Al Pittampalli

Al Rodin is a writer and illustrator from London. He studied children's book illustration at Cambridge School of Art and received the 2019 Sebastian Walker Prize. Al enjoys working with a wide variety of materials including acrylic, watercolour and collage. His paintings have been exhibited in galleries around Europe and Asia, and he was selected for lllustrators' Exhibition at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in 2019. Little Echo is his first book.

Al Rodin

Al Smith

Alain Gheerbrant

Alain de Botton is the bestselling author of fifteen books, including The School of Life: An Emotional Education, How Proust Can Change Your Life, The Consolations of Philosophy, The Art of Travel and The Course of Love. He is the founder of The School of Life (theschooloflife.com).

Alain de Botton

Alaina Urquhart is the science-loving co-host of the chart-topping show Morbid: A True Crime Podcast. As an autopsy technician by trade, she offers a unique perspective from deep inside the morgue. Alaina hails from Boston, where she lives with her wonderful husband, John, their three amazing daughters, and a ghost Puggle named Bailey. She is about 75 percent coffee, and truly believes she and Agent Clarice Starling could be friends. 
 
Before writing her first psychological horror novel, she received degrees in criminal justice, psychology, and biology. When she isn't hosting Morbid, she hosts the Parcast original show Crime Countdown, and a horror movie podcast called Scream!. Her days are usually spent either recording or eviscerating. The way she sees it, when she hangs up her microphone for the day, it's time to let the dead speak.

Alaina Urquhart

Alaine Hood

Alan Alda

Born in London in 1939, Alan Ayckbourn is one of  the world's most popular and prolific playwrights. He has written 74  full length plays and more than 20 other revues and plays for children.  He is also an acclaimed director. Alan Ayckbourn was awarded a CBE in  1987. Ten years later to the day, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II  'for services to the theatre.'

Alan Ayckbourn

Alan Baker

Alan Barker

Alan Beattie

Alan Bennett is one of Britain's best-loved and most highly acclaimed writers. He has written widely for radio, television and theatre. His latest play, The History Boys, won several awards, including Evening Standard and Critics' Circle Awards for Best Play and the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play. It also won six Tony Awards, including Best Play, following an extremely successful transfer to Broadway. In 2006 Bennett was named Author of the Year at the British Book Awards for Untold Stories, his collection of memoirs and diaries.

Alan Bennett

Alan Bennett's television series Talking Heads has become a modern-day classic, as have many of his works for the stage, including Forty Years On, The Lady in the Van, The Madness of George III (together with the Oscar-nominated screenplay The Madness of King George) and an adaptation of The Wind in the Willows. The History Boys won the Evening Standard and Critics' Circle awards for Best Play, The Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and the South Bank Award.

Alan Bishop

ALAN BOOTH was born in London in 1946 and travelled to Japan in 1970 to study Noh theatre. He stayed, working as a writer and film critic, until his untimely death in 1993.

Alan Booth

Alan Brazil is a Scottish broadcasting legend and former football player, most notably for Ipswich Town, Tottenham Hotspur, Manchester United and internationally for Scotland. He played as a forward before being forced to retire due to a recurring back injury. 
 
After retirement, Alan moved into media presentation, initially on television, before a career in radio where for many years he has presented the Alan Brazil Sports Breakfast show on TalkSPORT.

Alan Brazil

Alan Bullock

Alan Carr

Alan Carr is one of Britain's most successful and treasured comedians. His unique humour and effortless stage presence have earned him a catalogue of awards including Best Chat Show host at the publicly voted for 2015 National Television Awards, winner of the 2013 BAFTA for Best Entertainment Performance and 2013 British Comedy Award for Best Comedy Entertainment Personality. In previous years he has garnered a clutch of awards, from the 2012 National Television Award for Best Talk Show and the 2012 Loaded LAFTA Award for Best Stand-up to the 2010 TV Choice Awards for Best Entertainment Show. There were also nominations for Best New British Comedy &amp; Best Comedy Entertainment Personality at the 2009 British Comedy Awards. 
 
