A. J. Liebling, born in Manhattan in 1904, joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1935 and contributed innumerable articles to the magazine throughout his lifetime, on subjects ranging from food to boxing and France to horse racing. As a war correspondent during the Second World War, he reported from France, England and Algeria, and participated in the Normandy landings. In later life he married the writer Jean Stafford, his third wife. He died in 1963.

A. J. Liebling

A. J. Rosen is an author of YA fantasy and is known as @agatharoza on Wattpad.

A. J. Rosen

A. K. Davidson

A. O. Scott has been a film critic at the New York Times since 2000. His writing has appeared in many other publications, including the New York Review of Books, Slate, the New Yorker and the Nation. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism in 2010, Scott is currently Distinguished Professor of Film Criticism at Wesleyan University. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York. 
 
@aoscott

A. O. Scott

A.S. Byatt (1936-2023) was a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize 1990), the Frederica Quartet and The Children’s Book, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999, and was awarded the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her ‘inspiring contribution to life writing’ and the Pak Kyongni Prize 2017. In 2018 she received the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award.

A. S. Byatt

A. T. Williams won the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing in 2013 for his book A Very British Killing: The Death of Baha Mousa. He lives in Warwickshire.

A. T. Williams

A. W. Chase

Dubbed ‘The new queen of spy fiction’ by the Guardian newspaper, and ‘the real thing’ by the Washington Post, A.C. 'Ava' Glass is the CWA Dagger-shortlisted author of Alias Emma (The Chase), The Traitor and The Trap. The Traitor was a 2023 Richard and Judy Bookclub pick. Alias Emma was a Barnes and Noble book of the month. A former crime reporter and communications consultant, for five years Ava worked closely with spies. Her time in that world fascinated her, and the people she met back then inspire every book she writes.

A.C. Glass

A.E. Housman

Arthur Edward Waite was the designer and co-creator of the now famous Rider Waite Tarot deck. 
 
An American-born British poet and scholarly mystic, his strong interest in all esoteric matters - divination, magic, Kabbalism, alchemy and Freemasony - led to him penning a number of books. These include the Key to the Tarot, The Book of Ceremonial Magic and A New Encyclopedia of Freemasony.

A.E. Waite

A.E. Warren is the author of the Tomorrow's Ancestors series, which consists of Subject Twenty-One, The Hidden Base, The Fourth Species and The Final Rising. 
 
After spending eight years working as a lawyer, she began to write in the evenings and early mornings as a form of escapism from life in a very small cubicle with lots of files. She self-published her first novels in her spare time, which were picked up by Del Rey UK which is the science fiction/fantasy imprint of Penguin Random House. 
 
 She is an avid reader, occasional gamer and fair-weather runner. She lives in the UK with her husband, daughter and hopefully, one day, a wise border terrier named Austen.

A.E. Warren

A.G.D. Maran

A.J. Ayer

A.J. Cronin

A K Benedict writes crime and speculative fiction in a room filled with clowns, mannequins and Doctor Who figures. Her first novel, The Beauty of Murder, was nominated for an eDunnit award and is in development for a major 8-part TV series by Company Pictures. Her second, Jonathan Dark or The Evidence of Ghosts, came out in February 2016. She's written Torchwood audio dramas for Big Finish and her short stories have featured in anthologies including Great British Horror and Best British Short Stories. She lives in St Leonards-on-Sea with her dog, Dame Margaret Rutherford.

A.K.Benedict

A. L. Kennedy has twice been selected as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists and has won a host of other awards – including the Costa Book of the Year for her novel Day. She lives in Essex.

A.L. Kennedy

A.M. Ellis is a speculative fiction author and lover of everything steeped in myth and mystery. Her stories often lean into diverse voices, not only in her identity as a Black woman, but in exploring neurodivergence and mental health. A proud introvert and nostalgic gamer, she lives in Maryland, USA, with her husband and three children. Angelica is also the author of Hunt A Killer, a PERFECT SCORE novel, under the pen name A.M. Ellis, which she wrote as an IP for Scholastic in the US.

