Broadway actress Sharon Wheatley reveals an authentic and personal look at the damaging physical and emotional effects of childhood obesity.

    But with humour and courage, Julia faces the greatest challenge of her life – and in the process becomes the person she'd always wanted to be.A survivor of child abuse, brought up by a mother with mental illness, Julia was no stranger to adversity. After her daughter Georgie was born with Down syndrome, she thought she'd faced it all. But when doctors offer her the chance of risky but potentially life-saving surgery, Julia faces her toughest situation yet.Follow Julia and her family, as she writes her way through the crisis, chases her dreams, gets her dancing shoes on and discovers the lighter side of life with a colostomy bag.This is a candid, entertaining look at life with cancer and living each day with humour and hope.

    At the age of 15, in 1964, Lulu - born Marie Lawrie in Glasgow - was already a star with her international hit song 'Shout'. At 18 she stole hearts as an English schoolgirl to Sidney Poitier's teacher with the movie hit 'To Sir With Love'. At 21, she married a Bee Gee, Maurice Gibb, and tied as winner of the Eurovision Song Contest with 'Boom-Bang-a-Bang'. Yet in 1993 she reached No.1 with 'Relight My Fire' (with Take That). Nearly forty years at the top of the showbiz tree, Lulu has never been afraid to experiment with new trends, and her book reflects the daring that took a girl from a Glasgow tenement to international stardom - as 'To Sir With Love' says, 'from crayons to perfume'.I DON’T WANT TO FIGHT (the title of a song Lulu wrote and Tina Turner recorded) is the devastatingly candid autobiography of a singer who has never shirked from facing anything.

    A five year old bride in rural Nepal struggles with poverty, male domination and illiteracy to become a successful landowner, micro lender and great grandmother.Based on the true story of Kharika Devkota, this book provides a rare insight into the inspiring and determining life of a Nepali woman.

    Mine is predicated on formative years spent cleaning my father’s calf pens: Just keep shoveling until you’ve got a pile so big, someone has to notice. The fact that I cast my life’s work as slung manure simply proves that I recognize an apt metaphor when I accidentally stick it with a pitchfork. . . . Poetry was my first love, my gateway drug—still the poets are my favorites—but I quickly realized I lacked the chops or insights to survive on verse alone. But I wanted to write. Every day. And so I read everything I could about freelancing, and started shoveling."  The pieces gathered within this book draw on fifteen years of what Michael Perry calls "shovel time"—a writer going to work as the work is offered. The range of subjects is wide, from musky fishing, puking, and mountain-climbing Iraq War veterans to the frozen head of Ted Williams. Some assignments lead to self-examination of an alarming magnitude (as Perry notes, "It quickly becomes obvious that I am a self-absorbed hypochondriac forever resolving to do better nutritionally and fitness-wise but my follow-through is laughable.") But his favorites are those that allow him to turn the lens outward: "My greatest privilege," he says, "lies not in telling my own story; it lies in being trusted to tell the story of another."

    Biography

     Throw in the patter of little feet, sharp teeth, amputations and a smattering of characters from their Tenerife bar days, and you have another serving of Ketchup – only this time, it’s a little more salsa. With the Smugglers Tavern still a nagging ghost of their past, Joe and Joy free themselves from limpet-like patrons, battle once more with Spain’s bungling bureaucracy and dip a toe in numerous but short-lived careers to stop their bar money evaporating. Less Ketchup than Salsa is a true story about growing up, finding your dreams in the most unexpected of places and discovering what’s truly important in life. If you’ve ever pondered living abroad, are interested in travel writing as a career, wondered what life is all about, or just want a funny read in the style of Bill Bryson or Carl Hiaasen…. join Joe and Joy on this third and final memoir in the Ketchup trilogy.

