-
By 1942 Virginia Hall was the Gestapo's most urgent target, having infiltrated Vichy command, trained civilians in guerrilla warfare and sprung soldiers from Nazi prison camps. The first woman to go undercover for British SOE, her intelligence changed the course of the war - but her fight was still not over. This is a spy history like no other, telling the story of the hunting accident that disabled her, the discrimination she fought and the secret life that helped her triumph over shocking adversity. ISBN 9780349010168 -
In Nothing Is Wrong and Here Is Why, acclaimed The Washington Post satirist Alexandra Petri offers perfectly logical, reassuring reasons for everything that has happened in recent American politics and culture that will in no way unsettle your world view. In essays both new and adapted from her viral columns, Petri reports that the Trump administration is as competent as it is uncorrupted, white supremacy has never been less rampant and men have been silenced for too long. Q-Anon makes perfect sense! At the centre of the book is a virtuosic account of the past four years, a history as surreal and deranged as the Trump administration itself. This Panglossian venture into the swampy present will soothe- and terrify readers. ISBN 9781324006459 -
'She was bold, she was brave, she was funny, she was feisty. I owe her a great deal in leading the way' Sandi Toksvig. The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author - a woman very much ahead of her time. Nancy Spain was one of the most celebrated - and notorious - writers and broadcasters of the 40s, 50s and 60s. Hilarious, controversial and brilliant, she lived openly as a lesbian (sharing a household with her two lovers and their various children) and was frequently litigated against for her newspaper columns - Evelyn Waugh successfully sued her for libel... twice. She was also a fantastic crime novelist (and according to the Guardian, one of the 50 best female crime thriller writers of all time) writing with a unique style that marries the acid wit of Dorothy Parker with the intricacy of plotting worthy of Agatha Christie. WHY I AM NOT A MILLIONAIRE, has the same wit, style and fascinating detail - first published in 1956, with an introductory note from Noel Coward. After her death in a plane crash in 1964, Noel Coward commented: 'It is cruel that all that gaiety, intelligence and vitality should be snuffed out, when so many bores and horrors are left living.' ISBN 9781474618458 -
From iconic musicians Tegan and Sara comes a nostalgic memoir about high school, detailing their first loves and first songs in a compelling look back at their origin story. Before they became international musicians and LGBTQ+ icons, twin sisters Sara and Tegan Quin came of age in 90s Canada. They argued relentlessly, skipped school, dropped acid and fell in and out of love - sometimes with their best friends. One day they found their stepdad's guitar and their lives changed course forever. High School is a revelatory joint memoir. It captures two sisters wrestling with their sexual and artistic identities and those breathtaking years when the future seems wondrously possible. ISBN 9780349011981 -
YOU have the potential to make ANYTHING POSSIBLE. When working with the England football team, we focus on what we might achieve instead of worrying about what might go wrong. I honestly believe that with the right mindset, a willingness to learn from our mistakes, and the ability to cope with the highs and lows, every one of us can make the most of our lives. In this book I hope I can prepare you for your own exciting journey ahead. BE BRAVEBravery is not just the kind of heroic act that earns a medal. It's the quality we need to step out of our comfort zones and take on new challenges. BE KIND - A force for good that comes from the heart, kindness changes lives. It opens up opportunities and can be our greatest strength. FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS - We all have a story to tell in life. It's down to us what it will be about. So, let's begin writing YOUR STORY - and make it one that truly shines. 'Inspirational and honest - just like the man himself.' BEAR GRYLLS 'I loved this - full of wonderful advice I can't wait to share with my children.' HOLLY WILLOUGHBY Great for Ages 12+ ISBN 9781529135329 -
New Zealand's prime minister has been hailed as a leader for a new generation, tired of inaction in the face of issues such as climate change and far-right terrorism. Her grace and compassion following the Christchurch mosque shooting captured the world's attention. Oprah Winfrey invited us to 'channel our inner Jacindas' as praise for Ardern flooded headlines and social media. The ruler of this remote country even made the cover of Time. In this revealing biography, journalist Madeleine Chapman discovers the woman behind the headlines. Always politically engaged and passionate, Ardern is uncompromising and astute. In her first press conference, she announced an election campaign of 'relentless positivity'. The tactic was a resounding success: donations poured in and Labour rebounded in the polls. But has Ardern lived up to her promise? What political concessions has she had to make? And beyond the hype, what does her new style of leadership look like in practice? ISBN 9780750996068 -