The success of the first series of his own chat show, 'Alan Carr: Chatty Man', in the summer of 2009, led to Channel 4 commissioning 16 further series' as well as numerous Christmas Specials and New Year Specstaculars. In September 2013, the 100th episode aired with A-list guests Justin Timberlake and Rihanna. Guests from past series include: Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Cameron Diaz, Vin Diesel, Adele, Grace Jones, Naomi Campbell, Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Robin Williams, David Walliams, Mariah Carey, Russell Brand, Samuel L Jackson, Miley Cyrus, Robbie Williams, Bette Midler, Sharon Osbourne, One Direction, Gok Wan and Miranda Hart. 
 
The DVD of Alan's 2007 debut stand-up show, 'Tooth Fairy Live' topped the HMV charts and was a Christmas 2007 top seller. 
 
His best-selling debut autobiography 'Look Who It Is' was published in September 2008 by HarperCollins. 
 
In 2011, Alan travelled the country with his second live tour. 'Spexy Beast Live' was a 33-date arena tour and culminated in the successful DVD of the same name. 
 
Throughout 2015, Alan hit the road once again and performed at over 150 sold-out theatre's across the UK and Ireland with his 'Yap, Yap, Yap!' live show. His third stand up DVD 'Alan Carr - Yap Yap Yap! Live' was released by Universal Pictures (UK) in November 2016. 
 
2016 has also seen Alan go global with international performances of his Yap Yap Yap! live show throughout Scandinavia, Montreal (at the prestigious Just For Laughs Comedy Festival) and can currently be seen on tour this summer in New Zealand and Australia this summer, with two shows at the iconic Sydney Opera House. 
 
Alan also hosts Channel 4's flagship fundraising show 'Stand Up To Cancer' which in 2014 went on to raise an amazing £14 million for Cancer Research. Alan returns once again to host 'Stand Up To Cancer' on Channel 4 this October. 
 
Alanatomy: The Inside Story is Alan's second memoir, and will be published by Penguin in October 2016.

Alan Clark

Alan Clements

Alan Connor is the author of Two Girls, One on Each Knee: The Puzzling, Playful World of the Crossword ("witty, charming, encyclopaedic and highly readable" - Spectator) and The Joy of Quiz ("An absolute delight" - Mail on Sunday). He has made quizzes for various TV shows and newspapers and written comedy including BBC Film's The Rack Pack, A Young Doctor's Notebook (Jon Hamm and Daniel Radcliffe) and Have I Got News For You.

Alan Connor

Alan Connor has been the question editor for BBC2's Only Connect and Richard Osman's House of Games. He is the author of books for Pointless and The Traitors and is the puzzle consultant for the BBC1 drama Ludwig. He writes puzzles for various newspapers and has written for Charlie Brooker series and Have I Got News for You. His favourite quiz question is: What word was intentionally omitted from the screenplay of The Godfather?

Alan Cowell

Alan Curtis

Alan Cutler

Alan Davies

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Arnold Thomas Fanning

Arnold Thomas Fanning had his first experience of depression during adolescence, following the death of his mother. Some ten years later, an up-and-coming playwright, he was overcome by mania and delusions. Thus began a terrible period in which he was often suicidal, increasingly disconnected from family and friends, sometimes in trouble with the law, and homeless in London. 
 
Drawing on his own memories, the recollections of people who knew him when he was at his worst, and medical and police records, Arnold Thomas Fanning has produced a beautifully written, devastatingly intense account of madness - and recovery, to the point where he has not had any serious illness for over a decade and has become an acclaimed playwright. In a remarkably vivid present-tense narrative, Fanning manages to convey the consciousness of a person living with mania, psychosis and severe depression. 
 
Very few people have gone through what Arnold Thomas Fanning went through and emerged alive, well, and capable of telling the tale with such skill and insight. Mind on Fire is a book anyone who has experienced mental illness, or is close to someone who is mentally ill, or who wishes to understand the workings of the disordered mind.

Mind on Fire

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2019

Will Millard

Growing up on the Cambridgeshire Fens, Will Millard never felt more at home than when he was out with his granddad on the riverbank whiling away the day catching fish. As he grew older his competitive urge to catch more and bigger fish led him away from that natural connection between him, his grandfather and the rivers of his home and into large commercial fisheries catching fish after fish. That is, until the fateful day he let a record-breaking sand eel slip through his fingers and he knew that he had lost the magic of those days down by the river, and that something had to change. Armed with his late grandfather's well-thumbed fishing encyclopaedia Will set out on a quest to get back to his roots and catch some of our great forgotten fish species, hidden deep in our lost waterways. 
 
