Diaries & Memoirs

Lorelou is French, has lived in 7 different countries, and dreams of living on a tropical beach. She suddenly gets a job offer in Oslo and decides to move to Norway despite her limited knowledge of the country and its customs. Her friends think she has lost her mind. "Do you know what Norwegians do to have fun? They go on skiing trips in the middle of the night!". During one year she will try to understand Norwegians, learn their language and adopt their traditions. She will try adapting to Norwegian working culture from Norwegian meeting habits at work to the famous Julebord or Christmas party.From Easter holidays at the cabin, to 17th of May celebrations with bunad, and adapting to making things koselig and eating traditional Norwegian food like sheep heads from Voss (smalahove), Lorelou sails through this journey with candor, trying to make Norwegian friends, dating a Scandinavian and cycling all over the country to discover this wonderful land. She falls slowly in love with this country nothing destined her to love. "A Frog in the Fjord" was a national bestseller in Norway in 2017 and is now available in English, edited for an international audience.

Mrs Hinch: Life in Lists is a captivating book by the renowned author, Mrs Hinch. Published by Penguin Books Ltd in 2021, this book offers a unique perspective on life, presented in the form of lists. The author, known for her engaging and profound style of writing, takes the readers on a journey through various aspects of life, touching upon joy, sorrow, triumphs, and struggles, all encapsulated in her lists. This book is a must-read for anyone who enjoys insightful and thought-provoking literature. Published by the esteemed Penguin Books Ltd, this work is a testament to the author's talent and her ability to touch upon the human experience in a unique and impactful way. The book is written in English.

The British comedian of Nigerian heritage and co-executive producer and writer of the CBS hit series Bob Hearts Abishola chronicles her odyssey to get to America and break into Hollywood in this lively and humorous memoir.According to family superstition, Gina Yashere was born to fulfil the dreams of her grandmother Patience. The powerful first wife of a wealthy businessman, Patience was poisoned by her jealous sister-wives and marked with a spot on her neck. From birth, Gina carried a similar birthmark - a sign that she was her grandmother's chosen heir, and would fulfil Patience's dreams. Gina would learn to speak perfect English, live unfettered by men or children, work a man's job, and travel the world with a free spirit.Is she the reincarnation of her grandmother? Maybe. Gina isn't ruling anything out. In Cack-Handed, she recalls her intergenerational journey to success foretold by her grandmother and fulfilled thousands of miles from home. This hilarious memoir tells the story of how from growing up as a child of Nigerian immigrants in working class London, running from skinheads, and her overprotective mum, Gina went on to become the first female engineer with the UK branch of Otis, the largest elevator company in the world, where she went through a baptism of fire from her racist and sexist co-workers. Not believing her life was difficult enough, she later left engineering to become a stand up comic, appearing on numerous television shows and becoming one of the top comedians in the UK, before giving it all up to move to the US, a dream she'd had since she was six years old, watching American kids on television, riding cool bicycles, and solving crimes.A collection of eccentric, addictive, and uproarious stories that combine family, race, gender, class, and country, Cack-Handed reveals how Gina's unconventional upbringing became the foundation of her successful career as an international comedian.

In The Pastor, Eugene H. Peterson, the translator of the multimillion-selling The Message and the author of more than thirty books, offers his life story as one answer to the surprisingly neglected question: What does it mean to be a pastor? When Peterson was asked by his denomination to begin a new church in Bel Air, Maryland, he surprised himself by saying yes. And so was born Christ Our King Presbyterian Church. But Peterson quickly learned that he was not exactly sure what a pastor should do. He had met many ministers in his life, from his Pentecostal upbringing in Montana to his seminary days in New York, and he admired only a few. He knew that the job's demands would drown him unless he figured out what the essence of the job really was. Thus began a thirty-year journey into the heart of this uncommon vocation?the pastorate.The Pastor steers away from abstractions, offering instead a beautiful rendering of a life tied to the physical world?the land, the holy space, the people?shaping Peterson's pastoral vocation as well as his faith. He takes on church marketing, mega pastors, and the church's too-cozy relationship to American glitz and consumerism to present a simple, faith-filled job description of what being a pastor means today. In the end, Peterson discovered that being a pastor boiled down to "paying attention and calling attention to 'what is going on right now' between men and women, with each other and with God." The Pastor is destined to become a classic statement on the contemporary trials, joys, and meaning of this ancient vocation.

