Search Results for: true story

London, 1919: a city of ghosts and absences, haunted by the men who marched away but never came back.

‘A poignant and readable mystery’ THE TIMES

Grace Armstrong believes that she has come to terms with her own loss, the death of her dazzling fiancé who was declared Missing in Action. But soon he starts to reappear both in her waking life and dreams.

To make matters worse, a body, dragged from the Thames, is identified as Elizabeth Smith, who lodged with Grace and her family for the last eight years before suddenly disappearing.

Elizabeth had been more than a lodger; she had become a close friend to Grace, who feels compelled to uncover the true circumstances of her death. In doing so, she is drawn reluctantly into the sordid and dangerous underbelly of London and a scandal that rocked Edwardian society.

Will Grace find the answers she so desperately craves, or will she lose herself in the search?

********************

Praise for The Lodger

‘A deliciously Gothic page-turner’ BEST

‘A gripping historical mystery‘ A. J. WEST

‘[Helen Scarlett] has a gift for pulling readers into the twists and turns of her story’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A devastating reveal and a tangled web I won’t forget’ AMANDA GEARD

‘Magnificent, moving, often funny and deeply researched account . . . Is this just a book for those who know football? Far from it: this is a story of glory and the impermanence of fame’ Sunday Times (Book of the Week)

‘Like Alf Ramsey’s 1966 team, this book has depth, it has riches and it’s a winner – the finest piece of sports writing I have read in ages and a superb piece of contemporary history’ Peter Hennessy

England. 1966. The World Cup.

Duncan Hamilton watched England beat West Germany as an eight-year-old boy in the company of his father and grandfather. He recalls ‘Wembley, spread out in the sun; the waving flags; the delirious, joy-of-all-joys moment of the final whistle; the trophy sparkling in the late afternoon light’.

But, seeing the whole game again during the misery of the first Covid lockdown, finally made him realise what Alf Ramsey and his players had no inkling of, which was what came next for them. How, for many of those boys of summer, almost everything after that shimmering moment amounted to an anti-climax or a setback. How ’66 was not a beginning, a guaranteed path towards more success, but a slow decline and fall, and also a disproportionate number of disappointments. And how the triumph of ’66 was dulled through constant repetition, the same images always flashed before us.

Hamilton recognised, too, how many myths and misconceptions had grown around the match.
He decided to revisit ’66, tracing the very roots of a story – as well as the hidden figures within it – that really began during the era of post-War austerity.

Answered Prayers provides, at last, a full account of English football’s greatest achievement and the failures that followed it. We see the institutional inability to appreciate Ramsey and his players, who were taken for granted; the political machinations of the blazered fools who ran the Football Association; the short-sighted blunderers of the Football League.

With his matchless insight and descriptive power, Hamilton tells history afresh and shows us, for the first time, the scale of what was won and what was lost.

PRAISE FOR DUNCAN HAMILTON

‘Hamilton has a perceptively humane understanding of men for whom football was never just a game’ Guardian
‘A marriage of prose and detail so fine and fastidious that it takes the breath away’ Independent
‘Justifiably prize-winning’ Mail on Sunday

‘A hilarious must read.’ -Jameela Jamil

‘I loved the chutzpah and the honesty.’ – Graham Norton

‘Funny, frank and inspiring.’ – Lenny Henry

All her life, London longed to be a badass, an awesome bulletproof star nobody could mess with – someone who takes no shit – and in Living My Best Life, Hun, she lifts the lid on how she went from secretly writing Frasier fan fiction alone in her bedroom to taking Hollywood by storm.

It hasn’t been an easy journey; from birthday parties gone wrong and dealing with bullies every step of the way, to getting blocked by Foxtons (long story) and being mistaken for the cleaner at a comedy competition (true story), London leaves no stone unturned. It took London some time to find her voice and her people, but now that she has, she’s mentally high-fiving her fourteen-year-old self every day.

