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When he was a child, James Middleton wanted nothing more than a dog of his own. Struggling to connect in the classroom, James would often take off in pursuit of nature and animals - adventuring in the Berkshire countryside, tinkering with rusty farm machinery, performing locum care to injured creatures, and losing himself for hours to the outdoors.Then, finally, his pleas for a dog (made via handwritten letters to his parents) were answered.Meet Ella traces the extraordinary bond between James and his beloved first pup, Ella. From their enchanting introduction when James was just twenty and their many expeditions, to attending royal weddings and being guests at Highgrove and Sandringham, their journey is marked by love, loyalty, and unexpected twists of fate. Ella, the well-mannered and kind-natured companion, accompanied James everywhere, even playing a pivotal role in introducing him to his future wife, Alizee.But beyond the glamorous veneer of society engagements and entrepreneurial achievements lies a deeply personal account of James' battle with depression. Through unconditional love, Ella emerges as an intuitive friend, reading James' moods and offering solace during his darkest hours, becoming the catalyst for his healing journey, and helping him to see all the good in his life and future.Touching, honest and life affirming, Meet Ella is both devastating and wonderfully heart-warming. A love letter to man's best friend, and a beacon of hope to anyone struggling through hard times.

Pablo Escobar had one obsession. Not drugs, not money, not power... football.Narcoball uncovers the incredible story of Colombian football during the early 1990s - shaped by drug lords, rivalries, and ambition. With untold insights from the players and politicians, it uncovers a football empire backed by cartels - where victory was a currency of its own, and defeat, a matter of life and death.This is a different story of Pablo Escobar and his rival. A tale of clandestine deals that reshaped Medellin's football clubs, where fortunes were won and lost. It unveils the extraordinary bonds that Escobar forged with football's luminaries and why his influence reached unprecedented heights, leading to the astonishing 5-0 victory over Argentina in Buenos Aires, the murder of referees, and the ruthless coercion of officials culminating in the killing of Andres Escobar - the Colombian defender who paid the ultimate price for an own goal in the 1994 World Cup. It is also an examination of a people's relationship with both the sport and the nefarious leaders that brought both pride and terror to their communities.Set against the U.S War on Drugs, international threats, and government clampdowns, this is a gripping exploration of Colombian club football under Escobar's rise and fall.

Herbert Kenny, an army dispatch rider, was the first ally to push open the gates at Belsen Concentration Camp, in April 1945.He kept his story from the world until a chance correspondence with a trainee journalist brought it to light. Now, forty years on, that reporter is ready to share Herbert's incredible tale with the world.With unprecedented access to Herbert's diaries, letters and interviews, Mark Hodkinson brings to life the harrowing conditions of Bergen-Belsen and its eventual liberation. From the events leading up to its gruesome discovery, to the trauma Herbert faced and his abandonment in the aftermath, this is a testament to the power of one person in the face of unimaginable darkness.This is the tale of an ordinary man thrown into an extraordinary, life-changing situation. How can a person cope when they come face-to-face with history's darkest moment? Herbert Kenny was that man. This is his story.

'Emily's moving book is a powerful testimony that shines a light on the continued failure of health services to provide any kind of meaningful improvement for autistic people. Should be essential reading for mental health professionals and anyone with autism in their lives.' - FERN BRADY, author of Strong Female Character 'This book will bring so many readers self-recognition and comfort.' - DEVON PRICE, author of Unmasking AutismTo the outside world, Emily looks like a typical girl, with a normal family, living an ordinary life. But inside, Emily does not feel typical, and the older she gets, the more she realises that she is different.As she finally discovers when she is 16, Emily is autistic. Girl Unmasked is the extraordinary story of how she got there - and how she very nearly didn't. Still only 21, Emily writes with startling candour about the years leading up to her diagnosis. How books and imagination became her refuge as she sought to escape the increasing anxiety and unbearable stresses of school life; how her OCD almost destroyed her; how a system which did not understand autism let her down; and how she came so close to the edge that she and her family thought she would never survive.In this simple but powerful memoir, we see how family and friends became her lifeline and how, post-diagnosis, Emily came to understand her authentic self and begin to turn her life around, eventually becoming a mental health nurse with a desire to help others where she herself had once been failed.Ultimately uplifting, Girl Unmasked is a remarkable insight into what it can be like to be autistic - and shows us that through understanding and embracing difference we can all find ways to thrive.

Delve inside the mind of one of the most successful tennis players of our time.At the 2023 U.S. Open, Novak Djokovic surpassed Daniil Medvedev with his 24th Grand Slam single title, becoming the greatest male tennis player of all time. No man has ever won more Grand Slams.This is an illuminating exploration into the psyche of one of the most fascinating and controversial sporting characters ever. From his war-torn beginnings in Serbia to rewriting tennis history, this book uncovers the player's relentless pursuit for perfection and the unique and eccentric strategies that have grabbed headlines and amused and confused tennis fans worldwide.From refusing the COVID-19 vaccine to inhaling a mystery 'magic potion', Novak's controversial approach to his craft is unconventional, yet supremely effective. Dive into the world of meditation, shadow-chasing, and toe separators as we uncover the unorthodox methods that fuel Novak's focus and resilience, both on and outside the court.

