Biography & True Accounts

  • Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad: A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival

    08

    THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

    ‘Epic, moving and important’ ROBERT HARRIS

    ‘A modern classic’ OBSERVER

    ‘An unforgettable epic of a book’DAILY MAIL

    From longstanding political columnist and commentator Daniel Finkelstein, a powerful memoir exploring both his mother and his father’s devastating experiences of persecution, resistance and survival during the Second World War.

    Daniel’s mother Mirjam Wiener was the youngest of three daughters born in Germany to Alfred and Margarete Wiener. Alfred, a decorated hero from the Great War, is now widely acknowledged to have been the first person to recognise the existential danger Hitler posed to the Jews and began, in 1933, to catalogue in detail Nazi crimes. After moving his family to Amsterdam, he relocated his library to London and was preparing to bring over his wife and children when Germany invaded the Netherlands. Before long, the family was rounded up, robbed and sent to starve in Bergen-Belsen.

    Daniel’s father Ludwik was born in Lwów, the only child of a prosperous Jewish family. In 1939, after Hitler and Stalin carved up Poland, Ludwik’s father was arrested and sentenced to hard labour in the Gulag. Meanwhile, deported to Siberia and working as a slave labourer on a collective farm, Ludwik survived the freezing winters in a tiny house he built from cow dung.

    Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad is a deeply moving, personal and at times horrifying memoir about Finkelstein’s parents’ experiences at the hands of the two genocidal dictators of the twentieth century. It is a story of persecution; survival; and the consequences of totalitarianism told with the almost unimaginable bravery of two ordinary families shining through.

    ‘Danny Finkelstein has written an elegant, moving account of the history of one family, and in doing so shines light on the history of the 20th century. If you want to understand Hitler and Stalin, read this book about people whose lives were upended by both of them’ ANNE APPLEBAUM, author of Gulag: A History, winner of the Pulitzer Prize

    Read more

    £2.80
  • Listen: A powerful new book about life, death, relationships, mental health and how to talk about what matters – from the Sunday Times bestselling author … to Find the Words…

    08

    ‘Powerful, humane and wise’ JULIA SAMUEL

    ‘Everyone should read it’ NIGELLA LAWSON

    ‘Beautiful … This is a book for everyone. You feel held by it’ PHILIPPA PERRY

    Most of us have a conversation we’re avoiding.

    From the bestselling author of With the End in Mind, this is a book about the conversations that matter and how to have them better – more honestly, more confidently and without regret.

    A child coming out to their parent. A family losing someone to terminal illness. A friend noticing the first signs of someone’s dementia. A careers advisor and a teenager with radically different perspectives.

    There are moments when we must talk, listen and be there for one another. Why do we so often come away from those times feeling like we could have done more, or should have been braver in the face of discomfort? Why do we skirt the conversations that might matter most?

    By bringing together stories with a lifetime’s experience working in medicine and the newest psychology, Mannix offers lessons for how we can better speak our mind and help when others need to.

    Kathryn Mannix’s ‘With the End in Mind’ was a Sunday Times bestseller the weeks ending 6 January 2018, 13 January 2018 and 3 February 2018.

    Read more

    £2.80
  • Britney Spears: The Biography of Britney Spears

    University Press returns with a short, captivating biography of one of history’s most compelling figures: Britney Spears.

    Britney Spears, the pop sensation who exploded onto the scene like a glittery tornado, has lived a life as vibrant as her music.

    Born in McComb, Mississippi, in 1981, this Southern belle traded her small-town roots for the neon lights of Hollywood, and the world hasn’t been the same since.

    From her iconic schoolgirl outfit in “Baby One More Time” to her fierce comeback in Las Vegas, Britney’s journey has been nothing short of legendary.

    She’s danced her way through triumphs, survived the harshest media storms, and emerged stronger than ever.

    With a discography that could make anyone want to “Scream & Shout,” Britney’s star power remains as blinding as ever.

    Raise a toast to the princess of pop, who continues to live life on her terms and reminds us that we’re all stronger than yesterday.

    This short book tells the intensely human story of a woman who is inspiring her millions of adoring fans – and changing the world in a way that no one else can.

