They shine a light on what it really feels like when your world shatters and how they found hope in the deepest despair.Best friends since they met at university, Kerry and Pat had no idea that thirty years later, they’d need every ounce of their friendship to survive. In 2017, their worlds came crashing down when their teenage sons were both diagnosed with life-threatening illnesses within weeks of each other.During the following rollercoaster months, Kerry and Pat regularly snatched time to message each other – often with black humour – providing a momentary refuge from their frightening realities. Together these two ordinary mums found a way to survive their extraordinary challenges and to navigate a new normal in an alien and isolating world. With raw honesty, they share the things they’ve learnt and what they wish they’d known – from how to tame raging mother guilt to restoring their natural optimism in the aftershock of tragedy.In this profoundly moving book, Kerry and Pat take readers on a very personal exploration of the universal experiences of grief and loss, love and friendship that connect us all. Like a wise companion offering comfort, Take My Hand is a lifeline both to those overwhelmed by heartbreak and for friends and family who don’t know how to help. Most of all, it’s a powerful reminder that no matter how difficult life gets, you are not alone.

    For Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone. Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, "A Sense of Direction" is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose?"

    Increasingly frustrated with the inertia within the industry she decided to shake things up herself by doing something totally radical - setting up her own bank.In this awe-inspiring story Anne reveals how she broke through bureaucracy, tackled prejudice and successfully countered widespread suspicion to realise her vision for the future of consumer banking. She fulfilled that dream by founding Starling, the winner of Best British Bank at the British Bank Awards 2018 and in doing so has triggered a new movement that is revolutionising the entire banking industry.

    When Lilly "Aimee" Wust, a gentile mother of four and wife of a Nazi officer, met Felice "Jaguar" Schragenheim, a Jew living underground in Berlin, neither could have guessed that their brief initial encounter would develop into a blazing, devoted love. As the Nazi stranglehold closed in on them, Lilly and Felice found themselves fighting insurmountable odds to stay together. Extraordinarily passionate and heartrending, this is a rare and personal look at the love and strength of two women whose commitment to each other defied the brutality of their time.

     Two years. Three magnificent horses. Ten countries. A thousand stories of drug cartels, mass migration, the glorious wilderness, the old cowboy ways, the kindness of strangers and the powerful connection between man and beast. This is a tale of grit and inspiration, of Filipe and Frenchie, Bruiser and Dude chasing a dream, one hoof at a time. Please scroll up to grab your copy today!

    But then she didn't count on having a gypsy wedding...It's rare for a 'gorger', or non-traveller, to marry into the gypsy community. But after a shocking childhood tragedy, Sam found the comfort she needed from an unxpected source - Patrick and his family of travellers.Gypsy Bride is the heartwarming true story of how an ordinary girl finds herself discovering an extraordinary world. A place where 'grabbing' is a sign a boy fancies you, six-year-olds get spray tans, and christenings, weddings and funerals are jaw-droppingly flamboyant.This love story is more than boy meets girl. It's about a girl who falls in love with a whole race of people and their wonderful ways.

    Wendy Hilling has a rare skin condition which means her skin is very delicate. Every moment is difficult and causes pain. It affects the body inside and out: her throat is very narrow and she can stop breathing at any time. But eight years ago Wendy's life changed forever. She met Ted, the Golden Retriever, and he became her full-time carer. He has saved her life more times than she can remember, always watching and listening, and Wendy is now entirely reliant on him. This is the story of Wendy and her incredible bravery living with a disability and battling against the odds. It's also the story of Ted, the extraordinary assistance dog, and the unique relationship between a human and animal and the extraordinary things animals are capable of.

    20 pages of photos.

    Find out how being conceived in an air-raid gave her curly hair; what pranks led to her being known as the naughtiest girl Oxford High School ever had; how she ended up posing nude for Augustus John as a teenager; why Bob Monkhouse was the best (male) kiss she's ever had; and what happened next after Warren Beatty asked 'Do you fuck?'From declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave to being told to be quiet by the Queen, this book is packed with hilarious stories. With a cast list stretching from Scorsese to Streisand, a cross-dressing Leonardo di Caprio to Isaiah Berlin, This Much Is True is as full of life and surprises, as its inimitable author.

