It exposes the grim reality of everyday soldiering for the 'grunts on the ground'. After the tragic death of his brother, and in the dark days following 9/11, McLaughlin felt compelled to fulfil his lifelong ambition to serve in the army. He followed his late brother into the elite Royal Green Jackets and passed the arduous Combat Infantryman's Course at the age of 31. Thereafter, McLaughlin found himself submerged in a world of casual violence. Squaddie is a snapshot of infantry soldiering in the twenty-first century. It takes us into the heart of an ancient institution that is struggling to retain its tough traditions in a rapidly changing world. All of the fears and anxieties that the modern soldier carries as his burden are laid bare, as well as the occasional joys and triumphs that can make him feel like he is doing the best job in the world. This is an account of army life by someone who has been there and done it.

    Now, following his retirement from international cricket, McGrath tells his complete story - on and off the field.The man known as 'Pigeon' won his baggy green cap in Perth in 1993 and went on to forge a brilliant career, eventually becoming cricket's most successful fast bowler with 563 Test wickets. McGrath entered Ashes folklore in 1997 when he destroyed England by taking 8 for 38 at Lords, and he even scored a Test half-century with the bat. With leg spinner Shane Warne, he formed the most devastating bowling combination in Test history.Glenn McGrath's most meaningful achievements, however, have been off the field. With his wife, Jane, he established the McGrath Foundation, a major funder for and supporter of breast cancer sufferers. Here, in their own words, the McGraths discuss their battles with the disease and Jane's tragic death. Line and Strength is the tell-all story of an Australian country boy who took on the world.

    This remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The edition reproduces previously unknown photographs, and a gathering of Plath's own elegant line drawings taken from the letters she sent to her friends and family, offering the reader generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets.

    This extraordinary compilation of personal correspondence has all the hallmarks of Jackson's beloved fiction: flashes of the uncanny in the domestic, sparks of horror in the quotidian, and the veins of humor that run through good times and bad."I am having a fine time doing a novel with my left hand and a long story—with as many levels as Grand Central Station—with my right hand, stirring chocolate pudding with a spoon held in my teeth, and tuning the television with both feet."Written over the course of nearly three decades, from Jackson's college years to six days before her early death at the age of forty-eight, these letters become the autobiography Shirley Jackson never wrote. As well as being a bestselling author, Jackson spent much of her adult life as a mother of four in Vermont, and the landscape here is often the everyday: raucous holidays and trips to the dentist, overdue taxes and frayed lines of Christmas lights, new dogs and new babies. But in recounting these events to family, friends, and colleagues, she turns them into remarkable stories: entertaining, revealing, and wise. At the same time, many of these letters provide fresh insight into the genesis and progress of Jackson's writing over nearly three decades."The novel is getting sadder. It's always such a strange feeling—I know something's going to happen, and those poor people in the book don't; they just go blithely on their ways."Compiled and edited by her elder son, Laurence Jackson Hyman, in consultation with Jackson scholar Bernice M. Murphy and featuring Jackson's own witty line drawings, this intimate collection holds the beguiling prism of Shirley Jackson—writer and reader, mother and daughter, neighbor and wife—up to the light.

    In this sensational book the former Chelsea Headhunter gives a full and frank account of his time on the scene.

    Still wet behind the ears, he found himself on a whirlwind tour through the seven ages of man and the 57 varieties of human nature. He has to learn how to examine real people, diagnose them without becoming emotionally involved and fend off the crises of confidence which await around every corner. The book is set in the 1970s and there will no doubt be some readers who might think that things were better then. Edward Vernon is a pen name of a well known British doctor/author. Here's what the critics said about the series: Delightfully and wittily written. His descriptions of daunting receptionists, magazine-strewn waiting rooms and hypochondriacal patients will strike many familiar cords, but Dr Vernon is at his best when recounting his encounters in the surgery and at the bedside. For anyone needing to be entertained, and at times moved, there could be no better prescription than one chapter...taken each night at bedtime - Liverpool Echo Truthful, well observed and consistently readable - Daily Telegraph The funniest of the funny doctor books - Richard Gordon Dr Vernon is onto a good thing; we could do with some more - Oxford Times Hilarious - Titbits Thoroughly delightful - Fresno Bee Delightfully funny - Sunday Advocate, Baton Rouge For entertainment, a chapter or two before bedtime is just what the doctor ordered - Sacromento Bee Does for British GPs what Herriot has done for vets - Booklist Hilarious - Grimsby Evening Telegraph Very funny - Citizen, Gloucester Genuinely funny - South Wales Echo Wise, funny, sad and heartwarming - Chattanooga Times Good fun - Homes and Gardens Jolly good reading - Publishers Weekly Views the human species he treats with much the same affection, compassion and humour as Herriot brings to the animal world - Cleveland Plain Dealer Sometimes serious, sometimes hilarious - Lancashire Evening Post Will amuse, amaze and entertain - Yorkshire Post etc etc