    Read more

    £2.80
  • Robert My Father: A Personal Biography of Robert Morley

    06

    ‘If Robert had a mission, it was to emphasise that life was meant to be fun; he was one of the few men I knew who strode through life instead of circumnavigating it. He died without ever growing old.’ Michael Parkinson

    ‘Comic genius’ was the uncontested verdict of the International Herald Tribune. But Robert Morley was bigger even than that. While he is remembered for landmark performances such as the first portrayal of Oscar Wilde on stage and screen, and for many more as the epitome of the crusty but lovable English gentleman, Robert Morley is equally remembered for perhaps his finest role: playing himself. Through books, plays and countless radio and television performances, Robert Morley spread his own unique brand of irresistible humour and joie de vivre, generally resembling, to quote one memorable description, ‘an indignant elephant’. In this wonderfully entertaining account of a remarkable life, Sheridan Morley reveals the true Robert Morley – actor, playwright, bon viveur, and, not least, father.

    ‘Warm yet unsentimental … a first-rate portrait of a true original and star’ Evening Standard

    ‘Affectionate and moving, packed with anecdotes. Above all it is fun’ Sunday Express

    ‘Charming and affectionate … What his son’s biography sets out to do, and succeeds in admirably, is to celebrate the joyful pleasure that old-fashioned performers took in their art’ Times Literary Supplement

    ‘Hugely entertaining, and bulges with very good stories’ Mail on Sunday

    Read more

    £2.80
  • At My Mother’s Knee…And Other Low Joints: Tales from Paul’s mischievous young years

    08

    THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER

    ‘Warmly funny, dry and mischievous . . . Genuine and brilliant.’ Daily Mail

    Paul O’Grady is one of Britain’s very best loved entertainers. He is known and adored by millions, whether as the creator of the acid-tongued Blonde Bombsite, Lily Savage, the presenter of the fantastically successful, award-winning Paul O’Grady Show on Channel 4 or the massive hit ITV show, For the Love of Dogs.

    Now, in his own unique voice, Paul O’Grady tells story of his early life in Irish Catholic Birkenhead that started him on the long and winding road from mischievous altar boy to national treasure. It is a brilliantly evoked, hilarious and often moving tale of gossip in the back yard, bragging in the corner shop and slanging matches on the front doorstep, populated by larger-than-life characters with hearts of gold and tongues as sharp as razors.

    At My Mother’s Knee features an unforgettable cast of rogues, rascals, lovers, fighters, saints and sinners – and one iconic bus conductress. It’s a book which really does have something for everyone and which reminds us that, when all’s said and done, there’s a bit of savage in all of us…

    Readers love At My Mother’s Knee:

    ‘I laughed, I cried, I couldn’t put it down and the characters really just jumped out of the page.’ *****
    ‘Candid, heart warming and also hilarious.’ *****
    ‘Wonderfully written, laugh out loud funny and poignant by turns.’ *****

    Read more

    £2.80
  • I’m no Shakespeare: Walking the South West Coast Path

    08
    The unlikely but perfectly true story of how a nosey menopausal linguist threw away her pills, pulled on a backpack, and accidentally wrote a best seller.

    “It’s beautiful. Touching, honest, heartfelt and zigzags effortlessly from poignancy, reflection to humour in a sentence.”

    “Really lively writing … brilliant stuff … love the characters coming to life and your wry sense of humour!”

    For 630 miles she walked, with her life on her back, her heart on her sleeve, and a wickedly sharpened pencil behind her ear.

    Read more

    £1.99
  • Nursing In The ’60’s

    The NHS, nurse training and hospital life were vastly different in the 1960s when the author qualified as a nurse. Her autobiography covers the pressured years full of incident and humour in which Liz proved she was competent enough to be let loose on the patients of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Selly Oak and other prominent West Midlands institutions.

    Read more

    £1.90
  • Sean Connery: A Life from Beginning to End (Biographies of Actors)

    08
    Discover the remarkable life of Sean Connery…
    Free BONUS Inside!

    Sean Connery is still well remembered for his role in the epic James Bond series. Although we often picture him as a smooth, daring, and debonair agent, surviving all manner of incredible stunts, Sean Connery was more than just James Bond. His films were indeed action-packed, but so was his personal life.