The best travel writing by women. From Constantinople to Crimea; from Antarctica to the Andes. Throughout history adventurous women have made epic, record-breaking journeys under perilous circumstances. Whether escaping constricted societies back home or propelled by a desire for independence, footloose females have ventured to the four corners of the earth and recorded their exploits for posterity. For too long their triumphs have been overshadowed by those of their male counterparts, whose honourable failures make bigger news. In curating this collection of first-hand accounts, broadcaster, writer and traveller Mariella Frostrup puts female explorers back on the map. Her selection includes explorers from the 1700s to the present day, from iconic heroines to lesser-known eccentrics, celebrating 300 years of wild women and their amazing adventures over land, sea and air. ISBN 9781803287423 -
From the award-winning and best-selling author of Hemingway's Boat - a ground-breaking biography that illuminates the life, mind and work of one of the icons of twentieth-century America. Frank Lloyd Wright has long been known as both a supreme artist and an insufferable egotist who held in contempt almost everything aside from his own genius as an architect. But in this masterly work we discover a man dogged by traumas, racked by lies, and stifled by the myths he wove around himself: a man aware of the choices he made, and of their costs. This is the Wright who was haunted by his father, about whom he told the greatest lie of his life. And this is the Wright of many other overlooked aspects of his story: his close, and perhaps romantic, relationship with friend and early mentor Cecil Corwin; the connection between the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 and the murder of his mistress, her two children and four others at his beloved Wisconsin home by a servant gone mad; and the eerie, unmistakable role of fires in his eventful life. Showing us Wright's facades along with their cracks, Hendrickson helps us form a deep and more human understanding of the man, and a fresh appreciation of his monumental artistic achievements. With prodigious research, unique vision and his ability to make sense of a life in ways at once unexpected, poetic and brilliant, he has given us the defining book on one of the greatest creative talents of twentieth-century America. ISBN 9780099593836 -
Enda O’Doherty is an extraordinary man with an extraordinary story to share. In I’m Fine! Thoughts on Life, Addiction, Love and Health, co-written with journalist Dermot Keyes, he brings us on a journey from his youth and alcohol-soaked adulthood, through the birth of Enda 2.0 – sober and with a passion for helping others – to his new life as an endurance athlete and inspirational motivational speaker. Over a dozen years into sobriety and revelling in his new life, Enda has undergone a physical and emotional re-awakening as an endurance athlete, which has, incredibly, included carrying a washing machine from Belfast to Waterford in 2015 (covering nine marathon distances in eight days), and hauling his appliance to within a few hours of the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro in 2017, both in aid of charity. I’m Fine! traces the highs and lows of a life fully lived, the debt he owes to his family, how he has positively exploited his addictive personality, and his passion for teaching, while also disclosing his own ‘survival toolkit’ on how to make tomorrow better than today. Fuelled by 29 years as a teacher, and 6 years as a motivational speaker, this deeply personal adventure demonstrates the power of the human spirit along with Enda’s efforts to promote positive mental health. Reflective, entertaining and inspiring, Enda’s story is one worth reading if wringing every drop out of life is on your ‘To Do’ list. Enda O’Doherty is a teacher, endurance athlete and motivational speaker. He is also an advocate for positive mental health and a long-term supporter of mental health charities. ISBN 9781786051059 -
In A Friendship in Letters, Dr. Michael Shaw brings together correspondence between two of Scotland's most famous writers for the first time. Though they never met, Robert Louis Stevenson and J.M. Barrie developed a warm friendship, revealed in these amusing and gossipy letters, with vivid commentary on each other's literary work. Until recently, Barrie's side of the correspondence was presumed lost by his biographers. This epistolary volume reunites Barrie's letters with Stevenson's and contextualises them through an engaging introduction and a series of appendices, including a delightful short story by Barrie. ISBN 9781913207021 -