A.M. Ellis

A.N. Wilson was born in 1950 and educated at Rugby and New College, Oxford. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, he holds a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is an award-winning biographer and a celebrated novelist, winning prizes for much of his work. He lives in North London.

A.N. Wilson

A.T. Emerald

A.W. Priest

A.B.C. Merriman-Labor was a barrister, writer and munitions worker born in Freetown, Sierra Leone in 1877. His published works include A Series of Lectures on the Negro Race and The Story of the African Slave in a Nutshell. He also edited two editions of the Handbook of Sierra Leone. He arrived in the UK in 1904 to study law. In 1907, he organised a centenary commemoration of the abolition of the slave trade in Westminster Abbey. He later embarked on an 'entertainment-lecture' tour called Life and Scenes in Britain, travelling across thousands of miles of West, South West and Central Africa, which he expanded on to create Britons Through Negro Spectacles.

ABC Merriman-Labor

AJ Cronin

AJ Molloy

Aabria Iyengar is an American actress and author.

Aabria Iyengar

Aaliya Jaleel is a freelance illustrator, designer, and visual development artist, currently majoring in Animation at the University of Texas at Dallas. She is also the illustrator of Under My Hijab and Muslim Girls Rise. You can visit her online at www.aaliyamj.com.

Aaliya Jaleel

Aaron Allston

After more than fifteen years of experience as a clinical psychotherapist, Dr Aaron Balick has taken the amazing insights from psychology and psychotherapy out of the consultation room and made them accessible to the wider world. 
 
He has been an ‘agony uncle’ for many years for both CBBC and BBC Radio 1, as well as on television, including BBC Worldwide, BBC 3 and BBC Learning.

Aaron Balick

Aaron Carroll

Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready--a global organizational transformation and coaching practice--that helps companies large and small adopt new forms of self-organization and dynamic teaming. Clients include Johnson &amp; Johnson, Microsoft, Lloyds Bank, Citibank, Boeing, Mailchimp, Airbnb, Dropbox, and charity: water. 
 
He is also the founder of Murmur--a SaaS startup that helps teams scale culture through the magic of working agreements. The Murmur platform will allow every team on the planet to define and share their ways of working. 
 
Dignan is the author of Brave New Work (2019) and Game Frame (2011), co-host of the Brave New Work podcast, and a friend to misfit toys.

Aaron Dignan

Aaron Edwards is a senior lecturer in defence and international affairs at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, specialising in terrorism and counter-insurgency. He is the author and editor of several books, including Defending the Realm: The Politics of Britain’s Small Wars Since 1945, and has lectured all over the world on aspects of national and international security. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Aaron Edwards

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Geri Halliwell

In 2002, Just For The Record was the book that everyone was talking about. Then in 2003, repackaged in a new, compact mass-market format, Just For The Record did it all over again being one of the most read books of the year. 
 
Since the break up of the Spice Girls, Geri has continued to intrigue the media and the masses. But how many of the stories are true? Just For The Record reveals all. With particular focus on her personal battle to overcome the eating disorders that have plagued her since childhood, and the stark reality of weight obsession, Geri shares the facts about life after the girl band. This is Geri's story: revealing, frank, brutally honest, and at times shocking.

Just For The Record

Marie Herbert

When her two daughters were approaching the finish of their education Marie Herbert felt the need to mark the end of the child-rearing phase of her life by a rite of passage, a way to find herself a new place in the grand scheme of things. Long drawn to the Native American spiritual tradition, she planned a visit to the United States and an extraordinary journey of personal transformation under the guidance of Native American Healers. However, the end of her time of motherhood coincided tragically with the sudden death of one of her daughters and so her odyssey was to become far sadder and more urgent than she could have imagined. HEALING QUEST is the fascinating description of Marie Herbert's inner and outer journey of the heart. Vivid portraits of the people she met along the way are combined with honest accounts of the change in her feelings - together with ideas about how the readers, too, may learn from what she experienced and so gain insights into his or own life, whether in practical, emotional or spiritual terms.