    Connery was a man who was always on the move. Since his earliest days growing up in Scotland, he sought to make the most of everything he had. Whether he was involved in theater, film, or worthy causes in his ancestral homeland, he gave it his all. This book explores the life and legend of Sean Connery in full.

    Discover a plethora of topics such as

    • Early Days in Edinburgh
    • Connery, the Bodybuilder and Casket Polisher
    • Becoming James Bond
    • Work with Hitchcock
    • Sci-Fi Era
    • Late Life and Death
    • And much more!

    So if you want a concise and informative book on Sean Connery, simply scroll up and click the “Buy now” button for instant access!

    Read more

    £1.90
  • The Ladies of Whitechapel: London. 1888. Their Stories.

    08
    London, 1888.

    Enter the narrow dark alleys of Victorian London, where women sold their bodies for pennies, and the rich preyed among the weak!

    In the dark lanes, away from the hustle and bustle of Whitechapel High Street, four women live their lives. But someone is watching – and waiting.

    In 1888, five victims of Jack the Ripper became famous for their horrific fate. That same year, police ignored many other women’s murders because of their class, or in an attempt to dispel the idea of a serial killer loose in Whitechapel.

    Discover the forgotten women of Whitechapel: from heiress to whore, from wife to murderer – four woven tales of women struggling to survive the terror of Jack the Ripper’s reign.

    Read more

    £1.90
  • Working for the Royals (Kindle Single)

    08
    Ask any visitor to London, from Tokyo to Tennessee, what is their number one priority in places to see, and the answer will invariably be: Buckingham Palace. It is by far the most famous building in the world and the lady who lives there, Queen Elizabeth 11, is easily the most famous woman on the planet.
    Her Majesty employs some 1,200 men and women, full and part-time, permanent and temporary in her various Royal residences with over 400 working for her at Buckingham Palace alone.
    So, what is she like to work for? Is she a generous employer? Does she encourage friendliness among those whose salaries she pays or does she prefer to keep her distance? Is it true she hates her servants to have facial hair – beards or moustaches? Why do the housemaids have to vacuum while walking backwards at all times? How are the servants told to react when they meet the Queen or any member of her family? What’s the money like?
    In many ways Her Majesty is a model employer, providing food, drink and accommodation, at the best address in London, to her staff, but one thing she does not offer is high wages.
    So why do most of them stay for many years? This book gives all the answers from the inside.

    Brian Hoey has written 26 books about Britain’s Royal Family and as a former reporter and presenter with BBC Television and Radio he has interviewed Prince Charles, Princess Anne ( whose official biography he wrote), the Duke of Edinburgh and the late Diana, Princess of Wales. Hoey was a television commentator at the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981 and again, sadly, in 1997 at the funeral of Diana, He has also interviewed many of Hollywood’s Royalty including; Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, Ray Milland, Cary Grant, David Niven, Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren, Kirk Douglas, Jean Simmons and he conducted the final TV interview with Charlie Chaplin.

    Read more

    £1.40
  • Vinyl Countdown

    08
    ‘You hold in your hand a miracle. A book about a passion, and the hipsters, oddballs and old heads who share it, written by one of their number, albeit a ludicrously erudite one’ – Danny Kelly
    A revival of interest in vinyl music has taken place in recent years – but for many of those from the ‘baby boomer’ generation, it never went away.
    Graham Sharpe’s vinyl love affair began in the 1960s and since then he has amassed over 3000 LPs and spent countless hours visiting record shops worldwide along with record fairs, car boot sales, online and real life auctions.Vinyl Countdownfollows his journey to over a hundred shops across the globe – from New York to New Zealand, Walsall to Warsaw, Oslo to Ozstralia, (old) Jersey to New Jersey – and describes the many characters he has encountered and the adventures he accrued along the way.
    Vinyl Countdown seeks to reawaken the often dormant desire which first promoted the gathering of records, and to confirm the belief of those who still indulge in it, that they happily belong to, and should celebrate the undervalued, misunderstood significant group of music-obsessed vinylholics, who always want – need – to buy… just one more record.
    A mesmerising blend of memoir, travel, music and social history, Vinyl Countdown will appeal to anyone who vividly recalls the first LP they bought and any music fan who derives pleasure from the capacity that records have for transporting you back in time.
    ‘Graham Sharpe’s journey around the second-hand record shops of the UK is full of laugh out loud anecdotes and wonderful observations. A great read not just for vinyl fans, but for anybody who has ever visited a record shop’ – Graham Jones, author of Last Shop Standing (Whatever Happened to Record Shops), Strange Requests and Comic Tales From Record Shopsand The Vinyl Revival and the Shops That Made it Happen

    Read more

    £1.10
  • Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

    From the legendary vice-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, lessons in investment strategy, philanthropy, and living a rational and ethical life.