An urgent primer on race and racism, from the host of the viral hit video series 'Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man'. 'You cannot fix a problem you do not know you have.' So begins Emmanuel Acho in his essential guide to the truths Americans need to know to address the systemic racism that has recently electrified protests in all fifty states. 'There is a fix,' Acho says. 'But in order to access it, we're going to have to have some uncomfortable conversations.'In Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, Acho takes on all the questions, large and small, insensitive and taboo, many white people are afraid to ask - yet which everyone needs the answers to, now more than ever. With the same open-hearted generosity that has made his video series a phenomenon, Acho explains the vital core of such fraught concepts as white privilege, cultural appropriation, and "reverse racism." In his own words, he provides a space of compassion and understanding in a discussion that can lack both. He asks only for the reader's curiosity - but along the way, he will galvanize all of us to join the antiracist fight. 'I really love this' - Jada Pinkett Smith 'What Emmanuel Acho has to say is important' - Matthew McConaughey ISBN 9781529064063 -
Kant's Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write opens a window on Messud's own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm, complicated family; and, throughout it all, her devotion to art and literature. In twenty-nine intimate, brilliant and funny essays, Messud reflects on a childhood move from her Connecticut home to Australia; the complex relationship between her modern Canadian mother and a fiercely single French Catholic aunt; and a trip to Beirut, where her pied-noir father had once lived, while he was dying. She meditates on contemporary classics from Kazuo Ishiguro, Teju Cole, Rachel Cusk and Valeria Luiselli; examines three facets of Albert Camus and The Stranger; and tours her favorite paintings at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. In the luminous title essay, she explores her drive to write, born of the magic of sharing language and the transformative powers of 'a single successful sentence'. Together, these essays show the inner workings of a dazzling literary mind. "A profound book about the intrication of literature and life, about the modest, miraculous ways art helps us to live" Garth Greenwell. ISBN 9780349726557 -
Including new chapters. Frank, fearless, funny, articulate and inspiring, Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a dynamo, a young Muslim dynamo offering a bracing breath of fresh air – and hope. At 21, Yassmin found herself working on a remote Australian oil and gas rig; she was the only woman and certainly the only Sudanese-Egyptian-Australian background Muslim woman. With her hijab quickly christened a 'tea cosy' there could not be a more unlikely place on earth for a young Muslim woman to want to be. This is the story of how she got there, where she is going, and how she wants the world to change. Born in the Sudan, Yassmin and her parents moved to Brisbane when she was two, and she has been tackling barriers ever since. At 16 she founded Youth Without Borders, an organisation focused on helping young people to work for positive change in their communities. In 2007 she was named Young Australian Muslim of the Year and in 2010 Young Queenslander of the Year. In 2011 Yassmin graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering (First Class Honours) and in 2012 she was named Young Leader of the Year in the Australian Financial Review and Westpac's inaugural 100 Women of Influence Awards as well as an InStyle cultural leader and a Marie Claire woman of the future. Yassmin has now been awarded Youth of the Year in the Australian Muslim Achievement Awards. ISBN 9780857986177 -
'One truth I have learnt, as middle age enmeshes me like Virginia creeper, is that I shall never change-because my capacity for self-improvement is absolutely nil.'Jilly Cooper's observations from her days as a much-loved newspaper columnist cover everything to do with sex, socialising and survival - from marriage, friendship and the minutiae of family life, to the tedium of going to visit people for the weekend, the stress of hosting dinner parties and the descent of middle age. Entertaining and full of heart, this classic collection of journalism from the legendary author explores the highs and lows of everyday life with wit, wisdom and warmth. 'Joyful and mischievous' Jojo Moyes 'Fun, sexy and unputdownable' Marian Keyes 'Flawlessly entertaining' Helen Fielding 'No one else can make me laugh and cry quite like Jilly Cooper.' Gill Sims 'Jilly Cooper's non-fiction is just as entertaining as her novels.' Pandora Sykes ISBN 9780552178082 -
