Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

*** THE INSTANT TOP TEN BESTSELLER *** HIGHLY COMMENDED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES AWARD Paul Lamb is a hedgelayer. He lives in his wagon and works to the rhythm of the seasons, a way of life that has almost vanished. From the end of...

Brought to you by Penguin. The thoughtful and revealing memoir from one of the world's most recognisable women, renowned for her bold risk-taking, multiculturalism, and activism. "I am a product of traditional India and its ancient wisdom, and modern India and its urban bustle. My upbringing was...

First published in 1789, this autobiography of Olaudah Equiano comprises a variety of styles, such as a slavery narrative, travel tale, and spiritual journey. It recounts Equiano's time as a slave, and chronicles his attempts at becoming an independent man through his study of the Bible, and his eventual success in gaining his freedom.

Roots is a groundbreaking story of history and family that spanned continents and touched generations. One of the most important books and television series ever to appear, Roots galvanized the nation and created an extraordinary political, racial, social, and cultural dialogue that hadn’t been seen since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The book sold more than one million copies in the first year, and the miniseries was watched by an astonishing 130 million people. It also won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

It Ain't Perfume You Smell: Short Stories of Rural Life: a collection of short stories written while living in rural America. Being a city--boy every day was a new adventure. Now, in one audiobook, my favorite stories for your enjoyment. Sit back, listen, and dream of what is outside the city limits.

Childhood at the Northern ShorePart 1 of the Northern Shore TrilogyOne shore. One childhood. And questions no one ever answered. She was eleven when her mother didn't come home. No goodbye. No reason. Just a silence that split her world in two. In West Berlin, between concrete and water a child learns to carry whatno child should : responsibility, loneliness, and a life that starts too soon. These early years leave a mark, because they were never what they shouldhave been. This is where my trilogy begins.

We are outside Ramadi, clearing a route none of us has driven before, and that alone is enough to put everyone on edge. The usual roads are paved; you learn how to read them over time, learn the language of fresh asphalt and disturbed dirt, the subtle signs that something has been opened and closed again. But this road offers no such cues. It's unpaved, a supply line cutting through open terrain, stripped of landmarks or patterns, giving us nothing familiar to anchor to.

Bob Irwin's extraordinary life as a wildlife pioneer, father to wildlife warrior Steve and founder of Australia Zoo, told in his own words. Bob Irwin grew up in the Dandenong Ranges, where his passion for wildlife was born. A near-death experience while working as a plumber made Bob realise he needed to follow his dreams, so he and his wife, Lyn, moved their young family to Queensland, where they opened a wildlife park on the Sunshine Coast. The Irwin children grew up in around the Beerwah Reptile and Wildlife Park....

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER THE LONG-AWAITED SEQUEL TO WILD SWANS, THE MULTI-MILLION COPY INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING SENSATION A Book of the Year in The Times, Daily Telegraph and Financial Times 'A must-read … magnificent’ DAILY TELEGRAPH ***** 'Beautiful and moving' ELIF SHAFAK...

Beginning with a sweetly funny, moving account of her arranged marriage, the author undercuts stereotypes and offers the refreshing view of an American life through Muslim eyes. In chapters leavened with humor, hope, and insight, she recounts an immigrant's daily struggles balancing assimilation with preserving heritage, overcoming religious barriers from within and distortions of Islam from without, and confronting issues of raising her children as Muslims - while they lobby for a Christmas tree!

The first and only full biography on legendary Harlem gangster, Bumpy Johnson who was depicted in the movies Cotton Club, Hoodlum, and American Gangster.

Former townies Giles and Mary swapped city life for rural Wiltshire over thirty years ago, and they've each embraced it in their own very different ways. Mary has happily traded sophisticated London salons for monthly lectures at the Farmers' Club, competitive school quizzes, church interactions and local Auction House sales. While Giles has immersed himself in the catastrophic consequences of conventional farming, his organic no-dig veg-patch, the increasingly disproportionate response by local landlords to harmless trespassers and the strange death of the village house martins.

Funny, charming, and romantic to a fault, everyone loves Jamie Laing. The affectionate and exuberant blond puppy dog has come a long way - and broken many hearts - since he first graced our screens in 2011 as the joker of the Kings Road on Made in Chelsea. Ten years on, he became king of the...

Only the scathing wit and searching intelligence of Jessica Mitford could turn an exposé of the American funeral industry into a book that is at once deadly serious and side-splittingly funny. When first published in 1963, this landmark of investigative journalism became a runaway bestseller...

One of the first personal narratives written by an ex-slave, this is also one of the few written by a woman. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was enslaved, along with her family, in North Carolina under a ruthless master who sexually harassed her. After several failed escape attempts, and several years of hiding, she finally made her way North to freedom, where she was eventually reunited with her children. The book was published in 1861.

In his essay about the life of Irish writer John McGahern, Tóibín reveals the tones of melancholy and amusement within both art and the artist. In his extraordinary essay on his cancer diagnosis, Tóibín unpicks the word 'battle', and illuminates the distress, horror and blankness of his experiences. From the shades of light and dark in a Venice without tourists, to the streets of Buenos Aires riddled with disappearances and tied up with dictators and politics, we find ourselves considering law and religion in Ireland as well as in Marilynne Robinson's fiction.

Banine's family were peasants who became millionaires overnight when oil gushed from their lands - and the course of her own life would be just as dramatic. This is her unforgettable memoir of an 'odd, rich, exotic' childhood, growing up in Azerbaijan in the turbulent early 20th century, caught between East and West, tradition and modernity. She remembers her luxurious home, with endless feasts of sweets and fruit; her beloved, flaxen-haired German governess; her imperious, swearing, strict Muslim grandmother; her bickering, poker-playing, chain-smoking relatives.

The Gifted Jamaican Part 1: A Windrush Generation Success Story is an inspiring Windrush generation biography tracing the life of Michael Adolphus Hylton from rural Jamaica to his journey to Britain in 1960. Born in Manchester Parish, Jamaica, in 1933, Michael grew up amid hardship, strict discipline, social inequality, and limited opportunity. Yet he possessed remarkable gifts. He became a highly skilled carpenter and joiner, an accomplished singer, poet, storyteller, entertainer, and man of faith.

Everyone is your friend now. The word that once required an altar can be had for a thumb. For fifty years, David Boles ran his life on one blanket rule: if I know you, you are my friend. Then an actor he calls Curtis said six words in a rehearsal room, and a laugh came out where a sentence should have been, a sentence thirty years in the carrying. This book opens that ledger and refuses to close it politely.

What the Iron Holds follows four generations of the Francom family across three continents and eight decades—from the red dust of Uitenhage in the Cape Colony to the Atlantic crossings, the thousand miles on foot across the American plains, the Black Hawk raids, the polygamy underground, the Colorado River in January, and the quiet Utah bench-land where a family finally stopped moving and started building something that would last.