The Old Man and the Sand Eel is at its heart the story of three generations of men trying to figure out what it is to be a man, a father and a fisherman. It plots Will's scaly stepping stones back to his childhood innocence and late granddad, and a return to the importance of understanding the truly feral through a child's eyes, when anything was possible and the wild was everywhere.

The Old Man and the Sand Eel

Ben Platts-Mills

In Tell Me the Planets, Ben Platts-Mills shares stories about his remarkable work with survivors of brain injury, offering a rare glimpse into the world as seen through their eyes. We meet charismatic Danny, whose criminal past has left him paralysed down one side, but who now helps others worse off than himself; Sid, whose memory for the present lasts only moments; and Liah, who is caught in a battle with the care system threatening to make her homeless. But above all this is the story of the extraordinary friendship between Ben and Matthew, who suffered neurological damage during an operation to remove a cerebral cyst. It is a journey that takes them to the frontiers of science and to the limits of human resilience: when they discover that the cyst is growing again, Matthew is left with an impossible decision to make.

Tell Me the Planets

Stories of Brain Injury and What It Means to Survive

Deborah Levy

What does it mean to be free - as an artist, a woman, a mother or daughter? And what is the price of that freedom? 
 
In this dazzling memoir, Deborah Levy confronts the essential questions of modern womanhood with humour, pragmatism, and profoundly resonant wisdom. Reflecting on the period when she wrote the Man Booker Prize-shortlisted Hot Milk - when her mother was dying, her daughters were leaving home, her marriage was coming to an end - she is characteristically eloquent on the social expectations and surreal realities of daily life. And expanding far beyond these bounds, she describes a uniquely frank, wise and thrilling manifesto for female experience: embracing the exhilarating terror of freedom, seeking to understand what that freedom could mean and how it might feel.

The Cost of Living

Living Autobiography 2

Kate Thompson

While the men were away at war it was strong women like Joan, Marie, Babs, Beattie and Minksy who ruled the streets of the East End. Kate Thompson tells the real stories of the war experienced by these matriarchs, a tribe of working-class women in the stinking slums, teeming tenements and sweatshops of East London. 
 
Forget church halls and jam-making, these powerfully authentic stories will have you questioning what you thought you knew about wartime women. From standing up to the Kray twins, to taking over the London Underground and crawling out of bombsites, these women fought to survive and protect their community in some of our country's darkest hours.

The Stepney Doorstep Society

The remarkable true story of the women who ruled the East End through war and peace

Bart van Es

The last time Lien saw her parents was in the Hague, where she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own, but a falling out after the war put an end of to their relationship. What was her side of the story, Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - wondered? What really happened during the war, and after? So began an investigation that would consume and transform both Bart's life and Lien's. This is an astonishing portrait of a young girl's struggle to survive war, and her powerful, tumultuous and painful ties with her foster family.

The Cut Out Girl

A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found

Dave Eggers

Mokhtar grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings in a tiny apartment, raised by Yemeni immigrant parents. As a young man he learned of the true origins of coffee making - an ancient art born in Yemen, the secret stolen by European colonisers - and became determined to resurrect the ancient art of Yemeni coffee. 
 
Mokhtar dedicated himself to coffee, quickly becoming one of the world's leading experts, the first Arab in the world to qualify as a 'Q Grader'. But while visiting Yemen on a research trip, he was caught in the maelstrom of sudden civil war. The US Embassy closed its doors, and so Mokhtar embarked on a nail-biting adventure - to escape the country with his precious coffee samples intact. 
 
The Monk of Mokha is heart-pounding adventure story, a tale of underdog entrepreneurship and true passion, and a fascinating modern take on the great American dream.

The Monk of Mokha

Jeff Pearce

The poor boy who made his fortune . . . not just once but twice. 
 
Little Jeff Pearce grew up in a post-war Liverpool slum. His father lived the life of an affluent gentleman whilst his mother was forced to steal bread to feed her starving children. Life was tough and from the moment Jeff could walk he learned to go door to door, begging rags from the rich, which he sold down the markets. Leaving school at the age of fourteen, he embarked on an extraordinary journey, and found himself, before the age of thirty, a millionaire. 
 