    “Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up,” Charles T. Munger advises in Poor Charlie’s Almanack. Originally published in 2005, this compendium of eleven talks delivered by the legendary Berkshire Hathaway vice-chairman between 1986 and 2007 has become a touchstone for a generation of investors and entrepreneurs seeking to absorb the enduring wit and wisdom of one of the great minds of the 20th and 21st centuries.

    Edited by Peter D. Kaufman, chairman and CEO of Glenair and longtime friend of Charlie Munger—whom he calls “this generation’s answer to Benjamin Franklin”—this abridged Stripe Press edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack features a brand-new foreword by Stripe cofounder John Collison.

    Poor Charlie’s Almanack draws on Munger’s encyclopedic knowledge of business, finance, history, philosophy, physics, and ethics—and more besides—to introduce the latticework of mental models that underpin his rational and rigorous approach to life, learning, and decision-making. Delivered with Munger’s characteristic sharp wit and rhetorical flair, it is an essential volume for any reader seeking to go to bed a little wiser than when they woke up.

    Read more

    £0.99
  • Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

    03

    A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl’s shocking crime — and its extraordinary aftermath.

    ‘An absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness…it deserves to be read with attention.’ Hilary Mantel,Booker Prize–winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy

    On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old black girl kills a white elderly bible teacher in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tension the press swoops in.

    When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim’s grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world — reaching as far away as the Vatican — as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula.

    As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life. This story asks us to consider the nature of justice, and what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of.

    Read more

    £0.99
  • Sherlock Holmes and the Duelling Dukes (The Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes 6)

    Discover one of Sherlock Holmes’ secret early cases! Perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle, Anthony Horowitz and classic crime fiction.

    Is a killer hiding in plain sight…?

    1877

    Sherlock Holmes and his good friend Mr Stamford have taken a break from their studies at Barts Medical College in London to join a gentlemen’s sporting week at a large country manor house.

    But on arrival, they find the guests consumed by old rivalries, with new hatreds and sinister plots festering among them.

    And tensions boil over when one of the guests is discovered, dead.

    With a large collection of weapons to hand and a group consumed with vengeance and malice, it is soon apparent that there is at least one killer in their midst.

    Holmes is determined to solve the mystery and no can leave until he has done so.

    But how far will the killer go to escape detection? Will he strike again?

    Or can Holmes and Stamford outwit him…?

    SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE DUELLING DUKES is the sixth Victorian crime thriller in the Early Casebook of Sherlock Holmes series.

    THE EARLY CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES SERIES:
    BOOK 1: Sherlock Holmes and the Rosetta Stone Mystery
    BOOK 2:Sherlock Holmes and the Explorers’ Club
    BOOK 3: Sherlock Holmes and the Ebony Idol
    BOOK 4: Sherlock Holmes and the Persian Slipper
    BOOK 5: Sherlock Holmes and the Legend of the Great Auk
    BOOK 6: Sherlock Holmes and the Duelling Dukes

    Read more

    £0.90
  • An Englishman at War: The Wartime Diaries of Stanley Christopherson DSO MC & Bar 1939-1945

    05

    ‘An astonishing record…There is no other wartime diary that can match the scope of these diaries’ James Holland

    ‘An outstanding contribution to the literature of the Second World War’Professor Gary Sheffield

    From the outbreak of war in September 1939 to the smouldering ruins of Berlin in 1945, via Tobruk, El Alamein, D-Day and the crossing of the Rhine, An Englishman at War is a unique first-person account of the Second World War.
    Stanley Christopherson’s regiment, the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry, went to war as amateurs and ended up one of the most experienced, highly trained and most valued armoured units in the British Army.