How do you see Britain?That might depend on your point of view, and as long time British foreign correspondent, Michael Peel has come to understand, it can look very different from outside.It's tempting to think of the UK as a fundamentally stable and successful nation. But events of the past few years, from Brexit to exposés of imperial history, have begun to spark fierce public debates about whether that is true. Is Britain, just a marginal northern European island nation, marked by injustices, corruption and with a bloody history of slavery, repression and looting?And yet UK politics, media, and public opinion live constantly in the shadow of old myths, Second World War era nostalgia, and a belief in supposedly core British values of tolerance, decency and fair play. British politicians regularly exploit a damaging complacency that holds that everything will turn out okay, because, in Britain, it always does.In WHAT EVERYONE KNOWS ABOUT BRITAIN, Michael Peel digs into the national consciousness with the perspective of distance to pull apart the ways in which we British have become unmoored from crucial truths about ourselves. He shows us that from many perspectives we are no different from other countries whose own national delusions have seen them succumb to abuses of power, increased poverty and divisive conflict.The battle over Britain's narrative is the struggle for its future and its place in the world. So, how do we escape the trick mirror - and see ourselves as we really are?

All You Need is Love is a ground-breaking oral history of the Beatles and how it all came to an end. Based on never-before-published or heard interviews with Paul McCartney, Yoko Ono, George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and their families, friends, and business associates, this is a landmark book, containing stunning new revelations, about the biggest band the world has ever seen.In 1980-1981 former COO of Apple Corp, Peter Brown and author Steven Gaines interviewed everyone in the Beatles' inner circle and included a small portion of the transcripts in their international bestselling book The Love You Make, which spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list. But left in their archives was a treasure trove of unique and candid interviews that they chose not to publish, until now. A powerful work assembled through honest, intimate, sometimes contradictory and always fascinating testimony, All You Need is Love is a one-of-a-kind insight into the final days, weeks, months and years of the Beatles phenomenon.

After her father suddenly leaves, turning the family upside down, Ji-won is forced to pick up the pieces and keep her grieving mother from falling apart. When her mother tells her that eating fish eyes will bring good luck and hints that it may help her father return home, Ji-won tries one and immediately begins dreaming about eating eyes. Human eyes. Instead of Ji-won's parents reuniting, however, her mother starts dating George, a Caucasian man with an obvious Asian fetish. Tormented by her dreams, Ji-won becomes obsessed with his beautiful blue eyes and begins noticing blue eyes all around her. No longer able to control her urges, she finds opportunities to feed her hunger, growing more and more reckless each day. And, as her obsession grows, so does her selfishness: the things that once seemed important to her no longer do, and Ji-won, who has always been hopelessly devoted to her family, decides that she must do the one thing that will end her cravings once and for all. A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unravelling from feeling for too long - because of race, because of misogyny - completely unseen, THE EYES ARE THE BEST PART is also a story of an immigrant family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other.

Suddenly there is a blow to my face, I am hurled to one side. 'My child, I have to go with her!' I scream. But Dr Mengel is standing before me, whip raised. 'Maul halten, shut up!' His eyes gleam. Filled with fear I cower down.In 1943, as the Nazi power swept across central Europe, Rosa, her husband Emanuel and their daughter, Judy, were forced into hiding. But after a year and a half of living a terrifying, day-by-day existence, they were betrayed. As they arrived in Auschwitz, Rosa was torn from her husband and her only daughter. Could she dare to hope she would see either of them again?Somehow, Rosa fought the horror and humiliation of the camp, on occasion coming dangerously close to death. In nursing the people trapped beside her, she helped others survive, but tragically she also watched them die - including a mother she had met before, with a similar story and a daughter the very same age. Her name was Edith Frank.Written immediately in the months after the war, Auschwitz - A Mother's Story tells Rosa de Winter-Levy's unique and heart-breaking personal story - from the atrocities of the camp to her journey out of hell. Powerful and affecting, it is the testimony of a mother, and the pain she will endure for the chance to hold her child again.It's night. The door opens and along with 500 other women I am taken to the so-called Krätzeblock, the scabies block. Mice and rats run over us, the women scream and cry, it's almost unbearable. There's no chance of sleep, we're all consumed by the same thought: tomorrow our final hour will have come.

