Biography: adventurers and explorers Books
Random House Publishing Group Up Home
Book SynopsisNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)“A riveting work of literature, destined to take its place in the canon of great African American autobiographies.”—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard UniversityI was born at a crossroads: a crossroads in history, a crossroads in culture, and a geographical crossroad in North Houston County in East Texas.Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become the first Black president
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Random House USA Inc Live Learn Love Well
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Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group Chasing Hope
Book SynopsisFrom New York Times columnist, Pulitzer Prize winner, and best-selling author Nicholas D. Kristof, an intimate and gripping memoir about a life in journalismSince 1984, Nicholas Kristof has worked almost continuously for The New York Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent, bureau chief, and now columnist, becoming one of the foremost reporters of his generation. Here, he recounts his event-filled path from a small-town farm in Oregon to every corner of the world.Reporting from Hong Kong, Beijing, and Tokyo, while traveling far afield to India, Africa, and Europe, Kristof witnessed and wrote about century-defining events: the Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, the Yemeni civil war, the Darfur genocide in Sudan, and the wave of addiction and despair that swept through his hometown and a broad swath of working-class America. Fully aware that coverage of atrocities generates considerably fewer page views than the coverage of politics, he nevert
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Dlucks Enterprise LLC No Lucks Given
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£17.09
Random House USA Inc Riding with the Ghost A Memoir
Book SynopsisAn unflinching memoir from a writer reckoning with his relationship with his troubled father and the complicated legacy that each generation hands down to the next“Justin Taylor’s relentless, peripatetic, and tender search for reconciliation with his late troubled father blooms into a full-throated song of joy about his own life lived through music, teaching, travel, and literature.”—Lauren Groff, author of FloridaNAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWSWhen Justin Taylor was thirty, his father, Larry, drove to the top of the Nashville airport parking garage to take his own life. Thanks to the intervention of family members, he was not successful, but the incident forever transformed how Taylor thinks of his father, and how he thinks of himself as a son.Moving back and forth in time from that day, Riding with the Ghost captures the past&r
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Random House USA Inc What Just Happened
Book SynopsisA BOSTON GLOBE BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • With unwavering humanity and light-footed humor, this intimate account of the interminable year of 2020 offers commentary on the COVID-19 pandemic, protests for racial justice, the U.S. presidential election, and more, all with a miraculous dose of groundedness in head-spinning times. This book is so funny and so true. Charles Finch unpacks a year of plague, fear, shameless venality, and dizzying stupidity with an irrepressible wit and surgically precise cultural observations. I didn''t know how badly I needed exactly this. Maybe you do too? —Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box In March 2020, at the request of the Los Angeles Times, Charles Finch became a reluctant diarist: As California sheltered in place, he began to write daily notes about the odd ambient changes in his own life and in the lives around him. The result is What Just Happened. In a warm, c
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Faber & Faber Gerry Adams An Unauthorised Life
Book SynopsisHow did Gerry Adams grow from a revolutionary street activist in perpetual danger of arrest and assassination into the leader of Sinn Féin, with intimate access to the British and Irish prime ministers and the US president? And how did he outlast them all? Drawing on newly available intelligence and scores of exclusive interviews, Malachi O'Doherty's meticulously researched biography sheds light on the history of this extraordinary shape-shifter. O'Doherty's experience as a journalist, as a correspondent during the peace process and as a commentator on Northern Irish affairs, informs this authoritative account of one of the world's most controversial politicians.
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Random House USA Inc All the White Friends I Couldnt Keep
Book SynopsisA leading voice for social justice reveals how he stopped arguing with white people who deny the ongoing legacy of racism—and offers a proven path forward for Black people and people of color based on the history of nonviolent struggle.“A moving personal journey that lends practical insight for expanding and strengthening the global antiracist movement.”—Patrisse Khan-Cullors, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, bestselling author of When They Call You a TerroristWhen the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter” was heard across the world in 2013, Andre Henry was one of the millions for whom the movement caused a political awakening and a rupture in some of his closest relationships with white people. As he began using his artistic gifts to share his experiences and perspective, Henry was aggrieved to discover that many white Americans—people he called friends and family—were more interested in debating whether racism existed or whether Henry was being polite enough in the way he used his voice.In this personal and thought-provoking book, Henry explores how the historical divides between Black people and non-Black people are expressed through our most mundane interactions, and why this struggle won’t be resolved through civil discourse, diversity hires, interracial relationships, or education. What we need is a revolution, one that moves beyond symbolic progress to disrupt systems of racial violence and inequality in tangible, creative ways.Sharing stories from his own path to activism—from studying at seminary to becoming a student of nonviolent social change, from working as a praise leader to singing about social justice—and connecting those experiences to lessons from successful nonviolent struggles in America and around the world, Andre Henry calls on Black people and people of color to divest from whiteness and its false promises, trust what their lived experiences tell them, and practice hope as a discipline as they work for lasting change.
