What Am I Bid?: How One of Television's Favourite Auctioneers Went From Counting Sheep to Selling Silver


Philip Serrell - 2021
    How wrong he was. In What Am I Bid? he tells of life after the events he described in his previous memoirs, An Auctioneer's Lot and Sold to the Man with the Tin Leg, to bring his story up to date. From dodgy cars to fakes in the sales room; angry livestock, mangled silverware and tortuous--not to mention muddy--experiences in local markets and farm sales, Serrell has been there, done that, and got the hoof prints on his suit to prove it.

My Patients and Me: Fifty Years of General Practice


Jane Little - 2017
    She knew instantly that her decision to work in general practice was the ‘biggest and worst mistake of her life’. Fortunately, however, this did not deter her from continuing in general practice, and this fascinating memoir (spanning half a century) is testament to her resilience and professionalism, as well as her pragmatic and charismatic personality. She shares real stories about real people in this intriguing book. Some stories are truly heart-breaking and will have you reaching for the tissues (such as the times when she has lost patients, and encountered and supported abused children and rape victims). But it isn’t all serious. There are lots of light-hearted and heart-warming moments too, such as the stories about Jessie-dog – her bodyguard when she made home visits, and the time when she helped a large (and desperately in need) family to get rehoused, and her time as a country GP. She also recalls with honesty and candidness, the prejudice and unimaginable pressure she had to contend with, as a young female GP in the 1960s. As well as a plethora of fascinating stories, experiences and case studies, this book also gives us, as 21st Century readers, a glimpse into the rapid changes in general practice and the NHS in general. Whether you’re in general practice, or you’re a medical professional, or you have a penchant for all kinds of autobiographies/memoirs, you will find this a thought-provoking and captivating book that’s impossible to put down. Take a peek at the ‘Look Inside’ feature now and be prepared to be instantly intrigued.

Tea & Bee's Milk


Karen Gilden - 2008
    So they quit their jobs, sold their house and car, and flew off to Turkey with two bags each, a laptop computer and a camera. If you've ever dreamed of ditching the rat race and taking a year off, you’ll find inspiration in this charming and humorous series of essays and emails. A delightful memoir of a memorable year.

Riding in the Zone Rouge: The Tour of the Battlefields 1919 – Cycling's Toughest-Ever Stage Race


Tom Isitt - 2019
    It covered 2,000 kilometres and was raced in appalling conditions across the battlefields of the Western Front, otherwise known as the Zone Rouge. The race was so tough that only 21 riders finished, and it was never staged again.With one of the most demanding routes ever to feature in a bicycle race, and plagued by appalling weather conditions, the Circuit des Champs de Bataille was beyond gruelling, but today its extraordinary story is largely forgotten. Many of the riders came to the event straight from the army and had to ride 18-hour stages through sleet and snow across the battlefields on which they had fought, and lost friends and family, only a few months before. But in addition to the hellish conditions there were moments of high comedy, even farce.The rediscovered story of the Circuit des Champs de Bataille is an epic tale of human endurance, suffering and triumph over extreme adversity.

Border Crossing


Rosie Thomas - 1998
    The race included only five cars and their crews who wrote their agreed code of conduct on the back of a menu the night before the start. The only navigational aids were the sun and telegraph poles. Ninety years later, the race ran again.Rosie Thomas and her companion, Phil Bowen a thirty-year old climber, pearl-diver, charter-boat skipper and photographer were two of those daring enough to go for the challenge. On 6 September 1997, an assembly 110 vintage cars gathered in Peking, with the finish line in Paris lying 45 days and 16,000 kilometres ahead halfway across the world. The excitement of the daily time challenge, the strange camaraderie, the test of sleeping outdoors, in flea-pit hotels, in foreign lands, is more than matched by Rosie's own internal journey, including a near death experience at the top of the Himalayas.

101 Damnations: Dispatches from the 101st Tour de France


Ned Boulting - 2014
    Or sunflowers. (Though it does wax lyrical about some stunning Alpine scenery . . . and, with the race starting in Yorkshire, even some stunning scenery not far from Bradford).From Leeds to Paris (how often do you say that?), Ned details the minutiae of his encounters with the likes of Vincenzo Nibali, David Millar, Chris Froome, Chris Boardman (or ‘Broadman’ as some would have it), Marcel Kittel, Mrs Cavendish (Mark’s wife), Peter Sagan and the rest. Their endeavours, achievements, humour and occasional rancour, sit alongside his own decade-long quest for the ideal end-of-race T-shirt.Ned weaves together the interesting, amusing and unheralded threads of the race itself, and reflects on his own perennial struggle to get round, get on and get by. 101 Damnations encapsulates all that is incredible – and incredibly ordinary – about the greatest race on earth.

