Biography

Showcasing for the first time 250 of renowned author J.P. Donleavy's most intimate letters, this scrupulously edited collection throws an extraordinary light on the composition, publication and afterlife of The Ginger Man.

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For readers of Damaged and Running with Scissors, a chilling exploration of psychological control that ends with a glorious escape. Maude still remembers the sound of the gate being locked behind her. She was three years old when they moved into the secluded manor and in the coming years, she would only be allowed out a handful of times. Her parents belonged to a fanatical Masonic order. She followed a strict schedule of study, hard labour and endless drills designed to ‘eliminate weakness’, such as holding an electric fence without flinching and sitting in a rat-infested cellar. But despite their chilling psychological control, her parents could not control her inner life. Befriending animals on the lonely estate and characters in the books she read, Maude nurtured in herself the compassion and love her parents forbade.

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Long before Eva Perón turned Argentina upside down, Elisa Lynch brought Paraguay to its knees.In 1854, an ambitious Irish courtesan met a South American General in Paris and returned with him to Paraguay. When he became President, she became his de facto first lady and together they changed the course of the country's history. Consumed by desire for Napoleonic glory, General President López took Paraguay into a disastrous war against her neighbours. Elisa Lynch went with him on campaign, turning conditions of war to her advantage where she could. He was killed in the northern hills but she survived, only to be expelled from Paraguay and die an obscure death in Paris.Reviled and respected, loved and distrusted, Elisa Lynch has been described as both a heroic companion to López and a malign enchantress. In The Shadows of Elisa Lynch, Siân Rees tells her fascinating story of recovered history.

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Considered by many to be the iconic French memoirist’s defining work, The Years is a narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present, cultural habits, language, photos, books, songs, radio, television, advertising and news headlines. Annie Ernaux invents a form that is subjective and impersonal, private and collective, and a new genre – the collective autobiography – in order to capture the passing of time. At the confluence of autofiction and sociology, The Years is ‘a Remembrance of Things Past for our age of media domination and consumerism’ (New York Times), a monumental account of twentieth-century French history as refracted through the life of one woman.

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Doris Stokes, perhaps the greatest medium of recent times, astonished the world with the amazing accuracy of her psychic revelations. During her lifetime she worked tirelessly to reunite the bereaved and their loved ones, and helped bring joy and happiness to thousands of people. This second collection of her bestselling books brings together many more of her remarkable and moving experiences.In Innocent Voices In My Ear, Doris tells of her special relationship with children and her psychic communications with children of every age; from the heroic young men of the Falklands War, to the sixteen-year-old hostage of a ruthless gunman and the tragic stars who died too young: John Lennon, Marc Bolan and Richard Beckinsale.Whispering Voices recalls the extraordinary, sometimes amusing and often emotional situations she has found herself in; of how her gift brought her into contact with famous names such as Princess Anne and Freddie Starr, but also the ordinary folk who inspired her with their courage, and to whom she offered a new sense of hope.

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The heroine of MARY POPPINS and THE SOUND OF MUSIC tells her life story from the music halls of London to Broadway stardom.Over the years Julie Andrews has been much interviewed in the press and on television, but she has never before revealed the true story of her childhood and upbringing. In HOME she vividly recreates the years before the movies. An idyllic early childhood in Surrey was cut short when her parents divorced and her mother remarried. The family moved to London, and there are vivid scenes of life during the Blitz. Her mother went into musical theatre with her stepfather, who encouraged Julie to have singing lessons which led to the discovery that her voice had phenomenal range and strength for someone her age. Before long she was appearing on stage with her parents. She soon realised how much she enjoyed looking out into the black auditorium with the spotlights on her. By the time she was a teenager, she was supporting her whole family with her singing.A London Palladium pantomime led to a leading role in THE BOYFRIEND on Broadway at 19. Parts in MY FAIR LADY opposite Rex Harrison and CAMELOT with Richard Burton soon followed, and there are wonderful anecdotes about the actors and actresses of her day. But this is far more than a collection of show stories (it's not until the last page of the book that Julie gets the call from Disney for MARY POPPINS), HOME is an honest, touching and revealing memoir of the early life of a true icon.