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Faber & Faber Last Curtsey
Book SynopsisOnce upon a time the well-bred daughters of Britain''s aristocracy took part in a female rite of passage: curtseying to the Queen. But in 1958 this ritual was coming to an end. Under pressure to shine - not least from their mothers - the girls became the focus for newspaper diarists and society photographers in a party season that stretched for months among the great houses of England, Ireland and Scotland. Fiona MacCarthy traces the stories of the girls who curtseyed that year, and shows how their lives were to open out in often very unexpected ways - as Britain itself changed irreversibly during the 1960s, and the certainties of the old order came to an end.
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Random House USA Inc Red Lip Theology
Book SynopsisA moving essay collection promoting freedom, self-love, and divine wholeness for Black women and opening new levels of understanding and ideological transformation for non-Black women and allies“Candice Marie Benbow is a once-in-a-generation theologian, the kind who, having ground dogma into dust with the fine point of a stiletto, leads us into the wide-open spaces of faith.”—Brittney Cooper, author of Eloquent Rage and co-editor of The Crunk Feminist Collection Blurring the boundaries of righteous and irreverent, Red Lip Theology invites us to discover freedom in a progressive Christian faith that incorporates activism, feminism, and radical authenticity. Essayist and theologian Candice Marie Benbow’s essays explore universal themes like heartache, loss, forgiveness, and sexuality, and she unflinchingly empowers women who struggle with feeling loved and nurtured by church culture. Benbow writes powerfully about experiences at the heart of her Black womanhood. In honoring her single mother’s love and triumphs—and mourning her unexpected passing—she finds herself forced to shed restrictions she’d been taught to place on her faith practice. And by embracing alternative spirituality and womanist theology, and confronting staid attitudes on body positivity and LGBTQ+ rights, Benbow challenges religious institutions, faith leaders, and communities to reimagine how faith can be a tool of liberation and transformation for women and girls.
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Random House Publishing Group Feelings A Story in Seasons
Book SynopsisA stunning illustrated journey through one young woman’s year of feelings—from the saturated highs of early summer to the gray isolation of late winter. “Feelings is a visual and emotional treat, full of gorgeous artwork and soothing insight.”—Mari Andrew, New York Times bestselling author of Am I There Yet? Enter Manjit Thapp’s Feelings, where you’ll find moods that change as quickly as the weather; the different shades of anxiety and hope that each new season brings; and the stages of joy and pain that fuel our growth. From the spark of possibility and jolt of creativity in High Summer, to the need for release from anxiety and pressure during Monsoon, to the desolation and numbness of Winter, Feelings implores us to consider the seasons of our own emotional journeys.Articulating and validating the range of feelings we all experienc
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Random House USA Inc By Water Beneath the Walls
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Faber & Faber A Whores Profession Notes and Essays
Book SynopsisA Whore''s Profession brings together, for the first time, David Mamet''s acclaimed volumes of notes and essays, including, The Cabin, Writing in Restaurants, Some Freaks and On Directing Film. Poignant, intimate, insightful and witty by turns, these writings are an essential accompaniment for David Mamet''s plays, and an education for anyone interested in theatre, film, and writing. In these wise, revealing, and endlessly amusing pieces, David Mamet touches upon many aspects of his life as a writer. In Writing in Restaurants he reflects modestly on his career, while Some Freaks discourses loudly and entertainingly on aspects of contemporary culture - like the movies, Disneyland and on being a tourist. On Directing Film shows his ebullient and practical approach to his own film-making. Central to these essays is Mamet''s own work as a writer, and it is in The Cabin that Mamet comes closest to defining himself. I
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Faber & Faber Brian Friel Essays Diaries Interviews 19641999
Book SynopsisSince the success of Philadelphia Here I Come! in 1964, Brian Friel has written over 20 plays to critical acclaim, confirming him as one of the major dramatists of the 20th century. This collection of writing from 1964 to 1999 delves into his work and life before and after his landmark play.