Healing Quest

A Journey of Transformation

Andrew Harvey

Andrew Harvey, an Anglo-Indian novelist and poet, expands on the spiritual transformation that he described in part in Journey in Ladakh. Beginning in 1978 when he first met Meera, the Indian woman who would be his Master, Harvey (who at the time was teaching literature in England and the US), struggled for-- and against-- enlightenment for nine years. With other disciples he followed Meera, who he came to see as Ma, the Divine Mother. In India and then in Germany, under her guidance, he confronted his confused sexuality, his attachment to intellect and reason, his pride and his fears. 
 
Harvey's precise, passionately told story will touch sceptics as well as seekers.

Hidden Journey

A Spiritual Awakening

Tess Daly

If there's one thing that puts us all on a level playing field it's becoming a mum for the first time, everything else - work, sleep, sanity - goes out of the window. When I was handed our first daughter, Phoebe, I was terrified. This tiny bundle seemed so small and helpless and it was down to me and Vernon to take care of her every need when between us we couldn't change a nappy. 
 
This book is the story of my journey into motherhood. From the shock and excitement of the positive pregnancy test to trying to look 'stylish' when I couldn't even see my feet, the overwhelming emotion of having our beautiful baby and the horror to come of not sleeping properly for over three years. And then deciding to do it all over again! 
 
I do hope that by sharing my story you will have a better idea of what to expect, pick up a few tips and gain a little reassurance that even if the journey is rocky at times (as ours was!) we all become brilliant mums...eventually. 
 
To get a sneak preview of The Baby Diaries download our free iPhone app - just search iTunes for Tess Daly to find it.

The Baby Diaries

Memories, Milestones and Misadventures

Evelyn Prentis

Desperate circumstances were something Evelyn Prentis had to get very used to when she began her life as a nurse. It was in 1934 that Evelyn left home for the first time to enrol as a trainee at a busy Nottingham hospital in the hope of £25 a year. 
 
A Nurse in Time is Evelyn's affectionate and funny account of those days of dedication and hardship, when never-ending nightshifts, strict Sisters and permanent hunger ruled life, and joy was to be found in a late-night pass and a packet of Woodbines. 
 
The second memoir in this collection is A Nurse in Action. Surprising Matron as well as herself, Evelyn Prentis managed to pass her Finals and become a staff-nurse. Encouraged, she took the brave leap of moving from Nottingham to London - brave not least because war was about to break. 
 
Not only did the nurses have to cope with stray bombs and influxes of patients from as far away Dunkirk, but there were also RAF men stationed nearby - which caused considerable entertainment and disappointment, and a good number of marriages ... 
 
But despite all the disruption to the hospital routine, Evelyn's warm and compelling account of a nurse in action, shows a nurse's life would always revolve around the comforting discomfort of porridge and rissoles, bandages and bedpans.

Evelyn Prentis Bundle: A Nurse in Time/A Nurse in Action

Ruth Reichl

Fast,  funny, always near the knuckle.The best kind of food writing - it makes you hungry'  Elizabeth Luard'While all good food writers are humorous.few are so riotously, effortlessly entertaining as Ruth Reichl..[She] is also witty, fair-minded, brave, and a wonderful writer'  New York Times Review of Books At an early age, Ruth Reichl discovered that 'food could be a way of making sense of the world. If you watched people as they ate, you could find out who they were.'  Her deliciously crafted memoir, Tender at the Bone, is the story of a life determined, enhanced, and defined in equal measure by a passion for food, unforgettable people and the love of tales well told.  Beginning with Reichl's mother, the notorious food poisoner known as the Queen of the Mold, Reichl introduces us to the fascinating characters who shaped her world and her tastes, from the gourmand Monsieur du Croix, who served Reichl her first soufflé, to those at her politically correct table in Berkeley who championed the organic food revolution in the 1970s.  Spiced with Reichl's infectious humour and sprinkled with her favourite recipes, Tender at the Bone is a witty and compelling chronicle of a culinary sensualist's coming-of-age.

