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biography
You'll Never Walk
Andy Grant - 2018
He had a broken sternum, two broken legs, a broken elbow and shrapnel lodged in both forearms. He had a severed femoral artery, while sustaining nerve damage to his hands and feet as well as facial injuries. He had been blown up during a routine foot patrol in Afghanistan. Within days of coming to his senses, a doctor told Andy that because of the blast he would no longer be able to have children. You’ll Never Walk is his story. This is the tale of a Scouser who had to cope with losing his mum at the tender age of 12. The story of how a dream career in the Royal Marines descended into nightmare at the hands of the Taliban. The painstaking account of how he grew back six centimetres of shattered bone in his leg and learned to walk again. However, Andy wanted to run and push himself to the very edge of his limits and so he made a colossal decision. Against doctor’s advice and pleas from his father, he chose to have his leg amputated. The operation was a success, although there was a minor twist. Where once Andy’s treasured Liverpool FC tattoo had carried the message ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, surgery to create a stump removed a key word from the slogan. The scars of his amputation had been decorated with an ominous new motto, which read ‘You’ll Never Walk...’ Andy would walk again – he would do much more than that. Armed with a running blade he learned to run and play football, scaled mountains in South America and Italy and claimed two gold medals at Prince Harry’s Invictus Games. Through public speaking he brought hope to people right across the country. In 2016, he set his sights on a 10k below- the-knee-amputee world-record and completed the run in an unprecedented 37 minutes 17 seconds. And, most preciously of all, after every obstacle placed in his path, Andy became a father to a little girl.
Stay With Me, Rhys: The heartbreaking story of Rhys Jones, by his mother. As seen on ITV’s new documentary Police Tapes
Mel Jones - 2018
‘Please stay with me. I love you.’
There was still no expression in his eyes. I was talking and talking to him, desperate to let him know I was there, but there was no flicker in his face. In hindsight, it was like he’d already gone.
It's a Wednesday evening in Liverpool in the summer holidays, and Melanie is expecting her Everton-mad eleven-year-old son back from football practice very soon. She turns on Coronation Street and sets about stripping the wallpaper off the walls in the lounge, which is long-overdue a makeover. Suddenly she receives a frantic knock at the door. Rhys has been shot on his way home.From that fateful day when Melanie cradled her child as he lay dying, repeating to him ‘Stay with Me, Rhys’, to the day in court when his killers were finally sent down, this is a story of a family in trauma, of a community united behind them and of how a notorious local gang who terrorised the neighbourhood was brought to justice.In 2017, more than 7 million people watched the drama unfold in the highly-acclaimed ITV series Little Boy Blue. And now Melanie Jones tells the family's unbelievable story for the first time.Melanie, her husband Steve and Rhys’s brother Owen have been through unimaginable pain. The grief doesn’t go away, but the strength they’ve found within it is an inspiration.
Ozzy: Unauthorized
Sue Crawford - 2002
This biography is a comprehensive study of his past, and with its specially commissioned astrological chart, the future of this survivor and star.
Idol Truth: A Memoir
Leif Garrett - 2019
He was a hardworking child actor in the early 1970s, appearing on dozens of popular films and TV programs. Then he was offered a chance to make a record and “Leif Garrett, teen idol” was born. Millions of teenage girls all over the world covered their walls with his picture. His face adorned hundreds of international magazine covers as he became one of the biggest and most desired heartthrobs in history. There were jet-setting tours, TV specials, and hit records, along with an endless supply of beautiful women, alcohol, and ultimately, the drugs that sent this shooting star into the darkest depths of addiction. Idol Truth is a harrowing survivor’s story as well as a charmed tale filled with compelling pop culture characters—from Michael Jackson and Brooke Shields to John Belushi, Freddie Mercury, and many more. It’s the first time ever that Leif Garrett has come clean about his life, revealing all the details of his spectacular journey.
Paramore
Ben Welch - 2009
Combining muscular guitars and driving rhythms with an irresistible pop sensibility, their blistering live show and endlessly dynamic front woman Hayley Williams has taken them from club shows in their hometown to sell-out arena dates across the world - and earned them a fiercely dedicated fan-base along the way. But with their success has come the pressure of growing up under the media's scrutiny. Small-town kids from Tennessee thrust into international stardom, they have had to negotiate their adolescence alongside the demands of a gruelling tour schedule and numerous line-up changes. This test of character brought them to the brink of collapse. And yet, from this adversity Paramore returned with their most confident, accomplished and deeply personal album to date - Brand New Eyes. This unauthorised book is the first to tell their story and details the early years forming the band, their explosive debut record, the strident, platinum-selling follow-up Riot! and their status in late 2009 as the 'next major rock act' in the world.
