Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Brought to you by Penguin. In this collection of profiles, essays and travel stories, Chatwin takes us to Benin, where he is arrested as a mercenary during a coup; to Boston to meet an LSD guru who believes he is Christ; to India with Indira Ghandi when she attempted a political comeback in 1978; and to Nepal where he reminds us that 'Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot'.  

This is the simplest tale in the world. Two people meet and fall in love. But the route which brought Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell to a backstreet Venetian restaurant in 1962 was anything but straightforward. Larissa was born in northern Russia, the daughter of a Soviet army officer from...

This story begins, at the age of 14... in the closet of my Grandma's old bedroom... in my childhood home... which was now my room. I was getting ready to go into my freshman year of high school and knew I would be showering in the football locker room after practice... this terrified me because I knew everyone would see my huge scar that I received from a major childhood surgery.

En su debut, Miriam Casco Benard y sus hermanos emergen como sobrevivientes, relatando sus extraordinarias experiencias en sus recuerdos Tender Memories of Fire and Dust: Earthquakes, Revolution, and Family. Esta no es solo una historia de supervivencia, es una narrativa que palpita con la intensidad de superar el catastrófico terremoto de 1972 que asoló Nicaragua, navegar por el peligroso derrocamiento del gobierno por parte de los sandinistas y el arduo proceso de reconstruir una nueva vida en Estados Unidos.

A magnificent cultural biography that charts the life of one of our greatest writers, situating her alongside the key historical and social moments that shaped her work. As the first Black woman to consistently write and publish in the field of science fiction, Octavia Butler was a trailblazer...

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete. The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his...

Ian Fleming's greatest creation, James Bond, has had an enormous impact on our culture. What Bond represents about ideas of masculinity, the British national psyche, and global politics has shifted over time, as has the interpretation of the life of his author. But Fleming himself was more mysterious and subtle than anything he wrote. Nicholas Shakespeare is one of the most gifted biographers working today and his unprecedented access to the Fleming archives and his nose for a story make this a fresh and eye-opening picture of a man who lived his life in the shadow of his famous creation.

In 1972, when Alexandra Fuller was two years old, her parents finally abandoned their English life and returned to what was then Southern Rhodesia and to the beginning of a civil war. By the time she was eight, the war was in full swing. Her parents veered from being determined farmers to being blind drunk, whilst Alexandra and her sister, the only survivors of five children, alternately take up target practice and sing Rod Stewart songs from sun bleached rocks.

Audiobook narrated by author. “Madia’s adventurous tales transcend their rugged terrain, telling, at the crux of it all, very human stories”—The Source New York Times bestselling author of Nowhere for Very Long and Never Leave the Dogs Behind Brianna Madia considers putting down...

The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography written. They run the gamut from life affirming to tragedy and back again with a tone that is a joyous, direct and searingly honest and are an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.

The warmly welcomed memoir by one of the most influential and beloved musicians of our time In Herbie Hancock: Possibilities, the legendary jazz musician and composer reflects on an extraordinary life and a thriving career that has spanned seven decades. A true innovator who has spent a lifetime...

Brought to you by Penguin. On 28 February 2013, a 600-year-old tradition was shattered: the conservative Pope Benedict XVI made a startling announcement. He would resign. Reeling from the news, the College of Cardinals rushed to Rome to congregate in the Sistine Chapel to pick his successor...

The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles...

Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy-nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409-km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic.

New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nurse shortage. So begins the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure tuberculosis, one of the world's deadliest plagues, told alongside the often strange chronicle of the cure's discovery. Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this story follows the intrepid young women, the 'Black Angels', who, for twenty years, risked their lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city's poorest.

When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the writer Jana Bakunina, who has lived in the UK for 20 years, felt furious, ashamed, but most of all helpless. A year later she travelled to her home city of Yekaterinburg to see how ordinary Russians viewed the conflict—and whether the soul of her nation had truly been crushed.

For most of her adult life, Sloane and Russell worked together and played together as they navigated the corridors of office life, the literary world, and the dramatic cultural shifts in New York City. One day, while Russell is still alive, Sloane's apartment is broken into. Along with her most prized possessions, the thief makes off with her sense of security, leaving a mystery in its place. When Russell dies exactly one month later, his suicide propels her on a wild quest to right the unrightable.

How do you move forward when life doesn’t go as planned? Such is Life?: Framing a Positive "Next" Mindset in the Wake of Life's Setbacks by Bobby Steffens, thoughtfully narrated by Phillip Nathaniel Freeman and Lauren Henry, and produced and published by Audiobook Publishing Services, is a powerful and deeply personal memoir about resilience, healing, and finding purpose after life’s most difficult moments.

From her first ski trip, Jean Waight is entranced by the beauty and welcoming feel of Oregon's old lodge—an inspired 1937 creation. Winter by winter, her friends share weather, mishaps, and ale. She braves a comical encounter with a pine marten and is less brave when alone in a freakish snow accident that takes her to life's very edge. But Timberline Lodge's whisperings only become clear after she has to give up skiing. When skiers and snowboarders head for the slopes and all is quiet inside, the past comes out to play. Even the linocut murals hold up a mirror to her own life.

How long can you go on without breaking into a million pieces? Sara-Fay Tarlin, in this heartbreaking memoir that she dedicated to her daughter, will show you how. Follow her life’s story in Life’s Ups and Downs where she unfolds how she adopted her daughter, loved her as if she was her own...