The 'Ndrangheta is the world's most powerful Mafia and it's behind a litany of violence, organised crime and corruption around the world. Bound together by blood ties, silent but deadly, and steeped in religious ritual, they are a Mafia unlike any other, and vastly more dangerous. In Mafiopoli, the first comprehensive book to be published in English about the 'Ndrangheta, Sanne De Boer takes us deep inside this extraordinary criminal organisation. In 2006, Sanne, a journalist, moved from Amsterdam to a quiet coastal town in Calabria. She has only intended to live there for a few months but was won over by the beautiful surroundings and warm community and decided to stay. And then, one night, a car was set alight on her street in the dead of the night and soon after, two men were shot dead. Slowly, she begins to see glimpses of darker forces that control the small, idyllic Italian town.MAFIOPOLI is an engrossing and dramatic insight into an incredibly destructive and ascendant criminal organisation. As Sanne starts to piece together the mysterious events and violence marring her new home, she dives deep into the story of the 'Ndrangheta: how they got power, how they're expanding it around the world and how all our lives are, in frightening and shocking ways, affected by their reign. This is a powerful new book on a deliberately opaque but deadly Mafia.

What if the British Museum isn't a house of learning, but a vast sinkhole of still-bubbling historic injustice? What if it presents us not with a carefully ordered cross section of history but is instead a palatial trophy cabinet of colonial loot swarming with volatile and errant spirits?When artist and writer Noah Angell first heard murmurs of ghostly sightings at the British Museum he had to find out more. What started as a trickle soon became a landslide as staff old and new, from guards of formidable build to respected curators, brought forth testimonies of their inexplicable supernatural encounters.It became clear that the source of the disturbances was related to the Museum's contents - unquiet objects, holy plunder, and restless human remains protesting their enforced stay within the colonial collection's cases, cabinets and deep underground vaults. Be it wraiths associated with genocides, uprooted sacred beings or the afterglow of deaths that occurred inside the museum itself, according to those who have worked there, the museum is heaving with profound spectral disorder.Ghosts of the British Museum fuses storytelling, folklore and history, digs deep into our imperial past and unmasks the world's oldest national museum as a site of ongoing conflict, where under the guise of preservation, restless objects are held against their will.It now appears that the objects are fighting back.

The brand new edition of the unrivalled and bestselling annual, Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book, the world's bestselling annual wine guide. The world's best-selling annual wine guide.Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book is the essential reference book for everyone who buys wine - in shops, restaurants, or on the internet. Now in its 47th year of publication, it has no rival as the comprehensive, up-to-the-minute annual guide. It provides clear succinct facts and commentary on the wines, growers and wine regions of the whole world. It reveals which vintages to buy, which to drink and which to cellar, which growers to look for and why. Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine 2024 gives clear information on grape varieties, local specialities and how to match food with wines that will bring out the best in both. This latest edition of Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine 2024 includes a colour supplement on Chardonnay, the world's most obliging grape, discussing everything from history and taste to texture, fashion and the role oak.

"I loved writing, I loved chronicling life and every moment I was cogent, sober, or blitzed, I was forever feeding off my surroundings, making copious notes as ammunition for future compositions. . . . The thing is good, bad or indifferent I never stopped writing, it was as addictive as any drug."This is the memoir music fans have been waiting for. Half of one of the greatest creative partnerships in popular music, Bernie Taupin is the man who wrote the lyrics for Elton John, who conceived the ideas that spawned countless hits, and sold millions and millions of records. Together, they were a duo, a unit, an immovable object. Their extraordinary, half-century-and-counting creative relationship has been chronicled in biopics (like 2019's Rocketman) and even John's own autobiography, Me. But Taupin, a famously private person, has kept his own account of their adventures close to his chest, until now.Written with honesty and candour, Scatterhot allows the reader to witness events unfolding from Taupin's singular perspective, sometimes front and center, sometimes from the edge, yet always described vibrantly, with an infectious energy that only a vivid songwriter's prose could offer. From his childhood in the East Midlands of England whose imagination was sparked and forever informed by the distinctly American mythopoetics of country music and cowboys, to the glittering, star-studded fishbowl of '70s and '80s Beverly Hills, Scattershot is simultaneously a Tom Jones­-like picaresque journey across a landscape of unforgettable characters, as well as a striking, first-hand account of a creative era like no other and one man's experience at the core of it.An exciting, multi-decade whirlwind, Scattershot whizzes around the world as we ride shotgun with Bernie on his extraordinary life. We visit New York with him and Elton on the cusp of global fame. We spend time with him in Australia almost in residency at an infamous rock 'n' roll hotel in an endless blizzard of drugs. And we spend late, late night hours with John Lennon, with Bob Marley, and hanging with Frank Sinatra. And beyond the world of popular music, we witness memorable encounters with writers like Graham Greene, painters like Andy Warhol and Salvador Dali, and scores of notable misfits, miscreants, eccentrics, and geniuses, known and unknown. Even if they're not famous in their own right, they are stars on the page, and we discover how they inspired the indelible lyrics to songs such as "Tiny Dancer," "Candle in the Wind," "Bennie and The Jets," and so many more.Unique and utterly compelling, Scattershot will transport the reader across the decades and around the globe, along the way meeting some of the greatest creative minds of the 20th century, and into the vivid imaginings of one of music's most legendary lyricists.

