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Biographies

A good biography invites you into someone else’s life. It takes you on fascinating journeys through the ups and downs of the life of legendary film stars, talented musicians, inspiring athletes, visionary politicians and many more. A good biography lets you get under the skin of your biggest idols, and you feel collected when reading their story - maybe even in the form of their own words. You will find both biographies and autobiographies in Tales’ selection, in addition to diaries and memoirs. So are you ready to be inspired by some of the world’'s most extraordinary individuals?
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  • Save 10%
    by Stefan Zweig
    £8.99

    In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance -- his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope.Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastating depiction of the torment of the betrayalof both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

  • Save 23%
    by Carolyn McHugh
    £16.99

    A comprehensive illustrated biography of Harry Styles's amazing story to date Harry Styles is an English singer, songwriter, and actor. His musical career began in 2010 as a solo contestant on the British music competition series The X Factor. Following his elimination early on, he was brought back to join the boy band One Direction, which went on to become one of the best-selling boy bands of all time. Styles released his self-titled debut solo album through Columbia Records in 2017. It debuted at number one in the UK and the US, and became one of the world's top-ten best-selling albums of the year. Its lead single, "Sign of the Times", topped the UK Singles Chart. Styles' second album, Fine Line (2019), debuted a top the US Billboard 200 with the biggest first-week sales by an English male artist in history, and was listed among Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time. Harry's new Album Harry's House was released in 2022 and achieved No 1 on The Billboard 200 breaking records along the way. He is the first UK male artist to debut at No 1 on the Billboard Chart with his first 3 albums.

  • Save 10%
    by Rob Beckett and Josh Widdicombe
    £8.99 - 15.49

  • Save 13%
     
    £23.49

    Challenging the colonial narratives surrounding the Netflix film Against the Ice, this personal, editorial project by a present-day descendant opens-up to cultural and historical inclusion by broadening the storytelling. The new Netflix film Against the Ice is based on the adventures of a Danish polar explorer, captain, and coloniser in Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), who marked his agenda and achievements in books and maps that contributed to the production of 'collective memory' and the dominant history of Nordic colonialism. This book is designed and edited by Gudrun Havsteen-Mikkelsen, the great-granddaughter of this same explorer, in collaboration with designer Anna Bierler. Combining visual and textual contributions, archival material, dialogues, and controversies, Snowblindness - Let's talk about storytelling, colonialism, Netflix and my great grandfather presents new grounds for engagement with the polar explorer's stories, whether these are visually, orally, or textually transferred. The result is a generous and vulnerable reader, which weaves information from a multiplicity of sources, and places particular emphasis on collaboration, trust, and questioning. Our lives resonate through storytelling. The writing and rewriting of history, family stories handed down through generations, the inclusion of plural perspectives and subsequent broadening of conversations; our identities are made by narratives colliding and shifting. In Snowblindness, colonial narratives are challenged through such storytelling, encouraging a questioning of history, ethics, and aesthetics.

  • Save 21%
    by Robert Gluck
    £13.49

    "'I was a writer, but not the writer I needed to be. For that I had to become a different person,' Robert Glèuck, widely acclaimed as a novelist and as a theorist of 'the new narrative,' recently told the Paris Review, in which a section of About Ed has appeared. About Ed is Glèuck's portrait of the artist Ed Aulerich-Sugai, his sometime lover, met in the seventies in San Francisco, when gay life emerged unabashedly from the closet. 'I wanted to find in Ed something to latch on to that was outside my egotism and fear, my threadbare relation to the world-a leap through Ed into lyric time,' Glèuck has said, and in this book that is both 'a novel and my version of an AIDS memoir' he wanted to capture the full range of his feelings for Ed: 'estranged from Ed, bored by him, moved by him.' It is a book about the life they lived together-art and writing and family and sex and death-and, composed over many decades, it is also a book about how the past continues to change in memory and to charge the present. 'What is the right question to ask about a life?' Glèuck asks, describing About Ed as a 'collaborative project,' since 'Ed helped me write this book.' Ed gave him 'notes to fashion a chapter about the day he was diagnosed so I could describe his experience from the inside,' and 'after Ed died, Daniel, Ed's partner, lent me Ed's dream journals.... He started writing them in 1970, the year that we met. We both used his journals, not as puzzles to solve the truth of a self but as a commons producing images that we harvested for paintings and poems. And fifty years later, there I was reading and copying out and running away from his dreams. Are they a condensed version of Ed? Shorthand? Distillation? Is he knowable and unknowable in the same degree sleeping or waking?' About Ed is a challenging and beautiful book by one of America's finest and most adventurous writers"