Then, after a cruel twist of fate left him penniless, he, his wife and children were forced out of their beautiful home. 
 
With nothing but holes in his pockets, Jeff had no alternative but to go back down the markets and start all over again. Did he still have what it took? Could he really get back everything he had lost? 
 
A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams is the heartwarming true story of a little boy who had nothing but gained everything and proof that, sometimes, rags can be turned into riches . . .

A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams

Gloria Stewart

Sheffield, Christmas, 1953. Gloria Stewart and her family were having another cold and hungry winter, but Gloria's mother, Lil, had scrimped-and-saved to ensure the fire was lit, paper decorations were made, and her five children had a plate full of delicious food. Lil even made sure there was enough dinner for an unexpected friend or visitor; and each year there always seemed to be someone in need. 
 
Despite being raised in a busy, rag-and-bone household, Gloria grew up with few friends. That is, until a knock on the door brought a scruffy pup into her life- and Gloria discovered the loyal and unwavering friendship of a four-legged friend. 
 
Over the years, Gloria adopted many dogs - and even the odd cat - who helped her through good times and bad; illness, love and heart-breaking loss. They even helped her to carry on her mother's loving legacy of making sure that those who are alone at Christmas have food, warmth, and most of all, a friend!

A Friend for Christmas

Ta-Nehisi Coates

From 2008-2016, the leader of the free world was a black man. Obama's presidency was a watershed moment in American history. In those eight years, the political conversation around race, gender, class and wealth shifted drastically - inspiring hope but also attracting criticism and breeding discontent. That discontent ultimately led to a shocking backlash in the election of Donald Trump. 
 
In this essential book, Ta-Nehisi Coates takes stock of Obama's eight years in power, brilliantly navigating the intersections of political, ideological and cultural perspectives. And he reflects on his own journey through these years, weaving the public with the private to create a startlingly intimate and piercingly relevant memoir.

We Were Eight Years in Power

Frank McDonald

In his decades-long career at the Irish Times, Frank McDonald became uniquely beloved and influential for his tireless attention to Dublin's built environment. He was, meanwhile, living a remarkably varied and interesting life. In Truly Frank, McDonald tells the stories behind his public advocacy for a more beautiful and humane city, and of his battles (and lunches) with politicians and developers. And he also tells a more intimate story of growing up gay in Dublin at a time when homosexuality was entirely hidden. Passionate, indiscreet and seriously entertaining, Truly Frank is an instant classic of journalistic memoir.

Truly Frank

A Dublin Memoir

Javier Marías

Internationally renowned writer Javier Marias is a tireless examiner of the world around us, an enthusiastic debunker of pretensions of every kind, a polymath and a rogue. This selection of his inimitable non-fiction pieces are published together in English for the first time. 
 
Following in the essayistic tradition of Montaigne, Between Eternities ranges widely from the literary to the philosophical to the autobiographical, from football to cinema, comic books to mortality to 'Why Almost No One Can Be Trusted'. Trenchant and wry, subversive and penetrating, Marias demonstrates a dazzling intellectual vigour, showing with exhilarating verve why he is so often said to be Spain's greatest living writer.

Between Eternities

and Other Writings

Erling Kagge

Behind a cacophony of traffic noise, iPhone alerts and our ever-spinning thoughts, an elusive notion - silence - lies in wait. But what really is silence? Where can it be found? And why is it more important now than ever? 
 
Erling Kagge, the Norwegian adventurer and polymath, once spent fifty days walking solo in Antarctica with a broken radio. In this meditative, charming and surprisingly powerful book, he explores the power of silence and the importance of shutting out the world. Whether you're in deep wilderness, taking a shower or on the dance floor, you can experience perfect stillness if you know where to look. And from it grows self-knowledge, gratitude, wonder and much more. 
 
Take a deep breath, and prepare to submerge yourself in Silence. Your own South Pole is out there, somewhere.

Silence

In the Age of Noise

Anne Frank

David Polonsky

'June, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.' 
 
In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a 'secret annexe', fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary. The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Novel is a stunning new adaptation of one of the greatest books of the last century.

Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation

Sigrid Rausing

For years Sigrid Rausing watched helplessly as her brother Hans and his wife Eva succumbed to drug addiction. It afflicted a terrible toll on their family, culminating in Eva's tragic early death. As this death led to inquest and media circus, the world looked on in horror, but few understood the suffering endured by the Rausing family. 
 
 In Mayhem, Sigrid explores the collateral damage addiction wreaks on loved ones. Telling her family's story, she examines painful and rarely discussed questions. What is it like to live with addiction in the family? How can you help without hurting the one you love? And what does it mean to survive another's addiction?

Mayhem

A Memoir

Jo Wheeler

While their husbands, brothers and sweethearts fought in Europe and their mothers, sisters and friends kept the home fires burning, for the first time, a group of remarkable women took to the skies. They weren't allowed into combat but risked their lives in bad weather and without radios to bring our boys the aircraft they so vitally needed. 
 
Employed by the Air Transport Auxiliary, these women were known as 'attagirls'. They proved that women too could master Spitfires, Mosquitoes and Hawker Hurricanes, forging a new path in aviation. 
 
The Hurricane Girls is the fascinating, moving and inspirational story of bravery, determination and remarkable women.

The Hurricane Girls

The inspirational true story of the women who dared to fly

Claire Tomalin

As one of the best biographers of her generation, Claire Tomalin has written about great novelists and poets to huge success: now, she turns to look at her own life. 
 
 This enthralling memoir follows her through triumph and tragedy in about equal measure, from the disastrous marriage of her parents and the often difficult wartime childhood that followed, to her own marriage to the brilliant young journalist Nicholas Tomalin. When he was killed on assignment as a war correspondent she was left to bring up their four children - and at the same time make her own career. 
 
 She writes of the intense joys of a fascinating progression as she became one of the most successful literary editors in London before discovering her true vocation as a biographer, alongside overwhelming grief at the loss of a child. 
 
 Writing with the élan and insight which characterize her biographies, Claire Tomalin sets her own life in a wider cultural and political context, vividly and frankly portraying the social pressures on a woman in the Fifties and Sixties, and showing 'how it was for a European girl growing up in mid-twentieth-century England ... carried along by conflicting desires to have children and a worthwhile working life.'

A Life of My Own

Chris Patten

Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight'. This is a different sort of memoir. Following his life as a self-confessed 'wet European' from parliament to Hong Kong and beyond, Chris Patten creates a meditation on personal and political identity which, in an age of simplification, shows the complexities of both. 
 
'A defence of liberal conservatism ... If old-style centrism is to stage a comeback and reason to supplant stridency and authoritarianism, be it in west or east, the moderates can wave Patten's book on their way to their barricades' Jonathan Fenby, Financial Times 
 
'Vivid, very well-written, First Confession joins the highest tier of recent works by British politicians' Paschal Donohoe, Irish Times 
 
'Draws on his experience of four controversial institutions - the Tory party, the Vatican, the Chinese government and the BBC - to swell the tiny list of intelligent and cultured memoirs by front-line politicians' Mark Lawson, New Statesman, Books of the Year

First Confession

A Sort of Memoir

Gemma Dowler

'On 21 March 2002, a serial killer named Levi Bellfield stole my sister and sent our family to Hell . . .' 
 
Everyone remembers the haunting headlines about missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler, the body found months later and the years it took for the killer, known to the police and living yards from where she vanished, to be arrested. Gemma Dowler tells the truth behind the headlines, writing of her beloved sister, the trial orchestrated by the killer, the devastating hacking scandal that brought down a national newspaper and how the family fought for justice every step of the way.

My Sister Milly

Penelope Lively

Penelope Lively has always been a keen gardener. This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

Life in the Garden

Maria Alyokhina

From activist, Pussy Riot member and freedom fighter Maria Alyokhina, a raw, hallucinatory, passionate account of her arrest, trial and imprisonment in Siberian jail for standing up for what she believed in. 
 
'One of the most brilliant and inspiring things I've read in years. Couldn't put it down. This book is freedom' Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick 
 
'A women's prison memoir like no other! One tough cookie!' @MargaretAtwood 
 
'Once you begin reading, you are completely disarmed, unable to put it down until the last page' Marina Abramovic 
 
People who believe in freedom and democracy think it will exist forever. 
 
That is a mistake. What happened in Russia - what happened to me - could happen anywhere. 
 
