Biographies

Now a major motion picture, The Disaster Artist, starring James Franco, Alison Brie, Zoey Deutch, Lizzy Caplan, Zac Efron, Bryan Cranston, Dave Franco, Kristen Bell, Seth Rogen, Sharon Stone, and Judd Apatow.In 2003, an independent film called The Room - starring and written, produced, and directed by a mysteriously wealthy social misfit named Tommy Wiseau - made its disastrous debut in Los Angeles. Described by one reviewer as 'like getting stabbed in the head', the $6 million film earned a grand total of $1,800 at the box office and closed after two weeks. Over a decade later, The Room is an international cult phenomenon, whose legions of fans attend screenings featuring costumes, audience rituals, merchandising and thousands of plastic spoons. In The Disaster Artist, Greg Sestero, Tommy's costar, recounts the film's bizarre journey to infamy, explaining how the movie's many nonsensical scenes and bits of dialogue came to be and unraveling the mystery of Tommy Wiseau himself. But more than just a riotously funny story about cinematic hubris, The Disaster Artist is an honest and warm testament to friendship.

Former BBC correspondent's graphic personal account of National Service with the Suffolk Regiment in the 1950s based on the letters he wrote home to his family at the time.

Four travellers meet in Bolivia and set off into the Amazon rainforest on an expedition to explore places tourists only dream of seeing. But what begins as the adventure of a lifetime quickly becomes a struggle for survival when they get lost in the wilds of the jungle.

The first-ever memoir of the legendary co-founder of Nike Inc, Phil Knight

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'Affectionate, evocative, illuminating. A story of survival - of a flock, a landscape and a disappearing way of life. I love this book' Nigel Slater'Triumphant, a pastoral for the 21st century' Helen Davies, Sunday Times, Books of the Year 'The nature publishing sensation of the year, unsentimental yet luminous' Melissa Harrison, The Times, Books of the YearSome people's lives are entirely their own creations. James Rebanks' isn't. The first son of a shepherd, who was the first son of a shepherd himself, he and his family have lived and worked in and around the Lake District for generations. Their way of life is ordered by the seasons and the work they demand, and has been for hundreds of years. A Viking would understand the work they do: sending the sheep to the fells in the summer and making the hay; the autumn fairs where the flocks are replenished; the gruelling toil of winter when the sheep must be kept alive, and the light-headedness that comes with spring, as the lambs are born and the sheep get ready to return to the fells.

On 17th November, 2012, Salvador Alvarenga left the coast of Mexico for a two-day fishing trip. A vicious storm killed his engine and the current dragged his boat out to sea. The storm picked up and carried him West, deeper into the heart of the Pacific Ocean. Alvarenga would not touch solid ground again for 14 months. When he was washed ashore on January 30th, 2014, he had drifted over 9,000 miles. Three dozen cruise ships and container vessels passed nearby. Not one stopped for the stranded fisherman. He considered suicide on multiple occasions - including offering himself up to a pack of circling sharks. But Alvarenga developed a method of survival that kept his body and mind intact long enough for the Pacific Ocean to spit him up onto a remote palm-studded island. Crawling ashore, he was saved by a local couple living in their own private castaway paradise.Based on dozens of hours of interviews with Alvarenga and his colleagues, search and rescue officials, the medical team that saved his life and the remote islanders who nursed him back to normality, 438 Days by Jonathan Franklin is an epic tale of survival and one man's incredible story of beating the ultimate odds.

The first full biography of one of the most controversial champions of the Tour de France, Jan Ullrich.

Ten years ago, Janine Marsh decided to leave her corporate life behind to fix up a run-down barn in northern France. This is the true story of her rollercoaster ride from her early struggles and homesickness through personal tragedy, to her attempts to become self-sufficient, with her sharp observations on the very different way of life in France.