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A memoir by the master pianist, conductor and internationalist Daniel Barenboim - 'the closest thing that classical music can offer to Nelson Mandela' [THE TIMES]'The power of music lies in is its ability to speak to all aspects of the human being-the animal, the emotional, the intellectual, and the spiritual. Music teaches us, in short, that everything is connected'Daniel Barenboim's new book vividly describes his lifelong pursuit of knowledge and understanding, not only of music and of life, but of one through the other.

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A beautiful collection celebrating the Queen’s humour, with amusing quotations and stories about royal life.When thinking of the Queen, our first image is one of dignity and authority. She is the very definition of majesty: the British monarch, the Supreme Governor of the Church of England and the head of the Commonwealth. But as anyone who knows her will tell you, in person she has a wicked sense of humour:* Occasionally unintentional (when meeting guitar legend Eric Clapton she enquired 'Have you been playing a long time?')* Sometimes cannily astute ('I have to be seen to be believed')* At times downright silly (nicely demonstrated when staff at Balmoral discovered the Queen jumping up and down with glee exclaiming 'I've won, I've won!' after hearing that England had beaten Australia in the cricket)… the Queen’s sense of humour is like no other. Revealing a side of the Queen's personality that the public rarely see, this joyous book is a timely celebration of royal humour as Elizabeth II succeeds Victoria as Britain's longest-serving monarch.

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Jennifer Lawrence is the reigning queen of lots of things: Hollywood, the awkward award-ceremony-stumble, and hundreds of priceless Buzzfeed pages - to name a few. She announced herself to the world at a young age in The Burning Plain and Winter's Bone, gripping dramas set in America's deprived heartland. Ironic, then, that such a gifted character actress become a household name through two of the biggest fantasy roles in the business: the deadly shapeshifting assassin Mystique from Marvel's X-Men series and the gutsy, warlike heroine of Suzanne Collin's bestselling Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss Everdeen - the Girl on Fire. As Katniss and Mystique, she owns the screen, oozing grace, attitude and menace, re-defining the roles of women in action films as more than ragdolls to be saved by muscle-bound men; this girl doesn't need saving by anyone. But Jennifer couldn't be more different off-screen. Always ready with a smile or a quip about embarrassing everyday struggles, she is loved by millions for being a genuinely relatable personality in an industry of preening posers. And make no mistake: she has had every reason to lose her sunny disposition.She struggled early on in her career with a hurtful 'fat actress' label in spite of her healthy body type, and suffered public heartbreak with the likes of Coldplay's Chris Martin. In 2014, she was to suffer the ultimate indignity of having private photos leaked onto the internet for all to see. A lesser girl might have become spiteful, but Jennifer has always emerged with her head held high. This is the first biography of an Academy Award winner, a star of our screens for years to come and a role model for girls and young women everywhere. In every sense, this really is the story of a Girl on Fire.

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With a foreword by Helen Macdonald, author of the multi-award-winning H IS FOR HAWK.'No hawk can be a pet. There is no sentimentality. In a way, it is the psychiatrist's art. One is matching one's mind against another mind with deadly reason and interest. One desires no transference of affection, demands no ignoble homage or gratitude. It is a tonic for the less forthright savagery of the human heart.'First published in 1951, T.H. White's memoir describes with searing honesty his attempt to train a wild goshawk, a notoriously difficult bird to master. With no previous experience and only a few hopelessly out-of-date books on falconry as a guide, he set about trying to bend the will of his young bird Gos to his own. Suffering setback after setback, the solitary and troubled White nonetheless found himself obsessively attached to the animal he hoped would one day set him free.

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Compiled and published after Fitzgerald's death by his friend, the prominent critic and editor Edmund Wilson, The Crack-Up is a collection of writings that chronicle the author's state of mind and personal perspective on events, fellow writers and public figures of the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to articles and essays such as the celebrated title piece, this volume includes a selection of Fitzgerald's notebooks, which - as well as being a repository of anecdotes and witty lines - provide a fascinating behind-the-scenes glimpse into the novelist's creative process, with passages that would be reworked into his fiction.