A travel writing classic, available for the first time in 20 years.The inspiration behind the Sunday Times bestseller A Theatre for Dreamers, in paperback April '21. New introduction by Polly Samson. 'These are blissful reissues that will bring Grecian heat and light to your life, and much more besides'Editor's Travel Choice. The Bookseller

A charming and heartfelt story about war, art, and the lengths a woman will go to to find the truth about her family.'As devourable as a thriller... Incredibly moving' Elle'Pauline Baer de Perignon is a natural storyteller - refreshingly honest, curious and open' Menachem KaiserIt all started with a list of paintings. There, scribbled by a cousin she hadn't seen for years, were the names of the masters whose works once belonged to her great-grandfather, Jules Strauss: Renoir, Monet, Degas, Tiepolo and more. Pauline Baer de Perignon knew little to nothing about Strauss, or about his vanished, precious art collection.But the list drove her on a frenzied trail of research in the archives of the Louvre and the Dresden museums, through Gestapo records, and to consult with Nobel laureate Patrick Modiano. What happened in 1942? And what became of the collection after Nazis seized her great-grandparents' elegant Parisian apartment?The quest takes Pauline Baer de Perignon from the Occupation of France to the present day as she breaks the silence around the wrenching experiences her family never fully transmitted, and asks what art itself is capable of conveying over time.

''There''s an entire generation of South African women who ought to read this book.'' - Sara-Jayne King, author of Killing Karoline''Ougat is masterfully written - raw, unpretentious, unsettling. Shana Fife captures all the darkness from her body, psyche and life with fearless honesty and transparency.'' - Frazer Barry, award-winning theatre practitioner, writer and musician"A bold, unapologetic memoir about abuse, coming-of-age, a woman owning her sexuality and seizing her power. Shana Fife has a unique and compelling voice, which she uses with great effect to break with gender and sexuality taboos." - Dr Barbara Boswell, author of GraceBy the time Shana Fife is 25 she has two kids from different fathers. To the Coloured people she grew up around, she is a jintoe, a jezebel, jas, a woman with mileage on the pussy. She is alone, she has no job and, as she is constantly reminded by her community, she is pretty much worthless and unloveable. How did she become this woman, the epitome of everything she was conditioned to strive not to be?Unsettlingly honest and brutally blunt, Ougat is Shana Fife''s story of survival: of surviving the social conditioning of her Cape Flats upbringing, of surviving sexual violence and depression and of ultimately escaping a cycle of abuse.A powerful, fresh and disarming new voice - Shana''s writing is like nothing you''ve read before.

The account of one radically new school year for a Teacher of the Year and for his nonbinary, art-obsessed, brilliant child  Seven-year-old Ollie was researching local advanced school programs—because every second grader does that, right? Ollie, who used to hate weekends because they meant no school, was crying on the way to school almost every day. Sure, there were the slings and arrows of bullies and bad teachers, but, maybe worse, Ollie, a funny, anxious, smart kid with a thing for choir and an eye for graphic art, was gravely underchallenged and also struggling with identity and how to live totally as themselves. Ollie begged to switch to a new school with “kids like me,” where they wouldn’t feel so alone, or so bored, and so they made the change. Raising Ollie is dad Tom Rademacher’s story (really, many stories) of that eventful and sometimes painful school year, parenting Ollie and relearning every day what it means to be a father and teacher. As Ollie—who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, and prefers art to athletics, vegetables to cake, and animals to most humans—flourishes in their new school, Rademacher is making an eye-opening adjustment to a new school of his own, one that’s whiter and more suburban than anywhere he has previously taught, with a history of racial tension that he tries to address and navigate. While Ollie is learning to code, 3D model, animate, speak Japanese, and finally feel comfortable at school, Rademacher increasingly sees how his own educational struggles, anxieties, and childhood upbringing are reflected in his teaching, writing, and parenting, as well as in Ollie’s experience. And with this story of one anything-but-academic year of inquiry and wonder, doubt and revelation, he shows us how raising a kid changes everything—and how much raising a kid like Ollie can teach us about who we are and what we’re doing in the world.