Little Book of Chanel is a fascinating exploration of the timeless elegance of Chanel. Authored by Emma Baxter-Wright, this book delves into the iconic brand's evolution and influence in the fashion industry. Published in 2017, the book offers an intimate look at the creative journey of one of the most celebrated fashion houses in the world. Baxter-Wright, a renowned fashion journalist, provides an in-depth analysis of Chanel's unique style and its impact on contemporary fashion. Published by the Welbeck Publishing Group, this book is a must-read for fashion enthusiasts and those interested in the history of high fashion. Dive into the Little Book of Chanel and immerse yourself in the captivating world of luxury fashion.

'This is an essential read for every gay person on the planet' - Elton JohnWINNER BOYZ BEST LGBT BOOK 2017SHORTLISTED FOR THE POLARI BOOK PRIZE 2017Straight Jacket is a revolutionary clarion call for gay men, the wider LGBT community, their friends and family.

Pitched into the maelstrom of air fighting in the summer of 1940, twenty-four-year-old Gordon Olive barely lived to tell this extraordinary tale of courage and endurance. As Britain fought alone for its survival, 'the Few' of RAF Fighter Command took to the air grievously outnumbered, many reaching breaking point, exhausted physically and mentally by unreleting, intense combat. Gordon Olive flew the iconic Spitfire for over 125 missions above London and the south-east in the white heat of the aerial battle for supremacy of the skies. One of the most heavily engaged pilots of the Battle, he shot down ten enemy aircraft. This is his story of what it was like to dogfight with Messerschmitts at speeds of 400 mph, experiencing G forces close to blackout, at one moment to be drenched in sweat with exertion, the next to be freezing at 25,000 feet, to smell the cordite of your own fighter's machine guns and feel cannon shells explode against the back of your armoured seat. Illustrated in colour with forty unique paintings of the aerial battle of summer 1940 by the author.

Barack Obama's memoir, written long before his political career began, is a remarkable story of one man's search for his identity.

Tracing the story of women at home and in work, from the jet buttons of Victorian mourning, to the short skirts of the 1960s, taking in suffragettes, bachelor girls, little dressmakers, Biba and the hankering for vintage, this book lifts the lid on women's lives and their clothes.

An insightful memoir from a counterculture legend

Voted the UK s Favourite Nature BookThe memoir that inspired Chris Packham's BBC documentary, Asperger s and MeEvery minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence.An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt at ease in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn t understand him.Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever read.

During the 1950s and early 1960s the Sydney-based trance-artist and Pan-worshipper, Rosaleen Norton, was well known in Australia as ‘the Witch of Kings Cross’ and was frequently portrayed in the tabloid press as an evil ‘devil-worshipping’ figure from the red-light district. Norton attracted attention from both the public at large and also the local police for engaging in bizarre pagan sex-rituals with her lover, the poet Gavin Greenlees. Details of these activities would surface from time to time in the local courts when Norton was defending her metaphysical beliefs and seeking to defuse claims that her magical paintings and drawings were obscene. Norton was also associated with the scandal that eventually engulfed the professional career of renowned musical conductor, Eugene (later, Sir Eugene) Goossens who had arrived in Australia in 1947 and became a member of Norton’s magical coven six years later.Norton dedicated her magical practice to the Great God Pan and to a lesser extent Hecate, Lilith and Lucifer. She was also intrigued by the visionary potential of Kundalini yoga, out-of-the-body trance exploration and Aleister Crowley’s Thelemic sex magick and combined all of these elements in her ritual activities.Pan’s Daughter is the only biography of Rosaleen Norton and provides the most detailed and authoritative account of her magical beliefs and practices. First published in Britain by Mandrake in 1993, it is now reissued in a revised and expanded edition.

"An astonishing portrait of a killer not seen since In Cold Blood." -New York Daily News A bestselling masterpiece of true crime on par with Helter Skelter, this definitive account of one of America's most feared and notorious serial killers takes you deep into the psychology of a murderer, his terrifying crimes, and the cult following that is shockingly revealed in this revised and updated edition of a true crime classic. Decades after Richard Ramirez left thirteen dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles in the 1980s, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. From watching his cousin commit murder at age eleven to his nineteen death sentences to the juror who fell in love with him, the story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil. After The Night Stalker was first published, thousands of women from all over the world contacted Carlo, begging to be put in touch with the killer. Carlo interviewed them and presents their disturbing stories in this updated edition along with an exclusive death row interview where the killer himself gives his thoughts on the "Ramirez Groupies"-and what he thinks they really want. "I couldn't put the book down…very scary indeed." -Los Angeles Times "An exceptionally well-told true crime tale." -Publishers Weekly Includes 16 Pages Of Photos