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A lively diary chronicling the ups and downs of running a grocery shop in a Yorkshire town during the rationing years of the Second World War Kathleen Hey spent the war years helping her sister and brother-in-law run a grocery shop in the Yorkshire town of Dewsbury. From July 1941 to July 1946 she kept a diary for the Mass-Observation project, recording the thoughts and concerns of the people who used the shop. What makes Kathleen's account such a vivid and compelling read is the immediacy of her writing. People were pulling together on the surface ('Bert has painted the V-sign on the shop door…', she writes) but there are plenty of tensions underneath. The shortage of food and the extreme difficulty of obtaining it is a constant thread, which dominates conversation in the town, more so even than the danger of bombardment and the war itself. Sometimes events take a comic turn. A lack of onions provokes outrage among her customers, and Kathleen writes, 'I believe they think we have secret onion orgies at night and use them all up.' The Brooke Bond tea rep complains that tea need not be rationed at all if supply ships were not filled with 'useless goods' such as Corn Flakes, and there is a long-running saga about the non-arrival of Smedley's peas. Among the chorus of voices she brings us, Kathleen herself shines through as a strong and engaging woman who refuses to give in to doubts or misery and who maintains her keen sense of humour even under the most trying conditions. A vibrant addition to our records of the Second World War, the power of her diary lies in its juxtaposition of the everyday and the extraordinary, the homely and the universal, small town life and the wartime upheavals of a nation.

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Bobby Sands was 27 years old when he died. He spent almost nine years of his life in prison because of his Irish republican activities. He died, in prison, on 5 May 1981, on the sixty-sixth day of his hunger strike at Long Kesh Prison, outside Belfast. This book documents a day in the life of Bobby Sands. It is a tale of human bravery, endurance and courage against a backdrop of suffering, terror and harassment. It will live on as a constant reminder of events that should never have happened – and hopefully will never happen again.

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"Never was a painter more nobly joyous, never did an artist take a greater delight in life, seeing it all as a kind of breezy festival and feeling it through the medium of perpetual success... He was the happiest of painters." - Henry James on Veronese, 1909 Collected here for the first time, these fascinating early biographies (one of which has never been translated before) describe and celebrate the astonishingly fertile art of Paolo Veronese. Most of what we know about Veronese comes from these three essays. 'I have known this Paolino and I have seen his beautiful works. He deserves to have a great volume written in praise of him, for his pictures prove that he is second to no other painter', wrote Veronese's contemporary Annibale Carracci in the margins to his copy of Vasari's writings, continuing 'and this fool passes over him in four lines. And just because he was not Florentine.' It was indeed a measure of his fame that Vasari, whose Life of Veronese is reprinted here, should have overcome his pro-Tuscan prejudices to write about his great Venetian contemporary; and he was followed in this by another Florentine, the theorist Raffaele Borghini. But the most striking record of the impact of Veronese's art on his countrymen is the extensive biography by his fellow Venetian, Carlo Ridolfi. Entirely original in the seriousness and passion with which he approached his subject, Ridolfi permanently changed the course of writing about art. This is the first translation of his work into English. Translated and introduced by Xavier F. Salomon, curator of Veronese: Renaissance Magnificence at the National Gallery, London. Fifty pages of colour illustrations cover the span of Veronese's breath-taking career.

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Nothing in the papers, not the most vivid and heart-rending descriptions, have made me realise war like your letters' Vera Brittain to Roland Leighton, 17 April 1915.This selection of letters, written between 1913 & 1918, between Vera Brittain and four young men - her fiance Roland Leighton, her brother Edward and their close friends Victor Richardson & Geoffrey Thurlow present a remarkable and profoundly moving portrait of five young people caught up in the cataclysm of total war. Roland, 'Monseigneur', is the 'leader' & his letters most clearly trace the path leading from idealism to disillusionment. Edward, ' Immaculate of the Trenches', was orderly & controlled, down even to his attire. Geoffrey, the 'non-militarist at heart' had not rushed to enlist but put aside his objections to the war for patriotism's sake. Victor on the other hand, possessed a very sweet character and was known as 'Father Confessor'. An important historical testimony telling a powerful story of idealism, disillusionment and personal tragedy.

