Memoirs & Personal Stories Books

Ghost Stories is Siri Hustvedt's most personal work yet, a searing and intimate meditation on grief, memory and enduring love, written in the aftermath of the death of her husband, writer, poet and filmmaker Paul Auster.It is a pa…

At festive gatherings celebrating summer's peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time mi…

Beirut was a city like any other. What happened here could, I think, happen anywhere'Jean Said Makdisi arrived in Beirut as an outsider: a Palestinian refugee who had escaped Jerusalem in 1948 and had grown up across Egypt and Ame…

In The Land and Its People, David Sedaris investigates what it means to be a traveller, a brother, a lifelong friend.Trying on the role of carer after his boyfriend Hugh's hip-replacement surgery, he both succeeds and fails. He co…

The world knows Virginia Roberts Giuffre as Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell’s most outspoken victim: the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, whose photograph with Prince Andrew cataly…

Anthologized here for the first time, A Hitch in Time is a choice selection of Christopher Hitchens's finest reviews, diary entries, and essays along with a smattering of ferocious letters.A Hitch in Time is a banquet of entertain…

From working in some of London's most prestigious restaurants to scrubbing fat from kitchen floors, Alasdair Gill's life as a chef has been a series of exhilarating highs and harrowing lows. But so too has his private life.Taking …

A memoir of hope, faith and love, Samra Habib's story starts with growing up as part of a threatened minority sect in Pakistan, and follows their arrival in Canada as a refugee, before escaping an arranged marriage at sixteen. Whe…

In 1948, Tareq's grandmother would flee Haifa as Zionist militias seized the city. In the late 1970s, she would flee Beirut with her daughter, as the country was in the throes of a civil war.In Amman, the family would eventually o…

What happens at your kitchen table can become the blueprint for everything you are. Did you sit alone or with people you loved? Was it fun or tense? Was someone working hard to stop you noticing someone else's mood? Did you take i…

It’s 1996, and Jeremy, a young American, has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples rights including immigration. The pair snatc…

The incredible first memoir from the Booker-winning radical icon Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small ThingsTHE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR NONF…

Kathy Burke is one of Britain's most distinctive voices. Even as a fearless kid in Islington, she did things her own way; roaming the estate that raised her to find her own path.A place at the Anna Scher Theatre in her teens chang…

An honest, moving and long-awaited memoir from Academy Award-winning actor Sir Anthony Hopkins. Growing up in the small Welsh town of Port Talbot, Sir Anthony Hopkins struggled in school and was deemed by his peers and parents to …

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her …

Growing up in the 90s in a small town in Indiana, Kevin James Thornton had little notion he would one day make a career as a comedian. Like most kids in his deeply Christian town, his free time revolved around his church community…

How do we go on when a loved one betrays us?On a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden s husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her.His decision shocked…

‘The one thing you can’t fully control in a ship is the water all around you, so part of your plan is always reading and analysing the currents and the tides. You have a clear image in your head of how you think the ship will perf…

In 2017, Hannah Murray was a successful actor whose career had taken her to Hollywood and given her the opportunity to act with A list stars and Oscar-winning directors. But as the daily costs of acting grew, from the degradations…

Mark Ronson was born a night person. With hedonistic creatives for parents, parties became his playground. Yet, having moved to New York City from London at a young age, he always felt like a bit of an outsider, until discovering …

With his trademark wit, candour and relentlessly perceptive eye, Edmund White, the beloved 85-year-old ‘paterfamilias of queer literature’ (New York Times) delves unflinchingly into the aspect of his life which has inspired so man…

The long-awaited, candid memoir by Priscilla Presley chronicling her difficult, inspiring journey beyond the walls of Graceland and behind the elegant image the world sees. The Elvis legacy seen from the inside ...Priscilla Presle…

Sociopath: A Memoir is the astoundingly honest true story of a life lived on the edge of the law, and a fascinating account of one woman’s battle to understand her diagnosis. Jaw-dropping, moving and illuminating, it will challeng…

It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it.A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, …

Everything good, bad and downright mad that has shaped Vogue’s life and career is laid bare in Big Mouth. So get ready for sharply observed, hilarious and very personal insights into divorce, anxiety, family life, and showbiz, alo…

Father's Day, 2005. Just after nightfall, a discarded husband was driving his three young sons back to their mother's house. On that dark country road, barely five minutes from home, the old white car swerved off the highway and p…

An unflinching memoir about growing up in Iran where homosexuality is punishable by death, and yet underground, hidden from Sharia law, is a vibrant gay scene threatening to burst open. The dawn prayer calls echo through the stree…

The fascinating new memoir from one of Ireland's most celebrated and singular broadcastersI started writing this book as an exclusively work memoir but the work and the personal kept overlapping. I don’t know if that’s because I’m…

Sarah Perry’s father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. He was in some ways a very ordinary man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels and his local church.Yet as Sa…

DR HARRY BARRY's life and career has been shaped by defining events: a solitary childhood with chronic illness, a traumatic experience in school, and family tragedies that set him on a course of dedicating his life to medicine and…