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Faber & Faber Elizabeth Gaskell A Habit of Stories
Book SynopsisWinner of the Portico PrizeShortlisted for the Whitbread Biography of the YearHigh-spirited, witty and passionate, Elizabeth Gaskell wrote some of the most enduring novels of the Victorian age, including Mary Barton, North and South and Wives and Daughters. This biography traces Elizabeth''s youth in rural Knutsford, her married years in the tension-ridden city of Manchester and her wide network of friends in London, Europe and America. Standing as a figure caught up in the religious and political radicalism of nineteenth century Britain, the book looks at how Elizabeth observed, from her Manchester home, the brutal but transforming impact of industry, enjoying a social and family life, but distracted by her need to write down the truth of what she saw. In this widely acclaimed biography, Elizabeth Gaskell emerges as an artist of unrecognized complexity, shrewdly observing the political, religious and feminist arguments of nineteenth c
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Faber & Faber The Courtesans Revenge
Book SynopsisHarriette Wilson was the most desired and the most dangerous woman in Regency London. This highly acclaimed biography reveals for the first time the true story behind her sensational life and scandalous ''Memoirs''. When her former lovers - including much of the British aristocracy - turned against her, she knew exactly how to take revenge . . .''A wonderful book. Much more than a biography of one attractive, witty woman, it offers a deft analysis of how Britain dealt with celebrity, sex, power and popular journalism in an age that bears remarkable similarities to our own . . . Frances Wilson is not only a first-rate scholar but also a wonderful storyteller who manages to get inside her namesake''s famously creamy skin and tell her story with wit and understanding.'' Kathryn Hughes, Mail on Sunday''Lively and stylish . . . Reveals how dangerous the courtesan who operated at the heart of the political world was thought to be.'' Anne Sebba, Spectator<
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Faber & Faber Ariels Gift Ted Hughes Sylvia Plath and the Story
Book SynopsisErica Wagner provides a comprehensive guide to the poems that must constitute one of the most extraordinary and powerful volumes published in the last century. When Ted Hughes''s Birthday Letters was published in 1998, it was greeted with astonishment and acclaim. Few suspected that Ted Hughes had been at work, for a quarter of a century, on a cycle of poems addressed almost entirely to his first wife, the American poet Sylvia Plath. In Ariel''s Gift, Erica Wagner offers a commentary on the poems, pointing the reader towards the events that shaped them, and, crucially, showing how they draw upon Plath''s own work.
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Faber & Faber Houdinis BoxOn the Arts of Escape
Book SynopsisIn his most captivating book to date, Adam Phillips explores mankind''s on-going fascination with ideas of escape. Taking as his starting point the life and works of Harry Houdini - ''the greatest magician the world has ever seen'' - he considers why some people might become compulsive escape artists, whereas others appear to find freedom in self-imposed confinement.''A rare achievement - as remarkable a piece of work as Houdini ever performed himself.'' Daily TelegraphTrade Review'Though Phillips' territory is complication, he reports back in the simplest of words. He is perhaps single-handedly continuing the tradition of the world's best essayists! Observer; 'A rare achievement - as remarkable a piece of work as Houdini ever performed himself; Daily Telegraph
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Faber & Faber The Erotomaniac The Secret Life of Henry Spencer
Book SynopsisHenry Spencer Ashbee seemed a prosperous and respectable Victorian gentleman. But his well-upholstered chambers in Gray''s Inn concealed a shocking secret: a vast collection of erotica and pornography, thousands of volumes strong.The Erotomaniac is a fascinating account of Victorian curiosity, repression and subverted desire. Acclaimed biographer Ian Gibson has created an engrossing portrait of Ashbee, which examines the evidence that Ashbee himself may have been the author of the most famous work of Victorian erotica, My Secret Life.Trade Review'Here is the lust that dare not speak its name: Victoria may not have been amused; but I guarantee that you'll be.' Sunday Express '[A] gripping, finely researched jewel of a book.' Sunday Times
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Faber & Faber The Dust Diaries
Book SynopsisWhen Owen Sheers discovers a book in his father''s study he stumbles upon the life of an obscure relative: Arthur Cripps, lyric poet and maverick missionary to Rhodesia. Compelled by the description of Cripps'' extraordinary life in Africa, Sheers embarks on a journey through contemporary Zimbabwe in an attempt to better understand his ancestor''s devotion to the country and its people and the dramatic, often bloody, differences that echo across the years.