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Drawing on a vast array of sources, from writings of the poet himself to the latest scholarly literature, this new anniversary edition of the award-winning work examines the background, the legacy, and the continuing significance of Jalâl al-Din Rumi, today’s bestselling poet in the United States. With new translations of over fifty of Rumi’s poems and including never before seen prose, this landmark study celebrates the astounding appeal of Rumi, still as strong as ever, 800 years after his birth.

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The story of a woman who made an immense contribution to our knowledge of the Adirondacks.

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Richard III, the most notorious and most discussed of English kings, was also unusual among his contemporaries in regularly signing his books. This characteristic, among others, has enabled Anne Sutton and Livia Visser-Fuchs to reconstruct his library, and link it to the culture and reading habits of his generation.The books of Richard III are typical of what was available to and popular with the medieval reader religion, chivalry, history, genealogy, advice on how to govern, romance and prophecy and allow us to draw an interesting overview of fifteenth-century opinions.Each type of book is examined on its own terms and then related to the known preoccupations of Richard himself, his associates and to the political practices of his time. Containing valuable biographical material, insights into the history and politics of the later fifteenth century, and much detail on late medieval piety and other important aspects of contemporary culture, this fully

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Griffin Dunne has been an actor, producer and director since the late 70s. Among his work, he produced and acted in After Hours, directed Practical Magic and the documentary The Center Will Not Hold about his aunt, Joan Didion. Griffin and his dog Mary live in the East Village of Manhattan.

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*** The Sunday Times Bestseller ***'Intimate, tender and brutally honest ... a remarkable book.' Decca Aitkenhead, The Sunday Times'These are probably the toughest times we have faced in many decades, and we all have to find within us the strength and resilience to get through and to find happiness and love in our futures, whatever life throws at us.'After first contracting Covid in 2020, Kate Garraway's husband, Derek, fought its devastating impact for almost four years. He was left needing 24-hour care and long spells in hospital until he sadly passed away in January 2024.In The Strength of Love, Kate explores issues that resonate with so many of us. She looks at the impact of trauma as well as the importance of resilience, adaptability, curiosity and positivity when recovering from it. She talks about identity, purpose, how to embrace uncertainty and take back control of our lives. Through her and Derek's story, she provides comfort and wisdom that will help anyone who has ever felt desperate, lonely or experienced profound loss, or who is fearful about what the future holds.Despite all that she and her family have had to endure, Kate shows us that love truly is the most powerful and resilient emotion of all.

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The “First Lady of Show Business” and the “Last of the Red Hot Mamas,” Sophie Tucker was a star in vaudeville, radio, film, and television. A gutsy, song-belting stage performer, she entertained audiences for sixty years and inspired a host of younger women, including Judy Garland, Carol Channing, and Bette Midler. Tucker was a woman who defied traditional expectations and achieved success on her own terms, becoming the first female president of the American Federation of Actors and winning many other honors usually bestowed on men. Dedicated to social justice, she advocated for African Americans in the entertainment industry and cultivated friendships with leading black activists and performers. Tucker was also one of the most generous philanthropists in show business, raising over four million dollars for the religious and racial causes she held dear.Drawing from the hundreds of scrapbooks Tucker compiled, Red Hot Mama presents a compelling biography of this larger-than-life performer. Lauren Rebecca Sklaroff tells an engrossing story of how a daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants set her sights on becoming one of the most formidable women in show business and achieved her version of the American dream. More than most of her contemporaries, Tucker understood how to keep her act fresh, to change branding when audiences grew tired and, most importantly, how to connect with her fans, the press, and entertainment moguls. Both deservedly famous and unjustly forgotten today, Tucker stands out as an exemplar of the immigrant experience and a trailblazer for women in the entertainment industry.

