This story of three closely related Oxfordshire communities - a hamlet, the nearby village and a small market town - is based on the author's experiences during childhood and youth. It chronicles May Day celebrations and forgotten children's games, the daily lives of farmworkers and craftsmen, friends and relations - all painted with a gaiety and freshness of observation that make this trilogy an evocative and sensitive memorial to Victorian rural England.With a new introduction by Richard Mabey

    Don’t ask her to forgive and forget.When Kim was just 22, her older brother, Ron Goldman, was brutally killed by O.J. Simpson. Ron and Kim were very close, and her devastation was compounded by the shocking not guilty verdict that allowed a smirking Simpson to leave as a free man.It wasn’t Kim’s first trauma. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she and Ron were raised by their father. Her mother kidnapped her, telling her that her father didn’t love her any more. When she was 14, she was almost blinded from severe battery acid burns on her face during an automobile accident, requiring three reconstructive surgeries.But none of these early traumas compared to the loss of her brother, the painful knowledge that his killer was free, and fact that she could not even grieve privately—her grief was made painfully public. Counseled by friends, strangers, and even Oprah to “find closure,” Kim chose a different route. She chose to fight.Repeatedly, Kim and her family pursued Simpson by every legal means. Foiled over and over again, they ultimately achieved a small measure of justice.Kim’s story is one of tragedy, but also of humanity and, often, comedy. Living life as one of America’s most famous “victims” isn’t always easy, especially as a single mother in the dating market. She often had bizarre first date experiences, with one man even breaking down into tears and inconsolable with grief after realizing who she was.Ultimately Kim’s story is that of an ordinary person thrown into extraordinary circumstances at a very young age, and who had the courage—despite the discouragement of so many—to ignore the conventional wisdom and never give up her fight for justice.

    Ordained at twelve, he would eventually become the first Buddhist chaplain at an American university, the founder of a retreat center and monastery, and a bestselling author. Here, Bhante G. lays bare the often-surprising ups and downs of his seventy-five years, from his boyhood in Sri Lanka to his decades of sharing the insights of the Buddha, telling his story with the "plain-English" approach for which he is so renowned.

    Using superb illustrations he traces the development of the Spitfire and Hurricane, and describes the nail-biting actions of those who flew them against far superior numbers of enemy aircraft. As an added bonus, other well-known fighter aces including Johnnie Johnson, "Laddie' Lucas and Max Aitken contribute to Douglas's book, no doubt out of affection and respect.This is a really important contribution to RAF history by one of the greatest - and certainly the most famous - pilots of the Second World War.

    And yet, very few of its readers know that the subject of the novel was inspired by a real-life case: the 1948 abduction of eleven-year-old Sally Horner.Weaving together suspenseful crime narrative, cultural and social history, and literary investigation, The Real Lolita tells Sally Horner’s full story for the very first time. Drawing upon extensive investigations, legal documents, public records, and interviews with remaining relatives, Sarah Weinman uncovers how much Nabokov knew of the Sally Horner case and the efforts he took to disguise that knowledge during the process of writing and publishing Lolita.Sally Horner’s story echoes the stories of countless girls and women who never had the chance to speak for themselves. By diving deeper in the publication history of Lolita and restoring Sally to her rightful place in the lore of the novel’s creation, The Real Lolita casts a new light on the dark inspiration for a modern classic.

    Not real conflict but war as it has filtered down to generations of boys and men through toys, comics, games, and movies. Harry Pearson belongs to the great battalion of men who grew up playing with toy soldiers—refighting World War II—and then stopped growing up. Inspired by the photos of the gallant pilot uncles that decorated the wall above his father's model-making table, by toys such as Action Man (according to Pearson—not a doll) and board games such as Escape from Colditz, dressed in Clarks' commando shoes and with the Airfix Army in support, he battled in the fields and on the beaches, in his head and on the living room floor, and across his bedroom ceiling. And 30 years later he still is. This hilariously self-deprecating memoir is a celebration of those glory days, a boy's own story of the urge to play, to conquer, and to adopt very bad German accents, shouting "Donner und Blitzen!" at every opportunity. This is a tale of obsession, glue, and plastic kits. It is the story of one boy's imaginary war and where it led him.

    There have been numerous books about mother and daughter, but none has dealt with this closest of filial relations as directly or as ruthlessly. Gornick's groundbreaking book confronts what Edna O'Brien has called "the prinicpal crux of female despair": the unacknowledged Oedipal nature of the mother-daughter bond.Born and raised in the Bronx, the daughter of "urban peasants," Gornick grows up in a household dominated by her intelligent but uneducated mother's romantic depression over the early death of her husband. Next door lives Nettie, an attractive widow whose calculating sensuality appeals greatly to Vivian. These women with their opposing models of femininity continue, well into adulthood, to affect Gornick's struggle to find herself in love and in work.As Gornick walks with her aged mother through the streets of New York, arguing and remembering the past, each wins the reader's admiration: the caustic and clear-thinking daughter, for her courage and tenacity in really talking to her mother about the most basic issues of their lives, and the still powerful and intuitively-wise old woman, who again and again proves herself her daughter's mother.Unsparing, deeply courageous, Fierce Attachments is one of the most remarkable documents of family feeling that has been written, a classic that helped start the memoir boom and remains one of the most moving examples of the genre.

    Hunter, a professional big-game hunter and former chairman of Tanganyika National Parks. J A. Hunter led a life of adventure, but, perhaps, the most astonishing tale in this book is his incredible adventures while hunting rhino. As a game ranger, he was ordered by the Tanganyikan government to clear out dozens of rogue rhinos from the area around Makueni, and the accounts of his experiences are spine-tingling. Hunter hunted throughout East Africa-for bongo in the Ituri rain forest (former Zaire), lion in Masailand (Kenya), and the man-killing buffalo near Thomson's Falls with his favorite dog (Kenya).

     It is 1975, Watford, and two teenagers, George and Andrew, meet for the first time. Bonding over their love for singing, song writing and pop music, together they set out to follow an impossible dream. They didn't know it then, but they were taking their first steps towards forming Wham!, a band that was to become one of the biggest in the world.Wham! were the soundtrack of the 80s; whether it was choosing life or Live Aid, the decade of flamboyance and fun was a party that seemed like it would never end. But it had to stop somewhere - and that was in front of tens of thousands of tearful fans at Wembley Stadium in 1986.In Wham! George and Me, Andrew Ridgeley tells the story of Wham! - from the day they met to that iconic final concert. For the first time, he reveals what it was like being at the centre of a pop hurricane and talks of his love for and friendship with George. It's a story only he can tell. AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER NOW

    As a child, she was asked to publicly humiliate a teacher; at seventeen, she was sent to work at a labor collective. Forbidden to speak, dress, read, write, or love as she pleased, she found a lifeline in a secret love affair with another woman. Miraculously selected for the film version of one of Madame Mao’s political operas, Min’s life changed overnight. Then Chairman Mao suddenly died, taking with him an entire world. A revelatory and disturbing portrait of China, Anchee Min’s memoir is exceptional for its candor, its poignancy, its courage, and for its prose.

    He cleaned shoes, ironed underwear and socks and once had to stand all night in the hall waiting for a late visitor to arrive.But as a butler he was the best paid servant in the house, waited on, feared and respected by the other servants.Bob Sharpe knew the real world of upstairs downstairs and the secrets of the landed gentry - even to the point of incest and attempted murder!