Frank, fearless and funny, Living My Best Life, Hun will inspire you to ditch the self-loathing, start the self-loving and engage with your inner winner.

Operation Certain Death chronicles the story of the single most daring Special Forces operation since World War Two – Operation Barras; the attempted rescue by the SAS of the British Forces who were being held captive by guerrilla gang the West Side Boys in the Sierra Leone jungle. The West Side Boys were a strange-looking bunch, wearing pink shades, shower caps, fluorescent wigs and voodoo charms they believed made them invulnerable to bullets – an impression re-enforced by ganja, heroine, crack cocaine and gallons of sweet palm wine. In 1999 a twelve man patrol of Royal Irish Rangers, who were training government troops in Sierra Leone, were captured and held hostage by the West Side Boys. They were held prisoner in a fortified jungle hideaway, with severed heads decorating the palisades, defended by some 400 heavily armed soldiers.

Operation Barras, the rescue mission, was a combined force of 100 Paras, twelve members of the Special Boat Squadron, helicopters from the Navy and RAF and, spearheading the operation, 40-strong D squadron of the SAS. Against amazing odds the hostages were rescued – over 150 of the enemy were killed. Operation Certain Death is a thrilling true story of all out war. No hostages taken. Blood-letting on a vast scale inflicted on a very blood-thirsty enemy.

A gripping piece of true military history, perfect for fans of action adventure stories and anyone interested in the top secret division of the British Army.

‘As good as any thriller I have ever read’ Frederick Forsyth

(P)2023 Quercus Editions Limited

The most explosive true war story of the 21st Century.

It is the winter of 2001. A terror ship is bound for Britain carrying a horrifying weapon. The British military sends a crack unit of SAS and SBS to assault the vessel before she reaches London.

So begins a true story of explosive action as this band of elite warriors pursues the merchants of death from the high seas to the harsh wildlands of Afghanistan. The hunt culminates in the single greatest battle of the Afghan war, the brutal and bloody siege of an ancient mud-walled fortress crammed full of hundreds of Al-Qaeda and Taliban.

Fighting against impossible odds and bitter betrayal, our handful of crack fighters battle to rescue their fellow soldiers trapped by a murderous, fanatical enemy.

‘The most dramatic story of a secret wartime mission you will ever read’ News of the World

‘The author has been given unprecedented access’ Zoo

‘Gripping’ Eye Spy

(P)2023 Quercus Editions Limited

‘This is Dan Martin’s long-awaited autobiography, full of ‘the warmth, sharp insights and vivid colour of his 14-year career’ Guardian

Known, thanks to his racing style and attitude, for being one of road cycling’s last romantics, Dan has always shied away from revealing too much about himself and his story. Now, having retired at the end of the 2021 season aged 35 and no longer bound by the constraints of the racing circuit, Dan feels the time is right to tell his story in the same forthright and honest manner that he rode his bike.

This book reflects Dan’s generous and outspoken spirit, his resilience to pain, crashes, bad luck and, finally, his acceptance of destiny. Each chapter’s title has a sub-title based on a typical cyclist’s fear: the fear of losing a race, the fear of retiring from the sport, the fear of mountains or downhills, the fear of doping and, ultimately, the fear of death. Dan also discusses every aspect of the professional cyclist’s life – food, discipline, money, dreams, friendship and betrayal. Dan is unashamed when it comes to exposing these dark feelings, his weaknesses and how he tried to deal with them, his attitude exemplifying Mark Twain’s quote: ‘Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear, not absence of fear’.

Written with his long-time friend and best-selling author Pierre Carrey, this is the story of a rider who never sought to conform to modern cycling’s norms and someone who, in many ways, embodies an age in cycling which has long since disappeared.

This is the celebration of a true cyclist’s career, which will appeal to anyone who’s embraced the weekend ride whilst dreaming of the mountains.