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Faber & Faber The Lunar Men The Friends Who Made the Future
Book SynopsisLed by Erasmus Darwin, the Lunar Society of Birmingham was formed from a group of amateur experimenters, tradesmen and artisans who met and made friends in the Midlands in the 1760s. Most came from humble families, all lived far from the centre of things, but they were young and their optimism was boundless: together they would change the world. Among them were the ambitious toy-maker Matthew Boulton and his partner James Watt, of steam-engine fame; the potter Josiah Wedgwood; the larger-than-life Erasmus Darwin, physician, poet, inventor and theorist of evolution (a forerunner of his grandson Charles Darwin). Later came Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen and fighting radical. Led by Erasmus Darwin they joined a small band of allies, formed the Lunar Society of Birmingham (so called because it met at each full moon) and kick-started the Industrial Revolution. Blending science, art, and commerce, the Lunar Men built canals, launched balloons, named plants, gases and miner
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Faber & Faber Hawkwood Diabolical Englishman
Book SynopsisThe hugely acclaimed, best-selling life of Hawkwood, one of the outstanding figures of English and European history. John Hawkwood was an Essex man who became the greatest mercenary in an age when soldiers of fortune flourished - an age that also witnessed the first stirrings of the Renaissance. When England made a peace treaty with the French in 1360, during a pause in the Hundred Years War, John Hawkwood, instead of going home, travelled south to Avignon, where the papacy was based during its exile from Rome. He and his fellow mercenaries held the pope to ransom and were paid off. Hawkwood then crossed the Alps into Italy and found himself in a promised land: he made and lost fortunes extorting money from city states like Florence, Siena, and Milan, who were fighting vicious wars between themselves and against the popes. This man of war husbanded his use of violence, but for all his caution he committed one of the most notorious massacres of his time - an atrocity Trade Review"'Superb and quite unputdownable... Addictively readable, handsomely produced and compellingly intelligent' Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times"
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Faber & Faber Generals Ten British Commanders who Shaped the
Book SynopsisMark Urban tells the story of ten exceptional generals who left their mark on Britain, the British Empire, and the world. Some - including the Duke of Wellington, Lord Kitchener and Bernard Montgomery - are names etched in the national mythology. Others are unsung heroes and shadowy presences whose achievements or failures may have had consequences quite different to those they had intended.All ten of these generals revealed either a brilliant ability or a fatal flaw. Success or failure depended largely on their ability to work within Britain''s Parliamentary democracy - and against tyrants, despots and emperors who were often free to act alone. Mark Urban, the acclaimed author of Rifles and Fusiliers, is now one of our foremost experts on military history. ''One of the most intelligent books on the British Army I have ever read.'' Allan MallinsonTrade Review"'Generals succeeds because of the quirkiness of Urban's subjects, the quality of his writing and the originality of his conclusions.' Daily Telegraph"
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Faber & Faber Cavalier The Story of a 17th Century Playboy
Book SynopsisStep behind the scenes of a Stuart household in this lavish, seductive and absorbing history from bestselling historian Lucy Worsley''A tour de force'' - Sunday TimesWilliam Cavendish, courageous, cultured and passionate about women, embodies the popular image of a cavalier. Famously defeated at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, he went into a long and miserable continental exile before returning to England in triumph on the restoration of King Charles II to the throne in 1660.Lucy Worsley brings to life a fascinating household of the 17th century, painting a picture of conspiracy, sexual intrigue, clandestine marriage and gossip. From Ben Jonson and Van Dyck to a savage, knife-wielding master-cook, Cavalier is a brilliant illumination of the stately home in England and all its many colourful inhabitants.
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Faber & Faber Stalins Nemesis The Exile and Murder of Leon
Book SynopsisLeon Trotsky was the charismatic intellectual of the Russian Revolution, an authoritarian organizer, who might have succeeded Lenin and become the ruler of the Soviet Union. But by the time the Second World War broke out he was in exile, living in Mexico in a villa borrowed from the great artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, guarded only by several naïve young American acolytes. The household was awash with emotional turmoil - tensions grew between Trotsky and Rivera, as questions arose over his relations with Frida Kahlo. His wife was restless and jealous.Outside of the villa, Mexican communists tried to storm the house, the Trotskys'' sons were being persecuted and killed in Europe, and in Moscow, Stalin personally ordered his secret police to kill his fiercest left-wing critic - at any cost. By the summer of 1940, they had found a man who could penetrate the tight security around the house in far-away Mexico . . .Bertrand Patenaude''s book reconstructs a famous s
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Faber & Faber Isabella deMedici The Glorious Life and Tragic
Book SynopsisIsabella de'' Medici was the hostess of a glittering circle in Renaissance Florence. Beautiful and liberated, she not only matched the intellectual accomplishments of her male contemporaries, but sought sexual parity also, engaging in an adulterous affair with her husband''s cousin. It was this affair - and her very success as First Lady of Florence - that led to her death at the hands of her husband at the age of just thirty-four. She left behind a remarkable story, and as her legacy a son who became the best of the Orsini Dukes, immortalised by Shakespeare as Duke Orsino in Twelfth Night. Caroline P. Murphy illuminates this often misunderstood figure, and in the process brings to life the home of creativity, the city of Florence itself.
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Faber & Faber Fishers Face
Book SynopsisAdmiral of the Fleet Lord ''Jacky'' Fisher (1841-1920) was one of the greatest naval reformers in history. He was also a colossal figure to contemporaries, both loved and loathed, a man of exceptional charm, presence and charisma. Since the late 1940s, Jan Morris has been haunted by his face - with its startling combination of ''the suave, the sneering and the self-amused.'' This evocation is both biography and a love letter, a perfect expression of her passionate interest in mavericks and outsiders, in travel, ships and the glorious pageantry of the British Empire in its prime.