Street Photography: 50 Ways to Capture Better Shots of Ordinary Life


Eric Kim - 2013
    There is no need for the latest gadgets or trips to “exotic” places. Amazing images can be captured everywhere, all the time, and with the simplest equipment. All you need is a camera, an interest in ordinary people doing everyday things, and—of course—this book. In Street Photography, acclaimed photographer Eric Kim shares everything you need to develop your own street photography skills: how to conquer your fear of shooting in public, tips on choosing your gear, and inspiring techniques to discover the beauty in the mundane. You’ll learn how to chase the all-important “decisive moment,” and even how to find your own style. As a bonus, you’ll get insights from renowned street photographers Ludmilla Morais, Blake Andrews, Thomas Leuthard, and Kramer O’Neill. Street photography is all about discovering the wonderful things most of us are too busy to notice. Let this book inspire you to hit the streets—and turn everyday moments into extraordinary photos! About the author Eric Kim is a street photographer whose blog and sold-out workshops have become today’s most popular resources for aspiring “streettogs.” Eric has exhibited at Gulf Photo Plus, the ThinkTank Gallery in Los Angeles, and Leica stores internationally, and has been featured in Popular Photographer, Black+White, VICE, pixelperfect.com, Salon.com, and on the BBC. He can be found at erickimphotography.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Eric lives in Berkeley, CA.

The Road to San Donato: Fathers, Sons, and Cycling Across Italy


Robert Cocuzzo - 2019
    Riding rental bikes and carrying a bare minimum of supplies, Rob Cocuzzo and his sixty-fouryear-old father, Stephen, embark on a 425-mile ride from Florence to San Donato Val di Comino, an ancient village in the mountains outside of Rome from which the Cocuzzo family emigrated a hundred years earlier.Prompted by Rob's ailing grandfather, who regrets having never visited his home village, the two cyclists pledge to make the trip in the old man's honor. Despite an expired passport, getting lost, some near misses, and other misadventures, the father and son finally reach the quirky village of San Donato. For Italian Jews in the 1940s, the road to San Donato was one of exile, and many of the people in the village banded together to protect nearly a hundred Jews. While meeting his many new "cousins," Rob attempts to unlock this history and glean what role his family played at the time--resistors or collaborators? The Road to San Donato is a generational story that many Americans share and a travel adventure not to be missed.

Countryman's Lot: Tales from the Dales


Max Hardcastle - 1991
    One day, they'll sell their cramped city-centre antiques shop and the overflowing upstairs flat and relocate to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales. When a smallholding in a remote Dales village comes on the market, it seems like the answer to their prayers.

Streetwise Rome Map - Laminated City Street Map of Rome, Italy: Folding Pocket Size Travel Map


Streetwise Maps - 2012
    Easy to read and accordion fold for effortless use, all of our detailed travel maps are pocket size for discretion so you don't stick out like a tourist. Search for Streetwise Maps today to look for other great travel maps in addition to this Rome map. About Streetwise Maps:Originators of the laminated accordion-fold map, Streetwise makes WATER RESISTANT city maps, street maps, road maps & metro maps of major destinations around the world, including locations in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Europe, the United Kingdom, South America and Asia. Streetwise Maps are designed AND printed in the United States.

Lost Vegas: The Redneck Riviera, Existentialist Conversations with Strippers, and the World Series of Poker


Paul McGuire - 2010
    Las Vegas lures you to shed moral responsibility and piss away your money on indulgences like decadent food, entertainment, gambling, and sex. If you don't enjoy these pastimes, then what's the point of visiting the land of compromised values? Where else can you get a cheap steak, crash a Mexican wedding, get cold-decked in blackjack by a dealer named Dong, play video poker for thirteen straight hours, drink pina coladas out of a plastic coconut, bum a cigarette from an 85-year-old woman with an oxygen tank, speed away to the Spearmint Rhino in a free limo, get rubbed by a former Miss Teen USA, puke in the back of a cab driven by a retired Navy SEAL, snort cheap cocaine in the bathroom at O'Sheas, and then catch a lucky card on the river to crack pocket aces and win a poker tournament? Only in Las Vegas.