‘[Chased by Pandas] is not a conventional study of wins, losses and conquering mountains but overcoming the mental challenges of a sport into which he was seemingly born’ The Times

‘Records the brave and tough journey of ‘one of road cycling’s last romantics’ Irish Independent

‘Chronicles the former Irish road champion’s journey through the ranks of professional cycling’ Cycling Weekly

‘Absolutely gripping from the word go’ Alexis Conran, Times Radio

‘A convincing insight into the terror and adrenaline rush of war’ Mail on Sunday

Damien Lewis’s new bestseller tells the action-packed, riveting story of the band of mavericks and visionaries who made the SAS. Using hitherto untold stories and new archival sources, Damien Lewis follows one close-knit band of warriors from the SAS foundation through to the Italian landings – chronicling the extraordinary part they played as the tide of the Second World War truly turned in the Allies’ favour.

This is a narrative of wall-to-wall do-or-die action and daring, chronicling the exploits of some of the most highly-decorated soldiers of the twentieth-century.

‘A new book by historian Damien Lewis … who has read through the letters, diaries and reports kept by the Mayne family and conducted interviews with its surviving members over the past ten years’ Danielle Sheridan, Daily Telegraph

‘Read more about the characters as seen in SAS Rogue Heroes in Damien Lewis’s book SAS Brothers In Arms‘ Ed Cullinane, SWNS

‘Damien Lewis, bestselling author, describes the extraordinary bravery of Paddy Mayne and, it seems strange to say, the humanity of Mayne … Brilliant’ Nihal Arthanayake, BBC Radio 5 Live

‘The depth of research is astounding’Belfast Telegraph

William Morris – poet, designer, campaigner, hero of the Arts & Crafts movement – was a giant of the Victorian age, and his beautiful creations and provocative philosophies are still with us today: but his wife Jane is too often relegated to a footnote, an artist’s model given no history or personality of her own.

In truth, Jane and William’s personal and creative partnership was the central collaboration of both their lives. The homes they made together – the Red House, Kelmscott Manor and their houses in London – were works of art in themselves, and the great labour of their lives was life itself: through their houses and the objects they filled them with, they explored how we all might live a life more focused on beauty and fulfilment.

In How We Might Live, Suzanne Fagence Cooper explores the lives and legacies of Jane and William Morris, finally giving Jane’s work the attention it deserves and taking us inside two lives of unparalleled creative artistry.

Music, Magazines & Mayhem

Between 1994 and 1997, James Brown’s loaded magazine became the must-buy and must-be-in publication of the decade. It won every award going, year after year, and came to define not only its audience but also a generation. Bright, loud, funny, provocative, ambitious and careless, loaded was read from the barracks of Afghanistan to the England dressing room at Euro ’96. It captured a hedonistic lifestyle of alcohol, cocaine and more. The last great hurrah before the end of the century. It was the biggest noise in the golden generation of magazine publishing, rocketing from zero to half a million sales in a matter of months. What MTV had been to the 80s, loaded was to the 90s.

ANIMAL HOUSE follows James Brown’s remarkable career from a high school drop-out fanzine writer with few qualifications to NME features editor aged 22, and loaded founder at 27. In between, his mother died in tragic circumstances and gradually his own drug and alcohol use began to take over. Loaded‘s unexpected success legitimised (and paid for) James’s lifestyle, and it wasn’t until he crashed and burned at GQ, and went through rehab, that any sense of perspective kicked in.

Recuperating on the island of Mustique whilst plotting his return with Oz founder Felix Dennis, James was asked by neighbour Lord Patrick Lichfield: “How on earth did you manage to sell so many magazines whilst taking so many drugs?”

This book is his answer.

‘An uproariously funny collection of true stories from one of the comedy greats’ – BILL BAILEY

‘I loved this book. Absolutely adored it. I devoured it and savoured every word. A wild and wonderful love letter to comedy’ – ADAM HILLS

‘It’s rare for comedians to be as funny on paper as they are on stage, but Rich Hall nails it‘ – CARL HIAASEN

A collection of hilarious and often absurd epiphanies in the legendary comedian’s life that defined him – more in a for worse than for better kind of way – and all delivered in his unique deadpan style.