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Faber & Faber Family Romance A Memoir
Book SynopsisIn this acclaimed memoir from the award-winning author of Fragrant Harbour and Capital, John Lanchester pieces together his family''s past and uncovers their extraordinary secrets - from his grandparents'' life in colonial Rhodesia to his mother''s time as a nun - with clear-eyed compassion. A true story of family intrigues, of secrets and lies, as they unfold across three generations.
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Faber & Faber The Woman Who Shot Mussolini
Book SynopsisA gripping account of the life and fate of the woman who almost assassinated Benito Mussolini. 7 April 1926: on the steps of the Capitol in Rome, surrounded by chanting Fascists, The Honourable Violet Gibson raises her old revolver and fires at the Italian head of state, Benito Mussolini - the darling of Europe's ruling class. The bullet narrowly misses the dictator's bald head, hitting him in the nose. Of all his would-be assassins, she came closest to changing the course of history.What brought her to this moment? The daughter of an Anglo-Irish lord, she had once consorted with royalty and the peerage. Yet terrible unhappiness lurked beneath that glittering surface. She loved Italy and when Mussolini's thugs took it into the moral cesspit of Fascism, she felt she had to act.She paid for it for the rest of her life, confined to a lunatic asylum, like other difficult women of her class. Frances Stonor Saunders' moving and compulsively readable book rescues th
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Faber & Faber Point Man
Book SynopsisAmbushes. Hidden bombs. Snipers. The point man is the first to encounter these signs of danger. He's the soldier who leads the patrol into battle.Few survive for long. Between 2007 and 2008, 20-year-old Kenny Meighan was the longest-serving point man in Helmand province. An exceptionally skilful and brave private who came from a family of soldiers, he was lucky to stay alive.This is the true story of how Kenny took on the toughest test a soldier could face and lived to tell the tale.
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Faber & Faber She Left Me the Gun My Mothers Life Before Me
Book SynopsisA beautiful, wise book. It deals with the some of the grimmest aspects of human experience, but it is also one of the most genuinely up-lifting works I have read in years. Emma Brockes'' superb, clear-eyed narration is an object lesson for any aspiring memoir-writer. She Left Me the Gun deserves to become a classic. Zoe HellerWhen Emma Brockes was ten years old, her mother said ''One day I will tell you the story of my life and you will be amazed.'' Growing up in a tranquil English village, Emma knew very little of her mother''s life before her. She knew Paula had grown up in South Africa and had seven siblings. She had been told stories about deadly snakes and hailstones the size of golf balls. There was mention, once, of a trial. But most of the past was a mystery. When her mother dies of cancer, Emma - by then a successful journalist at the Guardian - is free to investigate the untold story. Her search begins in the Colindale liTrade ReviewA beautiful, wise book. It deals with the some of the grimmest aspects of human experience, but it is also one of the most genuinely up-lifting works I have read in years. Emma Brockes' superb, clear-eyed narration is an object lesson for any aspiring memoir-writer. She Left Me the Gun deserves to become a classic. -- Zoe Heller This astonishing, unsettling book examines the relationship between knowledge and love. Vigorously unsentimental, deeply absorbing, and written with fierce wit, It is an unstinting look at what it means to be innocent, at any stage of life, and how obsessively we all seek and avoid the many faces of truth. -- Andrew Solomon, author of Far From the Tree She Left Me the Gun is quite simply an extraordinary book. In the hands of any halfway decent author, this would be an incredible story: a mother with a mysterious South African past who arrived in England in her early twenties with a beautiful antique handgun and a mission to forget who she used to be. In the hands of a writer as gifted as Emma Brockes, it's basically the perfect memoir: a riveting, authentic tale elegantly told. -- Viv Groskop Sunday Telegraph Emma Brockes sets out on a delicate journey to uncover a secret locked in the heart of her own family's darkness. A harrowing tale of murder and incest emerges, unfolding by stages in this utterly compelling psychological memoir. -- John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil The late Nora Ephron suggested the title for Emma Brockes' She Left Me the Gun. Ephron ... was as smart as they come in Hollywood and you only need to read the opening chapters to understand why she took such a close interest in the career of this remarkable young writer and Guardian journalist ... It isn't just the story itself that sets this book apart. Brockes's prose is potent enough to do justice to the power of her insights. And although she is very good at maintaining the tension in the detective part of the story, she has an even more important ability to keep up the emotional suspense. Ephron, her mentor, would have approved. -- Christena Appleyard Literary Review [A] courageous, clear-sighted book, which shifts between memoir and elegy as it examines the persistence of family secrets and the fragile interface between innocence and knowledge. -- Elizabeth Lowry Guardian The resulting