Tender At The Bone

Lya Fett Luft

In her bestselling book Losses and Gains, Lya Luft draws on her own experiences of loss and gain in marriage and family to address the universal themes of childhood, love and maturity. She portrays love as the common thread through all phases of life. As children, the unconditional love we receive from our parents determines our expectations for all the other forms of love we experience later. And as adults, she argues, the complex task of loving another depends, initially, on self-love and self-esteem. 
 
Luft's ardent reflections on existence and the human spirit are a powerful reminder to us all: we have lost everything only when we believe we deserve less than everything still to be gained.

Losses and Gains

Reflections on a Life with a Foreword by Paolo Coelho

Tinie Tempah

'Every time I go out on stage I feel invincible. I feel like no one can do anything to me. I'm with 10,000 of the very best friends you could have.' 
 
Since his debut album Disc-Overy went double platinum, Tinie Tempah's life has transformed into a whirlwind of sell-out gigs, festivals, award ceremonies, partying with celebrities and jetting all over the world. For a lad with humble beginnings in south-east London it's been a breathtaking ride and now, in his very first book, he invites his fans to join his crazy world. 
 
Jam-packed full of exclusive photos, this is an up-close-and-personal insight into what it's like to be Britain's biggest pop star. Speaking from the heart, Tinie talks about everything that means the most to him, including family, his closest friends and girls, while sharing his incredible journey. 
 
This is Tinie's intimate account of how he's gone from 'Disturbing London' to disturbing the whole wide world.

Tinie Tempah: My Story So Far

Danny Wallace

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
Danny Wallace is a modern man. And that can be a very tricky thing to be these days. By rather cleverly doing the opposite of what should actually be done, let Danny show you how to catch your own fish for dinner, be a social maverick, and rise up against everyone who lets you down. And find out what 'I had a Nando's' really means. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Danny Wallace's brilliant book Awkward Situations for Men.

How to Be a Modern Man

Lives Less Ordinary

Edward Conlon

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
NYPD cop, Ed Conlon is quite simply the most stunningly authentic voice to ever tell what it is really like out there on the mean streets pursuing crime. His writing has been hailed as masterful and epic, and here he lets us know what is involved in the endless fight against the drug dealers. From grooming crackhead informants to adrenaline-fuelled chases, this is the true story of a New York drugs cop. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Edward Conlon's stunning book Blue Blood.

How to Be an NYPD Drugs Cop

Miles Corwin

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
Detectives Pete Razanskas and Marcella Winn are the real-life McNulty and Bunk from The Wire. The first: a 22-year LAPD veteran. The second: a rookie from the hood. Jump in a car with them and find out just how you catch a South-Central gangland killer from a cold start through a trail of witnesses, victims and killers. The real thing is more shocking and enthralling than any TV recreation. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Miles Corwin's gripping book The Killing Season.

How to Hunt an LA Gangland Killer

Stuart Maconie

The Lives Less Ordinary series brings you the most exciting, adventurous and entertaining true-life writing that is out there, for men who are time-poor but want the best. Lives Less Ordinary drops you into extreme first-hand accounts of human experience, whether that's the adrenaline-pumping heights of professional sport, the brutality of the modern battlefield, the casual violence of the criminal world, the mind-blowing frontiers of science, or the excesses of rock 'n' roll, high finance and Hollywood. Lives Less Ordinary also brings you some of the finest comic voices around, on every subject from toilet etiquette to Paul Gascoigne. 
 
Anyone who every dreams of being in the music business thinks that 'being with the band' is an instant passport to free drugs, women and hedonistic, rock 'n' roll good times. But Stuart Maconie hilariously tells a different story of the slow-drip hell of continental travel in the claustrophobic confines a small van with a certain death metal trio. 
 
This digital bite has been extracted from Stuart Maconie's brilliant book Cider with Roadies.

How to Survive on Tour with a Rock Band

Lucinda Clare

Sparklingly original and hugely entertaining, An English Psychic in Hollywood is the magical tale of Lucinda Clare's personal experiences as an actress and psychic among the stars of Hollywood. A cross between Jackie Collins and Bridget Jones, there is glitz and glamour mixed with dating dilemas and wardrobe malfunctions. 
 
