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Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You
￥66.22
*THE NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER* What are the things we live for? What matters most in life when your time is short? This brave, frank and heartbreaking book shows what it means to die before your time; how to take charge of your life and fill it with wonder, hope and joy even in the face of tragedy. Ambitious and talented, Kate Gross worked at Number 10 Downing Street for two British Prime Ministers whilst only in her twenties. At thirty, she was CEO of a charity working with fragile democracies in Africa. She had married 'the best looking man I've ever kissed' – and given birth to twin boys in 2008. The future was bright. But aged 34, Kate was diagnosed with advanced colon cancer. After a two-year battle with the disease, Kate died peacefully at home on Christmas morning, just ten minutes before her sons awoke to open their stockings. She began to write as a gift to herself, a reminder that she could create even as her body began to self-destruct. Written for those she loves,her book is not a conventional cancer memoir; nor is it filled with medical jargon or misery. Instead, it is Kate's powerful attempt to make sense of the woman who emerged in the strange, lucid final chunk of her life. Her book aspires to give hope and purpose to the lives of her readers even as her own life drew to its close. Kate should have been granted decades to say all that she says in these pages. Denied the chance to bore her children and grandchildren with stories when she became fat and old, she offers us all her thoughts on how to live; on the wonder to be found in the everyday; the importance of friendship and love; what it means to die before your time and how to fill your life with hope and joy even in the face of tragedy.
Tom Jones - The Life
￥58.86
From bestselling biographer Sean Smith comes the fascinating and tumultuous true story behind Sir Tom Jones, the nation’s treasure, sage of The Voice and living music legend. Celebrating his 75th birthday this year, Tom Jones’ life has been an unforgettable rollercoaster ride. From starting out in a little Welsh mining town where he married his sweetheart at just 16, who could have known that seven years later he would go on to become a major musical hit that would propel him to Bel Air? Through intimate interviews, Smith uncovers all this and more, including the years Tom spent as little more than a Vegas lounge singer, before being rediscovered in the late ‘80s and becoming a maestro on the music scene once again. As revealing as it is entertaining, this is the definitive story of a great talent who is showing no signs of slowing down.
Torn: A terrified girl. A shocking secret. A terrible choice.
￥58.86
Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis faces a battle to uncover the dark family secret that is tearing a family apart. Rosie is used to looking after children from difficult home situations, but she finds herself struggling when she agrees to take in Taylor and her younger brother, Reece, for a short while. Taylor tries desperately not to fit in, to be the tough young teen that she has had to become, making it clear that she cares about nothing and no-one, while Reece is just desperate for someone to love him. Rosie finds herself battling an unknown monster in their past, as social media and the Internet become a means to control and manipulate the siblings while in her care. And then a more sinister turn of events causes Rosie to dig into their past, desperate to discover the truth before her time with them is over and they must be returned to their family.
Rise of The Super Furry Animals
￥56.90
Rise of the Super Furry Animals tells the story of the greatest psychedelic pop band of our time. Welsh speakers with a lust for global communication, the Super Furry Animals shot to fame on Creation Records and found that, thanks to the record sales of label-mates Oasis, they suddenly had a vast budget to play with. Wasting no time, they bought an army tank and equipped it with a techno sound-system, caused national security alerts with 60-foot inflatable monsters, went into the Colombian jungle with armed Guerrilla fighters, and drew up plans to convert an aircraft carrier into a nightclub. Yet SFA's crazed adventures only tell half the story. By mixing up electronic beats, surf rock, Japanese culture and more, the band recorded some of the most acclaimed albums of the millennium, all the while documenting the mobile phone revolution in their uniquely surreal way. Written with the band’s own participation and housed in a jacket designed by Pete Fowler, the man behind some of SFA’s most iconic album covers, this is the remarkable story of their ascent to fame.