  • Save 19%
    by Dave Quinn
    £12.99

    THE INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER!"I like to think of Not All Diamonds and Rosé as the ultimate reunion. I know readers will be surprised, entertained, and even shocked at what's in store." -Andy Cohen Dave Quinn's Not All Diamonds and Rosé is the definitive oral history of the hit television franchise, from its unlikely start in the gated communities of Orange County to the pop culture behemoth it has become-spanning nine cities, hundreds of cast members, and millions of fans.What is it really like to be a housewife? We all want to know, but only the women we love to watch and the people who make the show have the whole story. Well, listen in close, because they're about to tell all.Nearly all the wives, producers, and network executives, as well as Andy Cohen himself, are on the record, unfiltered and unvarnished about what it really takes to have a tagline. This is your VIP pass to the lives behind the glam squads, testimonials, and tabloid feuds.Life's not all diamonds and rosé, but the truth is so much better, isn't it?"This exhaustive oral history features dishy interviews with 185 cast and crew members behind the Bravo phenomenon. Fans will delight to read about how it all got started."-New York PostIncludes Color Photographs

  • Save 14%
    by John Fury
    £9.49 - 16.99

  • Save 12%
    by Nick Wallis
    £11.49

    The definitive account of the infamous court battles between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, from the reporter who was there.

  • by DJ Paulette
    £9.99 - 18.99

  • Save 25%
    by James Gavin
    £10.49

    In George Michael: A Life,“Gavin’s engrossing biography of the singer takes the measure of a gifted, tragic, and infuriating man” (New York Times Book Review). George Michael was an extravagantly gifted, openhearted soul singer whose work was both pained and smolderingly erotic. He was a songwriter of true craft and substance, and his music swept the world, starting in the mid-1980s. His fabricated image—that of a hypermacho sex god—loomed large in the pop culture of his day. It also hid—for a time—the secret he fought against revealing: Michael was gay. Soon his obsession with fame would start to backfire. As one of the industry’s most privileged yet tortured men began to self-destruct, the press showed little sympathy. George Michael: A Life explores the compelling story of a superstar whose struggles, as well as his songs, continue to touch fans all over the world. Acclaimed music biographer James Gavin traces Michael’s metamorphosis from the shy and awkward Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou into the swaggering, dominant half of the leading British pop duo of the 1980s Wham! He then details Michael’s sensational solo career and its subsequent unraveling. With deep analysis of the creative process behind Michael’s albums, tours, and music videos, as well as interviews with hundreds of his friends and colleagues, George Michael: A Life is a probing, definitive portrait of a pop legend.

  • Save 15%
    by Caster Semenya
    £10.99 - 15.49

  • Save 20%
    by Andrew Killick, Yeon-Jeong Kim & Sukyeon Cho
    £11.99

  • by OH
    £6.99

    From controversial interview quotes to candid life philosophies, through his legendary performance at Live Aid in 1985 to his final days as a solo artist, this little book is full of quotes from Freddie Mercury.

  • Save 14%
    by To Be Confirmed Gallery
    £9.49 - 18.99

  • Save 15%
    by Fiona (Classical Music Critic - Observer) Maddocks
    £10.99 - 18.99

  • Save 18%
    by Glenys Johnson
    £11.49

    An illustrated exploration of the story behind Vivienne Westwood and her iconic fashion house.

  • Save 14%
    by Octavia Bright
    £9.49 - 13.49

  • Save 18%
    by Karen Homer
    £11.49

    An illustrated exploration of the story behind the brand, from Pierre Balmain's work in the 1950s fashion world, through to the brand as it is in the 21st century.

  • Save 18%
    by Susan Hendricks
    £20.49

    "Former CNN/HLN anchor and veteran broadcast journalist Susan Hendricks takes an investigative deep-dive into the still-unsolved double homicide of two teens in Delphi, Indiana--and its lasting impact on the community"--Provided by publisher.