Growing up, Rich Hall aspired to be a writer, and after school he trained to be a journalist. But after a stint at the Knoxville News Sentinel in Tennessee, he found himself trying to impress a girl by doing a one-man show in a state university campus in Kansas, armed with a bucket, a loudhailer and some dog biscuits. It wasn’t exactly a triumph, and he didn’t get the girl, but he had found his true calling.

Nailing It is a collection of true stories from both Hall’s professional and personal life where he really had to nail it. They’re not about glitz, or fame, or how he met his seventh wife at the rehab clinic and found spiritual direction. None of that happened to him.

They’re about accidentally melting Kraft cheese at his first Edinburgh Fringe Festival, alienating an entire convention of RV holiday-makers in Las Vegas, singing The Who’s ‘You Better You Bet’ at a charity gig and turning his performance into a legendary rock ‘n’ roll disaster, and attempting to seduce Karen, which must have been successful because she is now his wife. And other such escapades.

Hall doesn’t always come out of them all covered in glory – far from it – but if someone propped him up at the end of the comedy bar and put a 50p coin in him, these are the tunes he would spin. And you’d be laughing all night.

‘A delicate novel, finely judged and full of insight’ Hilary Mantel

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE HWA GOLD CROWN AWARD 2023


One Wednesday morning in November 1912 the ageing Thomas Hardy, entombed by paper and books and increasingly estranged from his wife Emma, finds her dying in her bedroom. Between his speaking to her and taking her in his arms, she has gone.

The day before, he and Emma had exchanged bitter words – leading Hardy to wonder whether all husbands and wives end up as enemies to each other. His family and Florence Dugdale, the much younger woman with whom he has been in a relationship, assume that he will be happy and relieved to be set free. But he is left shattered by the loss.

Hardy’s bewilderment only increases when, sorting through Emma’s effects, he comes across a set of diaries that she had secretly kept about their life together, ominously titled ‘What I Think of My Husband’. He discovers what Emma had truly felt – that he had been cold, remote and incapable of ordinary human affection, and had kept her childless, a virtual prisoner for forty years. Why did they ever marry?

He is consumed by something worse than grief: a chaos in which all his certainties have been obliterated. He has to re-evaluate himself, and reimagine his unhappy wife as she was when they first met.

Hardy’s pained reflections on the choices he has made, and must now make, form a unique combination of love story and ghost story, by turns tender, surprising, comic and true. The Chosen – the extraordinary new novel by Elizabeth Lowry – hauntingly searches the unknowable spaces between man and wife; memory and regret; life and art.

A Sunday Times Bestseller March 2022 (Ireland)

Soon, the lockdown would start. People would die alone, without any proper ceremony. Charlotte’s death would be washed away, the first drop in a downpour. Nobody knew it then but hers would be the last good funeral of the year.

It was February 2020, when Ed O’Loughlin heard that Charlotte, a woman he’d known had died, young and before her time. He realised that he was being led to reappraise his life, his family and his career as a foreign correspondent and acclaimed novelist in a new, colder light.

He was suddenly faced with facts that he had been ignoring, that he was getting old, that he wasn’t what he used to be, that his imagination, always over-active, had at some point reversed its direction, switching production from dreams to regrets. He saw he was mourning his former self, not Charlotte.

The search for meaning becomes the driving theme of O’Loughlin’s year of confinement. He remembers his brother Simon, a suicide at thirty; the journalists and photographers with whom he covered wars in Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, wars that are hard to explain and never really stopped; his habit of shedding baggage, an excuse for hurrying past and not dwelling on things.

Moving, funny, and searingly honest, The Last Good Funeral of the Year takes the reader on a circular journey from present to past and back to the present: ‘Could any true story end any other way?’

‘You could not ask for a more eloquent guide than this book. Essential’ Sathnam Sanghera

An eye-opening book about how societies are designed to support those in power, at the expense of those without it.