Originally coming to LA to land her dream acting job, Lucinda soon discovers that it is her psychic abilities that make her stand out amongst the wannabe actresses. As soon as she says the magic words, 'I'm psychic!' everyone wants to talk to her, from publicists to agents, A-list film stars to borderline psychotics. 
 
Accompanied by new best friend crazy Astrid, she gradually settles in. She talks Hindu with her hairdresser, does readings for everyone from screenwriters to sex slaves and finds herself falling for the archetypal tall, dark, handsome stranger. 
 
But is he the soulmate that is meant to be in her future? Only time, some crazy pool parties and successfully predicting everyone else's happy endings will tell...

An English Psychic in Hollywood

Carl Froch

Carl Froch grew up on a tough Nottingham housing estate. His dad took him to the local boxing gym at just nine years old, hoping boxing would keep him out of trouble. Carl’s incredible natural ability soon became clear and he rapidly ascended the heights of professional boxing, becoming three-time Super Middleweight champion and Britain’s most exciting boxer. 
 
In 29 professional fights has suffered defeat only twice. His greatest fights have already gone down in boxing history. In 2009 he was knocked down for the first time in his career by Jermain Taylor. Behind on everyone's scorecard but his own, until, with just 14 seconds of the fight to go, he came back in spectacular fashion with a stunning knock out. In 2012 he emphatically beat Lucian Bute to reclaim his belt in front of record audiences. The press described the fight as ‘one of the best nights in British boxing’. 
 
The Cobra follows Britain's most respected boxer every step of the way as he prepares for, and fights, the most important bouts of his life. Honest, outspoken, and every inch the boy from Nottingham, Carl pulls no punches in his revealing story from inside the high-stakes world of boxing, from his first discovery of his talent to his ascent to World Champion. 
 
**Fully updated from the hardback; this edition includes two brand new chapters covering Carl's astonishing fifth-round destruction of previously unbeaten Lucian Bute, to reclaim his IBF world super middleweight title**

The Cobra

My Story

Charles Hennessy

Marco was born of working-class parents on a bleak council estate in Leeds, and his Italian mother died when he was six years old. Today he has become a star chef of international renown, a controversial media celebrity, a national icon of the 1980s and 1990s, and a multimillionaire entrepreneur - all before the age of 40. How has this staggering rise to fame and fortune been achieved? MPW (as he calls himself and many of his new restaurants) is today widely regarded as the best cook in the country, but his astonishing talents and understanding of food are only part of the explanation. As this fascinating book reveals, there are many sides to this complex man which the massive media coverage he has received over the years have never revealed. Charles Hennessy tells the story with insight: the unpromising early life, his first job as a kitchen porter in Harrogate, the epiphany at the age of 17 when he went to work at the Box Tree restaurant in Ilkley, his arrival in London, learning under the Roux brothers, Pierre Koffmann and Raymond Blanc, and the opening of his own first restaurant, Harvey's from whence his fame and fortune grew.

Marco Pierre White

Making of Marco Pierre White,Sharpest Chef in History

Aleksandr Orlov

Aleksandr Orlov has become one of the most loved figures in British culture and his catchphrase - Simples! - can be heard from the playground to the office. Written in his inimitable voice (as dictated to his sidekick Sergei), his autobiography will offer the same humour as his TV ads, giving us the full story of his ancestor's Journey of Courageousness from the Kalahari to Russia, the low-down on his life as entrepreneur and founder of comparethemeerkat.com and his love of grubs and cravats. 
 
'My name is Aleksandr Orlov. I live and make work in Moscow. I have a success business. I have a mansion decorate with many fine things. I have a naturally majestic posture. But I would have none of these things if it were not for my family. This book is dedicated to them. I also wish to inspire next generation of young businesskats. I am hope that this book will show what can come of courage, hard work and a good fur-care regime. I am also hope that with royalties I will be able to re-marble roof on Orlov family mansion'

A Simples Life

The Life and Times of Aleksandr Orlov

David Bennun

David Bennun had lived in Africa his whole life. At the age of 18 he came to Britain, the mother country. The country he had read about in Punch magazine or seen in films like Chariots of Fire. He was in for a shock. A very big shock indeed: 'I could not have been less prepared had I spent my life up to that point listening to 30-year-old broadcasts of the Light Programme.' 
 