Passage Across the Mersey


Robert Bhatia - 2017
    Later in life, Helen wrote a ground-breaking series of memoirs, starting with Twopence to Cross the Mersey, which told the harrowing account of her family’s struggles in Depression-era Liverpool. It was a story filled with tragedy and small triumphs but many readers wondered what happened to Helen when she grew up; what became of the fragile young girl who had so much responsibility heaped on her shoulders?Now for the first time, her son Robert recounts the unexpected life that Helen went on to live; of the remarkable love story with a young man from a background a million miles away from everything a Lancashire Lass like Helen would have known and of the astonishing lengths she went to in order to achieve happiness. Full of new revelations and fascinating detail never before revealed, Passage Across the Mersey is a story of an extraordinary woman, and of the journey that took her thousands of miles from the place she called home…

Flying the Knife Edge: New Guinea Bush Pilot


Matt McLaughlin - 2015
    ‘Flying the Knife Edge’ is the story of an ordinary man experiencing extraordinary things as a pilot in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s. After an untimely exit from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, New Zealander Matt McLaughlin took a leap into the unknown, travelling to Papua New Guinea to work as a missionary pilot. He soon switched from missionary to mercenary, and over the next three and a half years, as he built up the necessary experience to chase his goal of becoming an airline captain, his life was a rollercoaster ride of adventure, risk, near-misses, and tragedy. Matt lived on the knife edge of bush pilot ops in one of the world’s most dangerous flying environments. Along the way he soaked up some fascinating local history: the country's vital role in WWII’s Pacific Theatre; the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart; the chaos of the Bougainville civil war; the Morobe gold rush of the 1930s... “The gap in the cloud became smaller and smaller as I descended, a shrinking tunnel twisting down the gorge. In a matter of seconds I was so low my wheels barely cleared the trees on the valley floor as I passed, and jungle-clad walls closed in on me until I was a mere wingspan from both sides of the valley. And then, in an instant, the gap was gone and I was flying blind. In cloud. In the bottom of a gorge. With terrain on both sides rising thousands of feet above me. Time stopped. The passengers started screaming, anticipating the aircraft impacting the side of the mountain. And their deaths. I had the capacity for just one other thought: Will I hear the sound of the airframe smashing into the trees as we crash, or will I be dead before it registers?”

Ghosts in the Forest (Kindle Single)


Corinne Purtill - 2015
    They did not know that the war they were fleeing had in fact ended—25 years earlier. Corinne Purtill was one of the first journalists to meet the families upon their incredible return to society. Years later she returned to Cambodia to learn the truth about their time on the run. What she found was a darker and more complicated tale than the one they first shared, a story of terror, isolation, fierce loyalty, appalling choices and murder. The result is a story that examines the unyielding human need for family and connection and the meaning of survival. Corinne Purtill is a journalist who has reported around the world for publications including Quartz, GlobalPost, CNN, Salon and the Cambodia Daily. She lives in California with her family. Cover design by Hannah Perrine Mode

Bug Out Bag


Miles Bennett - 2013
    This book (written specifically for the novice) will change that by teaching you what you need to have ready-to-go in a Bug Out Bag to keep you and your loved ones alive for seventy-two hours until help arrives.Bug Out Bag ContentsThe problem I found with current Bug Out Bag books is the contents suggested are not needed or are outdated. For instance, some will tell you to have change available so you can use a pay phone.When is the last time you even saw a pay phone?Others will advise jamming a bag full of stuff like snares, axes and other items that really belong in a survival kit, not a Bug Out Bag...A bug-out bag is a portable kit that contains the items one would require to survive for seventy-two hours when evacuating from a disaster. It is also known as a 72-hour kit, a grab bag, a battle box, and other popular names include "Personal Emergency Relocation Kits" (PERKs) GO Bag and GOOD (Get Out Of Dodge) bag. The focus is on evacuation, rather than long-term survival, distinguishing the bug-out bag from a survival kit, a boating or aviation emergency kit, or a fixed-site disaster supplies kit. - WikipediaThis book is not a survival book, nor is it a book for seasoned disaster preparedness "pros"; it is a book that show's anyone wanting to build a Bug Out Bag EXACTLY what you need to have in your bag to wait it out until help comes.The Right StuffYou see, the key to a functional Bug Out Bag is having the right items while keeping the bag manageable. After all, if your bag weighs 60 pounds what are the odds you will be able to grab it and take shelter in an emergency?Bug Out Bag contains the essential items necessary to sustain life but as a bonus I also include Nice To Have items if you want to enhance your bag's contents and don't mind the extra bulk.Don't get caught like I did years ago when vandals sawed through power lines causing my family to be without electricity and water for two days.Buy this book now and get your family prepared!