John C. Woods, the US Army's hangman during World War II, is known for his role executing ten senior Nazis in 1946. For the first time, learn about Woods's early life in Kansas and his dishonorable discharge before World War II. Discover how volunteering as a military executioner would lead Woods to his career as a hangman. Award-winning author Colonel...

From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year.

Following a run of New Year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on...

Despite Damon Runyon’s iconic status as a fiction writer and reporter, one particular chapter of his extraordinary career has been completely overlooked. During World War I he was an accredited war correspondent—writing a series of dispatches from Europe, he followed the American Doughboys through France, into Germany, and back home. This period marked a...

Foreword by Harriet Walter.

Clementine Churchill: A Life in Pictures is a fully illustrated and abridged edition of Sonia Purnell’s acclaimed biography, First Lady, including over 100 stunning and rarely seen photographs. 

Without Winston Churchill’s inspiring leadership Britain could not have survived its darkest hour. Without his wife Clementine, however...

As seen on BBC Breakfast
Horrifying, heartbreaking and eye-opening, these are the stories, the patients and the cases that have characterised a career spent being a doctor behind bars.

Violence. Drugs. Suicide. Welcome to the world of a Prison Doctor.

Dr Amanda Brown has treated...

'Driven by curiosity, freighted with mystery and tempered by chance, wonders gleam from every page' Melissa Harrison

A Guardian and Financial Times Pick for 2019

For thousands of years human beings have been losing their possessions and dumping their rubbish in the River Thames, making it the longest and most varied archaeological site in the world. For those...

In the age of big box stores and mass production, there are still artists and crafts people who make beautiful things by hand. Colourful quilts, hooked rugs, and stained glass. Resilient dories and snowshoes. Whimsical whirligigs. In this book, Don MacLean explores the traditional crafts of Atlantic Canada, visiting dozens of creators in their workshops...

Celebrated textile artist Deanne Fitzpatrick learned early that traditional rug-hooking is so much more than just making mats for old houses. This intricate art form has given her the chance to speak without words. It has built her a supportive community, a successful business, and an international reputation. But most of all, hooking rugs has allowed...

When Mayann Francis was named Nova Scotia's first Black lieutenant-governor, she wondered if the community would accept her. Francis was born just three months after businesswoman Viola Desmond was arrested for sitting in a whites-only section of a movie theatre in New Glasgow. Had enough changed? In this candid memoir, Francis describes her journey from...

Binga is the definitive full-length biography of Jesse Binga, the first black banker in Chicago. Born into a large family in Detroit, Binga arrived in Chicago in 1892 in his late twenties with virtually nothing. Through his wits and resourcefulness, he rose to wealth and influence as a real estate broker, and in 1908 he founded the Binga Bank, the first...

A memoir about fatherhood, family, and what it means to be a man in America.

Five years into fatherhood, Calvin Hennick is plagued by self-doubt and full of questions. How can he teach his son to be a man, when his own father figures abandoned him? As a white man, what can he possibly teach his biracial son about how to live as a black man in America? And...

'What a fantastic read, but not for the faint-hearted!' MARTINA COLE

'True crime has never been more female - or more deadly.' KIMBERLEY CHAMBERS

'Admired and respected by the men who worked with her, she is the real deal.' FREDDIE FOREMAN

If you think you know everything about the East End's toughest gangsters, think again.

Meet Linda Calvey, aka the Black...

I showed up in South Korea with $20 and a dubious offer to teach English. Jennifer was the wickedly smart, fiercely independent second daughter of one of Korea's most influential families. We fell in love in a country where even sitting together brought angry stares, taunts, and threats. Our employer forbade us from seeing each other, but we continued in...

Martha Gellhorn was a strong-willed, self-made, modern woman whose pioneering journalism paved the way for women who came after her. An ardent anti-fascist, she abhorred “objectivity shit” and wrote about real people doing real things with intelligence and passion. Her life, reportage, fiction and correspondence all reveal her passionate advocacy of social...