Diary of a Crap Housewife
Jessica Rowe - 2019
The idea of crap lies in the real-life messes, hiccups, disasters and bad meals that many of us dish up and deal with every day. This mum is tired of the photos of perfectly packed school lunches, posts about gourmet family dinners eaten together over the table, and tales of neat, tidy and obedient children with smoothly brushed hair. It's time to reset the bar. Make expectations realistic. Strive to be kind, loving, smart and funny. Perfection is not required.
Dave Matthews Band: Music for the People
Nevin Martell - 1999
Traces the evolution of the Dave Matthews Band, and describes their experiences on the road.
You Really Got Me: The Story of the Kinks
Nick Hasted - 2010
The Kinks are the quintessential British sixties band, revered for an incredible series of classic songs ("You Really Got Me," "Waterloo Sunset" and "Lola" to name but a few) and critically acclaimed albums such as The Village Green Preservation Society. Featuring original interviews with key band members Ray Davies, his brother Dave Davies and Mick Avory, as well as Chrissie Hynde and many others close to the group, every stage of their career is covered in fascinating detail: the hits, the American successes of the 1970s and the legendary band in-fighting. Nearly 50 years after they formed, the Kinks' influence is still being felt today as strongly as ever.
Underneath the Southern Cross
Michael Hussey - 2013
This is THE cricket biography of 2013. Michael Hussey's huge popularity does not rest solely on his incredible playing record. Popularly known as Mr Cricket, he made his Test debut against the West Indies in Brisbane in November 2005, and has scored 6,183 Test runs over 78 Tests in his career. But to his fans, it is the way he plays the game rather than simply the sum of his achievements that marks him out as one of the best-loved cricketers of his generation. He is a middle-order maestro with a batting average of 51.52, but he has always played cricket with an integrity and sense of values that is the epitome of what cricket stands for. His autobiography takes you behind the scenes to his world of cricket. From his lengthy struggle to break into the Australian side, through to his masterly achievements in the Australian team, in ODI and Indian Premier League - this book follows his extraordinary cricket career., with plenty of surprisingly frank admissions & behind the scenes dramas.
Shot and a Ghost: a year in the brutal world of professional squash
James Willstrop - 2012
Cowboy Song: The Authorised Biography Of Philip Lynott
Graeme Thomson - 2016
Leading music writer Graeme Thompson explores the fascinating contradictions between Lynott's unbridled rock star excesses and the shy, sensitive 'orphan' raised in working class Dublin. The mixed-race child of a Catholic teenager and a Guyanese stowaway, Lynott rose above daunting obstacles and wounding abandonments to become Ireland's first rock star. Cowboy Song examines his key musical alliances as well as the unique blend of cultural influences which informed Lynott's writing, connecting Ireland's rich reserves of music, myth and poetry to hard rock, progressive folk, punk, soul and New Wave. Published on the thirtieth anniversary of Lynott's death in January 1986, Thompson draws on scores of exclusive interviews with family, friends, band mates and collaborators. Cowboy Song is both the ultimate depiction of a multi-faceted rock icon, and an intimate portrait of a much-loved father, son and husband.
MP: The Life of Michael Peterson
Sean Doherty - 2005
This is his story, covering his early life, his celebrated victories in surfing, his descent into the drugs scene, imprisonment and subsequent institutionalisation.
Tenement Kid
Bobby Gillespie - 2021
Filled with 'the holy spirit of rock n roll' his destiny is sealed with the arrival of the Sex Pistols and punk rock which to Bobby, represents an iconoclastic vision of class rebellion and would ultimately lead to him becoming an artist initially in the Jesus and Mary Chain then in Primal Scream.Structured in four parts, Tenement Kid builds like a breakbeat crescendo to the final quarter of the book, the Summer of Love, Boys Own parties, and the fateful meeting with Andrew Weatherall in an East Sussex field. As the '80s bleed into the '90s and a new kind of electronic soul music starts to pulse through the nation's consciousness, Primal Scream become the most innovative British band of the new decade, representing a new psychedelic vanguard taking shape at Creation Records.Ending with the release of Screamadelica and the tour that followed in the autumn, Tenement Kid is a book filled with the joy and wonder of a rock n roll apostle who would radically reshape the future sounds of fin de siecle British pop. Published thirty years after the release of their masterpiece, Bobby Gillespie's memoir cuts a righteous path through a decade lost to Thatcherism and saved by acid house.