Our Vinnie - Part 1 of 3
免费
Our Vinnie can either be read as a full-length eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts. This is PART 1 of 3. You can read Part 1 three weeks ahead of release of the full-length eBook and paperback. The infamous Canterbury Estate in Bradford, a hotbed of crime, drink and drugs, was a law unto itself in the ’70s. So when one of their own was wronged in any way, the community always had its own way of dealing with it. The first title in a series of gritty family sagas, Our Vinnie accounts the dramatic true story of a brother’s determination to avenge his younger sister’s rape. Josie was just 11 when her Vinnie, then 14, was taken away to a detention centre. Distraught by his absence and left alone with indifferent parents, when she escapes from one of their rows she naively enters the house of a neighbour, Melvin, who – horrifically – leads her upstairs and overpowers her. Convinced by her friend Carol, Josie tells her sister Lyndsey about the rape but, with Vinnie out of the picture, Lyndsey uses the information for her own ends. When Vinnie returns, hardened by years inside the system, his outrage on discovering the truth is severe. And with new abuses continually coming to light, a cataclysmic series of violent events begins to spiral out of control… Dramatic and shocking, Our Vinnie is an unbelievable page-turner, documenting a community forsaken by society, and one brother’s unrelenting determination to take justice into his own hands.
My Uncle Charlie - Part 3 of 3
￥15.60
My Uncle Charlie can either be read as a full-length eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts. This is PART 3 of 3. You can read Part 3 one week ahead of the full-length eBook and paperback.
My Mam Shirley - Part 2 of 3
￥18.93
My Mam Shirley can either be read as a full-length eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts. This is PART 2 of 3. You can read Part 2 two weeks ahead of release of the full-length eBook and paperback.
The 13th Gift: Part Two (HarperTrue Life – A Short Read)
￥11.77
A true Christmas story of a family suffering their darkest moments finding strength and love from a surprise Christmas miracle. December 1999: It was the Christmas season, but Joanne Smith was numb. She wished she could just go to sleep and wake up on December 26. No singing. No laughter. No shopping. She typically enjoyed the holidays, but this year she couldn’t celebrate. Her beloved husband of almost twenty years had died two months previously. What had once been a happy home was now devastated, leaving her and her three children drowning in grief. Until they were thrown a lifeline. Twelve days before Christmas, Jo was in the midst of rushing her kids to school, when she discovered a poinsettia sitting on her doorstep with a card, signed cryptically by her “true friends.” That seemingly small gift was the turning point for the Smith family, as over the course of the twelve days of Christmas, a new gift arrived daily. The mystery of the Christmas presents – specifically, the generosity and kindness behind them – worked its magic on the Smiths as the family knitted back together. They rose out of their grief and latched onto the hope they suddenly felt again: that with love, with community, and with family, even the most broken hearts can be mended.
Child of the North
￥54.25
A fascinating insight into the life of one of the country's bestselling and best-loved authors, marrying her work with her extraordinary life, and looking at her rise to fame and fortune against all the odds. ‘Everything I have touched in my life figures in my books. Every single book I write has something that has happened to me or my family or to my friends.’ Josephine Cox was born in Blackburn during its decline as the cotton-weaving capital of the world. Life was hard but characterful, the joys and tragedies of her youth later inspiring her multi-million selling novels. One of ten children, Josephine knew poverty, hunger and charity. Between births, her mother worked in the cotton mills, her father on the roads. Sleeping up to six in a bed, her family lived in the tightly packed, working-class terraces of Blackburn. But Josephine never felt victimised or shamed. Transforming their closed-in community into one that inspired ‘another kind of love, a deep sense of belonging’ were the characters Josephine writes about in her novels with such fondness and feeling. But alas reality was not always so easy. Hand in hand with poverty came deprivation and domestic difficulties. At the end of her tether, Jo’s mother gathered her children around her in the bus station one day and announced they were leaving Blackburn. Josephine was fourteen years old. Not only did she lose her friends, she also lost her brothers too who were left behind. ‘Belonging to a street, to a place, to a family, is the most important thing.’ Out of this tremendous loss, Josephine’s novels were born.