COLONIAL POWER
In the 1950s, over 10,000 Kenyans were killed by the British during the Mau Mau uprising against a government determined to install a sympathetic post-independence regime and continue to exploit the resources of its former colonies.

PATRIARCHAL POWER
After the Iranian revolution in 1979, the Islamic Republic systematically removed freedoms from women, relegating them to second-class citizens in the name of religious teachings.

EDUCATIONAL POWER
There have been fifty-seven prime ministers of the United Kingdom, of whom forty-three have been privately educated, creating a society built by and for the privileged.

These are just some of the stories through which Dr Jack Davy illustrates the key factors that allow societies to create and sustain oppressive systems. Some are historical. Others have played out right before our eyes over the last decade. All are rooted in the systems in which we all participate. Read this book, and take action.

‘Sharp and insightful. Jack Davy makes complex ideas accessible in this powerful book about the roots of inequality’ Caroline Dodds Pennock, author of On Savage Shores: How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe

‘A deeply humane book with true hope in its message’ Ray Mattinson, Blackwells

‘Warm, funny, and bursting with heart’ Rebecca Serle

‘Beautiful, moving, hopeful’ Emily Stone

Greta James is adrift. Literally.

Just after the sudden death of her mother – her most devoted fan – and weeks before the launch of her high-stakes second album, Greta James falls apart on stage. The footage quickly goes viral and she stops playing. Greta’s career is suddenly in jeopardy – the kind of jeopardy her father, Conrad, has always warned her about.

Months later, Greta – still heartbroken and very much adrift – reluctantly agrees to accompany Conrad on the Alaskan cruise her parents had booked to celebrate their fortieth anniversary. It could be their last chance to heal old wounds in the wake of shared loss. But the trip will also prove to be a voyage of discovery for them both, and for Ben Wilder, a charming historian who is struggling with a major upheaval in his own life.

In this unlikeliest of places – at sea and far from the packed venues where she usually plays – Greta must finally confront the heartbreak she’s suffered, the family hurts that run deep, and how to find her voice again.

‘Gorgeous, heartfelt’ Amanda Eyre Ward

‘Moving and beautiful’ 5* reader review

‘Thoughtful and tender and true’ Janelle Brown

‘Full of warmth, heart and music’ 5* reader review

‘Filled with music, passion, and love of all kinds’ Jill Santopolo

‘Wonderful, inspiring and delightful’ 5* reader review

‘A total delight!’ Christine Pride

‘A heartwarming story reminding you to really live’ 5* reader review

‘Full of hope . . . vibrant’ Linda Holmes

‘I have always been fascinated by that charismatic hero of the Resistance, Josephine Baker, but it turns out I didn’t know the half of it. Lewis’ story-telling blew my mind. Again.’ – Dan Snow

‘A story of incredible bravery in the face of tyrants who invaded a free and democratic nation, this will have powerful resonance today.’ – Tim Spicer

During WW2, Josephine Baker, the world’s richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. This is the story of her heroic personal resistance to Nazi Germany.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music hall diva renowned for her singing and exotic dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the most highly-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all ‘negroes and Jews’. Yet, instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight she went from performer to Resistance spy.

In The Flame of Resistance best-selling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little known history of the famous singer’s life. During the years of the war, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers – a cover for her spying work– she participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served: the US, the nation of her birth; France, the land that embraced her during her adult career; and Britain, the country from which she took her orders, as one of London’s most closely-guarded special agents. Baker’s secret war embodies a tale of unbounded courage, passion, devotion and sacrifice, and of deep and bitter tragedy, fueled by her own desire to combat the rise of Nazism, and to fight for all that is good and right in the world.

Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, revealing that her mark on history went far beyond the confines of the stage.

