Showing titles in Biographies & Memoirs

England. 2001. Ruth Crilly has embarked on a law degree and is destined for a life of normality and stability. That is, of course, until she sticks a polaroid of herself in a box somewhere in Birmingham and is scouted by one of the biggest agencies in the world. Flung between Redditch and Milan, telesales and Vogue, wizard cloaks and red shearling coats, follow Ruth through a rip-roaring, hilarious decade of not-quite-making-it as a supermodel. Fuelled by little more than cigarettes and a fear of being measured she criss-crosses the world in pursuit of fame and fortune.

Louise was like any other excited mother-to-be during her first pregnancy, but no one could have predicted what happened when she gave birth. During an emergency c-section, she had severe complications and fought for her life over a number of days, whilst her son was taken into NICU. This terrifying experience impacted on Louise's mental health in a way that completely changed her life, as she has battled to come to terms with what happened to her, whilst also becoming a mother.

Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?

For wrestling fans, Jim Ross’ voice is the soundtrack of an era. This book is your ringside ticket to wrestling’s most unforgettable moments—from the announcer who made them iconic. In the last 50 years, professional wrestling has risen up from a collection of regional territories to become a global phenomenon—and Jim Ross has been there for it all. From the grit and glory days of the 1970s with NWA, to the rise of WCW and the heyday of WWF and WWE, to signing on as on-air talent and senior advisor for wrestling’s newest chapter at AEW, Jim Ross has long had the best seat in the house.

Britain's most chilling crimes are brought sensationally to life in this compelling new series, using court room transcripts, police interviews, 999 calls, secret audio recordings and eye witness testimony.

Once again, the legendary comedy duo unearth six vitally important subjects... and then tit about about them. From surviving on a desert island to being eaten by a cardboard crocodile, Dawn and Jennifer will entertain, inform and thoroughly tit about for your pleasure. (Batteries not included.)

There are many miles from the business school and basketball court at the University of Southern California to 50 million viewers for the final episode of a TV show called Magnum P.I. Tom Selleck has lived every one of those miles in his own iconoclastic and joyful way. Frank, funny and open-hearted, You Never Know is an intimate memoir from one of the most beloved actors of our time, the highly personal story of a remarkable life and thoroughly accidental career.

If it weren’t for Emma Johnson, Caryn Johnson would have never become Whoopi Goldberg. Emma gave her children the loving care and wisdom they needed to succeed in life, always encouraging them to be true to themselves. When Whoopi lost her mother in 2010—and then her older brother, Clyde, five years later—she felt deeply alone; the only people who truly knew her were gone. Emma raised her children not just to survive, but to thrive. In this intimate and heartfelt memoir, Whoopi shares many of the deeply personal stories of their lives together for the first time.

Celebrating twenty years since her bestselling debut autobiography, Being Jordan, and a stellar thirty-year career, This is Me is Katie Price as you've never seen her before - honest and reflective, Katie explores the incredible highs and devastating lows of her life and turbulent career, as well as the journey she's been on to get to where she is today.

With nearly 40 million record sales, three albums topping the Billboard charts, a Grammy win and a legion of fans, System Of A Down are one of the biggest metal bands on the planet. At their core has always been Serj Tankian, whose journey from the streets of Beirut to rock superstardom is as remarkable and unlikely as you'll get. By dint of luck, circumstance, struggle, and more than a little talent, Serj has had the chance to live an extraordinary life, and retraces this remarkable journey, exploring what it's taught him - about music, about art, about activism, and about himself.

From early on, we are taught that getting a certain job is the only to get ahead, that we have to do well at school, that failure is embarrassing and to be avoided. We're so busy trying to follow these rules that we never stop and ask ourselves: What's my purpose? What do I really want? Simon Squibb is on a mission to change stranger's lives for the better. Here, he shares the hard-won life lessons from his years in the business world, plus his own personal life, and empowers listeners to identify their own meaningful goals.

An exposé on the depths of the internet. From sex trafficking and fraud to government secrets and anonymous hacking groups.

My Family and Other Rock Stars is Tiff's remarkable, truly unique story of growing up in a rural idyll, of Cordon Bleu cookery and of a childhood where the chances of bumping into Freddie Mercury playing piano, or a group of Hell's Angels turning up to record for Lemmy, or even the hope of David Bowie appearing, were as normal as hopscotch and homework.

Living in the Belgian Congo with her husband in the 1960s, Fran’s mother became pregnant with a daughter. However, right after she gave birth in the hospital, she felt strange. Unbeknownst to anyone, another daughter was on the way, but before anybody responded, an hour had passed. Because of the delay, Fran was born with cerebral palsy. Growing up with her siblings in Africa, Fran always felt different. When everyone else was playing and having fun, she would watch and wish she could join in.

This is the incredible story of Elzbieta Zawacka, the WW2 female resistance fighter known as Agent Zo, told here for the very first time. Agent Zo was the only woman to reach London from Warsaw during the Second World War as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command, and then in Britain she became the only woman to join the Polish elite Special Forces, known as the 'Silent Unseen'. She was secretly trained in the British countryside, and then the only female member of these SOE affiliated forces to be parachuted back behind enemy lines to Nazi-occupied Poland.

In attempting to find out why we're not having the sex we want, Sofie asks the questions: can we blame a lacking sex education? Is it all just sexual trauma? Where's the radical sexual liberation we were promised? What are we going to do about this? Should she have slept with that guy in that bush that one time? How do you overcome being a 35 year-old virgin (when it comes to queer sex, that is)? How do the socially awkward and the neurodiverse have sex?

[Contains Mature Themes] This much we do know: Sophie Toscan du Plantier was murdered days before Christmas in 1996, her broken body discovered at the edge of her property near the town of Schull in West Cork, Ireland. The rest remains a mystery.

Operation Biting was one of the most thrilling British commando raids of World War II, and probably the most successful. In February 1942 RAF intelligence was baffled by a newly-identified radar network on the coast of Nazi-occupied Europe, codenamed Würzburg. The brilliant scientist Dr RV Jones proposed an assault to capture key components. The nearest accessible enemy set stood upon a steep cliff at Bruneval in Normandy. Winston Churchill enthused, as did Lord Louis Mountbatten, chief of Combined Operations.

In Unruly, David Mitchell explores how early England's monarchs, while acting as feared rulers firmly guiding their subjects' destinies, were in reality a bunch of lucky sods who were mostly as silly and weird in real life as they appear to us today in their portraits.

Some crimes are so horrific they attract the harshest punishment possible: a sentence that means the guilty will die behind bars.