     The exciting, pacy, tricky striker moved from club to club during his colourful 17-year career, endearing himself to fans with his energetic, all-action displays and no-nonsense attitude. Walsh netted on a regular basis, his trademark long blond locks bobbing around on his shoulders as he skipped past defenders or slotted the ball past despairing goalkeepers. After bursting onto the scene aged just 16 at Charlton Athletic he became one of the country’s most sought-after teenage footballers during a two-year stint at Luton Town that saw him crowned PFA Young Player of the Year and called up by Bobby Robson for full international duty. European champions Liverpool, on the hunt for a long term replacement for Kenny Dalglish, soon snapped him up and at the age of 21 he was playing alongside greats like Ian Rush and Alan Hansen. Walshy proved popular with Kopites but injury and team politics meant life with the champions wasn’t straightforward. His next stop was Tottenham Hotspur, where he joined up with Terry Venables, Paul Gascoigne and Gary Lineker. It was an entertaining time and Walsh added an FA Cup winner’s medal to his collection but living life to the full off the pitch sometimes meant the Spurs’ faithful saw only fleeting glimpses of his striking talents. A move to Portsmouth followed and Walsh became a Fratton Park favourite, operating up front alongside record-breaking goalscorer Guy Whittingham. His departure to Manchester City upset Pompey fans and he soon proved why at Maine Road by forming a thrilling strike partnership with cult hero Uwe Rosler to save the club from relegation before eventually returning to Portsmouth where injury ended his career at the age of 34. Walshy: Wouldn’t It Be Good is full of twists and turns. Honest and whole-hearted, it is an entertaining tale of football during the ’80s and ’90s – the team-mates and triumphs, the booze and bust-ups – and a lesson that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

    Flight Attendant Memoir is an intriguing, inside view of the not-so-friendly skies seen through the eyes of former flight attendant, Margo Anderson; if you are a frequent flier or plan to fly in the near future, fasten your seat belts for a turbulent read!

    Written over a sixty-year period, these letters, the vast majority of them never before published, are funny, moving, and full of the same uncanny wisdom that has endeared his work to readers worldwide. Included in this comprehensive volume: the letter a twenty-two-year-old Vonnegut wrote home immediately upon being freed from a German POW camp, recounting the ghastly firebombing of Dresden that would be the subject of his masterpiece "Slaughterhouse-Five;" wry dispatches from Vonnegut's years as a struggling writer slowly finding an audience and then dealing with sudden international fame in middle age; righteously angry letters of protest to local school boards that tried to ban his work; intimate remembrances penned to high school classmates, fellow veterans, friends, and family; and letters of commiseration and encouragement to such contemporaries as Gail Godwin, Gunter Grass, and Bernard Malamud. Vonnegut's unmediated observations on science, art, and commerce prove to be just as inventive as any found in his novels--from a crackpot scheme for manufacturing "atomic" bow ties to a tongue-in-cheek proposal that publishers be allowed to trade authors like baseball players. ("Knopf, for example, might give John Updike's contract to Simon and Schuster, and receive Joan Didion's contract in return.") Taken together, these letters add considerable depth to our understanding of this one-of-a-kind literary icon, in both his public and private lives. Each letter brims with the mordant humor and openhearted humanism upon which he built his legend. And virtually every page contains a quotable nugget that will make its way into the permanent Vonnegut lexicon. - On a job he had as a young man: "Hell is running an elevator throughout eternity in a building with only six floors."- To a relative who calls him a "great literary figure" "I am an American fad--of a slightly higher order than the hula hoop."- To his daughter Nanny: "Most letters from a parent contain a parent's own lost dreams disguised as good advice."- To Norman Mailer: "I am cuter than you are." Sometimes biting and ironical, sometimes achingly sweet, and always alive with the unique point of view that made him the true cultural heir to Mark Twain, these letters comprise the autobiography Kurt Vonnegut never wrote.

