Biography

A New York Times bestseller, the incredible true story of a couple that escaped slavery in the South and eventually made their way to the UK, Africa and beyond. The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escaped sl…

From the time, many years ago, when Michael Palin first heard that his grandfather had a brother, Harry, he was determined to find out more about him. The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective wor…

In 1969, Jane Mixer, a first-year law student at the University of Michigan, posted a note on a student noticeboard to share a lift back to her hometown of Muskegon for spring break. She never made it: she was brutally murdered, h…

An intrepid voyage out to the frontiers of the latest thinking about love, language, and family.A timely and genre-bending memoir that offers fresh and fierce reflections on motherhood, desire, identity and feminism.At the centre …

A novelist's gripping investigation of the forces that led his childhood best friend from academic stardom to the psychiatric hospital where he has lived since killing the woman he loved. When the Rosens moved to New Rochelle, New…

Are we ever truly lost in the internet age? The Observable Universe is a moving, genre-defying memoir of a woman reckoning with the loss of her parents, the virus that took them, and what it means to search for meaning in a hyperc…

When football players leave Ireland behind in the hopes of carving out a future in the professional game, they often end up plying their trade in the UK -competing for a chance in the Premier League, the Scottish Premiership, or t…

Tom Kiely strode majestically through the Irish sporting scene, brushing aside all challengers, collecting championships by the score, smashing Irish, Scottish, British and European and world records on all sides. He created a bla…

On 7 April 1986, Annie Ernaux’s mother, after years of suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, died in a retirement home in the suburbs of Paris. Shocked by this loss which, despite her mother’s condition, she had re…

A stunning collection of essays and memoir from twice Booker Prize winner and international bestseller Hilary Mantel, author of The Mirror and the Light.  In 1987, when Hilary Mantel was first published in the London Review of Boo…

The astonishing new portrait of the master of spy fiction, by the woman he kept secret for almost half his life.  John le Carré led a life entirely constructed of secrets. First as a British ‘spook’ during the Cold War, then as a …

In 1981, Rebecca Solnit rented a studio apartment in San Francisco, her home for the next twenty-five years. There she began the process of forging a voice in a society that preferred women to be silent. Liberated by West Coast ac…

In the Ukrainian city of Poltava stands a building known as the Rooster House, an elegant mansion with two voluptuous red roosters flanking the door. It doesn't look horrifying. And yet, when Victoria was a girl growing up in the …

John F. Kennedy’s life is promoted by sentimental and careless myth-makers as pure legend. But a sinister shadow lies across it.His death was such a shocking event that the vivid memory of his assassination still blinds us to much…

The definitive biography of Shane MacGowan, fully updated to include Shane's final months and the response to his passing. Punk protagonist, legendary drinker, Irish musical icon. The complete and extraordinary journey of the Pogu…

Meet the Murdochs and the disastrously dysfunctional family of Fox News. Until recently, they formed the most powerful media and political force in America. Now their empire is cracking up and crashing down.In his irresistible tri…

In 1983 de Beauvoir published Sartre's letters, maintaining that her own to him had been lost. They were found by de Beauvoir's adopted daughter, and published to a storm of controversy in France. Tracing the emotional and triangu…

When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for h…

An extraordinary, uncompromising and consoling celebration of a life - through childhood, faith, family, love, friendship, pain and loss - written as its author was facing her own mortality. Gillian Rose was a star academic, accla…

Reuben, aged 38, was living in a home for adults with learning disabilities and struggling to accept that he had Down's syndrome. Depressed and in a fog of anti-depressants, he hadn't spoken for over a year. Increasingly isolated,…

The new memoir from prize-winning writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo - playful, provocative and original, it's her deeply personal take on striving for a life of her own. 'When it comes to spinning light and shadow on the complexitie…

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own .. . When she uncovers his forgotten wif…

The superb classic memoir from a dazzlingly eccentric and endlessly fascinating author and feminist icon - a woman very much ahead of her time - including her time spent on the glorious island of Skiathos. Nancy Spain was one of t…

In this gripping memoir, Eamonn Mallie takes us on an extraordinary journey through his life as a journalist in Northern Ireland. From the frontlines of the Troubles to the corridors of power, Mallie’s fearless reporting and unrel…

At the age of 12, Pat Sheedy placed his first 10p bet and concocted his first scam. This marked the beginning of his descent into a compulsive gambling addiction that would lead to close to one hundred criminal convictions, over a…

When Jade's partner leaves the barn that they moved into just weeks before, he leaves a dent in the wall and her life unravelled. Numbed from years in a destructive, abusive relationship, she faces an uncertain future and complete…

What we can learn from Ethiopian running culture – written by an anthropologist and 2:20 marathon runner who trained with the Ethiopians.'Ethiopia is a place where I have been told that energy is controlled by angels and demons an…

Between Meals is the gourmand and journalist A.J. Liebling's delectable account of his time spent eating and drinking in 1920s Paris, under the tutelage of his friend Yves Mirande, 'one of the last of the great around-the-clock ga…

The pop songs that have been the soundtrack to the worst moments of her life. And of course, the pivotal day when Orange Is the New Black hit the airwaves and broke down the door to Jill's own sexuality. In these honest examinatio…

From the acclaimed author of Japan Story, this is the history of Japan, distilled into the stories of twenty remarkable individuals. The vivid and entertaining portraits in Chris Harding's enormously enjoyable new book take the re…