A look at the life and times of the man Sir Michael most looked up to. It started in the shadow of the pithead in a South Yorkshire mining village and ended up in tears before an audience of millions. Michael Parkinson's relationship with his late father John William was, and remains, a family love story overflowing with tenderness and tall tales of sporting valour, usually involving Yorkshire cricket or Barnsley FC. However, it was the overwhelming grief which poured out of Michael when Piers Morgan pressed him about John William in a television interview - four decades after the death of the father he encapsulated as 'Yorkshireman, miner, humorist and fast bowler' - that convinced one of the outstanding broadcasters and journalists of our time to delve deeper into the dynamics of their lives together. Co-written with his son Mike, this affectionate and revealing memoir explores the influences which shaped John William, Michael and succeeding generations of Parkinsons. The journey leads them from the depths of a Yorkshire coal mine, via the chapel, pub and picture-house, to a spot behind the bowler's arm at Lord's and the sands at Scarborough. While Like Father, Like Son conveys a powerful sense of time and place, it is wit, insight and, above all, enduring love which shine through its pages. ISBN 9781529362473 -
Travel back in time and share the experience of everyday thoughts and great moments in history in this fascinating compilation of diaries through the ages. Great Diaries traces the history of the diary from ancient times to the present day, bringing together more than 80 historical and literary diaries, artists' sketchbooks, explorers' journals, and scientists' notebooks. Discover what it was like to build a pyramid, sail the seas with Magellan, travel into the heart of Africa, or serve on the Western Front. Find out how writers and artists planned their masterpieces, and how scientists developed their groundbreaking theories. Great Diaries takes you into the pages of the world's greatest diaries and notebooks, including those of Samuel Pepys, Charles Darwin, Henry-David Thoreau, the Goncourt brothers, Virginia Woolf, and Anne Frank, and shows you what they looked like. Stunning images of the original notebooks and manuscripts are complemented by key extracts and close-ups of important details. Feature boxes provide additional biographical information and set the works in their cultural and historical context. Essential reading for everyone who is passionate about history and literature, Great Diaries provides an intimate insight into the lives and thoughts of some of the most interesting people of the last 2,000 years. ISBN 9780241412947 -
In the vein of Erling Kagge's Silence and Lars Mytting's Norwegian Wood, Under the Open Skies: A Practical Guide to Living Close to Nature combines escapism and adventure with a love of nature and the desire for a simpler life. Twenty years ago, Markus Torgeby traded his hectic urban lifestyle for a small hut in the forests of northern Sweden. He ended up living there for four years, in perfect solitude and in harmony with nature. Today, he and his wife Frida and their three children live in a house he built with his own hands, near the site where he once survived on nothing but oatmeal, river water and the forest's own pantry. Framed with stunning photographs taken by Frida, Under the Open Skies is the story of Markus's journey from broken youth, to living alone in the forest, to a self-healed family man. Torgeby is proof of the restorative powers of the outdoors and his descriptions of living close to nature combine everyday philosophy and inspirational insights with helpful advice as he shares how to make fire, the best techniques for chopping logs and how best to forage for food. Part practical guide to how to live in the wild, part a meditation on the human need for a connection with the natural world, Under the Open Skies is the beguiling and timely portrait of how the desire for a simpler existence helped one man find contentment and connection with the world around him, and how we can all learn from his experience. ISBN 9781471196539 -
In the course of making Human Flow, his epic feature documentary about the global refugee crisis, the artist Ai Weiwei and his collaborators interviewed more than 600 refugees, aid workers, politicians, activists, doctors, and local authorities in twenty-three countries around the world. A handful of those interviews were included in the film. This book presents one hundred of these conversations in their entirety, providing compelling first-person stories of the lives of those affected by the crisis and those on the front lines of working to address its immense challenges. Speaking in their own words, refugees give voice to their experiences of migrating across borders, living in refugee camps, and struggling to rebuild their lives in unfamiliar and uncertain surroundings. They talk about the dire circumstances that drove them to migrate, whether war, famine, or persecution; and their hopes and fears for the future. A wide range of related voices provides context for the historical evolution of this crisis, the challenges for regions and states, and the options for moving forward. Complete with photographs taken by Ai Weiwei while filming Human Flow, this book provides a powerful, personal, and moving account of the most urgent humanitarian crisis of our time. ISBN 9780691207049