Barefoot in Mullyneeny: A Boy’s Journey Towards Belonging
￥73.58
Bryan Gallagher's reminiscences of the Ireland of his youth, first heard on Radio 4's 'Home Truths', transport you to a world of boyhood pranks, playground politics and the confusion of growing up in a land that is every bit as magical and captivating as the stories he has to tell. Barefoot in Mullyneeny is Bryan Gallagher's evocative tale of a childhood remembered through the people and landscape of Fermanagh, near the beautiful shores of Lough Erne in Ireland. Bryan chronicles a time when all the big boys went to school in bare feet and secretly watched the Saturday night bands and dances in halls lit by Tilley lamps; where it was known to be nothing less than the biblical truth that if you put a horse-hair across the palm of your hand when you were about to be punished at school, the cane would split in two. Gallagher's writing will touch the hearts of those who long for the innocence of childhood and the simplicity of an era long past. Whether relating tales of murderous bicycle chases through the darkened streets of Cavan, of ghosts and fairy forts or the anguish of emigration, this remarkable memoir vividly recreates life in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 50s. For those who thought that life in Ireland was one of the poverty and misery of James Joyce or Frank McCourt, Barefoot in Mullyneeny offers a view of the Ireland of yesteryear that combines the touching, homely nostalgia of Nigel Slater's Toast and Laurie Lee's Cider with Rosie with a humorous optimism that is unmistakably Ireland at its best.
Notes to my Mother-in-Law
￥58.86
‘My mother-in-law Annie lived with us for 17 years and was picture-book perfect.’ It took a while before the family realised that Annie was increasingly (as she would put it) 'Mutt and Jeff'. So Phyllida began to write out the day's gossip at the kitchen table, putting her notes by Annie's bed before going to hers. One night as heer husband wandered off to bed he muttering darkly that she spent so much time each evening writing to Annie she could have written a book. 'And illustrated it!' Here it is. It is a book full of the delights of a warm and loving household. Of Boot the Cat being sick after over-indulging in spiders; the hunt for cleaning products from the dawn of time; persistently and mysteriously malfunctioning hearing aids; an unusual and potentially hilarious use for a clove of garlic; and the sad disappearance of coconut logs from the local sweetshop. It's about the special place at the heart of a home held by a woman born in another age. Who polished the brass when it was 'looking red at her'. Who still bore a scar on her hands from being hit by her employer when, as a young woman, she was in service. Who could turn the heel of a sock and the collar of a shirt, and make rock-cakes, bread pudding and breast of lamb with barley.
Chopin
￥80.25
A new edition of Adam Zamoyski’s definitive biography of Chopin, first published in 1979 and unavailable in English for many years. Few composers elicit such strong emotions as Chopin. Few have been more revered and cherished. And few have had so much sentimental nonsense written about them. Published to coincide with the bicentenary of Chopin's birth, Adam Zamoyski's compelling new biography cuts through the mass of anecdote and myth that has sprung up around the composer's life and the ebullient and striking personalities of Romantic Paris among whom he lived, including Liszt, Berlioz, Victor Hugo and George Sand, in search of the real Chopin. Zamoyski brings to the subject an unrivalled knowledge of the historical, social and cultural background of the composer's native Poland as well as of the France in which he spent most of his creative life. He has scoured the archives of Warsaw, Krakow, Paris and London in his quest for the truth, and has based his account exclusively on primary sources and contemporary accounts. The result is a biography of authority, perception and wit. Chopin emerges from the sugary romantic mist in which he has been shrouded as a real, palpable personality, a man of intelligence and humour; in music an innovator of genius; in business a feckless spendthrift; in love hesitant and tender; in friendship passionately loyal but often intolerably exacting. Through a close reading of his letters and the use of everyday detail, Zamoyski draws the reader into the private world of this most complicated and reticent of men - 'a man made for intimacy', as the poet Heinrich Heine called him - and reveals the real passions, suffering and ultimate tragedy of his life.