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From butcher's daughter in Communist Hungary to winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine 2023, this is the story of one woman's extraordinary determination through decades of obscurity and rejection - and her breakthrough discovery that saved millions of lives.'Riveting. A true story of a brilliant biochemist who never gave up or gave in' BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry'Anyone who has ever doubted that science, innovation and persistence can change the world should read this book' BILL GATESKatalin Karikó began life as a butcher’s daughter in post-war Communist Hungary: a hand-to-mouth existence in a single-room house of clay and straw with no running water. Breaking Through is her extraordinary memoir of how she achieved her dream of becoming a scientist, first in Hungary and then in the USA, and pursued her belief – despite so many telling her not to – that an elusive molecule could transform our ability to prevent disease.For three decades she worked in obscurity, battling cockroaches in a windowless lab, enduring demotion, the derision of her colleagues, even threats of deportation. But in 2020, Karikó’s vision was spectacularly vindicated when her work made possible the vaccines that brought an end to the pandemic, paving the way for similar vaccines against HIV, malaria and other life-threatening diseases.As frank, wise and fearless as Karikó herself, Breaking Through is a remarkable story of tenacity, friendship and loyalty, and one woman’s unshakeable commitment to her values.'Few have overcome adversity like Katalin Karikó . . . This remarkable memoir . . . is a joy to read' Financial Times*An Amazon Best Book of the Year* *One of Nature's five best science books for 2024*

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The dramatic story of Captain Bill Bradford, Adjutant of the 1st Battalion Black Watch, compiled using diaries and letters, coded messages and correspondence between his family and the War Office in their desperate effort to hear news of his safety.Escape from St-Valery-en-Caux tells of Captain Bradford's experiences between 1939 and 1941, during which time he was in the thick of the action in France until the surrender of the Highland Division at St-Valery-en-Caux in June 1940. While being marched into captivity Captain Bradford managed to escape once from the Germans and then seven further times from the Vichy French. His son, Andrew Bradford, details his journey to safety in Gibraltar, travelling through France, Spain and North Africa, including a night crossing of the Pyrenees and an astonishing 700-mile voyage in a 17ft sailing boat.

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From Red to Read: The Story of Fergie's First Fledgling at Manchester United is the compelling tale of former professional footballer Dr Alan Tonge and his journey from Manchester United to PhD graduate. Alan became Sir Alex Ferguson's first acquisition when he signed for the Red Devils as a schoolboy in January 1987. He turned professional with his boyhood club but suffered the heartbreak of being released when he was 19. A move to Exeter City provided the opportunity to play first-team football under World Cup-winner Alan Ball before a serious back injury ended Tonge’s football career at the age of just 22. After feeling completely lost and enduring mental-health battles, Tonge rebuilt his life by reinvesting in his education. He achieved numerous academic qualifications, culminating in a PhD, alongside a successful career as a university lecturer. From Red to Read is the inspirational story of a man who found an alternative route to success and happiness after his dreams of a football career were cut short.

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A “courageous and revelatory memoir” (Naomi Klein) chronicling the life of the leading Indigenous climate change, cultural, and human rights advocate For the first ten years of her life, Sheila Watt-Cloutier traveled only by dog team. Today there are more snow machines than dogs in her native Nunavik, a region that is part of the homeland of the Inuit in Canada. In Inuktitut, the language of Inuit, the elders say that the weather is Uggianaqtuq—behaving in strange and unexpected ways. The Right to Be Cold is Watt-Cloutier’s memoir of growing up in the Arctic reaches of Quebec during these unsettling times. It is the story of an Inuk woman finding her place in the world, only to find her native land giving way to the inexorable warming of the planet. She decides to take a stand against its destruction.The Right to Be Cold is the human story of life on the front lines of climate change, told by a woman who rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most influential Indigenous environmental, cultural, and human rights advocates in the world. Raised by a single mother and grandmother in the small community of Kuujjuaq, Quebec, Watt-Cloutier describes life in the traditional ice-based hunting culture of an Inuit community and reveals how Indigenous life, human rights, and the threat of climate change are inextricably linked. Colonialism intervened in this world and in her life in often violent ways, and she traces her path from Nunavik to Nova Scotia (where she was sent at the age of ten to live with a family that was not her own); to a residential school in Churchill, Manitoba; and back to her hometown to work as an interpreter and student counselor. The Right to Be Cold is at once the intimate coming-of-age story of a remarkable woman, a deeply informed look at the life and culture of an Indigenous community reeling from a colonial history and now threatened by climate change, and a stirring account of an activist’s powerful efforts to safeguard Inuit culture, the Arctic, and the planet.

