General

Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother, a mother who played tortuous, unpredictable games - games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. She no longer considered Dave a son, but a slave; no longer a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement, his clothes were torn and smelly, and when he was allowed the luxury of food it...

Alan Bennett's "A Life Like Other People's" is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra. Bennett's powerful account of his mother's descent into depression and later dementia comes hand in hand with the uncovering...

Published for the first time in flipback - the new, portable, stylish format that`s taken Europe by storm. James Frey wakes up on a plane, with no memory of the preceding two weeks. His face is cut and his body is covered with bruises. He has no wallet and no idea of his destination. He has abused alcohol and every drug he can lay his hands on for a decade - and he is aged only twenty-three. What...

This is the heart-wrenching true story of a girl named Cupcake and it begins when, aged eleven, she is orphaned and placed in the 'care' of sadistic foster parents. But there comes a point in her preteen years - maybe it's the night she first tries to run away and is exposed to drugs, alcohol, and sex all at once - when Cupcake's story shifts from a tear-jerking tragedy to a dark, deeply...

At thirty-three, Lori Smith found herself falling short of her expectations: single, facing a difficult job, and sinking into something like depression. She needed a change - and she needed it now. In the absence of a Darcy, she made the bold move of leaving her job and country to travel through Jane Austen's England. On a voyage of multi-layered discovery, Lori leads readers through Jane's life...

Krissy Kneen was raised by a very protective, quite eccentric family who avoided any mention of sexuality: perhaps it was no coincidence that she became obsessed by the very idea of sex. After leaving home, she plunged into a world of voracious exploration, revelling in any variation of sex play she could find. But despite the fun, despite the essentially innocent pursuit of pleasure without...

Bryce Courtney's beloved son Damon, a haemophiliac, died from medically-acquired AIDS on Aprils Fool's day 1991, at the age of 24. In this book, he celebrates his life, but he condemns the medical approach taken towards AIDS, and how he and his family coped with Damon's haemophlia and early death.

It struck Bill Bryson one day that we devote a lot more time to the Wars of the Roses or the Normandy Landings than considering what most of history really consists of: centuries upon centuries of people quietly going about their daily business - eating, sleeping, having sex, endeavouring to be amused. So he started a journey around his house, an old rectory in Norfolk, wandering from room to...

On 6 June 2004, Frank Gardner and cameraman Simon Cumbers were in a suburb of Riyadh, filming a report on Al-Qaeda when they were confronted by Islamist gunmen. Simon was killed outright. Frank was brought down by shots in the shoulder and leg. As he lay bleeding in the street, a figure stood over him and pumped four more bullets into him at point blank range...Against all the odds, Frank Gardner...

Helen Brown wasn't a cat person, but her nine-year-old son Sam was. So when Sam heard a woman telling his mum that her cat had just had kittens, he pleaded to go and see them. Helen's heart melted as Sam held one of the kittens in his hands, with a look of total adoration. In a trice the deal was done - the kitten would be delivered when she was big enough to leave her mother. A week later, Sam...

Waris Dirie, whose name means "desert flower", was born in Somalia of nomadic parents. She underwent extreme female circumcision at the age of five, and when she was 13 her father sold her into marriage with a 60-year-old for five camels, at which time she ran away. She was discovered by a fashion photographer in the United States whilst working as a janitor at McDonald's, and became a...

William Pike, a 22-year-old school teacher from Auckland, came to the attention of the nation on 25 September 2007 when, while tramping on Mt Ruapehu, he was critically injured during a volcanic eruption. William was trapped inside the hut, surrounded by mud and rocks and in freezing temperatures, while his friend went for help. When the rescue team arrived he was suffering from such severe...

'Few people visited the Forest of Dean. They thought us primitive, and looked down on us.' Winifred Foley grew up in the 1920s, a bright, determined miner's daughter - in a world of unspoilt beauty and desperate hardship, in which women were widowed at thirty and children died of starvation. Living hand-to-mouth in a tumbledown cottage in the Forest of Dean, Foley - 'our Poll' - had a loving...

Even by the versatile standards of Victorian pioneers, Charles Heaphy had an unusually varied career, as a draughtsman, explorer, surveyor, gold agent, geologist, soldier, war hero, politician, land commissioner and judge. Most importantly, however, for decades Heaphy painted and sketched what he saw. From his earliest surviving watercolour of birdlife in the Marlborough Sounds in August 1839 to...

Pragmatism, humour, stubborn bloody-mindedness - what else does a woman need to carry her through the ups and downs of her life's work? Her Life's Work chronicles the extraordinary life stories of five New Zealand women - Jacqueline Fahey, Merimeri Penfold, Anne Salmond, Gaylene Preston and Margaret Mahy. As artists, writers, teachers, filmmakers and thinkers each has carved out an impressive...