“A MIND-BLOWING APHRODISIAC!” “EXPLOSIVELY FUN!” “DELICIOUSLY EXCITING!” These are just a few of the accolades inspired by Tré Williams’ debut drink recipe book and travelogue/adventure story. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE A MIXOLOGIST to Party and Have a Good Time is an inspired and fun-filled book that’s on a mission to show you how to celebrate the ultimate joys...

"I still see the idle brightness of us dimming, the life in everything slowing. Us, fluorescent and fluctuating. And I realize it takes a long time for anything to leave me altogether."

Meg Flores reflects on how each love in her life has affected the next, beginning when her father left her mother to her current partner. As she learns there is no separation...

Trove is the story of a woman whose life is up-ended when she begins an armchair treasure hunt—a search for $10,000 worth of gold coins buried in New York City, of all places—with a man who, as she points out, is not her husband. In this eloquent, hilarious, sharply realized memoir, Sandra A. Miller grapples with the regret and confusion that so often...

This is the explosive story of Lt Joshua Woodhouse, a young, highly successful officer, who died in suspicious circumstances whilst serving his country on board HMS Ocean in August, 2010.

At the time of his death, HMS Ocean was berthed in the Unites States naval base, Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida.

At the very time of the incident, a US Navy warship...

When Victoria Hoffarth was at graduate school in the U.S., her lecturer, the anthropologist Margaret Mead, once told her class, “There are so many varied places in the world. It is incumbent upon us to search for one where we most fit.” Thus, despite having been born and brought up in the Philippines, Victoria never felt at home there. And so, she became a...

OUR BABY WAS BORN PREMATURE is a uniquely conceived memoir rendered in “super-tweets.” Begun by the stand-up-comedian-cum-author as a way to work out the complex and anxious feelings that an expecting/new parent goes through, Alexander offers up fresh insights into the perils and joys of parenthood, ranging from amusing to hilarious to keenly observant to...

Sometimes the best way to transform emotional pain and is by writing about it.

This book is a collection of stories and poems the author published after the traumatic loss of her career, income, status, friends, and, ultimately, personal identity.

Going through it was tough but writing and sharing her thoughts and feelings about it changed her life in the...

Sophonisba Breckinridge's remarkable career stretched from the Civil War to the Cold War. She took part in virtually every reform campaign of the Progressive and New Deal eras and became a nationally and internationally renowned figure. Her work informed women’s activism for decades and continues to shape progressive politics today.
Anya Jabour's biography...

Recorded in 1949, "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" changed the face of American music. Earl Scruggs's instrumental essentially transformed the folk culture that came before it while helping to energize bluegrass's entry into the mainstream in the 1960s. The song has become a gateway to bluegrass for musicians and fans alike as well as a happily inescapable track...

It began on August 12, 1983, when a disturbed woman’s bizarre accusation ignited hysteria across the small Southern California community of Manhattan Beach.

Driven by over-zealous investigators and a sensational news media, the legend of The McMartin Preschool became the “case of the century”—the longest, most expensive criminal trial in United States...

'The most magical book about the African bush since Born Free'. Daily Mail

Françoise never expected to find herself responsible for a herd of elephants with a troubled past. A chic Parisienne, her life changed forever when she fell in love with South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony. Together they founded a game reserve but after Lawrence’s...

This is the true story of William Alexander Morgan, the Yankee Comandante, an idealistic young American who found fame fighting in the Cuban Revolution. The blond American didn’t speak a word of Spanish, but he felt his rightful place was among the guerilleros of the Escambray Mountains, fighting to bring down dictator Fulgencio Batista. Morgan was among...

A heartwarming, moving story of a young girl escaping hardship and coming of age during World War II.

Born in 1926, the year of the General Strike, Margaret grew up with her brother Bobby in the mill town of Blackburn where her father worked in his parents' pub. She was too young to understand her mother's unhappiness or that her father was gambling away...

