She's about to turn 50, which is fine (she thinks) but suddenly she seems to have MANY questions about EVERYTHING.Should she be getting plastic surgery? Will the menopause ruin her life? What's the secret to making love last? Can anyone really deal with the idea of death? And why, oh why, did nobody tell her how important big knickers would be?!In this revealing exploration of ageing, Kate tackles the biggest issues faced by women in their supposed 'prime', and searches for answers on their behalf. Drawing on her own experiences and those of others, consulting experts and challenging herself more than she's ever done so before, she tries to find the useful amongst the deluge of advice women are bombarded with as they age.Written with all the warmth and humour Kate is known for, The Joy of Big Knickers is her amusing journey into the next stage of her life and how she learned to embrace everything it has in store. But above all, it's a lesson on why women in their midlife should be loved and celebrated, especially by themselves...

    '"Beauty before comfort," she would say as she trimmed her brows and cinched her belts corset-tight. My grandmother is so beautiful she has never once been comfortable, a cross she bears with the subtlety of Liberace.'So writes Allison Glock at the start of her remarkable memoir, the story of her maternal grandmother, Aneita Jean Blair, and the extraordinary life she led growing up in Chester, West Virginia, a sooty factory town wedged between the unforgiving Appalachians and the Ohio River. As a girl, a young woman, and even late in life as a grandmother, Aneita Jean had a magnetism that attracted and enchanted all she came into contact with. Allison Glock takes us through the stages of her life, capturing not only the irrepressible vitality of a woman born ahead of her time, but also the eccentricities of a small-town, working-class West Virginia family, trying to survive the Great Depression and the Second World War.Aneita, blessed with 'the body of Miss America' was determined that she would escape the town that was holding her back. That she never made it, and the pattern that her life ended up taking, is just another small-town tragedy of the vanished dreams of one extraordinary person. Allison Glock writes with humour, lyricism and beauty to create a truly unforgettable portrait of a remarkable person.

    His mission: to explore Germany’s rustic countryside and historical towns, meet the local people, eat their cheese and drink their beer. Whether riding a draisine in the Uckermark National Park, witnessing the spectacle of rabbit showjumping in Jena or bathtub racing on the Edersee, Lown takes in the sights and dissects the culture as he zigzags his way around all sixteen of Germany’s states. But his tent doesn’t fare quite so well. After it survived an act of wanton vandalism, battled against inclement weather and was torn to shreds by a fox with a rapacious appetite and a penchant for Knackwurst, Lown is finally forced to concede that buying a cheap tent wasn’t the wisest of decisions.

    once homeless cast-offs that were living on the streets or in the wild. Cats that people ignored, or worse, abused. But at some point, fate stepped in and changed the lives of these three cats and nine others. Rescued: The Stories of 12 Cats, Through Their Eyes contains the true-life stories of these cats—but each one is told through the feline’s own point of view. Human authors might have made these stories too saccharine and sentimental, but when they are viewed through the cats’ own eyes, they become funny, tragic, earthy and inspiring. This collection was carefully compiled and edited by Janiss Garza, renowned author and columnist for CatChannel.com.

    In Beyond Tears, nine mothers share their individual stories of how to survive in the darkest hour. They candidly share with other bereaved parents what to expect in the first year and long beyond:* Harmonious relationships can become strained* There is a new definition of what one considers "normal" * The question "how many children do you have?" can be devastating* Mothers and fathers mourn and cope differently* There simply is no answer to the question "why?"This sharing in itself is a catharsis and because each of these mothers lost her child at least seven years ago, she is in a unique position to provide perspective on what newly bereaved parents can expect to feel. The mothers of Beyond Tears offer reassurance that the clouds of grief do lessen with time and that grieving parents will find a way to live, and even laugh again.

    Brolga lives in a simple tin shed in the outback where he raises orphaned baby kangaroos. It is a sad fact of life that kangaroo mothers are at the mercy of speeding cars in this part of the world - killed on the road their young still tucked up in their pouches. These young joeys holding on to life have been given a second chance thanks to the kindness and dedication of Brolga who carefully retrieves them and nurses them back to health. Brolga has been rescuing these special creatures for years slowly and painstakingly creating a kangaroo sanctuary for the many kangaroos he has saved reared and loved. He has dedicated his life to observing how kangaroo mums care for their babies and does everything he can to replicate this. The baby kangaroos traumatised by losing their mother so early are tucked up into pillow cases and kept warm and comforted next to Brolga at night. We see him getting up at 4am to bottle feed them washing them in a little tub taking them to the supermarket and generally mothering them with heart breaking tenderness. Charting Brolga's life with the joeys and honing in on his relationship with one or two in particular Kangaroo Dundee tells the heart-warming sometimes funny sometimes poignant story of one man's unique relationship with a group of extraordinary animals.