  • by Min Jin Lee & Heidi Pitlor
    £14.99

  • Save 15%
    by Daniel C. Dennett
    £10.99 - 21.99

  • Save 10%
    by Alba Donati
    £8.99

  • Save 24%
    by Bernie Taupin
    £18.99 - 497.49

  • Save 14%
    by Chris Blackwell
    £9.49 - 16.99

  • Save 15%
    by Margaret Atwood
    £10.99

    A curious collection of essays, seeking answers to BURNING QUESTIONS such as: Why do people everywhere tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over fifty pieces, Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at our world, and reports back to us.

  • Save 11%
    by Volodymyr Zelensky
    £7.99 - 8.99

  • Save 27%
    by Musa Mayer
    £25.49

    Philip Guston paintings?particularly the liberated and instinctual forms of his late work?continue to exert a powerful influence on younger generations of contemporary painters. His daughter, Musa Mayer, manages the estate of Philip Guston and is president of The Guston Foundation. She has curated exhibitions of Guston's work and written books including the memoir Night Studio, first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1988. In 2022 the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that more than two hundred Guston works from her collection would be gifted to the museum.

  • by Rab McWilliam
    £19.99

  • Save 18%
    by Mark Fleischman
    £16.49

Biographies
Biographies books are per definition a collection of someone’s life. That someone is mostly a celebrity and often comes from the world of entertainment for example a famous movie or television star. A good biography lets you under the skin of the subject. Biographies are mostly written by biography authors, who are specialized in capturing the life of another person through research and multiple interviews with both the individual and his or her relatives. The celebrity or icon can also choose to write his or her own story, which is what characterizes an autobiography. An autobiography can - if the writer is good - give you a more intimate picture of the subject. You can both find biographies and autobiographies in Tales’ wide selection of Biographies. 

Biographies best sellers
Tales’ selection contains most of the biographies best sellers. The biographies books are often about celebrities known from film, television or the music industry, but they can also be about inspiring trailblazers from the societal or political world like the biography best seller Becoming about Michelle Obama. The American first lady has inspired many Americans and people around the world. Her and her husband - the first black American first lady and President - made many extraordinary changes in the American society and advocated for more diversity and respect in the American people. Michelle Obama also fights for more equality, especially when it comes to girls and women. Read the inspiring story of how Michelle Obama became one of our times most popular, kind and obliging residents of the White House in her biography Becoming, and let it guide you to finding our own voice. 
Another best seller is Three Women by Lisa Taddeo. Taddeo has written an innovative biography that is a collection of three American women's lives. The biography is an investigation of the female lust in all its complexity. Many women have expressed that they can reflect their own life and feelings of desire in the book. 

Biographies about musicians
Take a look in our selection and find some of the best biographies about musicians. The selection has something for every taste, because you find accounts about musicians from every end of the spectre. Whether you like rock, jazz, classical music, pop or musicals you will find biographies about musicians representing every genre. 
Take for example the autobiography Me Elton John, who has gained extraordinary reviews and success all around the world making the Elton John biography an international best seller. The book is the only official biography made about the iconic musician and singer. Read the incredible and turbulent story about one of our biggest stars to date, and you might learn the secrets behind writing and performing hit after hit.
You can also dive into the fascinating story of the musical legend Julie Andrews. In the biography Home you can read about her journey from London to Broadway stardom. The triple threat is the woman behind legendary roles such as Mary Poppins and Maria from The Sound of Music, and you can follow her journey through Hollywood in the sequel Home Work. Julie Andrews is the writer of her own story and she writes in an intimate and heart-warming narrative. 

Biographies about artists
Are you an art lover, art student or an artist yourself? Then we would recommend you to find inspiration in our biographies about artists. Our collection of biographies contains among others the book Frida Kahlo - A Biography written by Claudia Schaefer. Schaefer gives an introduction to the beloved Latino artist. Frida Kahlo is one of modern times greatest female artists and her surrealist artworks are extraordinary. The biography introduces the reader to her unique form of art - Kahlo did not see herself as a surrealist - but it also gives a look into the artist behind the world famous works of art. If you want to dive into the lives of amazing artists, the story of Kahlo is just one of many wonderful biographies about artists. 

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