In Secrets and Lies, Sam gives us the truth about life in the spotlight.Finally turning her back on all the TOWIE jealousies and dramas, Sam lays bare her fellow cast members and describes what really goes on behind the scenes. She also reveals all on her dramatic on-off relationship with Joey Essex: the engagements and bust-ups, that infamous 'slap', what really happened when Joey was in I'm a Celebrity, and their doomed rekindled romance.For the first time she talks about her eating issues, as well as her success as a businesswoman, her excitement and sister Billie's pregnancy and the birth of baby Nelly, and her wish to settle down herself. Funny, charming, telling it like it is, Secrets and Lies is essential reading for fans of Sam and TOWIE.

    Deany Brady tells the story of her colorful childhood in the 1930s and 40s with freshness, humor, wit, and intelligence. She is a master storyteller, following in the vigorous oral tradition of her parents and her grandmother, who told vivid family stories all through her childhood. Following the arc of her young life, Brady beautifully captures her own growth from a daydreaming child, creating mansions out of moss and sticks, and gazing at the famous people in the newspapers covering the walls, to a girl in love with language and writing, whose greatest happiness is to read all of Gone with the Wind to her mother by the wash stream one magical summer. Unusual in her Appalachian community, the young Deany yearns not only to complete her high school education but to find a way to better her own life and that of her family’s, by moving to the big city of Atlanta and hoping to gain a college education. Even as Deany’s life grows more intricate and challenging, and even as she makes her own mistakes in her urge to escape the constraints of Appalachia, she holds onto her dream of a life filled with knowledge, happiness and beauty.An Appalachian Childhood is the first half of a two-part memoir. It covers Deany Brady’s first twenty-two years. The second half, Higher than Yonder Mountain, is forthcoming. This second volume follows her grown-up life’s arc from Georgia to Miami Beach, to Park Avenue in New York, and ultimately to her life as a writer in California.

    After eighteen months of trying, my mother eventually conceived and nine months later I was born. My birth was a difficult one. It was like I was never meant to be in this world.” Boy is Nigel Cooper’s memoir from the age of five to sixteen. It tells the shocking, brutal, disturbing, emotional story of his childhood spent in and out of various care homes and institutions during the 1970s and 1980s. When Nigel was just seven years old, after the untimely death of his sister and father, his mother asked social services to take him away – and then his nightmare began. For the next nine years of his life, Nigel was repeatedly rejected by his mother and spent his childhood among bullies, abusers, psychopaths and criminals. He spent time in a children’s psychiatric hospital, where they carried out unimaginable tests, pumped him full of drugs and physically abused him; care homes, where he would come face to face with rough estate kids who would beat him up, force him to steal for them and threaten his life; and barbaric assessment centres for disturbed and delinquent children, where the staff were, at times, sicker than the children.The system tried to break Nigel and it was a miracle that he survived. The British care system robbed him of his childhood. His story is truly extraordinary and will do a lot more than shed light on what it was like growing up during the Jimmy Savile years.Boy is powerfully written, edgy, gripping and beautifully crafted.

    Ten years on she'd calmed right down and was just 'lapsed'. Then, on a family trip to Rome, her young daughter expressed a desire to be baptised. Monica found herself re-examining her own childhood and how Catholicism had shaped her. Was it really out of her system or was it in her blood fr life?In Lapsed, Monica sets out to find the answer. Her investigations lead her to test a miracle cure in Lourdes and to steal from a church. She visits the grave of a headless Saint who claimed to be married to Christ (and wore a wedding ring made of his foreskin to prove it), and speaks to cannon lawyers, abuse survivors and even a nun who insists that the Virgin Mary starts her car every morning. She ponders the big questions, such as would Jesus really make a great dinner party guest? And, far more seriously, given what she now knows about clerical abuse and its extent, is it enough to turn her back on the Church, or did she have a deeper, more enduring obligation?With the wry humour of David Sedaris and the razor-sharp observations of Nora Ephron, Lapsed is the story of one woman's attempt to exorcise her religious upbringing, and to answer the question, is Catholicism like a blood group and, if so, is it possible to get a total transfusion?'It made me laugh, cry and swear.' Jane Caro

    Kerry Stokes is a remarkable Australian. Not because he is one of this country's wealthiest and most powerful people but because of what he overcame to get there and because he has endured when others didn't. He is the last mogul. His rise has intrigued the business world for decades but there is so much more to him than takeover targets and balance sheets. Behind the laconic front is a human story as tough and touching as a Dickens tale: Oliver Twist with great self-expectations. It is the story of a poor boy who stared down poverty, ignorance and the stigma of his birth to achieve great wealth and fulfilment. A compelling story that, until now, he has not told. Now he oversees a multi-billion dollar media, machinery and property empire. He is renowned for his art collection and for philanthropy, spending millions of dollars to buy Victoria Crosses from soldiers' families to donate to the Australian War Memorial. But he's a private man. A man apart. He made his name in the West but kept his distance from the buccaneering band of entrepreneurs who forged fabulous fortunes in Perth from the 1960s until the 1987 crash. Bond went to jail, Holmes a Court died; Connell did both. Lesser lights flickered and faded but Stokes grew stronger, becoming a player alongside Murdoch, Packer and Lowy. His story fascinates all the more because he has spent most of his life guarding it. But now he's telling it, to one of Australia's great storytellers. This book will tell his story, scars and all.