She’s been called a “… bundle of ideas” by the Wall Street Journal; a “… sharp-elbowed New Yorker” by NBC News, and found herself on Good Morning America, Fox & Friends, NPR, The New York Times, USA Today, The Washington Post and The Guardian for being the only First Lady to be legally banned from a city hall in the United States. Yet through the adversity...

"Do you have a list of your books, or do I just have to stare at them?" Shaun Bythell is the owner of The Bookshop in Wigtown, Scotland. With more than a mile of shelving, real log fires in the shop and the sea lapping nearby, the shop should be an idyll for bookworms. Unfortunately, Shaun also has to contend with bizarre requests from people who don't...

'A tender and beautifully written tour-de-force on love, grief, hope and cake. If this is not the book of the summer, I will eat my wig. An absolute triumph' The Secret Barrister

'An utterly beautiful, moving, bittersweet book on love and loss. I loved it' Dolly Alderton

At the moment her mother died, Olivia Potts was baking a cake, badly. She was trying to...

From a god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother, to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family, this is a heart-breaking and hilarious memoir about the author’s fight to be true to themself.

My name is Amrou Al-Kadhi – by day. By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the...

'Hysterical, important, moving, wonderful' Sara Pascoe

I'm Jen Brister, stand-up comedian, middle-aged adolescent and, more recently, a mum. But not that mum – I'm the other one. Confused? Let’s back up a bit. Two years ago, my partner (a woman – we're not solicitors) gave birth to twins. Yes. Yes. Already there’s a lot to take in here: gay mums, twins...

In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the late twentieth century was a time of unprecedented hope for democracy and freedom in Eastern Europe. The collapse of the Soviet Union left in its wake a number of independent countries where the Scorpions’ 1990 pop ballad “Wind of Change” became a rallying cry. Communist propaganda was finally being displaced...

Winner of the 2017 Nautilus Silver Award for Religion/Spirituality of Eastern Thought!

Facebuddha: Transcendence in the Age of Social Networks is a rich modern Asian American immigrant memoir of relationship online and off, a state-of-the-art exploration of psychological research about social media, and an engaging introduction to Buddhism.

We are who happens...

With intolerance and inequality increasingly normalised by the day, it's more important than ever for women to share their experiences. We must hold the truth to account in the midst of sensationalism and international political turmoil. Nasty Women is a collection of essays, interviews and accounts on what it is to be a woman in the 21st century.

People...

Goodreads Choice Nominee Ralph Webster tells the true story of his grandmother’s desperate journey from her life at the Pensione Alexandra in Naples to America - after Mussolini and the Fascists join with Hitler - and as countries across the world close their doors to Jewish refugees fleeing the spread of Nazi evil.

In 1934, at age fifty-one, Elsa’s...

Paulette Tourdes was born in Jussac, a village in south-west Auvergne, in 1916. She spent half of her childhood there and half in the nearby town of Aurillac, growing up as part of a large extended family in typically rustic rural France. She went to Spain for several months at the start of the Civil War, and not long after moved to England, having met her...

Percy Sykes began his career with Army Intelligence in India. Their main concern was the threat to India of the Russian advances across Central Asia. In 1893 they sent Sykes into eastern Persia on the first of many expeditions. Always with his terrier and often with his sister or his wife, he rode over thousands of miles of unknown desert, marsh and...

‘Facts are introduced with a cool intelligence and take us through Victoria’s 81 years with skill in selection and quotation. Precise, informative, well balanced in comment... All is admirably documented... Mullen and Munson give a perspective to Victoria’s life and times.’

The Sunday Times

‘I must say at once that I have enjoyed this new biography...

In the 19th century, most travel books about the United States were written by men, often producing lengthy works describing political, social, and economic aspects of American life.

There were also a small number of female travel writers, who tended to write more about the business of daily life, the precise subject that today’s readers want to know...