'Dazzling... An unforgettable journey to some of boxing's darkest places' Steve Bunce, author of Bunce's Big Fat Short History of British BoxingShortlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year 2000A breathtakingly brutal and evocative account of the life of infamous boxing world champion Sonny Liston Sonny Liston is one of the most controversial men the boxing world has ever seen. He rose from a childhood of grinding poverty to become 1962's heavyweight world champion. He spent time in prison, he was known to have mob connections, he was hated and vilified by his public. And after he lost the world title to Cassius Clay in a spectacular fall from grace, he died under mysterious and never fully explained circumstances.Sonny Liston's life story is an unsolved mystery and an underappreciated tragedy. In uncompromising detail, Nick Tosches captures the shadowy figure of Liston, this most mesmerising and enigmatic of boxing antiheroes.

';The work that brought down a presidency...perhaps the most influential piece of journalism in history' (Time)from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, #1 New York Times bestselling authors of The Final Days. The most devastating political detective story of the century: two Washington Post reporters, whose brilliant, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation smashed the Watergate scandal wide open, tell the behind-the-scenes drama the way it really happened. One of Time magazine's All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books, this is the book that changed America. Published just months before President Nixon's resignation, All the President's Men revealed the full scope of the scandal and introduced for the first time the mysterious ';Deep Throat.' Beginning with the story of a simple burglary at Democratic headquarters and then continuing through headline after headline, Bernstein and Woodward deliver a riveting firsthand account of their reporting. Their explosive reports won a Pulitzer Prize for The Washington Post, toppled the president, and have since inspired generations of reporters. All the President's Men is a riveting detective story, capturing the exhilarating rush of the biggest presidential scandal in US history as it unfolded in real time.

The death of Princess Diana, Princess of Wales, sent shockwaves around the world. A nation was left in mourning, but soon feelings of suspicion surfaced: was her death all that the Establishment might wish us to believe? This book aims to reveal what the people of Britain have always believed - that Diana's death was murder.

Elizabeth Prout stands at both the heart and the crossroads of nineteenth-century history. From her birth in 1820 as the daughter of a cooper in a brewery, beside a cotton mill and an ironworks in the suburbs of Shrewsbury, to her death of tuberculosis, beside the glass and chemical works of St Helens, in 1864, she experienced the industrial, educational, social, economic and religious changes that transformed English society at that time. It was, however, her close friendships with those two giants of the spiritual life, the Passionists Blessed Dominic Barberi and Father Ignatius Spencer, that transformed her own life, enabling her, in turn, to transform her own environment. Slight in build, fragile in health, Elizabeth Prout spent her life in the service of the poor: the mill girls of Manchester, the refugees from the Irish Potato Famine, the needy of Sutton, St Helens and the unemployed of Ashton-under-Lyne during the Lancashire Cotton Famine. Through her work she implemented educational changes that raised up the Catholic population. She provided Homes for the motherly care of Catholic working girls. Most important of all, in partnership with Father Gaudentius Rossi CP and Father Robert Croskell of the Diocese of Salford, she founded a religious Order for the poor, the Sisters of the Cross and Passion - enabling others, too, to educate, to nourish family life in parish visitation and the instruction of converts and to enrich the drabness of people's lives with the beautiful vestments they made for their churches. In 1994 the Cause for the Canonisation of Elizabeth Prout (Mother Mary Joseph of Jesus) was opened by Archbishop Derek Worlock of Liverpool in the Church of St Anne and Blessed Dominic Barberi, Sutton, St Helens, where her remains are interred, like those of Father Ignatius Spencer CP, in the shrine of Blessed Dominic. In 2008 Archbishop Patrick Kelly completed the Liverpool Archdiocesan Process and forwarded Elizabeth Prout's Cause to Rome.