The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
￥66.22
When William Kamkwamba was just 14 years old his parents told him that he must leave school and come and work on the family farm as they could no longer afford to $80 a year tuition fees. This is the story of his refusal to give up on learning and reading. A story of passion, determination and remarkable achievements. Malawi is a country battling Aids, drought and famine, and in 2002, a season of floods, followed by the most severe famine in fifty years, brought it to its knees. Like the majority of the population, William's family were farmers. They were totally reliant of the maize crop. By the end of 2001, after many lean and difficult years, there was no more crop. They were running out of food - had nothing to sell - and had months until they would be able to harvest their crop again. Forced to leave school at 14 years old, with no hope of raising the funds to go again, William resorted to borrowing books from the small local library to continue his education. One day, browsing the titles, he picked up a book about energy, with a picture of a wind turbine on the front cover. Fascinated by science and electricity, but knowing little more about the technology, William decided to build his own. Ridiculed by those around him, and exhausted from his work in the fields every day, and using nothing more than bits of scrap metal, old bicycle parts and wood from the blue gum tree, he slowly built his very own windmill. This windmill has changed the world in which William and his family live. Only 2 per cent of Malawi has electricity; William's windmill now powers the lightbulbs and radio for his compound. He has since built more windmills for his school and his village. When news of William's invention spread, people from across the globe offered to help him. Soon he was re-enrolled in college and travelling to America to visit wind farms. This is his incredible story. William's dream is that other African's will learn to help themselves - one windmill and one light bu
Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens
￥81.52
This is the first biography of the fateful relationship between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots. It was the defining relationship of their lives and marked the intersection of the great Tudor and Stuart dynasties. At its core were their rival claims to the throne of England. Distinguished biographer Jane Dunn reveals an extraordinary story of two queens ruling in one isle, both embodying opposing qualities of character, ideals of womaliness and divinely ordained kingship. Theirs is a drama of sex and power, recklessness, ambition and political intrigue, with a rivalry that could only be resolved by death. As regnant queens in an overwhelmingly masculine world they were deplored for their femaleness, compared unfavourably with each other, and courted by the same men. By placing this dynamic and ever-changing relationship at the centre of the book, Dunn throws new light and meaning on the complexity of their natures. She reveals an Elizabeth revolutionary in her insistence on ruling alone and inspired in her use of celibacy as a political tool, yet deeply feeling and more sympathetic than the usual picture of the virgin queen. Mary, too, is not the romantic victim of history but a courageous adventurer with a reckless heart, and a magnetic influence over men and women alike. Vengeful against her enemies and the more ruthless of the two, she was untroubled by plotting Elizabeth’s murder. Elizabeth, however, was in anguish at having to sanction Mary’s death warrant for treason. Jane Dunn brings her skills as a biographer to bear on history’s two most charismatic queens. Working almost exclusively from contemporary letters and writings, she lets them speak to us across more than 400 years, their voices and responses surprisingly familiar to our own, their characters vivid, by turns touching and terrible. The death in 1603 of Elizabeth, our greatest English queen, was to mark the end of the Tudors and the posthumous triumph of Mary, whose son, James I united the English and Scottish thrones under a Stuart king.
Humble Pie
￥12.56
Everyone thinks they know the real Gordon Ramsay: rude, loud, driven, stubborn. But this is his real story… In this fast-paced, bite-sized edition of his bestselling autobiography Ramsay tells the real story of how he became the world’s most famous and infamous chef: his difficult childhood, his brother’s heroin addiction, his failed first career as a footballer, his fanatical pursuit of gastronomic perfection and his TV persona - all the things that have made him the celebrated culinary talent and media powerhouse that he is today. Gordon talks frankly about: ? his tough childhood: his father’s alcoholism and violence and the effects on his relationships with his mother and siblings ? his first career as a footballer: how the whole family moved to Scotland when he was signed by Glasgow Rangers at the age of fifteen, and how he coped when his career was over due to injury just three years later ? his brother’s heroin addiction. ? Gordon’s early career: learning his trade in Paris and London; how his career developed from there: his time in Paris under Albert Roux and his seven Michelin-starred restaurants. ? kitchen life: Gordon spills the beans about life behind the kitchen door, and how a restaurant kitchen is run in Anthony Bourdain-style. ? and how he copes with the impact of fame on himself and his family: his television career, the rapacious tabloids, and his own drive for success.