"I'm a simple village girl whose family had to move to the capital, and I have always obeyed the orders of the men in my family. Since forever, I have learned to say yes to everything. Today, I have decided to say no." Uplifting and impossible to put down, this is a true story of the ten-year old girl who won a divorce from the man she was forced to marry, courageously defying both...

From failure to fusilli, this deliciously hilarious read tells the story of Giulia Melucci's fizzled romances and the mouth-watering recipes she used to seduce her men, and console herself when the relationships flamed out. From an affectionate alcoholic, to the classic New York City commitment-phobe, to a hipster aged past his sell date, and not one, but two novelists with Peter Pan complexes,...

It could be inside a crystal blue barrel wrapping around a palm-fringed Indonesian island. It could be perched in the lip of a 15-foot Pipeline widowmaker. It could be as your feet touch the sand for the first time as the new world surfing champion. It could be when you are the first person to come across a mind-numbing human tragedy. It could be, simply, staring out over an empty pointbreak at...

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is one of today's most admired and controversial political figures. She burst into international headlines following the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist who threatened she would be next. An international bestseller, her life story INFIDEL shows the coming of age of this elegant, distinguished -- and sometimes reviled -- political superstar and champion of free speech....

From the time he was three or four, John Elder Robison realised that he was different from other people. He was unable to make eye contact or connect with other children, much to his distress, and by the time he was a teenager his odd habits - such as a tendency to obsessively dismantle radios and dig five-foot holes (and stick his little brother in them) - had earned him the label 'social...

Despite Marley's billing as 'the world's worst dog', Marley and Me explores much more than the trials and tribulations of dog-ownership. This is a heartwarming and unforgettable story of a family in the making and the wondrously neurotic dog who taught them what really matters in life.

"Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother" is made up of the stories of Chinese mothers whose daughters have been wrenched from them, and also brings us the voices of some adoptive mothers from different parts of the world. These are stories which Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - because they were too painful and close to home. In the footsteps of Xinran's "Good...

During the mid-1980s, Marks had 43 aliases and 25 companies, all laundering money from dealing cannabis. After a world-wide operation, he was arrested and sentenced to 25 years at a State Penitentiary in Indiana, but was released in 1995 after serving seven years. This is his own story.

Sometimes it's pretty hard to tell them apart...my family and the animals, that is. I don't know why my brothers and sisters complain so much. With snakes in the bath and scorpions on the lunch table, our house, on the island of Corfu, is a bit like a circus. So they should feel right at home...

This is a wonderfully written and engaging memoir of Jacqueline Wilson's life as a teenager - her problems with her family, first love, her school life and her friends. Read extracts from her real secret teenage diaries and the stories she wrote as a teenager, to build up a fascinating picture of a real teenager and her inner life. Covering issues as diverse as the songs she danced to and the way...

A CHILD CALLED 'IT' is Dave Pelzer's story of a child beaten and starved by his emotionally unstable, alcoholic mother: a mother who played torturous, unpredictable games that left one of her three sons nearly dead. Dave was no longer considered a son, or a boy, but an 'it'. His bed was an old army cot in the basement and when he was allowed food it was scraps from the dogs' bowl. Throughout,...

What if everything around you was black and white except for the red letters on propaganda signs? Where spies like Orwell′s Thought Police studied your facial expressions during political rallies to make sure you were sincere in your expressions and your thoughts? If you couldn′t turn the dials of your radio away from the government station? In fact, there is such a place: North...

What happens when a nice Muslim Australian boy considers joining the jihad in Afghanistan? Irfan Yusuf grew up in John Winston Howard's electorate in the leafy suburbs of Sydney. He should have been thinking about girls and cars, but instead became convinced he should die for a Muslim cause. And in the process he discovered he couldn't learn the Koran from boofy-headed blokes brandishing sticks,...

Stella Rimington was educated at Nottingham Girls' High School, and Edinburgh and Liverpool Universities. In 1959 she started work in the Worcestershire County Archives, moving in 1962 to the India Office Library in London, as Assistant Keeper responsible for manuscripts relating to the period of the British rule in India. In 1965 she joined the Security Service (MI5) part-time, while she was in...

Spying has always been portrayed as a glamorous occupation. Overworld is where the truth meets the fiction

For two years before she left Iran in 1997, the author gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. All were former students she had taught at university. The author offers a glimpse from the inside of the women's lives in revolutionary Iran.

RUNNING WITH SCISSORS is the true story of a boy whose mother (a poet with delusions of Anne Sexton) gave him away to be raised by her unorthodox psychiatrist who bore a striking resemblance to Santa Claus. So at the age of twelve, Burroughs found himself amidst Victorian squalor living with the doctor's bizarre family, and befriending a pedophile who resided in the backyard shed. The story of an...

Little is known of the wife of England's greatest playwright. In play after play Shakespeare presents the finding of a worthy wife as a triumphant denouement, yet scholars persist in believing that his own wife was resented and even hated by him. Here Germaine Greer strives to re-embed the story of their marriage in its social context and presents new hypotheses about the life of the farmer's...