    A junior officer at the beginning of the war, Christopherson became the commanding officer of the regiment soon after the D-Day landings. What he and his regiment witnessed presents a unique overview of one of the most cataclysmic events in world history and gives an extraordinary insight, through tragedy and triumph, into what it felt like to be part of the push for victory.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • The Royal Station Master’s Daughters at War: A dramatic World War I saga of the royal family (The Royal Station Master’s Daughters Series book 2)

    08
    The second heartwarming book in The Royal Station Master’s Daughters series. For readers of Maisie Thomas and Daisy Styles.

    It is 1917 and Maria has adapted well to her new life on the royal Sandringham estate where she works as a maid in the Big House for Queen Alexandra and is in awe of the many treasures around her. It is two years since she turned up at the royal station master’s house to escape her secret past, destitute and with nowhere else to turn. Having proven herself to Harry Saward and his daughters, she is now welcomed by them as one of the family. But when Nellie, a mysterious relative turns up, on the run from the law, Maria’s new-found happiness could be under threat.

    Meanwhile, the impact of World War I is felt deeply in the community as the fate of missing men from the Sandringham Company, who fought in Gallipoli, is still unknown. Harry’s daughters pull together to support each other and women on the royal estate as they face their sorrows and challenges. Ada’s husband, Alfie, is away fighting on the front line while Beatrice is now a VAD nurse at a cottage hospital. Jessie has become a land army girl, proudly doing a man’s job, while pining for her sweetheart Jack.

    In a community torn apart by loss and tragedy, how will the station master’s family survive and find the happiness they’re all searching for?

    The Royal Station Master’s Daughters at War is the second book in the WWI saga series, inspired by the Saward family, who ran the station at Wolferton in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Through this family we get a glimpse into all walks of life – from royalty to the humblest of soldiers.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • A Funny Life: The Sunday Times Bestseller

    08

    The Sunday Times top 10 bestseller.

    Laugh along with Michael McIntyre as he lifts the curtain on his life in his revealing autobiography.

    Michael’s first book ended with his big break at the 2006 Royal Variety Performance. Waking up the next morning in the tiny rented flat he shared with his wife Kitty and their one-year-old son, he was beyond excited about the new glamorous world of show business. Unfortunately, he was also clueless . . .

    In A Funny Life, Michael honestly and hilariously shares the highs and the lows of his rise to the top and desperate attempts to stay there. It’s all here, from his disastrous panel show appearances to his hit TV shows, from mistakenly thinking he’d be a good chat show host and talent judge, to finding fame and fortune beyond his wildest dreams and becoming the biggest-selling comedian in the world. Along the way he opens his man drawer, narrowly avoids disaster when his trousers fall down in front of three policemen and learns the hard way why he should always listen to his wife.

    Michael has had a silly life, a stressful life, sometimes a moving and touching life, but always A Funny Life.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • The Doctor Will See You Now: The Junior Doctor’s Back in Hospital

    08

    The doctor is back again and on the wards! Now in his third year as junior doctor, Max looks and sounds the part. But this time around, things are not at all as he expected …

    The junior doctor … back on the wards. After a year on the streets treating outreach patients, Max Pemberton is back in the relative comfort of hospital. This time running between elderly care and the dementia clinic to A&E and outpatients. No longer inexperienced (Max and his doctor friends can now tell when someone is actually dead), they are on the front line of patient care for better or worse.

    In the midst of an NHS still under threat (some things never change) there are committed and caring doctors, big issues, hope, frustration, huge societal changes affecting the entire health system as well as the general drama of everyday life in a big hospital, from biscuit wars to resus. It’s not like television, this is real – there are no easy answers – but The Doctor Will See You Now will give you hope that there are enough good doctors asking the questions.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • Could It Be Forever? My Story

    06
    This ebook edition contains the full text version as per the book. Doesn’t include original photographic and illustrated material. In the seventies, when he was just 20 years old, David Cassidy achieved the sort of teen idol fame that is rarely seen. He was mobbed everywhere he went. His clothes were regularly ripped off by adoring fans. He sold records the world over. He was bigger than Elvis. And all thanks to a hit TV show called The Partridge Family. Now, in his own words, this is a brutally frank account of those mindblowing days of stardom in which being David Cassidy played second fiddle to being Keith Partridge. Including stories of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll that explode the myth of Cassidy as squeaky clean, it’s also the story of how to keep on living life and loving yourself when the fickle fans fall away.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • Bravo Two Zero: the classic true story from an SAS hero

    04

    Sergeant Andy McNab recounts the story of the top secret mission that would reveal the secrets of the SAS to the world for the first time.

