All of Me


Anne Murray - 2009
    It is a candid retrospective of the extraordinary success achieved, and the prices that had to be paid.“After ‘Snowbird’ hit, I was swept up like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, and catapulted into a strange new universe … If I thought for a moment that I was really in control of events, I was deluded.” Anne MurrayAn unflinching self-portrait of Canada’s first great female recording artist, All of Me documents the life of Anne Murray, from her humble origins in the tragedy-plagued coal-mining town of Springhill, Nova Scotia, to her arrival on the world stage. Anne recounts her story: the battles with her record companies over singles and albums; the struggle with drug- and alcohol-ridden band members; the terrible guilt and loneliness of being away from her two young children; her divorce from the man who helped launch her career, Bill Langstroth; and the deaths of two of her closest confidantes. The result is a must-read autobiography by Canada’s beloved songbird.

Celebrating the Seasons with the Yorkshire Shepherdess: Farming, Family and Delicious Recipes to Share


Amanda Owen - 2021
     Amanda Owen and her family have charmed millions of viewers of Our Yorkshire Farm and inspired three books. Now, in a book full of stunning photographs, Amanda takes readers behind the scenes of their life at Ravenseat Farm and on a journey to a beautiful but remote place. Month by month she describes their activities, from lambing and shearing to haymaking. Her photographs will show the Swaledale landscape she writes about, imbued with history, and the flora and fauna, from rare wildflowers to the hares glimpsed in the field and the curlews flying above. In many ways Amanda and her family live a simple life, in tune with nature, and Amanda's attitude to food is the same. She believes in buying good, seasonal ingredients when it comes to feeding her family and shares her favorite recipes here, all easy and cheap to make. As inspirational as Amanda herself, this book will delight everyone who has followed her adventures so far.

The Lonely End of the Rink: Confessions of a Reluctant Goalie


Grant Lawrence - 2013
    Grant, his parents, Bobby Orr and the rest of the Canadian hockey team were ontheir way to Game Three of the famous Summit Series -- seven games played between Russia and Canada in 1972, during the height of the Cold War. It was at this point -- at the age of one -- that Grant's life-long entanglement with hockey began.In this deeply personal, yet incredibly witty memoir about Grant's relationship with hockey, the narrative passes back and forth between tales of Grant's life and a fascinating history of hockey, complete with lively anecdotes about the many colourful characters of the NHL. Through Grant's early life, he struggled with the idea of hockey. He was an undersized child who wore thick glasses and knee-braces, and he understood, first-hand, what it was like to be in the attack zone of the hockey-obsessed jocks at his school. For Grant, bullying and the violent game of hockey seemed to go hand-in-hand. Yet he was also enamoured with the sport, and eventually learned that playing goalie on a hockey team isn’t all that different from playing in a band and that artistically-minded wimps find just as much joy in the game as their meathead counterparts.In The Lonely End of the Rink , Grant Lawrence brings the allure of hockey into a zone where it can impress upon the nerds and geeks as well as the jocks. Grant is a highly original writer, and with this book, he tells a quintessentially Canadian story about the nation’s favourite sport.

Roadie: My Life on the Road with Coldplay


Matt McGinn - 2010
    Behind-the-scenes touring and recording stories are featured, as well as humorous and engaging anecdotes about Matt's relationship with Coldplay as they travel the globe and become one of the biggest bands in the world.

J.K.Rowling


Colleen Sexton - 2005
    K. Rowling wrote her first story at age six. From then on, writing was her passion. In 1990, an idea popped into her head that changed her life. She envisioned an orphaned Harry Potter, who learns he is a wizard. Rowling began to write amazing tales and became one of the world's most famous authors.

Clandestino: In Search of Manu Chao


Peter Culshaw - 2013
    That's Manu in a nutshell. He does everything differently. He is a multi-million selling artist who prefers sleeping on friends' floors to five-star hotels, an anti-globalisation activist who hangs out with prostitute-activists in Madrid and Zapatista leader Comandante Marcos in Chiapas, a recluse who is at home singing in front of 100,000 people in stadiums in Latin America or festivals in Europe.Clandestino has been five years in the writing, as Peter Culshaw followed Manu around the world, invited at a moment's notice to head to the Sahara, or Brazil, or to Buenos Aires, where Manu was making a record with mental asylum inmates. The result is one of the most fascinating music biographies we're ever likely to read.

Death of a Rebel: A Biography of Phil Ochs


Marc Eliot - 1979
    Altho his recordings were never bestsellers & there were times when he was more greatly appreciated in the UK, Canada & the 3rd World than at home, the late Philip David Ochs was one of the few American folksingers, aside from Woody Guthrie & Bob Dylan, who wrote & performed his own songs. This singing journalist's earliest ballads--championing civil rights, pacifism & revolution, attacking unemployment & US foreign policy--dealt with the romance of politics. Later ones celebrated the politics of romance. Fascinated by night, death, drowning, James Dean & Elvis Presley, Ochs was only 36 when, after surviving an attack in Africa followed by a psychotic break, he hanged himself in 1976. Eliot's sympathetic, powerful biography 1st appeared in paperback in 1979. Newer editions contain an epilog that updates information on Ochs's family & friends, discusses the FBI's 13-year surveillance of him & offers a revised discography.