memoir is an exemplary family history and immensely brave. It is one thing to delve into dusty archives in Pretoria, "each page containing the split-second possibility of an explosion in my face", but quite another to sit with aunts and uncles you've never met ("a wacky bunch") and ask them to recall a childhood lived in fear and that was exposed in court ... Brockes's descriptions of South Africa and her newly discovered family (towards whom she is loyal and generously affectionate) are astute and, one feels, tempered by the tightly coiled wayward nature of the freshly grief-stricken. It makes the slow pace of the revelations all the more honourable and heartfelt. The result is a wise, tender letter of love to a mother and her incredible sense of love and -necessary self-sufficiency. -- Helen Davies Sunday Times An amazing and harrowing story. In Emma Brockes's consummate, Joan Didionesque prose, it becomes a surpassingly rich meditation on family, endurance, secrecy, trauma, guilt, strength and love ... Intensely personal, but it is also a beautifully written and, ultimately, a redemptive book: deeply impressive, deeply painful, deeply true. -- Kevin Power Sunday Business Post She Left Me The Gun is a triumph for three reasons. The first is the voice. Brockes is often very funny ... Then there is the material itself - not just the story of Paula's childhood but that of the lives of her extraordinary siblings ... Finally, there is Brockes's fearlessness and her resistance to glib interpretation of the facts that are often tantalisingly opaque. -- Claire Lowdon New Statesman Here we have a memoir, detective story and love letter revolving around a violent alcoholic and paedophile - the author's grandfather. Jimmy's crimes and their repercussions were so horrendous that at times one physically recoils from the page. It is a measure of Emma Brockes's artfulness and sensitivity that she has fashioned her material into an enjoyable narrative. -- Sara Wheeler Observer The story itself is a total wow - thrilling, dark, brave and so intense that if it were fiction no-one would believe it. But the writing itself is just so crisp and insightful... I'm not sure I'd have the bravery to read my way through the narrative if it weren't for Emma Brockes's own strength and trustworthiness as a narrator. -- Bidisha The fantastic She Left Me the Gun ... this consummate piece of writing, originating from the death of her mother, manages to encompass memoir, family history, travel writing, investigative journalism and a moving meditation on grief and loss ... Heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measure. -- Doug Johnstone Big Issue in Scotland
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Faber & Faber Commander The Life and Exploits of Britains
Book SynopsisEdward Pellew, captain of the legendary Indefatigable, was quite simply the greatest frigate captain in the age of sail. An incomparable seaman, ferociously combative yet chivalrous, a master of the quarterdeck and an athlete of the tops, he was as quick to welcome a gallant foe into his cabin as to dive to the rescue of a man overboard. He is the likely model for the heroic but all-too-human Jack Aubrey in Patrick O''Brian''s novels.Pellew was orphaned at eight, but fought his way from the very bottom of the Navy to fleet command and a viscountcy. Victories and eye-catching feats won him a public following. Yet as an outsider with a gift for antagonizing his better-born peers, he made powerful enemies. Redemption came with his last command, when he set off to do battle with the Barbary States and free thousands of European slaves. Contemporary opinion held this to be an impossible mission, and Pellew himself, in leading from the front in the style of his
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Faber & Faber Eamon de Valera
Book SynopsisÉamon de Valera is the most remarkable man in the history of modern Ireland. Much as Churchill personified British resistance to Hitler and de Gaulle personified the freedom of France, de Valera personified Irish independence.
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FABER & FABER EXCLUSIVES VERSE CHORUS MONSTER
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Faber & Faber The Eitingons A TwentiethCentury Family
Book SynopsisLeonid Eitingon was a KGB killer who dedicated his life to the Soviet regime. He was in China in the early 1920s, in Spain during the Civil War, and, crucially, in Mexico when Trotsky was assassinated. ''As long as I live,'' Stalin had said, ''not a hair of his head shall be touched.'' It did not work out like that.Max Eitingon was a psychoanalyst: a colleague, friend and protégé of Freud''s. He was rich, secretive and - through his friendship with a famous Russian singer - implicated in the abduction of a white Russian general in Paris in 1937.Motty Eitingon was a New York fur dealer whose connections with the Soviet Union made him the largest trader in the world. Imprisoned by the Bolsheviks, and questioned by the FBI in a state of Cold War paranoia: was Motty everybody''s friend or everybody''s enemy?Mary-Kay Wilmers began exploring the history of her remarkable family twenty years ago. The result is a book of astonishing scope and thrilling originality wh
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Faber & Faber Caesars Vast Ghost