An autobiography emerges from this Covid diary by the celebrated novelist, short story writer, critic and playwright.

West with the Light biography - autobiography of Brian Jackman, one of the UK's best loved travel and wildlife writers, from childhood memories of the Blitz to Fleet Street journalism and a life-long love affair with Africa. George Adamson, Jonathan Scott and Saba Douglas-Hamilton all feature.

A lyrical, poetic essay collection that blends memoir with powerful writing on the natural world, taking us from London to New Zealand, Shanghai to Malaysia - from the winner of the Nan Shepherd Prize

Aldo Kane is an adventurer and World Record Holder with over 20 years' experience working in some of the most extreme, remote and inhospitable places on the planet; Lessons From The Edge will show readers that with the right mindset, you can get through anything life throws at you.

From 1813 until his death in 1847, Thomas Pinniger kept a detailed daily account of the sheep and corn husbandry he practised first at Little Bedwyn Farm to 1825, and then as the owner of Beckhampton Farm in Avebury parish from 1829. These periods were separated by a stay on Sambourne Farm in Chippenham, when he was more an observer than an active farmer. These 'Farming Memorandums', as Pinniger described them, provide a fascinating and detailed record of the challenges that he faced throughout his long career. Farming practices and developments, prices of corn and livestock, and the weather were all recorded in detail. It is clear that they were not just kept for the sake of posterity, but as a body of knowledge and experience on which he could draw. His relations with his labourers and neighbours, not always cordial, add to the wealth of the content of the diaries. Having moved to Beckhampton, Pinniger bought the eponymously-named established coaching inn in the village. Stables were constructed for both the farm and the inn, with the latter specifically for race horses. The fortunes of the inn faltered with the coming of the railway in the early 1840s. As well as the obvious subject matter, Pinniger also noted the births, marriages and deaths of relatives, friends and acquaintances, revealing the social milieu in which he lived. Dates of funerals and of funeral services were also often provided, the latter rarely recorded in this period. He also provided a first hand account of the unrest of the Swing Riots of 1830, which he viewed as a serious threat. The years 1823 to 1838 have been transcribed, but the whole span is covered in the introduction. In keeping such meticulous daily records over so long a period, Thomas Pinniger stands as the principal representative of the class of yeoman farmers, from early to mid 19th-century Wiltshire.

A rousing manifesto and memoir from a leading young Ugandan activist that will change the way we way we think about the impact of climate change and inspire readers to become activists themselves

A highly anticipated memoir by Gabriel Byrne, award-winning actor. Walking with Ghosts is an exquisite portrait of an Irish childhood and a remarkable journey to Hollywood and Broadway success.

"One morning in 2011, Libby DeLana stepped outside her New England home for a walk and took a photo of a local barn. She did the same thing the next day, and the next. It became a daily habit that has culminated in her walking over 25,000 miles the equivalent of the earth s circumference. In Do Walk, Libby shares the transformative nature of this simple yet powerful practice. With each day presenting a new opportunity to reset and reconnect with the natural world, our inner thoughts and physical selves, this morning walk becomes a sacred time and space where new ideas, wonder and wisdom interact elements that remind us of who we are, beyond titles and labels. With beautiful photography and chapters on curiosity, perseverance, creativity and more, Do Walk is an inspiring and reflective guide: an invitation to simply step outside and see where the path takes us"--Publisher's description.

A groundbreaking account of the effects of everyday racism on the identity and mental health of black British men, explored through the lens of Homeland and Supergirl actor David Harewood's personal experience.

Brave, funny and honest, columnist Sophie Beresiner takes us on her complex journey to parenthood and shows us that there's more than one way to become a mother.

Part homage to angling and part coming-of-age story, The Magic of Fishing is a charming celebration of a personal passion and one of the UK's most popular pastimes.

It's a chance for me to forget about the things going on in the world around me for a minute. I hope this book helps you to lose yourself for a moment, too - and that you enjoy reading it and even, maybe, having a go at some of the bits inside. Lots of Love, to the moon and backStacey x