    Personally, I think the eye-catching cover shot of me in my pajamas is reason enough. (By the way, those are my real kids on the cover, and yes, those are my actual ankles. No, I'm not retaining water.)What you're holding in your hands is a very funny and sometimes remarkably poignant look at fathers, not from the mother's point of view or the child's, but from the dad's side. Which is why it's called Tales from the Dad Side.It's filled with stories of what it's like to be a dad and a son, from a child's first day of kindergarten to the awkward sex talk and right up to the day the always-practical dad tries to pay for college with bonus miles. I was there for every landmark in my children's lives, except the day I was on the riding lawn mower and missed my son's first words, which my wife insists were “trust fund.”As children get older, the lessons of the father get harder, like teaching my son how to shave just as my father taught me, with a rusty double-edged safety razor. At the end of my dad's lesson, I emerged from the bathroom nicked and gouged, looking like an extra from a Quentin Tarantino film. My more civilized son is a Norelco man. With my high-school-age daughters, I promised them a day on which I'd take them anywhere and do anything with them they wanted, expecting them to ask for dinner and a movie; I was horrified when they told me they wanted all of us to get manicures and pedicures together. That was not the answer I was expecting; it was like discovering Lou Dobbs was an illegal alien.Over the course of raising three children, I have learned with my wife that fathers are different from mothers. That could be the greatest understatement since Noah turned on the Weather Channel and found out that the next forty days called for a 20 percent chance of light rain.The truth is, fatherhood is like Wikipedia: some parts based in fact, others just made up along the way. And while bookstores are filled with tales of mothers, their children and families, there are few from the dad's side. Now, as a public service, I'm doing my part to right this wrong.I sincerely hope this answers your questions. If perhaps it's not exactly your cup of tea, I bet you've got a father or mother in your life who'd like the stone-cold truth about dads. Besides, for the same money, you can either put three gallons of gas in your car or take home this book, which has a highway rating of 29 smiles an hour.Steve Doocy

    Millions of fans have enjoyed Bremer’s observations, insight, and magical storytelling on television broadcasts. Now, in this striking memoir, the Minnesota native and lifelong Twins fan takes fans behind the mic, into the clubhouse, and beyond as only he can. Told through 108 unique anecdotes–one for each stitch in a baseball–Bremer weaves the tale of a lifetime, from childhood memories of the ballfield in remote Dumont, Minnesota, to his early radio days as the “Duke in the Dark,” to champagne soaked clubhouses in 1987 and 1991, and his encounters with Twins legends ranging from Calvin Griffith and Harmon Killebrew, to Kirby Puckett and Kent Hrbek, to Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. Game Used gives fans a rare seat alongside Bremer and his broadcast partners, including Killebrew, Bert Blyleven, Jack Morris, Jim Kaat, Tom Kelly, and other Twins legends.

    It will change the way you look at life.For a couple of weeks, Matthew Ames didn't feel well. The busy father of four young children knew things were not quite right but suddenly he was in Emergency, with a severe case of toxic shock syndrome – the common bacteria Strep A had entered his bloodstream and his body had gone into shutdown. He was put into an induced coma and the only way he could be kept alive was to have all his limbs amputated.Diane Ames knew exactly what her husband would want and that he would cope – he had always been optimistic and practical. Despite a one per cent chance of survival, she asked the doctors to go ahead with the radical operation. And so began the inspiring story of an ordinary family's courage and determination to make the most of a terrible situation.What happened to Matthew could happen to anyone. But not everyone would accept what life offers and pursue possibilities in the way that he does. Matthew has astounded doctors with his adaptation to a new way of living, so much so that he is about to become a bionic man. And he has never once questioned Diane's decision – it gave him the chance to truly understand how much family matters and to appreciate humanity.

    Interviewed and hired by what seemed like a bona fide recruitment agency, Timea left her home on the promise she would earn good money to send home to her family. She had no idea that she'd been lured by a ring of international human traffickers. Upon her arrival in Toronto, she was forced into sex labour in some of the city's seediest nightclubs and kept by her "agents" for three months until she escaped.This is her captivating, heartbreaking but ultimately redemptive story. It will take readers from the early years of Timea's life in Communist Hungary, offering a look inside an austere but complicated world ruled by community, restriction and struggle; then, to the dark, abusive three months working as a sex slave in a country that Timea once believed would offer her freedom and opportunity; and, finally, in riveting detail, through the heart-pounding escape Timea plots.Compelling and sweeping, balancing a tragic and unbelievable experience with a powerful story of grace, Timea Nagy's journey is one that will stay with you long after you read the last page.