‘An eye-opening, pulse-quickening history. Josephine Baker led a wartime double life of extraordinary jeopardy and Damien Lewis’s needle-sharp narrative is jagged with suspense. Yet he also writes with great warmth and sensitivity, creating a powerfully moving portrait of a woman who fought prejudice and hate in all its forms.’ – Sinclair McKay

‘A gripping true story of a remarkable heroine. The details of Josephine Baker’s espionage for the Deuxieme Bureau, the French military intelligence agency during the war, make for a fascinating read in Damien Lewis’s meticulously researched account’ – Deborah Cadbury

‘Joyful, wise and enormously good fun’ TASMINA PERRY

‘An utterly gorgeous story that had me totally hooked. Without a doubt the best book I’ve read this year’ HOLLY MARTIN

If you knew how the love story finished, would you turn the first page?

Amy has been keeping a secret most of her adult life… The women in her family have a gift, or is it a curse?

Since her first kiss, Amy has had visions of how her relationships will end. A date fleeing through the bathroom window. At the altar – runaway-bride style. There seems to be no end to the unhappy endings.

Then she drunkenly kisses three men at her best friend’s wedding, only to wake up with no memory of who she kissed. She knows she’s found ‘the one’ but now she must find out which one…

Roping in her friends, Amy sets off on a mission to find her true love.

What readers are saying about Skip to the End:

‘Well written, charming, sweet and thoroughly enjoyable’

‘A proper feel good book. I couldn’t put it down’

‘I couldn’t have loved this book more. It’s absolutely perfect in every way’

‘This book was absolutely stunning. About Time is one of my all time favourite films and this was finally a book like it’

‘I finished reading Skip to the End with an enormous, contented sigh and a huge smile on my face’

Love Skip to the End? Then read Molly James’s magical new romance, One Day to Fall in Love, available to pre-order now!

Oscar Wilde’s early fame ensured that throughout his short life he was written about by many of those he met. He was celebrated – or mocked – as the master of the ingenious epigram, the provocative paradox, the witty aside or the extravagant conceit.

In researching his monumental biography of Wilde Matthew Sturgis found, in every major archive, sheets of foolscap in Wilde’s distinctive handwriting, setting down a series of unfamiliar epigrams – unpublished try-outs. There were fascinating new discoveries.

He uncovered dozens of unfamiliar and previously ungathered anecdotes about Wilde: sidelights on his days in Oxford, London, America and Paris and beyond, by society hostesses, men-about-town, actors, lawyers, minor litterateurs, artists and politicians, diligently setting down his actions, his mannerisms and above all his sayings.

The items in this volume are all small additions to the Wilde story: some unfamiliar, others unexpected, they enrich and alter the picture of his life.

‘As a mayor, I am responsible for the upkeep of rural roads; as poet, I prefer to see them neglected.’

Jules Renard was a French literary figure of the late nineteenth century. Not a Parisian but a committed countryman, he was elected mayor in 1904 of the tiny village of Citry-le-Mines in a remote part of northern Burgundy. He had the soul of a rustic bourgeois but the ambition of a metropolitan, and his wife’s money allowed him to move in elevated circles, though he seemed an awkward customer, a badger, and looked like one. He wrote fiction, journalism and drama, very successfully, but the Journal is Renard’s masterpiece, the least categorizable work of the French fin de siècle.

The Journal constitutes a profusion of entries, without stitching or pattern: mordant reflections on style, literature and theatre; portraits of family, friends and the Parisian literary scene; quasi-ethnographical observations on village life and notations of the natural world which are unlike anything except themselves.

Samuel Beckett spoke of Renard in the same breath as Proust and Celine, wrote of the Journal that ‘for me it is as inexhaustible as Boswell ‘ and believed his style was learnt from despair. Gide said the Journal was ‘not a river but a distillery’. Sartre wrote that ‘He invented the literature of silence’. But above all it is a moving and splintery piece of self-scrutiny.

Julian Barnes has admired the Journal for many years and has made this new selection from the twelve hundred page Pléiade edition. Theo Cuffe’s translation will help bring this fierce judge of human foibles to a new generation of readers.