The Other Side of Me
￥51.50
A brilliant, highly spirited memoir of Sidney Sheldon's early life that provides as compulsively readable and racy a narrative as any of his bestselling novels. Growing up in 1930s America, the young Sidney knew what it was to struggle to get by. Millions were out of work and the Sheldon family was forced to journey around America in search of employment. Grabbing every chance he could, Sidney worked nights as a busboy, a clerk, an usher – anything – but he dreamt of becoming something more. His dream was to become a writer and to break Hollywood. By a stroke of luck, he found work as a reader for David Selznick, a top Hollywood producer, and the dream began to materialise. Sheldon worked through the night writing stories for the movies, and librettos for the musical theatre. Little by little he gained a reputation and soon found himself in demand by the hottest producers and stars in Hollywood. But, this was wartime Hollywood and Sidney had to play his part. He trained as a pilot in the US Army Air Corps and waited for the call to arms which could put a stop to his dreams of stardom. Returning to Hollywood and working with actors like Cary Grant and Shirley Temple; with legendary producers like David Selznick and Dore Schary; and musical stars like Irving Berlin, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly, memories of poverty were finally behind Sheldon. This is his story: the story of a life on both sides of the tracks, of struggles and of success, and of how one man rose against the odds to become the master of his game.
Me Cheeta: The Autobiography
￥63.18
The incredible, and moving true story of Cheeta the Chimp, star of countless Hollywood blockbusters, told in his own words The greatest Hollywood Tarzan, Johnny Weissmuller, died in 1984. His coffin was lowered into the ground to the recorded sounds of his famous jungle call. Maureen O'Sullivan, his Jane, died in 1998. Weissmuller's son, who first played Boy in the 1939 film Tarzan finds a Mate, has gone too. But Cheeta the Chimp, who starred with them all, is alive and well, retired in Palm Springs. At the incredible age of seventy-five, he is by far the oldest living chimpanzee ever recorded. Now, in his own words, Cheeta (aka Jiggs) finally tells his extraordinary story. He was just a baby when snatched from the jungle of Liberia in 1932, by the great animal importer Henry Trefflich, who went on to supply NASA with its 'Monkeys for Space' programme. That same year, Cheeta appeared in Tarzan the Ape Man, and in 1934 Tarzan and His Mate, in which he famously stole the clothes from a naked O'Sullivan, dripping wet from an underwater swimming scene with Weissmuller. Other Tarzan films followed until Cheeta finally retired from the big screen after the 1967 film Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison, whose finger he accidentally bit backstage while being offered a placatory banana. Cheeta tells it all, a life lived with the stars, a monkey stolen from deepest Africa forced to make a living in the fake jungles of Hollywood. He tells us too of his journey beyond the screen: his struggle with drink and addiction to cigars; his breakthrough with a radical new form of abstract painting, 'Apeism'; his touching relationship with his retired nightclub-performing grandson Jeeta, now a considerable artist in his own right; his fondness for hamburgers and his battle in later life with diabetes; and, through thick and thin, carer Dan Westfall, his loving companion who has helped this magnificent monkey come to terms with his peculiar past. Funny, moving, searingly honest, Cheeta transports us back to a lost Hollywood. He is a real star, and this the greatest celebrity memoir of recent times.
Not My Idea of Heaven
￥51.50
Those who had not discovered our truth had Satan in their hearts. We lived amongst them, but not with them, ‘in the world, but not of the world’. We were special. We were the disciples of the Fellowship. When she was a child, Lindsey Rosa’s every waking moment was governed by the rules of an extreme separatist sect. It controlled what she wore and what she ate; it forbade her to listen to music, to cut her hair, to watch television, to use a computer. The Fellowship said her family was special. Why would she believe otherwise? Then, when Lindsey was seven, her elder brother was caught listening to music and the family were expelled from the sect. But Lindsey’s parents knew nothing but the ways of the Fellowship, so they remained in hope that they would be accepted and continued to make the family live by the sect’s strict rules--cutting themselves off from their local community. But as Lindsey grew, so too did her awareness of a world outside. And, feeling increasingly isolated, she struggled with her own identity. Until finally she was faced with a devastating choice: to continue to live by the rules of the religious sect or to be brutally cast out and leave the family she loved behind forever.