    Behind the public acclaim which his wartime achievements brought him, he had vanity and a controversial lifestyle. He had influential connections with the Royal Family but made many enemies, including Winston Churchill, who never forgave him for his part in "giving away India", while courtiers in the Royal Household disliked him for his arrogance and interference. Both Mountbatten and his wife were widely known to have had numerous affairs, but this was rarely spoken of outside their circle. He was an egotistical man, fascinated by Royalty and his own relationship to the Royal Family, and delighted in being seen with celebrities. His biographer, Brian Hoey, knew Mountbatten for ten years and interviewed him on radio and television. Hoey talked to many in the Royal Household, and also to Prince Philip, Prince Michael of Kent and King Constantine of Greece about their memories of Mountbatten. Both of Mountbatten's daughters, and his grandchildren also agreed to speak.

    Their destination was the Eden Valley, and a small stock-rearing and dairy farm called Rowfoot. There they have spent the last 20 years getting to grips with the practice of running a working farm, keeping sheep, cattle, pigs, and horses, becoming part of the community, and coping with the ups and downs of farming life.

    An act of terrorism of staggering efficiency, it fulfilled its every aim: it would liberate Bosnia from Habsburg rule and it created a powerful new Serbia, but it also brought down four great empires, killed millions of men and destroyed a civilization. What made a seemingly prosperous and complacent Europe so vulnerable to the impact of this assassination? In The Sleepwalkers Christopher Clark retells the story of the outbreak of the First World War and its causes. Above all, it shows how the failure to understand the seriousness of the chaotic, near genocidal fighting in the Balkans would drag Europe into catastrophe.

    It was the sound of eighteen hundred airplanes approaching Hamburg from the south at an unimaginable height. We had already experienced two hundred or even more air raids, among them some very heavy ones, but this was something completely new. And yet there was an immediate recognition: this was what everyone had been waiting for, what had hung for months like a shadow over everything we did, making us weary. It was the end.Novelist Hans Erich Nossack was forty-two when the Allied bombardments of German cities began, and he watched the destruction of Hamburg—the city where he was born and where he would later die—from across its Elbe River. He heard the whistle of the bombs and the singing of shrapnel; he watched his neighbors flee; he wondered if his home—and his manuscripts—would survive the devastation. The End is his terse, remarkable and moving memoir of the annihilation of the city, written only three months after the bombing. A searing firsthand account of one of the most notorious events of World War II, The End is also a meditation on war and hope, history and its devastation. And it is the rare book, as W. G. Sebald noted, that describes the Allied bombing campaign from the German perspective.In the first English-language edition of The End, Nossack's text has been crisply translated by Joel Agee and is accompanied by the photographs of Erich Andres. Poetic, evocative, and yet highly descriptive, The End will prove to be, as Sebald claimed, one of the most important German books on the firebombing of that country. "A small but critical book, something to read in those quiet moments when we wonder what will happen next."—Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times

    That trial and Alyokhina's subsequent imprisonment became an international cause. For Alyokhina, her two-year sentence launched a bitter struggle against the Russian prison system and an iron-willed refusal to be deprived of her humanity. Teeming with protests and police, witnesses and cellmates, informers and interrogators, Riot Days gives voice to Alyokhina's insistence on the right to say no, whether to a prison guard or to the president. Ultimately, this insistence delivers unprecedented victories for prisoners' rights.Evocative, wry, laser-sharp, and laconically funny, Alyokhina's account is studded with song lyrics, legal transcripts, and excerpts from her jail diary--dispatches from a young woman who has faced tyranny and returned with the proof that against all odds even one person can force its retreat.

    In Blue Like Play Dough, she shares her unlikely journey from rebellious, pregnant teen to busy wife and mom with big dreams of her own. As her story unfolds, Tricia realizes that God has more in store for her than she has ever imagined possible.Sure, life is messy and beset by doubts. But God keeps showing up in the most unlikely places?in a bowl of carrot soup, the umpteenth reading of Goodnight Moon, a woe-is me teen drama, or play dough in the hands of a child.In Tricia's transparent account, you'll find understanding, laughter, and strength for your own story. And in the daily push and pull, you'll learn to recognizes the loving hands of God at work in your life? and know He has something beautiful in mind.