Originally published as Relish, a fully revised and updated edition of the eye-opening story of one woman’s incredible appetite for life: Dame Prue Leith, judge of hit show GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF, tells all from childhood in South Africa to becoming a DBE.

‘What a terrific tale it is – of a South African girl who could stand the heat and made the kitchen into a remarkable career’ Telegraph

Prue Leith describes herself as greedy in all senses of the word. Cook, caterer, restaurateur, food writer, journalist, novelist, businesswoman, teacher, television presenter, charity worker, lover, wife and mother, she has certainly lived life to the full. Prue came to London in the early 1960s and, not long afterwards, opened Leith’s Restaurant. By the mid-seventies she was a food columnist on the Daily Mail, had published several cookbooks and opened Leith’s School of Food and Wine.

But it wasn’t all work. Prue writes with honesty of her love life, her longing for children, the birth of her son, the adoption of her daughter and much else besides. In this fully revised and updated edition she tells of how she met, fell in love with and married John Playfair as well as her exciting role as a judge on Great British Bake Off, now a hit show in the United States as well as the UK. Prue’s down-to-earth attitude to life and her remarkable energy are an inspiration to women readers everywhere.

‘Life is too short to waste time on second-class ambitions. Go for the big ones.’

Now in his late seventies, Sir Ranulph Fiennes looks back on a lifetime of exploration, and draws powerful, inspiring lessons that we can all use when faced by the tribulations of everyday life.

Having crossed both Polar ice caps on foot, climbed Everest and the Eiger, served in the SAS and circumnavigated the world along its polar axis – a 53,000 mile odyssey that has never been repeated – ‘Ran’ looks back from the summit of an incredible life and teaches us how to:

– Learn self-discipline, and master fear
– Plan for success, and make your own luck
– Learn from failure and strive to succeed
– Keep going, whatever life throws at you

**NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM**

Every ending is also a new beginning . . .

On the night before they leave for college, Clare and Aidan have only one thing left to do: figure out whether they should stay together or break up. In twelve hours, they’ll be heading to opposite ends of the country, and they’re anxious to resolve things before they go.

But the quiet night they had planned quickly turns into an unexpected adventure, a roller-coaster ride through their past that leads to family and friends, familiar landmarks and unexpected places, hard truths and surprising revelations. . . .

And as the clock winds down and morning approaches, so does their inevitable goodbye. The question is, will it be goodbye for now or goodbye forever?

Full of wisdom, heart, and hope, Jennifer E. Smith’s irresistible novel explores what happens when life and love lead in different directions.

Praise for Jennifer E. Smith:

‘A sweet story of summer love’ Sunday Express
‘Packed with fun and romance, this uplifting You’ve Got Mail-style story is totally charming’ Closer
‘A gorgeous, heartwarming reminder of the power of fate’ New York Times Book Review

NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX FILM STARRING HALEY LU RICHARDSON

Who would have guessed that four minutes could change everything?

Today should be one of the worst days of Hadley’s life. Her father is getting married in London to a woman she’s never even met, and she’s just missed her flight.

Hadley has never believed in destiny or fate before. But, stuck at the airport in New York, today is also the day she meets Oliver. He’s British. He’s cute. And he’s on her new flight.

Set over twenty-four hours, Hadley and Oliver’s story will make you believe that true love finds you when you’re least expecting it.

Readers love The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

‘A warm and witty book about destiny, first loves, soul mates and perfect timing’ 5* reader review

‘One of those books that you just want to keep reading and reading’ 5* reader review

‘So amazing! A beautiful love story’ 5* reader review

‘The Night Manager meets Narcos‘ Saul David

‘To catch this criminal took incredible courage and skill. This is James Bond meets Jason Bourne’ Bear Grylls

‘This is the book that warned us years before the Ukraine invasion about the power and reach of Moscow’s Merchants of Death… Should be on the bookshelf of every Western anti-narcotics officer and not a few spies. No cliché this time – this is truth which really does trump fiction’ Euan Grant, UK former intelligence analyst for ex-Soviet states.