Book SynopsisLose yourself in this classic travelogue evoking the idyllic South of France by the king of travel writing and real-life family member of The Durrells in Corfu. ''Full of stories, landscapes, comedy, history, heresies, animals, food, drink, and songs of the Midi.' Patrick Leigh Fermor ''A richly characteristic bouillabaisse by our last great garlicky master of the vanishing Mediterranean, our old Prospero of the south.'' Richard Holmes Provence, Southern France. Celebrated writer and poet Lawrence Durrell made the Midi his home for more than thirty years: and in his final book, he shares his most evocative, dazzling memories of life as a local. A seductive blend of travelogue, poet''s notebook, and intimate autobiography, Durrell guides us through the rich layers of human history that lie beneath the region''s legendary landscapes. From stories of magic and mythology infusing the rolling vineyards and vivid lavender fieldsTrade Review'Full of stories, landscapes, comedy, history, heresies, animals, food, drink, and songs of the Midi.' - Patrick Leigh Fermor
£9.49
Faber & Faber A Sultry Month
Book SynopsisWine and dine with Victorian London's literati in a heatwave in one of the first ever group biographies, introduced by Francesca Wade (author of Square Haunting).Though she loved the heat she could do nothing but lie on the sofa and drink lemonade and read Monte Cristo ''One of the most illuminating and insufficiently praised books of the last 60 years.'' ObserverNever bettered.' Guardian''Brilliant.'' Julian BarnesWholly original.' Craig BrownA pathfinder.' Richard HolmesExtraordinary.' Penelope LivelyJune 1846. As London swelters in a heatwave sunstroke strikes, meat rots, ice is coveted a glamorous coterie of writers and artists spend their summer wining, dining and opining.With the ringletted face of an Egyptian cat goddess', Elizabeth Barrett is courted by her secret fiancé, the poet Robert Browning, who plots their elopement to Italy; Keats roams Hampstead Heath; Wordsworth visits the zoo; Dickens is intrigued by Tom Thumb; the Carlyles host parties for a visiting German novelist and suffer a marital crisis. But when the visionary painter Benjamin Robert Haydon commits suicide, they find their entwined lives spiralling around the tragedy . . .One of the first-ever group biographies, Alethea Hayter's glorious A Sultry Month is a lively mosaic of archival riches inspired by the collages of the Pop Artists. A groundbreaking feat of creative non-fiction in 1965, her portrait of Victorian London's literati is just as vivid, witty and enticing today.Elegant Hayter more or less invented the biographical form which is a close study of a brief period in the life of an individual or a group . . . A rigorous scholar [with] an artist's eye.' A. S. ByattHayter's clever, innovative book turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies.' Penelope LivelyNothing I've ever read has flung me so immediately into those streets, that weather, that period. Hayter never forgets that people want stories, that lives are stories.' Margaret ForsterHayter could take a tiny chip of life [and] find within it the seeds of a whole existence.' Richard HolmesA pioneer . . . Beautifully written vignettes . . . Immaculate scholarship and intense readability.' Jonathan BateOutstanding . . . A small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess''A brilliant recreation of London literary life in 1846, which is highly original in its form and narrative cross-cutting.'' Julian BarnesTrade Review'Hayter's clever, innovative book turned a searchlight on a time, a place, a circle of people; it has surely inspired the subsequent fashion for group biographies.' Penelope Lively'Nothing I've ever read has flung me so immediately into those streets, that weather, that period. Hayter never forgets that people want stories, that lives are stories.' Margaret Forster'Hayter could take a tiny chip of life [and] find within it the seeds of a whole existence.' Richard Holmes'A pioneer . . . Beautifully written vignettes . . . Immaculate scholarship and intense readability.' Jonathan Bate'Outstanding . . . A small masterpiece.' Anthony Burgess
£11.69
Penguin Putnam Inc Recollections of My Nonexistence
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the James Tait Black Prize for BiographyLonglisted for The Orwell Prize for Political WritingAn electric portrait of the artist as a young woman that asks how a writer finds her voice in a society that prefers women to be silent, from the author of Orwell''s RosesIn Recollections of My Nonexistence, Rebecca Solnit describes her formation as a writer and as a feminist in 1980s San Francisco, in an atmosphere of gender violence on the street and throughout society and the exclusion of women from cultural arenas. She tells of being poor, hopeful, and adrift in the city that became her great teacher, and of the small apartment that, when she was nineteen, became the home in which she transformed herself. She explores the forces that liberated her as a person and as a writer--books themselves; the gay community that presented a new model of what else gender, family, and joy could mean; and her eventual arrival in the spacious landscapes and overlooked conflicts of the American West. Beyond being a memoir, Solnit''s book is also a passionate argument: that women are not just impacted by personal experience, but by membership in a society where violence against women pervades. Looking back, she describes how she came to recognize that her own experiences of harassment and menace were inseparable from the systemic problem of who has a voice, or rather who is heard and respected and who is silenced--and how she was galvanized to use her own voice for change.