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Gathie Falk is one of Canada’s most heralded visual artists: she has won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts, and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize; she has been honoured with the Order of British Columbia and the Order of Canada; and her work is featured in major galleries across the country. From performance works involving eggs and bird feathers, to paintings of flower beds and night skies, to celebrated sculptures of fruit, men’s shoes, and dresses, Falk’s chronicles of the everyday span more than four decades and a variety of media. Apples etc. is Gathie Falk’s memoir, a lively, personal, and yet unsentimental reflection on nearly ninety years of art and life. Falk tells of growing up in small Mennonite communities in the 1930s and ’40s. These were hard years, as her Russian immigrant father died just ten months after she was born. While the family struggled financially, Falk recalls cabbage rolls made by hand, a backyard skating rink, and music lessons paid for by an anonymous donor. Her apprenticeship, she says, was a long one. After working a series of menial jobs, she trained as a public school teacher, which led her back to the art classes she’d given up as a child. It has now been fifty years since Falk’s art career was launched, and her “veneration of the ordinary” has sustained her through the deaths of beloved friends and relatives, a short-lived marriage, broken bones, and debilitating pain. Interweaving stories about her community, her family, and her daily rituals with anecdotes about her major artworks, Falk paints a portrait of a life well lived.

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Andrew Wilkinson, touted as the Warren Buffett of tech, pulls back the curtain on the lives of the ultra-rich in this memoir outlining Wilkinson's rapid rise from barista to successful entrepreneur. Readers will get insights into building a successful business and a surprising, first-person account of what it's actually like to become a billionaire.

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John Muir wrote many wonderful books about his travels, but one story—about his long walk from San Francisco to Yosemite—is one book he did not author himself. In April 1868, a very young John Muir stepped off a boat in San Francisco and inquired about the quickest way out of town. “But where do you want to go?” was the response, to which Muir replied, “Anywhere that is wild.” Using Muir’s personal correspondence and published articles, Peter and Donna Thomas have reconstructed the real story of Muir’s literal ramblings over California hills and through dales, with lofty Sierra Nevada peaks, Englishmen, and bears mixed in for good measure. The trip is illustrated by charming cut-paper illustrations that take their inspiration from Muir's love of nature. John Muir’s story-telling is so compelling that even 150 years later, seeing the world through his eyes makes us want to head out into the wild.

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Hailed as ‘the man who made the modern garden’, John Brookes transformed twentieth-century garden design, not only in his native Britain but throughout the world. In his first – groundbreaking – book, Room Outside, in 1969, he wrote ‘A garden is essentially a place for use by people . . . not a static picture created by plants . . . plants provide the props, the colour and texture, but the garden is the stage and its design should be determined by the uses it is intended to fulfil.’ For nearly fifty years he has designed gardens, and taught garden design – in the United States, Canada and South America, in Russian and Japan, in Iran and all over Europe – and he continues to emphasize ‘the importance of reconciling nature and the character of a landscape with the needs and visions of the people living in it’. Now, in A Landscape Legacy, John Brookes tells the story of his life and work and reflects on how his thinking about design has developed. ‘John Brookes’s work has helped gardeners worldwide move beyond the tradition of pure horticulture towards a recognition of space, mass, volume and texture as crucial elements in design; towards functional considerations – how people live in gardens, even small ones created with modest means; and an emphasis on setting and spirit of place, making gardens more than mere fashionable and interchangeable decors. By treating garden design as an art form, yet recognizing its raw materials as living, evolving and infinitely diverse, he bridges the opposition of art and nature, conceptual and environmental design.’ - Louisa Jones, garden writer, Provence