Neville Cooper started out with divine impulses: to preach the Word and bring sinners to God, and to build a Christian utopia on earth. However, not all his followers could stomach the rule of this charismatic, willful, driven, and self-righteous man. Especially his eldest son Phil. Fleur Beale, with Phil Cooper and his son Israel, has written their extraordinary story. It begins with Neville's...

Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs, now aged ninety, and freed from any inhibitions that even she may once have had, she reflects frankly on the losses and occasionally the gains that old age brings, and on the wisdom and fortitude required to face death. This is a lively narrative of events, lovers and friendships: the people and experiences that have...

Secret instructions written in invisible ink. Cigarettes that fire bullets. Covert communications slipped inside dead rats. Subminature cameras hidden in ballpoint pens. If these sound like the stuff of James Bond's gadget-master Q's trade, think again. They are all real-life devices created by the CIA's Office of Technical Services. Now, in the first book ever written about this ultra secretive...

In the former East there was one agent of the Stasi, the secret police, for every six citizens. What did it do to people to be so watched? And what sort of people were they, all those watchers? In her internationally acclaimed debut, Anna Funder presents with startling humour and sympathy the human face of the twentieth century's most repressive regime. Anna Funder lived in Berlin before the Wall...

Sylvia Ashton-Warner was one of the great educational innovators of the twentieth century. Working predominantly with small New Zealand country schools, particularly with Maori youth, at the furthest edge of the 'civilised' world, she established classroom techniques that unlocked a storehouse of imagery native to each child. Through the use of 'key vocabulary' her pupils learned that language...

264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined. The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world;...

The Horse Boy tells the heartbreaking, exhilarating story of Rowan's autism and his parents' journey of hope. As they watch their only child recede into a nightmare of isolation punctuated by episodes of incandescent rage, Rupert discovers two things that seem to pull Rowan back towards them. His uncanny, almost spiritual, connection with horses, and the spontaneous bond he appears to form with...

John Grisham's first work of non-fiction, an exploration of small town justice gone terribly awry, is his most extraordinary legal thriller yet. In the major league draft of 1971, the first player chosen from the State of Oklahoma was Ron Williamson. When he signed with the Oakland A's, he said goodbye to his hometown of Ada and left to pursue his dreams of big league glory. Six years later he...

Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. Across the moth-holed chest was a golden thunderbolt. It may have looked like an old college football sweater, but young Bryson knew better. It was obviously...

As a child, Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his mother. The world knew nothing of his living nightmare and he had nothing and no one to turn to. But his dreams kept him alive - dreams of someone taking care of him, loving him and calling him their son. Finally, his horrific plight could no longer be hidden from the outside world and Dave's life radically changed."The Lost...

In the tradition of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and Eric Larson's "The Devil in the White City", Douglas Preston weaves a captivating account of crime and punishment in the lush hills of Florence, Italy. Douglas Preston fulfilled a lifelong dream when he moved with his family to a villa in Florence. Upon meeting celebrated journalist Mario Spezi,...

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness" is the inspiring, rags-to-riches story of the charismatic Chris Gardner - a once homeless father who raised and cared for his son on the mean streets of San Francisco and went on to become a crown prince of Wall Street. At the age of twenty, Milwaukee native Chris Gardner, just out of the Navy, arrived in...

The Weight of Silence is the gravity of all the unsaids, the unseens, and how they shape our lives. A father's drinking, a mother's shame, a daughter's longing to hold on to a trouser leg to hear someone speak of what never happened. The Weight of Silence = 9 lbs 4 ozs. In her achingly funny, heartbreaking childhood memoir, Catherine Therese takes the reader inside her head, and upside down on a...

From one of America's iconic writers, a portrait of a marriage and a life -- in good times and bad -- that will speak to anyone who has ever loved a husband or wife or child. A stunning book of electric honesty and passion. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter, Quintana, fall ill. At first they thought it was flu, then pneumonia, then...

Revolutionary practitioner, theorist, factional chief, sparkling writer, 'ladies' man' (e.g., his affair with Frieda Kahlo), icon of the Revolution, anti-Jewish Jew, philosopher of everyday life, grand seigneur of his household, father and hunted victim, Trotsky lived a brilliant life in extraordinary times. Robert Service draws on hitherto unexamined archives and on his profound understanding of...

Kelvin is one of three psychics selected to investigate unsolved murders on the acclaimed TV2 series Sensing Murder - now in its second series and one of the country's highest-rating TV shows. From his early days growing up in an isolated rural environment to travelling the world as an acclaimed psychic investigator, Kelvin's life story is amazing, inspirational and at times heart-breaking....

'We'd fought fires before and won - in many ways it's a part of life, here in the bush, so you make sure you're prepared. But as I watched the cars melting, our ancient ash tree torn up by the roots and the air itself on fire, it occurred to me that we might lose this fight. It occurred to me that today I might die.' Jane O'Connor and husband Sean moved to Kinglake, 65 kilometres northeast of...