Doc Holliday


John Myers Myers - 1955
    "As for the general reader, he'll eat this up and beg for more."-San Francisco Chronicle.

Brothers: From Childhood To Oasis: The Real Story


Paul Gallagher - 1996
    Paul Gallagher, the elder brother of Noel and Liam, discusses their childhood, their father, their musical beginnings and their rise to fame, as well as considering their future.

Life & Works of Beethoven 4D


Jeremy Siepmann - 2001
    Beethoven's (1770-1827) music helped define the classical style and is considered by many to be the greatest composer who ever lived.

The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller


Carol Baxter - 2017
    Jail attendants said they understood she was held in connection with the shooting of an airline pilot.'Petite, glamorous and beguiling, Jessie 'Chubbie' Miller was one remarkable woman ... flyer, thrill seeker, heartbreaker. No adventure was too wild for her, no danger too extreme. And all over the world men adored her.When the young Jessie left suburban Melbourne and her newspaperman husband in 1927, little did she know that she'd become the first woman to complete an England to Australia flight (with a black silk gown thrown into her small flight bag, just in case), or fly the first air race for women with Amelia Earhart, or that she would disappear over the Florida Straits feared lost forever only to charm her way to a rescue. Nor could she have predicted that five years later she'd find herself at the centre of one of the most notorious and controversial murder trials in United States history. And this all began with something as ridiculously mundane as a pat of butter.The Fabulous Flying Mrs Miller is a spellbinding story of an extraordinary woman - an international celebrity during the golden age of aviation - and her passionate and spirited life.

The Eternal Summer: Palmer, Nicklaus, and Hogan in 1960, Golf's Golden Year


Curt Sampson - 1992
    Here was Arnold Palmer, the workingman's hero, "sweating, chain-smoking, shirt-tail flying"; Ben Hogan, the greatest player of the fifties, a perfectionist battling twin demons of age and nerves; and, making his big-time debut, a crew-cut college kid who seemed to have the makings of a champion: twenty-year-old Jack Nicklaus.        And of course, the rest: Ken Venturi, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Doug Sanders, Gary Player, and the many other colorful characters who chased around a little white ball--and a dream.        Would Palmer win the mythical Grand Slam of golf? Could Hogan win one more major tournament? Was Nicklaus the real thing? Even more than an intimate portrait of these men and their exciting times, The Eternal Summer is also an entertaining, perceptive, and hypnotically readable exploration of professional golf in America.

Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller


Marshall Chapman - 2003
    Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller is an inventive and original book from Nashville singer/songwriter Chapman, who uses twelve of her most resonant songs as entry points to many of her life's adventures. Not a memoir, but a map of the places Chapman's been and what went through her mind as she was traveling there, this book is funny and tender, warm and exuberant. Raised a debutante in Spartanburg, South Carolina, the daughter of a mill owner and firmly part of proper society, Chapman became a rocker at a time when women weren't yet picking up electric guitars. She is "a living example," as one reviewer wrote, "of the triumph of rock and roll over good breeding."From New Year's Eve in 1978 when Jerry Lee Lewis gave Chapman advice on how to live life ("I mean it's one thing when your mother says 'Honey don't you think you'd better slow down?' But when The Killer voices his concern....") to the time her black maid Cora Jeter took the seven-year-old to see Elvis, Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller goes to the moments when the influences on Chapman's songwriting and psyche were cemented. And it winningly reveals how the creative process comes from life: one of Chapman's favorite songs was written after waking up facedown in her underpants in her front-yard vegetable garden. Revealing intimate rock and roll moments and memories of a South Carolina childhood, Marshall Chapman is a fresh voice firmly in the Southern tradition.

Cherry on Top: Flirty, Forty-Something, and Funny as F**k


Bobbie Brown - 2019
    She’s still smoking hot, but telling jokes about farting on men’s balls isn’t helping her find The One...Hilarious, sweet, and bitingly honest, Cherry On Top reveals how one gorgeous, potty-mouthed blonde took back Hollywood in middle age, and embarked on a fresh search for love―one fart joke at a time.

Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie


Jon Ronson - 2014
    Frank wore a big fake head. Nobody outside his inner circle knew his true identity. This became the subject of feverish speculation during his zenith years. Together, they rode relatively high. Then it all went wrong.Twenty-five years later and Jon has co-written a movie, Frank, inspired by his time in this great and bizarre band. Frank is set for release in 2014, starring Michael Fassbender, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Domhnall Gleeson and directed by Lenny Abrahamson.Frank: The True Story that Inspired the Movie is a memoir of funny, sad times and a tribute to outsider artists too wonderfully strange to ever make it in the mainstream. It tells the true story behind the fictionalized movie.