    She had been Hotel K's most famous inmate.Schapelle was a 27-year-old beauty-school student when, in 2004, Bali customs officers found 4.2 kilograms of marijuana in her boogie-board bag. She was convicted of a crime she still vehemently denies committing.She spent ten years in Hotel K, where she survived unimaginable horrors, corrupt guards, degrading conditions, and abuse at the hands of other prisoners, but also, amazingly, found the love of her life - a love that still burns strong.In this revised and updated edition of My Story, first published in 2006, Schapelle describes her descent into madness, and finding her way back, the chaos of her release, the trials of surviving outside on parole and, eventually, her dramatic return to Australia, all the while hounded mercilessly by the media.This is the first time since 2006 that Schapelle has spoken, driven by a determination to show she has emerged, scarred, but with her dignity, humour and courage intact.Written with bestselling author Kathryn Bonella, this is a deeply unsettling but utterly compelling tale of what should have been a holiday in paradise but instead turned into 13 years of living hell. You won't be able to put it down.

    I had an operating fridge, I was doing brilliantly, and I had written the memoir to prove it. I even had online haters. I had conquered life at 30 and nothing was ever going to go wrong again!'It was all going so well for Rosie Waterland. Until it wasn't.Until, shockingly, something awful happened and Rosie went into agonising free fall.Until late one evening she found herself in a hospital emergency bed, trembling and hooked to a drip. Over the course of that long, painful night, she kept thinking about how ironic it was, that right in the middle of writing a book about lies, she'd ended up telling the most significant lie of all.A raw, beautiful, sad, shocking - and very, very funny - memoir of all the lies we tell others and the lies we tell ourselves.Praise for The Anti-Cool Girl:'Hilarious, wise, gutsy, clear-eyed, devastating and uplifting. It's a marvel.' Richard Glover'Waterland's writing is ... individual, wounded, brilliant and hilarious' Sydney Morning Herald'If Augusten Burroughs and Lena Dunham abandoned their child in an Australian housing estate, she'd write this heartbreaking, hilarious book.' Dominic Knight, The ChaserThe Anti-Cool Girl was shortlisted for the 2016 Indie Book Awards and for the 2016 ABIA Awards for Biography of the Year, and in addition was the Winner of the 2016 ABIA Awards People's Choice for the Matt Richell Award for New Writer of the Year

    Now, for the first time, she speaks out–in her signature straight–talk style–about her own history and career. Olympia Dukakis, internationally known movie and theater star, and cousin of presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, was born into a Greek family in Lowell, Massachusetts. As a first generation Greek–American, Olympia "lived in the hyphen" and struggled to reconcile her American desires with her family's old–world traditions. ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW tells the story of Olympia's struggle to find her place as an American, as a woman and as a star. It specifically explores the relationship between Olympia, whose main ambition was to live her life exactly as she wanted, and her mother, who spent a lifetime constrained by a tradition that delegated her to second class. Like Sidney Poitier's THIS LIFE and THE MEASURE OF A MAN, this is a book that is more than a celebrity memoir. ASK ME AGAIN TOMORROW will speak to many audiences: readers who also experienced America as an adopted country; readers interested in the art of acting; readers interested in autobiography, and particularly to female readers who have struggled with fitting their own aspirations in with the needs of family. It is a book that will endure.

    I HAD A BALL is full of stories no one but Michael would know. His friendship with Mom is evident on every page. A good read. Thank you Michael." -DESI ARNAZ J R ."Michael's memories are my memories, only clearer. What a talent for details! It was very moving for me to relive so much of our lives through Michael's eyes. Very entertaining. Charming. And, more importantly, true. As Mom wrote on one of her photos to him, 'Happy Thoughts.'" -LUCIE ARNAZIn 1971, ten-year-old Michael Stern thought he had died and gone to heaven as he watched a filming of Here's Lucy. He was enthralled with a redhead gifted with beauty, stage presence, and the ability to make others laugh. Over the next few years, he would attend several more filmings, meet Lucy, and eventually become (in Lucy's own words) her "number-one fan."In his memoir, Michael Stern offers a refreshing glimpse into the life of a natural comedienne and actress as he provides a fascinating narrative on what it was like to become first a fan and then a friend with one of the biggest television personalities of all time. Known to fans simply as Lucy, she entertained millions of people across the world with shows like I Love Lucy, The Lucy Show, and Here's Lucy. But to Michael, who was eventually allowed access into her private world, she was a fascinating woman with whom he would share many unforgettable adventures.I Had a Ball is a unique tribute to Lucy's legacy, her spirit, her talent, and her enthusiasm for life-sure to entertain Lucy fans, television aficionados, and comedy lovers around the world.

    Taber shares memories of her childhood in the Southwest and Mexico as well as her married life and early pursuit of a writing career.