How many steps have you done today?How many emails answered?How much money have you spent this week And how many hours have you slept?Welcome to the numberdemic, where a deluge of figures, stats and data manipulate your every move. From the way you work, date and exercise to the products you buy and the news you read, numbers have worked their way into every part of our lives. But is life better this way? How are all of those numbers affecting us?With fascinating, sometimes frightening and sometimes shrewdly funny research, behavioural economists Micael Dahlen and Helge Thorbjørnsen explain why we're so attached to numbers and how we can free ourselves from their tyranny. Along the way, you'll learn why viral videos, however inaccurate, become more convincing with every view; how numbers can affect the way we physically age, if we let them; why the more films you rate the less impressive you'll find them and how numbers that 'anchor' themselves in your brain can affect the size of your mortgage - plus much more.Sharp, insightful and totally engaging, MORE. NUMBERS. EVERY. DAY. is your vaccination against a world obsessed with numbers.'An entertaining and thought-provoking antidote to the tyranny of numbers in the modern world. By looking at the psychology of how we are tricked, goaded and often crushed by endless quantification, the authors present a winning case for weaning ourselves off number-dependence.'-Alex Bellos, author of Can You Solve My Problems?'Everybody should read this book. A smart and insightful read that will totally change the way you think - and live.'-Thomas Erikson, author of Surrounded By Idiots'Written in lucid, skillfully translated prose that puts the science into philosophical perspective, this shines a fascinating light on the modern-day obsession with numerical quantity over quality.' -Publishers Weekly'In 31,234 words Dahlen and Thorbjørnsen cast their four critical, and at times whimsical, eyes at our numbered existences revealing that consuming too much 'pi' might be bad for our health.'-Professor Scott Page, author of The Model Thinker

'A one-man, one-cat mission to cheer people up' - The Mirror When Travis Nelson arrived in London, he expected to embark on a new life and a new job. Coming from California, he'd uprooted his wife and his cat, Sigrid, and planned to be here for the long haul. Then Covid-19 struck. Travis's new job vanished as the company cut staff. For two years, and through successive lockdowns, he was stuck in limbo in an unfamiliar city, trying to find his way.To keep himself occupied, Travis set out to discover his adoptive home. He bought a bike and began cycling through London's streets and parks with his unusual travelling companion, Sigrid - his deaf, Norwegian Forest cat - who came along for the ride. But what started as a way of injecting routine and purpose into Travis's life in stressful times, created an internet sensation. When Travis began posting videos of the pair's rides on social media, he drew in another community of people looking for moments of joy in an anxious world.In this charming memoir, Travis charts his adventures with Sigrid. He unlocks a hidden London seen only from cyclist's viewpoint, as well as finding friendship and hope. Most of all, it is the story of one man's relationship with his feline companion - one that has given him direction and a sense of belonging at a time when he felt lost.

Hidden in the margins of history books, classical literature, and thousands of years of stories, myths and legends, through to contemporary literature, TV and film, there is a diverse and other-worldly super community of queer heroes to discover, learn from, and celebrate. Be captivated by stories of forbidden love like Patroclus & Achilles (explored in Madeleine Miller's bestseller Song of Achilles), join the cult of Antinous (inspiration for Oscar Wilde), get down with pansexual god Set in Egyptian myth, and fall for Zimbabwe's trans God Mawi. And from modern pop-culture, through Dan Jones's witty, upbeat style, learn more about 90s fan obsessions Xena: Warrior Princess and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Neil Gaiman's American Gods and the BBC's Doctor Who. Queer Heroes of Myth & Legend brings to life characters who are romantic, brave, mysterious, and always fantastical. It is a magnificent celebration of queerness through the ages in all its legendary glory.

"On a Saturday morning in August 2010 my mother, Sally Challen, killed my father, Richard, at the family home with twenty blows of a hammer to the head. She was sentenced to life behind bars after suffering 40 years of abuse."David Challen grew up in a household that was accustomed to his father's abuse and coercive behaviour - his criticisms, humiliations, manipulations and mind games. As David grew older, he realised there was something deeply wrong with the way his father treated their mother, Sally. Though she eventually left him, it was only weeks later that she murdered her husband of 31 years, leaving David with the most unimaginable moral dilemma: defending his mother.CONTROL tells the story of the abuse Challen unknowingly witnessed throughout his childhood, the coercive control that led to his mother, Sally Challen, killing his father, and the subsequent "trial that changed everything for women".