private Life

Kate Barlow

The Abode of Love is Kate Barlow's remarkable account of growing up within the remnants of a religious cult. 
 
Protected from the truth about her family's past by a wall of secrecy, it was years before Kate unearthed her grandfather's controversial claim to be the reincarnation of Jesus Christ and learned of the rumours that had circulated within the local Somerset community of sexual scandals, 'spiritual brides' and peculiar rituals. 
 
This is the gripping story of how one woman pieced together a hidden family history and uncovered a more shocking truth than she ever imagined.

The Abode of Love

The Remarkable Tale of Growing Up in a Religious Cult

P G Wodehouse is widely recognized as the greatest English comic writer of the twentieth century. 
 
His characters and settings have entered our language and our mythology. The first ever collected edition (Wodehouse had many publishers in his lifetime), the Everyman Wodehouse, will contain all the novels and stories, newly edited and reset from the first British edition. 
 
Printed on cream-wove, acid-free paper, sewn and bound in cloth, each Everyman volume is already recognized as the finest edition of the master ever published.

Everyman's Library P G WODEHOUSE

Everyman's Pocket Classics complements highly successful Pocket Poets series, offering the best prose writing in a handy pocket-sized format. Like all Everyman Library books, each title is printed on a cream-wove, acid-free paper with full cloth sewn binding, headbands and silk ribbon marker. Eminently collectable and great gifts.

Everyman's Library POCKET CLASSICS

Pocket clothbound volumes from the world's greatest poets, and with a stunning range of anthologies. Each volume has an elegant jacket, full cloth sewn binding, silk ribbon marker and headbands, with gold stamping on front and spine and decorative endpapers. In size, price and presentation they make ideal gifts and are a joy to read and collect. More than eighty titles in print.

Everyman's Library POCKET POETS

Everyman’s Library Contemporary Classics

Ex-Heroes

Explore with Peter Rabbit

Extraordinary Lives

Factory Girls

Fairwick Chronicles

Fairytale in Progress

Faith, Hope and Glory

Laid-back Roman detective Marcus Didius Falco investigates crimes in the dangerous world of first century Rome, a place of political intrigue, corruption and murder.

Falco

Fall of the Dragon

Luce doesn’t like the sound of the Sword and Cross reform school, and it lives up to all her expectations. Until she meets Daniel. He’s perfect, but what she doesn’t realise is that they have met before. Many times. He is a fallen angel, and each time they meet they are torn apart, Luce dying and Daniel forced to live on without her. They think that they have found a way to break the curse, but they will have to make great sacrifices along the way. Love never dies in this darkly romantic series which spans centuries in its storytelling.

Fallen

Falling Kingdoms

Far Out Five

Far-Flung Adventures

Sam and Remi Fargo are a husband and wife team on a quest. Treasure hunters, they travel the world looking for ancient artefacts and exotic bounty. They're in it for the history and the mystery, but others are not so honourable, and the Fargo's often find themselves caught up in ancient riddles, desperate to solve the puzzle before the bad guys get there first.

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