When I was jailed for political protest, I learned that prison doesn't just teach you to follow the rules. It teaches you to think that you can never break them. 
 
It's inevitable that the prison gates will open at some point. But this doesn't mean that you leave the 'prisoner' category and go straight into the category of 'the free'. 
 
Freedom does not exist unless you fight for it every day. 
 
This is the story about how I made a choice.

Riot Days

Viv Groskop

What should I do with my life? What if my love is not returned? Why do bad things happen? 
 
The answers to some of life's biggest questions are found not in trite self-help manuals but in the tough-love lessons explored in Russian literature. Here, Viv Groskop delves into the novels of history's deepest thinkers to discover enduring truths about how we should live. 
 
Whether you're new to the Russian classics or returning to old favourites, The Anna Karenina Fix will help salve your heartache by exploring the torments of a host of famous and infamous literary heroes and heroines. Think of it like this: they have suffered so that you don't have to . . .

The Anna Karenina Fix

Life Lessons from Russian Literature

Yrsa Daley-Ward

'You may not run away from the thing that you are 
because it comes and comes and comes as sure as you breathe.' 
 
This is the story of Yrsa Daley-Ward, and all the things that happened - 'even the Terrible Things (and God, there were Terrible Things)'. It's about her childhood in the north-west of England with her beautiful, careworn mother Marcia, Linford (the man formerly known as Dad, 'half-fun, half-frightening') and her little brother Roo, who sees things written in the stars. It's about growing up and discovering the power and fear of her own sexuality, of pitch grey days of pills and powder and encounters. It's about damage and pain, but also joy. Told with raw intensity, shocking honesty and the poetry of the darkest of fairy tales, The Terrible is a memoir of going under, losing yourself, and finding your voice.

The Terrible

Eddie Izzard

The stand-up comedian of his generation. Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. There is no one quite like Eddie Izzard. 
 
This is the story of how a boy who wanted to become a professional footballer and win the lead in Joseph and His Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat found comedy. Affecting, witty and nothing less than rousing, readers will, as Eddie himself says, 'look at my life and say, 'If that idiot transvestite can run a whole bunch of marathons, play the Hollywood Bowl, and travel across France with a French-speaking tour, then what's holding me back?''

Believe Me

A Memoir of Love, Death and Jazz Chickens

Roald Dahl

In 1918, the RAF was established as the world's first independent air force. To mark the 100th anniversary of its creation, Penguin are publishing the Centenary Collection, a series of six classic books highlighting the skill, heroism esprit de corps that have characterised the Royal Air Force throughout its first century. 
 
'They didn't think for one moment that they would find anything but a burnt-out fuselage and a charred skeleton; and they were apparently astounded when they came upon my still-breathing body, lying in the sand near by.' 
 
In 1938 Roald Dahl was fresh out of school and bound for his first job in Africa, hoping to find adventure far from home. However, he got far more excitement than he bargained for when the outbreak of the Second World War led him to join the RAF. His account of his experiences in Africa, crashing a plane in the Western Desert, rescue and recovery from his horrific injuries in Alexandria, and many other daring deeds, recreates a world as bizarre and unnerving as any he wrote about in his fiction.

Going Solo

The Centenary Collection

James Goodson

Anglo-American James Goodson's war began on Sept 3rd 1939, when the SS Athenia was torpedoed and sank off the Hebrides. Surviving the sinking and distinguishing himself rescuing survivors, Goodson immediately signed on with the RAF. He was an American, but he wanted to fight. 
 
Goodson flew Spitfires for the RAF before later joining his countrymen with the Fourth Fighter Group to get behind the controls of Thunderbolts and Mustangs where he became known as 'King of the Strafers'. 
 
Chock full of breathtaking descriptions of aerial dogfights as well as the stories of others of the heroic 'few', Tumult in the Clouds is the ultimate story of War in the air, told by the one of the Second World War's outstanding fighter pilots.