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Ben Mezrich is the New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Billionaires (adapted by Aaron Sorkin into the David Fincher film The Social Network), Bringing Down the House (adapted into the hit film 21), The Antisocial Network and many other bestselling books. His books have sold over six million copies worldwide and he is one of the world's leading business narrative writers.

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''Compulsively readable'' Times Literary Supplement''An outstanding work'' Philippa Gregory''A powerful narrative told with frankness and sensitivity'' Helen Fry, historian and author of Women In Intelligence''A woman, a dog and a walnut tree, the more they are beaten, the better they'll be.''So went the proverb quoted by a prominent MP in the Houses of Parliament in 1853. His words intended ironically in a debate about a rise in attacks on women summed up the prevailing attitude of the day, in which violence against women was waved away as a part and parcel of modern living a chilling seam of misogyny that had polluted both parliament and the law. But were things about to change?In this vivid and essential work of historical non-fiction, Kate Morgan explores the legal campaigns, test cases and individual injustices of the Victorian and Edwardian eras which fundamentally re-shaped the status of women under British law. These are seen through the untold stories of women whose cases

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Twins Chang and Eng Bunker (1811-1874), conjoined at the sternum by a band of cartilage and a fused liver, were “discovered” in Siam by a British merchant in 1824. Yunte Huang depicts the twins, arriving in Boston in 1829, first as museum exhibits but later as financially savvy showmen. Their rise from freak-show celebrities to rich southern gentry; their marriage to two white sisters, resulting in twenty-one children; and their owning of slaves is here not just another sensational biography but an excavation of America’s historical penchant for finding feast in the abnormal, for tyrannising the “other”—a tradition that, as Huang reveals, becomes inseparable from American history itself.

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There, in a lush landscape of fire-petaled immortelle trees and vast plantations of coffee and cocoa, where the three hills along the southern coast act as guardians against hurricanes, Krystal A. Sital grew up idolizing her grandfather, a wealthy Hindu landowner. Years later, to escape crime and economic stagnation on the island, the family resettled in New Jersey, where Krystal’s mother works as a nanny, and the warmth of Trinidad seems a pretty yet distant memory. But when her grandfather lapses into a coma after a fall at home, the women he has terrorized for decades begin to speak, and a brutal past comes to light. In the lyrical patois of her mother and grandmother, Krystal learns the long-held secrets of their family’s past, and what it took for her foremothers to survive and find strength in themselves. The relief of sharing their stories draws the three women closer, the music of their voices and care for one another easing the pain of memory. Violence, a rigid ethnic and racial caste system, and a tolerance of domestic abuse—the harsh legacies of plantation slavery—permeate the history of Trinidad. On the island’s plantations, in its growing cities, and in the family’s new home in America, Secrets We Kept tells a story of ambition and cruelty, endurance and love, and most of all, the bonds among women and between generations that help them find peace with the past.

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____________________________ A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls 'the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected' of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks. ____________________________ 'A beautiful memoir in which Oliver Sacks comes wonderfully to life ... Exquisitely wrought, heartrending and joyous' - Joyce Carol Oates 'A loving tribute to Sacks and to New York ... Read just 50 pages, and you’ll see easily enough how Hayes is Sacks’s logical complement' - Jennifer Senior, New York Times ____________________________ Bill Hayes came to New York in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera. And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers. ____________________________ 'A unique and exuberant celebration of life and love' - Kirkus Reviews