£12.80
Random House USA Inc Some People Need Killing
Book SynopsisTIME’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “riveting” (The Atlantic) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte, hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” (The New Yorker) “Tragic, elegant, vital . . . Evangelista risked her life to tell this story.”—Tara Westover, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Educated WINNER OF THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY’S HELEN BERNSTEIN BOOK AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Economist, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads, The Mary Sue “My job is to go to places where people die. I pack my bags, talk to the survivors, write my stories, then go ho
£22.88
Random House USA Inc A Few Days Full of Trouble
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£14.39
Crown True Believer The Rise and Fall of Stan Lee
Book SynopsisThe definitive, revelatory biography of Marvel Comics icon Stan Lee, a writer and entrepreneur who reshaped global pop culture—at a steep personal cost HUGO AWARD FINALIST • EISNER AWARD NOMINEE • “A biography that reads like a thriller or a whodunit . . . scrupulously honest, deeply damning, and sometimes even heartbreaking.”—Neil GaimanStan Lee was one of the most famous and beloved entertainers to emerge from the twentieth century. He served as head editor of Marvel Comics for three decades and, in that time, became known as the creator of more pieces of internationally recognizable intellectual property than nearly anyone: Spider-Man, the Avengers, the X-Men, Black Panther, the Incredible Hulk . . . the list goes on. His carnival-barker marketing prowess helped save the comic-book industry and superhero fiction. His cameos in Marvel movies have charmed billions. When he died in 2018, grief poured in
£13.49
Penguin Putnam Inc Not Your China Doll
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£24.64
Penguin Books Ltd Go Up for Glory
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£13.60
Penguin Putnam Inc Chuck Yeager
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£10.79
Hogarth We Are Free to Change the World
Book SynopsisA timely guide on how to live—and think—through the challenges of our century drawn from the life and thought of political-theorist Hannah Arendt, one of the twentieth century''s foremost opponent of totalitarianism and a prophet against conformity (The Nation).‘We are free to change the world and to start something new in it.’ --Crises of the RepublicThe violent unease of today’s world would have been all too familiar to Hannah Arendt. Tyranny, occupation, disenchantment, post-truth politics, conspiracy theories, racism, mass migration, the banality of evil: she had lived through them all.Born in the first decade of the last century, she escaped fascist Europe to make a new life for herself in America, where she became one its most influential—and controversial—public intellectuals. She wrote about power and terror, exile and love, and above all about freedom. Questioning—thinkin
£24.00
Random House Publishing Group Subculture Vulture
Book SynopsisNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A “hilarious” (Dax Shepard), “surprisingly emotional trip” (The Chainsmokers) through deep American subcultures ranging from Burning Man to Alcoholics Anonymous, by the writer and comedian Moshe Kasher “Part history lesson, part standup set and, often, part love letter . . . Kasher’s ability to blend humor with homework works almost too well.”—The New York TimesAfter bottoming out, being institutionalized, and getting sober all by the tender age of fifteen, Moshe Kasher found himself asking: “What’s next?” Over the ensuing decades, he discovered the answer: a lot.There was his time as a boy-king of Alcoholics Anonymous, a kind of pubescent proselytizer for other teens getting and staying sober. He was a rave promoter turned DJ turned sober ecstasy dealer in San Francisco’s techno warehouse party scene of the 1990s. For fifteen yea
£21.60
Crown When the World Didnt End
Book SynopsisIn this immersive, spell-binding memoir, an acclaimed screenwriter tells the story of her childhood growing up with the infamous Lyman Family cult—and the complicated and unexpected pain of leaving the only home she’d ever knownOn January 5, 1975, the world was supposed to end. Under strict instructions, six-year-old Guinevere Turner put on her best dress, grabbed her favorite toy, and waited with the rest of her community for salvation—a spaceship that would take them to live on Venus. But the spaceship never came.Guinevere did not understand that her family was a cult. She spent most of her days on a compound in Kansas, living apart from her mother with dozens of other children who worked in the sorghum fields and roved freely through the surrounding pastures, eating mulberries and tending to farm animals. But there was a dark side to this bucolic existence. Guinevere was part of the Lyman Family, a secluded cult spearheaded by Mel Lyman, a se
£21.85
Random House USA Inc Against the Wind
Book SynopsisNew York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • From the author of Catching the Wind comes the second volume of the definitive biography of Ted Kennedy and a history of modern American liberalism.“Magisterial . . . an intricate, astute study of political power brokering comparable to Robert A. Caro’s profile of Lyndon Johnson in Master of the Senate.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)Against the Wind completes Neal Gabler’s magisterial biography of Ted Kennedy, but it also unfolds the epic, tragic story of the fall of liberalism and the destruction of political morality in America. With Richard Nixon having stilled the liberal wind that once propelled Kennedy’s—and his fallen brothers’—political crusades, Ted Kennedy faced a lonely battle. As Republicans pressed Reaganite dogmas of individual freedom and responsibility and Democratic centrists fell into line, Kennedy
£17.99