    His big break came when he was invited to join the England squad for their tour to Argentina in 1990 and has been capped 100 times.

    Born in Croydon in 1936, his early life was turbulent. His father left home and his mother committed suicide during the war leaving his formidable, but adored grandmother, to raise him, and it was she who gave him the title for this book. His big television break came with "Not So Much a Programme, More a Way of Life" with David Frost, John Bird and John Fortune and he also had a brief stint in the popular TV soap "Coronation Street". His radio career includes the hugely popular "The News Huddlines", which he starred in and ran for twenty-six years. "A Fart in a Colander" brings together some wonderful stories from his life, and sparkles with the fun and laughter Roy has brought to millions of people throughout his career.

    Nina Stibbe's Love, Nina: Despatches from Family Life is the laugh-out-loud story of the trials and tribulations of a very particular family.

    He's the prime suspect in the 2004 murder of Keith Palomares, a 25-year-old armored truck guard. Despite the FBI's active investigation, Brown remains at large living among us without a trace. And yet, a faint pulse of his identity surfaces from time to time, haunting the detectives tasked to find him. In the Kindle Single The Ghost, crime writer Paige Williams chronicles the case and draws a portrait of a killer who is as slippery and elusive as he is enigmatic. Jason Derek Brown was raised by a Mormon father who held a high position in the church despite being a known con man. Jason himself was a devout Mormon for years, and maintained his generosity and Southern California charm even as he slid into a life of excessive materialism fueled by theft. Aside from the murder, he has no history of violence. His case is downright perplexing, and Williams captures it from multiple viewpoints in pitch-perfect prose. --Paul Diamond

    For 20 years, an outspoken New York writer and a rather more restrained London bookseller carried on an increasingly touching correspondence. In her first letter to Marks & Co., Helene Hanff encloses a wish list, but warns, "The phrase 'antiquarian booksellers' scares me somewhat, as I equate 'antique' with expensive." Twenty days later, on October 25, 1949, a correspondent identified only as FPD let Hanff know that works by Hazlitt and Robert Louis Stevenson would be coming under separate cover. When they arrive, Hanff is ecstatic--but unsure she'll ever conquer "bilingual arithmetic." By early December 1949, Hanff is suddenly worried that the six-pound ham she's sent off to augment British rations will arrive in a kosher office. But only when FPD turns out to have an actual name, Frank Doel, does the real fun begin. Two years later, Hanff is outraged that Marks & Co. has dared to send an abridged Pepys diary. "i enclose two limp singles, i will make do with this thing till you find me a real Pepys. THEN i will rip up this ersatz book, page by page, AND WRAP THINGS IN IT." Nonetheless, her postscript asks whether they want fresh or powdered eggs for Christmas. Soon they're sharing news of Frank's family and Hanff's career.

    He’s been bitten by twenty-six venomous snakes, been stung by three stingrays, and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He’s received more than four hundred stitches and broken twenty-three bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you research only the venom you yourself have collected, the adventures—and danger—never stop.Imagine a three-week-long first date in Siberia catching venomous water shrews with the daughter of a Russian war hero; a wedding attended by Eastern European prime ministers and their machine-gun-wielding bodyguards and snakes; or leading a team to Antarctica that results in the discovery of four new species of venomous octopi. Bryan’s discoveries have radically reshaped views on venom evolution and contributed to the creation of venom-based life-saving medications. In pursuit of venom, he has traveled the world collecting samples from Indonesia to Mexico, Germany, and Brazil. He’s encountered venomous creatures of all kinds, including the Malaysian king cobra, the Komodo dragon, and the brush-footed trapdoor spider. Bryan recounts his lifelong passion for studying the world’s most venomous creatures in this outlandish, captivating memoir, where he and danger are never far apart.