In this timely follow-up to the critically acclaimed Tick Bite Fever, David Bennun shows us our own country through the eyes of an alien. With his brilliantly witty turn of phrase we follow his life as a student, his brushes with Bohemia, his troubles renting and buying property, his discovery of British food and his horrors at entering the world of work. From DIY to architecture, sport to alcohol, transport to music and entertainment, David Bennun brilliantly and with ruthless wit deconstructs all these subjects, many of them so dear to the British heart.

British As A Second Language

John Robb

In the crazed aftermath of the late '80s northern pop explosion there have been few survivors. The Charlatans, however, still prosper despite once being perceived as runts of the Manchester music scene. The cruellest of luck has visited heartbreaking death, nervous exhaustion, a jail sentence, and the prospect of falling almost totally out of fashion upon them. And yet, a deceptively tough band with a charismatic lead singer, their combination of unnerving honesty, sheer pop talent, great live shows, and a total and touching commitment to their fans has seen them survive some of the worst disasters that fate has thrown at any pop group. They have remarkable street suss that, with their small town backgrounds makes them totally at one with their huge following -- a relationship that has given them a fistful of number one albums. This is a tale of a love of pop and a lust for life. A story of northern pop and a band with guts and a passion for creativity. It traces the rise of the Charlatans from the fringes of the Manchester scene in the late Eighties to their current position at the top of British music, one of the key bands of the Nineties in possession of a rare and beautiful canon of great pop tunes.

The Charlatans We Are Rock

The band, the lifestyle, the revolution. This classic biography charts the phenomenal rise of The Stone Roses to the icons they are today, using interviews, rehearsal tapes and the archives of author John Robb who was with them from the beginning. 
 
Robb's exclusive inside knowledge of The Stone Roses creates a compelling and intimate insight into how the band single-handedly set the blueprint for the resurgence of UK rock 'n' roll in the 1990s: Ian Brown's new lazy-style vocals, Reni's fluid, funk-tinged, ground-breaking drumming, and the guitar genius of John Squire. 
 
From the band members' early years to the inception of the Roses, through the tours and success, their influences and style, to the demise of the original line-up and their solo careers; every high and low is documented in minute detail. 
 
This is the definitive, most revered account of one of the most influential British bands in pop music history.

The Stone Roses And The Resurrection Of British Pop

David Benjamin

Through the telling of his own madcap childhood, David Benjamin pays homage to the exuberance of young boys at play.  Whether he's stalking frogs though the swamps of Tomah, Wisconsin, playing four-kid baseball with his bothersome little brother and two favourite cousins, or sneaking into the cinema to watch Saturday-afternoon Westerns, David Benjamin is the kind of kid who would have eagerly fallen in with Tom Sawyer. In relating his adventures - including one truly sorry incident with Snappy, the snapping turtle, and a run-in with a particularly fiendish squirrel - David Benjamin is by turns hysterically funny, movingly sincere, caustic, aggrieved and intrepid.  Traversing the nooks and crannies of kidhood from playing fields to swimming holes, The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked captures a time and a place in twentieth-century life and magically recalls the myriad scrapes and adventures and wanderlust that once made childhood such an exhilarating enterprise.

The Life And Times Of The Last Kid Picked

Mimlu Sen

Mimlu Sen is living a bohemian life in Paris when she witnesses an electrifying performance by three wandering minstrels from rural India. They wear flowing, multicoloured robes and play frenetic rhythms on strange instruments made of wood and clay, capturing the many moods of nature and passion. After her turbulent past, including a year in a Calcutta jail, Mimlu instantly knows it is time to set off on the journey of her life. 
 
