Secondhand Biographies

An intimate and moving portrait of a family combined with an account of the events which swept through Africa in the post-independence period. Aminatta Forna's intensely personal history is a...

James Frey wakes up on a plane, with no memory of the preceding two weeks. His face is cut and his body is covered with bruises. He has no wallet...

Peter Godwin, an award-winning writer, is on assignment in Zululand when he is summoned by his mother to Zimbabwe, his birthplace. His father is seriously ill; she fears he is...

'This is the story of my journey into parenthood, from being a 24 year old man-child with no idea of what being a dad involved, to where I find myself...

As a child, Dave Pelzer was brutally beaten and starved by his mother. The world knew nothing of his living nightmare and he had nothing and no one to turn...

The tragic murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl is well known. Why he was in Karachi; how he saw his role as an international journalist: why he was...

Saira Shah always felt like an outsider. As a child growing up in Britain, she was told that she came from a far away Eastern land, a magical place that...

In 1964 a young artist sat in the public gallery of the House of Commons, sketching former Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The Sunday Times refused to print the resulting drawing...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER Discover how to embrace your best basic self in this laugh-out-loud funny guidebook from the breakout star of Bravo's hit reality show Vanderpump...

Hillary Clinton's memoir focuses on her eight years at the White House - what she lived through, how she felt about her experiences then and now, why she made the...

A heart-warming memoir about life as a nursery nurse and nanny in the 1960s, for fans of Call the Midwife. In 1961, sixteen year-old Pam Weaver began her training as...

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**'Flawless... Poetic... Superbly portrayed... [Faulks's] feat of imagination...is phenomenal' Daily TelegraphChristopher Wood, a beautiful young Englishman, decided to be the greatest painter the world had seen. He...

In December 1991, Allende's daughter Paula, aged 28 fell gravely ill and sank into a coma. This book started as a letter to Paula written during the hours spent at...

In typically idiosyncratic fashion, Paul Morley revisits the past he has long struggled to forget: his childhood in Stockport ('the town I couldn't wait to escape from, the town where...

Daniel Pennac has never forgotten what it was like to be a very unsatisfactory student, nor the day one of his teachers saved his life by assigning him the task...

It's Boxing Day, 1956 in East London, and it's freezing, inside and out. Roberta, aged eight, sits in the kitchen in her overcoat, determined to make herself invisible, watching the...

In 1989, driven by a dream and by the memory of her own past, Christina Noble travelled to Vietnam and, against the odds, opened the Christina Noble Children's Foundation, a...

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERFrom the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids Selected as Book of the Year by the Daily Telegraph, i paper, Metro and Harper's Bazaar'Magical' GUARDIAN...

An incisive and deeply candid account that explores autistic women in culture, myth, and society through the prism of the author's own diagnosis.Until the 1980s, autism was regarded as a...

'Grimly funny and superbly written, with a twist on every page' - Hilary Mantel'Delightfully compulsive and unforgettably original' - Hadley Freeman'Wonderful, funny and wise' - Kate SummerscaleSHORTLISTED FOR THE DUFF...

When I had a Little Sister by Catherine Simpson is a searingly honest and heartbreaking account of growing up in a farming family, and of Catherine's search for understanding into...

The sensational number one bestseller about taking on the mafia, the Clintons and Trump.In his Number One bestselling memoir A Higher Loyalty, former FBI director James Comey shares his never-before-told...

It is the late 1970s and Manjula Padmanabhan is in her mid-twenties trying to find her way in the world. Life in Bombay is proving tricky: there are the visits...

NEW STATESMAN BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017Most politicians write autobiographies to 'set the record straight' and provide retrospective justification for their careers. That is not the case with this book....

Kate Adie, reporting from the world's trouble spots, is so familiar to us that we all recognise her, but this book reveals much more about her eventful life. Raised in...

Sattareh Farman Farmaian, the daughter of a once-powerful and wealthy Iranian prince, was raised and educated in the 1920s and 1930s in a Persian harem compound, along with numerous mothers...

Jung-ling's family considers her bad luck because her mother died giving birth to her. They discriminate against her and make her feel unwanted yet she yearns and continuously strives for...

A red paperclip is currently sitting on my desk next to my computer. I want to trade this paperclip with you for something bigger or better, maybe a pen, a...

Belle de Jour is the nom de plume of a high-class call girl working in London. This is her story.From the summer of 2003 to the autumn of 2004 Belle...

Karren Brady is an inspiration to women everywhere, and her incredible success is borne of her passion, impressive business instinct, ambition, and her very genuine, honest, down-to-earth outlook. This is...

The wry, honest and often hilarious chronicles of a very brave and clever TV presenter, Arctic Explorer and general drawer of the Short Straw. Moving quickly on from the devastating...

Cherie Blair's much-anticipated autobiography takes the reader from a childhood in working-class Liverpool to the heart of the British legal system and then, as the wife of the Prime Minister,...