    Their location: Iraq
    Their mission: to sever a vital enemy underground communication link, to find and destroy mobile Scud launchers
    Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero

    When eight members of the elite SAS regiment embark on a highly covert operation, they are each laden with 15 stones of equipment, needing to tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. They engage in a fierce battle. They escape on foot to the Syrian border. Three men die. One escapes.
    But four men are captured. For them, the worst is yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they are tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training has prepared them…

    This is a story of superhuman courage, strength, endurance and dark humour in the face of overwhelming odds. It shows just how much it takes to be a member of the SAS.
    _____________________________________________
    ‘The best account yet of the SAS in action.’ Sunday Times
    ‘A gripping account of special forces at work…a tremendous adventure story.’ Daily Telegraph

    Read more

    £0.90
  • Billy Connolly

    08

    The inside story of the one of the most successful British stand-up comedians, as told by the person best qualified to reveal all about the man behind the comic, his wife of over 20 years – Pamela Stephenson.

    Once in a lifetime, there strides upon the stage someone who can truly be called a legend. Such a person is the inimitable, timeless genius who is Billy Connolly. His effortlessly wicked whimsy has entranced, enthralled – and split the sides of – thousands upon thousands of adoring audiences.

    And when he isn’t doing that…he’s turning in award-winning performances on film and television.

    He’s the man who needs no introduction, and yet he is the ultimate enigma. From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over.

    How did this happen, who is the real Billy Connolly? Only one person can answer that question: his wife, Pamela Stephenson. Pamela’s writing combines the very personal with a frank objectivity that makes for a compelling, moving and hugely entertaining biography. This is the real Billy Connolly.

    This genre-defining book is now released as an ebook for a new generation of comedy fans, with a new Foreword from the author. Pamela’s vision of Billy is as true now as it ever was – as groundbreaking, as moving and as laugh-out-loud funny – and here she brings the book fully into its context, as one of the most influential biographies ever written.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • Agatha Christie: The Sunday Times Bestseller

    08

    ‘A smart and highly entertaining portrait of a literary powerhouse’
    – THE TIMES BOOKS OF THE YEAR

    ‘A riveting portrait’
    – GUARDIAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR

    ***
    ‘Worsley’s sparkling biography brings a fresh eye to Christie’s life and work, firmly busting the myth that she, or her novels, were cosy.’ Daily Mail

    ‘Every Christie fan should read this’ – The Times

    ‘Shows the Queen of Crime in a new light.’ – Daily Telegraph

    ‘Worsley’s book excels in bringing a broader historical perspective to Christie’s life and work, and her enthusiasm is infectious.’ – Observer

    ‘Nobody in the world was more inadequate to act the heroine than I was.’

    Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was ‘just’ an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? As Lucy Worsley says, ‘She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern’. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness.

    So why – despite all the evidence to the contrary – did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure?
    She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do. Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer. It’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman.

    With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was – truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.

    Read more

    £0.90
  • Humble Pie

    08

    Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, driven, stubborn. But this is his real story…

    In this fast-paced, bite-sized edition of his bestselling autobiography Ramsay tells the real story of how he became the world’s most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother’s heroin addiction, his failed first career as a footballer, his fanatical pursuit of gastronomic perfection and his TV persona – all the things that have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about:

    • his tough childhood: his father’s alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings
    • his first career as a footballer: how the whole family moved to Scotland when he was signed by Glasgow Rangers at the age of fifteen, and how he coped when his career was over due to injury just three years later
    • his brother’s heroin addiction.
    • Gordon’s early career: learning his trade in Paris and London; how his career developed from there: his time in Paris under Albert Roux and his seven Michelin-starred restaurants.
    • kitchen life: Gordon spills the beans about life behind the kitchen door, and how a restaurant kitchen is run in Anthony Bourdain-style.
    • and how he copes with the impact of fame on himself and his family: his television career, the rapacious tabloids, and his own drive for success.

    Read more

    £0.70

    Humble Pie

    £0.70

Main Menu