Tumult in the Clouds

Original Edition

Patricia Lockwood

When the expense of a medical procedure forces the 30-year-old Patricia to move back in with her parents, husband in tow, she must learn to live again with her family's simmering madness, and to reckon with the dark side of a childhood spent in the bosom of the Catholic Church. Her father is a gun-toting, all-American, frequently semi-naked priest who underwent a religious conversion after watching The Exorcist 70 times on a Navy submarine; her mother, who emerges as the book's real heart, is a woman preternaturally concerned with the various disasters that could be about to befall her loved ones - and any nearby babies - at all times. Told with a keen comic sensibility that packs a laugh on almost every page, this is at the same time a lyrical and affecting true story of how, having ventured into the underworld, we can emerge with our levity and our sense of justice intact.

Priestdaddy

Tommy Caldwell

A dramatic, inspiring memoir by legendary rock climber Tommy Caldwell, the first person to free climb the Dawn Wall of Yosemite's El Capitan. 
On January 14, 2015, Tommy Caldwell, along with his partner, Kevin Jorgeson, summited what is widely regarded as the hardest climb in history Yosemite's nearly vertical 3,000-foot Dawn Wall, after nineteen days on the route. 
Caldwell's odds-defying feat was the culmination of an entire lifetime of pushing himself to his limits as an athlete. 
This engrossing memoir chronicles the journey of a boy with a fanatical mountain-guide father who was determined to instill toughness in his son to a teen whose obsessive nature drove him to the top of the sport-climbing circuit. 
Caldwell s affinity for adventure then led him to the vertigo-inducing and little understood world of big wall free climbing. But his evolution as a climber was not without challenges; in his early twenties, he was held hostage by militants in a harrowing ordeal in the mountains of Kyrgyzstan. Soon after, he lost his left index finger in an accident. Later his wife, and main climbing partner, left him. Caldwell emerged from these hardships with a renewed sense of purpose and determination. He set his sights on free climbing El Capitan s biggest, steepest, blankest face the Dawn Wall. This epic assault took more than seven years, during which time Caldwell redefined the sport, found love again, and became a father. 
The Push is an arresting story of focus, drive, motivation, endurance, and transformation, a book that will appeal to anyone

The Push

A Climber's Journey of Endurance, Risk and Going Beyond Limits to Climb the Dawn Wall

Stuart Hall

Growing up in a middle-class family in 1930s Jamaica, still then a British colony, the young Stuart Hall found himself caught between two worlds: the stiflingly respectable middle class in Kingston, and working-class Jamaica, grindingly poor, though rich in culture, music and history. But as colonial rule was challenged, things were beginning to change. When, in 1951, a scholarship took him across the Atlantic to Oxford University, Hall gained unexpected access to this other Jamaica. Also making the journey to Britain were young Jamaicans from all walks of life, as well as writers and thinkers from across the Caribbean. Now, Hall faced a new struggle: that of building a life in a post-war England so rife with racism that it could barely recognize his humanity.

Familiar Stranger

A Life between Two Islands

Geoffrey Wansell

Pure Evil takes a close look at the country's deadliest criminals, from those who horrified the nation to those less famous but equally brutal, such as Jeremy Bamber, Joanna Dennehy and Ian Huntley. 
 
In this shocking, chilling and powerful book Geoffrey Wansell exposes killers' motivations and remorse, but also seeks out an answer to the vital question: should life always mean life? 
 
Having observed lifers over more than twenty years, often up close and very personal, Geoffrey Wansell's Pure Evil reveals more of the criminal mind than has ever before been seen.

Pure Evil

Inside the Minds and Crimes of Britain’s Worst Criminals

Dragoneye

Dragonlance Destinies

Dread Pirate Fleur

Dream Master

Drenai Novels

DropZone

Duggee's Little Library

Dungeon Crawler Carl Series

Duty Calls

A gripping three-part series based on real historical events. Three Roman legions massacred. Three Imperial Eagles lost. One man vies for revenge.

Eagles of Rome

For thirty years, the O’Donnels have ruled the East End, but there’s a price to pay for this power, and it’s usually in blood.

Eastend Trilogy

Easterleigh Hall

Eat Around Italy

Eat Around Spain

Eat Right For Blood Type

Ebb and Flo

Ed Reardon's Week

Elemental Emergence

Elfies Spellbook

Eliot Biographies

Emma Trilogy

Emma and James

Empire of Salt

In the Swedish town of Engelsfors, a mysterious forcedraws seven teenagers together. They are the Chosen Ones, and they have been chosen to drive back the demons that threaten to overwhelm the world

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