Jumbo to Jockey: Fasting to the Finishing Post
￥81.03
How one man turned a midlife crisis into the realisation of a childhood dream at 4pm at Wincanton Dominic Prince, journalist, documentary-maker, racing enthusiast and bon viveur hit the scales at nearly 16 stone on his 45th birthday. It was not always so. His first love was and still is horses. As a child he would bunk off school to ride his first horse, Conker, and it was only after an horrific accident that left him and his horse wound up in barbed wire that he stepped down off his mount and gave in to the lure of Fleet Street and the three hour lunch. But the smell of oats and the mist of early morning canters were never far away, even if he was living it from the other side of the paddock. In the 20 years since he last rode a horse he has made a film on Lester Piggott, bought and sold one race horse and won and lost thousands on 'the occasional flutter'. Through the drastic changes to his overindulgent lifestyle that he has had to go through to make the weight for the 4pm at Wincanton in October, is weaved an insider's account of the very particular world of jockeys, racing and the multi-billionaire owners who pull the strings at the world's greatest race courses. Memoir, sports book, exposé of the dark world of horse racing, at heart Jumbo to Jockey is the story that all middle aged men will know well of the realisation of a childhood dream before it is too late.
Did You Really Shoot the Television?: A Family Fable
￥73.58
Max Hastings's account of his family's tumultuous 20th century experiences embraces the worlds of fashion and newspapers, theatre and TV, pioneering in Africa and even – his father's most exotic 1960 stunt – being cast away on a desert island in the Indian Ocean. The author is the son of broadcaster and adventurer Macdonald Hastings and journalist and gardening writer Anne Scott-James. One of his grandfathers was a literary editor while the other wrote plays and essays, and penned an enchanting memoir of his own Victorian childhood. His great-uncle was an African hunter who wrote poetry and became one of Max's heroes. The author tells a richly picaresque story, featuring guest appearances by a host of celebrities from Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad to John Betjeman and Osbert Lancaster, who became Anne Scott-James's third husband. 'All families are dysfunctional', Anne asserted impenitently to Max, but the Hastings’ managed to be more dysfunctional than most. His father roamed the world for newspapers and as a presenter for BBC TV's legendary Tonight programme, while his mother edited ‘Harper's Bazaar’, became a famous columnist and wrote best-selling gardening books. Here, the author brings together this remarkable cast of forebears, 'a tribe of eccentrics', as he himself characterises them. By turns moving, dramatic and comic, the book portrays Max's own childhood fraught with rows and explosions, in which the sudden death of a television set was only one highlight. His story will make a lot of people laugh and perhaps a few cry. It helps to explain why Max Hastings, whose family has produced more than eighty books over three generations, felt bound to follow their path of high adventure and popular journalism.
Memories of Milligan
￥73.58
An arresting collection of interviews, collated by Norma Farnes, Spike Milligan's close friend and longstanding agent, bringing to life the late, great Milligan in all his various guises. Heralded as brilliant and difficult in equal measure, Spike Milligan is one of the most prolific and mould-breaking writers of the twentieth century. Fantastically funny and incredibly talented, on his death in 2002, Spike left behind him one of the most diverse legacies in British entertainment history. Creative, inspirational, and at times doggedly loyal, yet famously tempestuous and fickle, Spike was many things to many people. In Memories of Milligan, Norma Farnes sets out to interview those who knew him best, amassing an array of personal memories from fellow performers and comedians, long time friends and former girlfriends. Compiled of intimate stories, small exchanges and habits that go into making up a relationship, be it personal or professional, Memories of Milligan captures another side to the performer's well-known public persona, to build a complete picture of one of the greatest British comic writers to date. Ranging from interviews with fellow comedian Barry Humphries, *writers Galton and Simpson, director Jonathan Miller, stalwart presenters Michael Palin and Terry Wogan, to comic geniuses such as Eric Sykes and producer George Martin, this original book encapsulates a moving portrait of a man who is synonymous with a unique era in post-war entertainment.