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A hilarious, confrontational and moving story of one woman's attempts to navigate her way through the challenges of mid-life, for lovers of HOW TO BE A WOMAN and I'M NOT WITH THE BAND. 'Claire Dederer is not only a brilliant author, but an honest and brave one' Elizabeth Gilbert, author of EAT, PRAY, LOVEClaire Dederer's youth was wild, an endless cascade of beer and rock and acid and sex that left her benumbed and adrift. But then, after two decades of disciplined transformation, she'd become a successful writer, a faithful wife, and a mother - a real adult. That is, until one morning at 44, she found herself overcome by the same sexual cravings and ineffable sadness of her younger years. The hedonistic girl, 'that crazy bitch', was back - or had she never left?Frank and disarming, seductive and hilarious, Love and Trouble: A Mid-life Reckoning is Dederer's attempt to reckon with those urges, and to reconcile the girl she'd been with the woman she's become.

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A radical look at Jane Austen as you’ve never seen her – as a lover of farce, comic theatre and juvenilia. The Genius of Jane Austen celebrates Britain’s favourite novelist 200 years after her death and explores why her books make such awesome movies, time after time. Jane Austen loved the theatre. She learned much of her art from a long tradition of English comic drama and took joyous participation in amateur theatricals. Her juvenilia, then Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma were shaped by the arts of theatrical comedy. Her admiration for drama’s dialogue, characterisation, plotting, exits and entrances is why she has been dramatised so successfully on screen in the last twenty years – and these versions are at the centre of her continuing fame, culminating in her celebration on £10 note. Austen expert and author of The Real Jane Austen, Paula Byrne looks at stage adaptations of Austen’s novels (including one called Miss Elizabeth Bennet by A. A. Milne) to modern classics, including the BBC Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion, Emma Thompson’s Sense and Sensibility, and the phenomenally brilliant and successful Clueless, The Genius of Jane Austen presents an Austen not of prim manners and genteel calm, but filled with wild comedy and outrageous behaviour.

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In December 1937, the Chinese capital, Nanjing, falls and the Japanese army unleash an orgy of torture, murder, and rape. Over the course of six weeks, hundreds of thousands of civilians and prisoners of war are killed. At the very onset of the atrocities, the Danish supervisor at a cement plant just outside the city, 26-year-old Bernhard Arp Sindberg, opens the factory gates and welcomes in 10,000 Chinese civilians to safety, beyond the reach of the blood-thirsty Japanese. He becomes an Asian equivalent of Oskar Schindler, the savior of Jews in the European Holocaust.This biography follows Sindberg from his childhood in the old Viking city of Aarhus and on his first adventures as a sailor and a Foreign Legionnaire to the dramatic 104 days as a rescuer of thousands of helpless men, women, and children in the darkest hour of the Sino-Japanese War. It describes how after his remarkable achievement, he receded back into obscurity, spending decades more at sea and becoming a naturalized American citizen, before dying of old age in Los Angeles in 1983, completely unrecognized. In this respect, too, there is an obvious parallel with Schindler, who only attained posthumous fame.The book sets the record straight by providing the first complete account of Sindberg’s life in English, based on archival sources hitherto unutilized by any historian as well as interviews with surviving relatives. What emerges is the surprising tale of a person who was average in every respect but rose to the occasion when faced with unimaginable brutality, discovering an inner strength and courage that transformed him into one of the great humanitarian figures of the 20th century and an inspiration for our modern age, demonstrating that the determined actions of one person—any person—can make a huge difference.

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From New York Times bestselling author and trailblazing athlete Ronda Rousey, an unfiltered and entertaining chronicle of her last decade, tackling not only her explosive career transition but also parenthood, overcoming adversity, and finding meaning in life's journey. From the moment she burst onto the MMA scene, Ronda Rousey was unbeatable. She repeatedly strung together back-to-back flawless victories, racking up a collection of records and forever changing the face of sports as the UFC's first female champion. A superstar in her sport, she transcended athletics, appearing in blockbuster films and becoming a role model for women everywhere. Then, on November 15, 2015, it all came crashing down. In OUR FIGHT, Rousey explores the greatest challenge of her life and, ultimately, how she rebuilt her life into something better in the aftermath. She recounts how she replaced her pursuit of perfection with the pursuit of happiness and found an opportun

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