One of the minstrels, Paban Das Baul, is a gifted young musician with a growing international reputation. Mimlu defies prejudice to travel with him deep into the heart of Bengal, the rural hinterland behind Calcutta where few tourists ever go. In this fascinating and unusual book, she describes how they make their way across country, from shanty town to village, from monastery to festival, perched on the roofs of buses and squeezed inside trains, encountering tantrics and sages, exorcisms and witch sightings, catfish that climb trees and esoteric secrets - and fall in love. 
 
 With Paban's encouragement, Mimlu too performs for alms - 'gathering honey' in the traditional Baul way - and is initiated into a hidden world of song, sensuality and adventure as wild and unpredictable as the landscape itself.

The Honey Gatherers

Richard Herring

Richard hits the big 4-0 and spends his birthday in the British Musuem, harassing waiters, and lamenting his demise into old age.

How Not to Grow Up: Birthdays

Justin Lee Collins

He street jams in spandex and wrestles in lycra. He's been a magician, a ventriloquist and a clown. He's hugged some of the biggest stars in the world, and pretty much anyone else who's crossed his path. He mucks about, wears silly costumes and manhandles his friend Alan Carr on national TV on a weekly basis. And people have literally paid him to do all this. Good times! 
 
But life wasn't always so kind to young Justin. He discovered he couldn't kiss very well at school camp in Plymouth. "An attractive sixth-form girl let me snog her. I was about 12. She pulled away, and said 'Aaah, you can't do it.' Then she then picked me up and carried me back to my room." The years stacking shelves at Bristol's Marks and Spencer weren't exactly a high point. Being told to 'walk faster' by his boss and being given a final warning: "it dawned on me they thought that putting out knickers and crisps was beyond me!" Bad times. 
 
But mere retail couldn't keep him down! This hilarious coming-of-age story follows his journey from collecting Star Wars toys as a small boy to schmoozing Carrie Fisher in her Hollywood home, and becoming one of the most loved and instantly recognised faces on British TV. For each new twist his life has taken, he hasn't changed a bit. He's as bouncy, funny, shambolic, huggable and of course Bristolian as he's ever been. This is the story of how it all happened. By accident. 
 
But this book is not just a routine celebrity autobiography/memoir - that would be boring. Especially for Justin himself, whose attention span is that of a small child at the best of times. Instead, this is JLC utilising his remarkable photographic memory to ponder the unfeasibly peculiar and funny moments that have defined his life, and desperately trying to make sense of it all. Rock on!

Good Times!

Jon Nicholson

'This account will not hide from the truth of what this illness does to the one who is suffering, and to all those whom that person loved the most. Above all, however, I want to write this book because my story, which is also Emma's and that of our three wonderful children, is nevertheless a story of hope.' 
 
Living Without Emma is Jon's Nicholson's moving account of how he and their three young children coped when their mother was diagnosed with the cancer that ultimately took her life. On her 35th birthday, Emma Nicholson was told she had a tumour - it turned out to be osterosarcoma, a very rare form of bone cancer. 
 
For 14 months she fought the disease and here Jon writes about how her illness put unimaginable strains on his relationship with his wife and the loved ones around them, how it pitched them all into roles they had never foreseen, and how as a family they coped and pulled together in the dark days after her death to discover a life that, although very different from the one they had planned, is happy.

I Want My Mummy Back

A Moving True Story of One Family's Loss

A Private Thriller

A series of children's modern classic novels by renowned 20th century children's writers. All the titles in this series have the A Puffin Book logo, contemporary-style covers, and child-friendly endnotes.

A Puffin Book

A Ripley Novel

A Slice of the Moon

A Victorian Mystery

A Walk in...

A Women’s Murder Club Thriller

A chef Paul Delamare Mystery

Aberrations

Across the Universe

Actiphons

Adelia Aguilar

Adrian Mole

Adventures in Time

Aftermath

Against War

Age of X

Agent 21

Agent Z

Detective Aidan Waits is a troubled junior detective haunted by his past. Facing an uncertain future, and disconnected from his history, DC Waits and his partner, Detective Inspector Peter 'Sutty' Sutcliffe work on Manchester's streets to uncover the city's worst criminals among the grime of the underworld.

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