Russian billionaire Viktor Bout was the world’s foremost arms dealer. Known as the ‘Merchant of Death’ he was both “Public Enemy No. 1” to the global intelligence agencies who hunted him and a ruthless criminal worth a fortune. He was also a former KGB officer and a tool of the Kremlin.

For decades Bout had eluded capture, building up a labyrinthine network of airlines rushing weapons to dictators, rebels, despots and terror groups worldwide. An enemy of the free nations of the world and a top global sanctions buster, Bout was hunted by MI6, INTERPOL, the CIA, the NSA and more. Holed up in Moscow – from where he masterminded the sale of anything from AK47s to state-of-the-art helicopter gunships and anti-aircraft missiles – he was shielded by a Russian state that was a partner in his dark dealings. In short, Bout appeared utterly invulnerable and beyond hope of capture.

Step forward former SAS man Mike Snow, AKA ‘The Bear’. After serving in the world’s most famous special forces unit, Snow had worked as a bush pilot in war-torn Africa, where he’d got to know Bout well. Via a secretive, shadow network, Snow was approached by the US Drugs Enforcement Agency. The DEA agents had one question for him: was Snow able to get Bout – the Lord of War?

This is the incredible tale of OPERATION RELENTLESS, the top-secret mission masterminded by Snow and a handful of DEA operatives – a manhunt that ranges from the steamy jungles of Colombia to the ice-bound streets of Moscow, and from horrific bloodshed and tyranny in Afghanistan to a snatch operation like no other. Based upon the first hand testimonies of those who were there, award-winning author Damien Lewis reveals a story that reads like an impossible thriller, but every word is true

*A mesmeric, harrowing and ultimately uplifting childhood memoir about identity, family and mental health that has touched so many readers around the world*

‘So raw and full of so many emotions. I didn’t want the book to end’ @ftsworld

‘It’s hard to put into words how sacred this book is’ @lisainthecity27

‘I’ve literally read it in one sitting. Glued to every single word’ @lorencoles

‘Thank you for shining a light on ‘different’ children. Thank you for showing that there is no normal. But most of all thank you for proving that even when it’s hard to make friends…there is always someone looking out for you’ @gabrielle.rea

It was an ordinary day in 2016. In Gatwick Airport, Jonathan and his wife Anna were having breakfast with their two little children while waiting for their flight to be called. And then it happened, a familiar sensation that Jonathan hadn’t had for decades: an out-of-body experience that transported him to another place, the safe place he used to escape to in his mind when he was a boy.

Because growing up in conservative 1980s Dublin, where there was little tolerance for children who were ‘different’, Jonathan Joly was, indeed, a different sort of child: creative, expressive, and – on the inside – a girl. The limitations of the people around him to understand his differences led to years of tyrannical bullying and abuse, forcing him to withdraw within himself to the point of clinical absence. His only chance for survival was the inner world he created for himself, rich with loving and supportive friends and playmates, that only he could see. Jonathan’s invisible friends were his lifeline, and on that day at the airport, they came flooding back, and have remained with him to this day.

This extraordinary childhood memoir is not only an important, thought-provoking and exhilarating read, it gives hope and community for all those who have ever felt ‘other’, and proves how vital it is to provide children with the safe space to be themselves.

In All My Friends are Invisible, Jonathan Joly, known widely as one of social media’s most successful content creators, shares the secret he’s kept hidden these many years. He shows the beautiful world he retreated to time and time again when life was unbearable for his ‘skin machine’. Most importantly, he introduces us to his invisible friends, and in so doing you may be transported back to the friends you had as a child that no one else could see, and who may have saved you, too.

‘This will blow you away’- Stylist

‘Joly’s prose is sensitive and heartbreaking…darkly compelling’ – Business Post

‘An extraordinary and thought-provoking memoir’ – Belfast Telegraph