    I had been looking for sweets. I put my hand in the bag and felt a sticky liquid on my fingers, then I looked at it. A red smear. Then I looked in the bag: bloody knives and clothes. It didn't feel good. What did it mean? I don't know. There are no answers; I daren't ask the questions'Growing up in poverty in London's East End, Kathy was eight years old when her father forced her mother into prostitution. When their mother fled, leaving Kathy and her sisters behind, the girls stuck fiercely together while being passed from children's homes to boarding schools. Then, on a rare trip home, Kathy looked out the window to see a man firing four shots into a Rolls-Royce. It took several seconds for her to realise the victim was her mother's lover, and the gunman was her father.Kathy began her haunting memoir when, as an adult, she travelled back to London, to find out who her gangster father really was. A compelling memoir of an extraordinary childhood, Dance for your Daddy is a true story of the effects on one family of poverty and affluence, violence and love.

    Bewildered by the bizarre and cruel behaviour of her mother and terrified by the violent outbursts of her perpetually angry father, the only certainty in life is that there is none. So when Granddad 'Pop' gives her sweets and does the horrid things he does to her, how is she to know that isn't what all Granddads do? And if it isn't, why does her mother find it funny? Told with honesty and courage, this is the story of a little girl who never stood a chance - who was regularly abused in the most shocking ways by her family and preyed upon by the worst kind of men. Faith went on to have two children in her teens and endured appalling domestic violence but now, after all the suffering, she has turned her life around. Her decades-long journey out of the darkness tells the truth about what happens to abused children when they grow up, in a story that's horrifying and compelling in equal measure.

    More can happen to Monica in one week than most people experience in a year, from facing down psychopathic drug dealers to the FBI threatening to put her in the Witness Protection Program or the SWAT team appearing to rescue her from a man she's done with, and every story is as true as it is strange. Get ready for an exciting ride that takes you from the depths of drug addiction to the pinnacle of high society only to end up six feet under.

    Few in the town of Cypress Creek even remember the house and what had occurred inside its walls decades before. In the present time, author Rob Hooper and his wife, Janet, are looking for a quiet place to live. The grandiose, isolated Victorian-style relic is everything they could want. A mysterious, widowed owner offers them a deal that can't be passed up. But they quickly discover that some things are too good to be true.

    Housewives and corporate executives. Young professionals and those who are retired. No matter their professions or responsibilities, women of all ages and all walks of life often struggle with an all-consuming issue-self-image. We as Americans are continually obsessed with the grass-is-greener, anything-else-is-better-than-what -we-have philosophy. And that is never truer for women than when it comes to our bodies and our self-images. The media and the world around us tell us that we should be perfect in every way. But this kind of scrutiny and obsession with perfection leaves women feeling unloved, unattractive, frustrated, and even depressed.In The Real Me, contemporary Christian singer and songwriter Natalie Grant is on a mission to especially help young women deal with this struggle and to find acceptance in how God created them. And this struggle is something that Natalie understands fully-she gives the reader an inside look at her own struggle with image issues that led her on the path to bulimia. In acknowledging her pain and sharing her struggle, she offers practical help and hope to women of all ages.

    Posing as jewel thief “Donnie Brasco,” Pistone spent the next six years undercover in the Family, witnessing-and sometimes participating in-the Mafia's gruesome activities while gathering enough evidence to send over 200 gangsters to jail. Pistone told his story in the 1988 book Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia-a New York Times bestseller and later a feature film starring Johnny Depp and Al Pacino. But because of pending trials at the time of publication, many details of the alleged crimes were held back. Now, in Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business, Pistone for the first time reveals with great detail the horrific deeds of wiseguys Tony Mirra, “Lefty” Ruggiero, Sonny Black, and the rest of the cold-blooded Bonanno crew. Pistone puts the operation into historical perspective, detailing the timeline of Mafia trials that crippled the New York City crime family over the past 25 years. He also recounts his experiences after the operation, his time on the Hollywood set with Pacino and Depp, and other undercover operations through present-day. A tense, thrilling account of the greatest infiltration ever by a federal agent into the most brutal gang of killers in the world, Donnie Brasco: Unfinished Business is the final chapter in the story of a real American hero.

    What’s it like to work in a morgue? This book describes, first hand, coping with mutilated or decomposed bodies and the carnage of large-scale disasters like the Bali bombings. Equally as traumatic, the suicides, accidental drownings, car accidents and murders. But forensic counsellors do much more, witnessing autopsies, attending crime scenes and coronial enquiries. It’s all in a day’s work. Find out what it’s like behind the scenes. Those working at the morgue come face to face with death on a daily basis, and forensic counsellors like John have to find the compassion and kindness to ease the grief of those left behind.

    But instead, separated from his siblings, young Tommy was thrown to the wolves.Tommy Rhattigan takes us, in his own inimitable way, back to his own childhood of pranks, cruelty and laughter grown from a need to survive his daily torment and to stick two fingers up to the system that was failing him so spectacularly.

    No allowances were made for emotion, sentiment or boyhood worries, and anyone who disturbed the routine was severely punished. Artane demanded absolute obedience, absolute submission; Patrick's was an education in cruelty and fear. Patrick Touher spent eight long years in Artane Industrial School. Run by the Christian Brothers, the school has become synonymous with the widespread abuse of children in Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s which is currently the subject of an official inquiry. This is the inside story of a childhood lived in the most horrific of circumstances. A moving and powerful true account, Fear of the Collar bears testament to the courage and determination of the children that society forgot.