    Ever since the death of his beloved dog Candy, he'd craved the unique companionship that had so enriched his childhood. Co-presenter of ITV's Long Lost Family, reuniting parents with children, as an adopted child himself Nicky knows all too well the tangled emotions and inner conflicts that go with being given up by your birth mother. It has taken a lifetime - and a miracle dog - to come to terms with abandonment and the feeling of being an imposter in your own life. Raw, honest and courageous in One of the Family, Nicky opens up about how being adopted has made him always feel like an outsider; the guilt he has carried towards his Mum and Dad for needing to trace his birth mother, and the crushing disappointment he felt when he finally met her. And for the first time, he writes about his emotional breakdown and how he has learned to live with a late diagnosis of bipolar. Through it all his passion for dogs and animals has been a lifeline. It is Maxwell's magic, a lesson from a Labrador in simple unconditional friendship, that has allowed him to see all the good in his life: from the security and safety of his childhood home, the love of his wife and four daughters and above all, to better understand the decisions taken by his birth mother to give him up for adoption.

    For as long as she can remember, Kelly Doust has been passionate about clothes. They are her first, and most enduring, love affair to date. Like many women, she adores the playfulness of fashion and its endless ability to transform. She loves the ritual and drama of getting dressed, assuming different identities in different outfits, and exploring the many facets of her personality. She buys far too many glossy magazines, and puzzles over how she can spend half her life shopping and yet still find herself with nothing to wear. Over the years, clothes have comforted her, given her confidence, lured lovers, made her invisible, secured jobs, aged her, and given back her youth. And yes, they have betrayed her. This is one woman's charming analysis of her fascinating relationship with what she wears.

    Meet Karl (the Joker), Boris (the Gladiator), Miss Winnifred Hardbottle, Buddy (the Little Whittler) and many more.

    It’s an inside look into the day-to-day challenges facing not only the patient, but also the caregivers. For many years, her father exhibited signs of dementia, eventually becoming too significant to ignore. Everything culminated during an incident one night, after which her father was taken away, never to return to his home again. The disease changed him every day until he was a stranger. Then, it stole his life. Through the initial days at home to hospital stays, living in a memory care unit, rehab stints and eventually hospice care, this book reveals many of the struggles encountered while facing Alzheimer’s in a world not quite ready for it. It is based on actual events depicted exactly as they happened while travelling the heartbreaking and harrowing road through this horrific illness. Its purpose is to give guidance and insight to others caring for loved ones with this terrible affliction, whether it is in providing helpful information, feelings of support or simply words of encouragement. Most importantly, the hope is that it will make the road for others an easier one to travel. May the many tears in this journey be the fortitude that helps others deal with the adversity from this overwhelming disease.

    In that time, he has taken on dozens of groundbreaking cases and emerged as a pivotal figure in race relations in America. Cochran gained international recognition as one of America's best - and most controversial lawyers - for leading 'the Dream Team' defense of accused killer O.J. Simpson in the Trial of the Century. Many people formed their perception of Cochran based on his work in that trial. But long before the Simpson trial and since then Johnnie Cochran has been a leader in the fight for justice for all Americans. This is his story.Cochran emerged from the trial as one of the nation's leading African-American spokespersons - and he has done most of his talking through the courtroom. Abner Louima. Amadou Diallo. The racially-profiled New Jersey Turnpike Four. Sean "P. Diddy" Combs. Patrick Dorismond. Cynthia Wiggins. These are the names that have dominated legal headlines - and Cochran was involved with each of them. No one who first encountered him during the Simpson trial can appreciate his impact on our world until they've read his whole story.Drawing on Cochran's most intriguing and difficult cases, A Lawyer's Life shows how he's fought his critics, won for his clients, and affected real change within the system. This is an intimate and compelling memoir of one lawyer's attempt to make us all truly equal in the eyes of the law.

    Against all logic, he applies and, against all logic, he advances. Fearless and funny, Shubaly is forced to interrogate not just the reality of the show but also his decisions, his addictions, his neuroses, his desires - indeed, his entire reality.

    At the age of 29, Diana Hill fell under a London train. In 7 seconds the tall, glamorous businesswoman went from busy woman of the world with everything to live for to double-leg amputee, her life in ruins. Then it got worse. A few days after her accident, as she lay in hospital, traumatised and heavily sedated, she learnt via a newspaper article that the railway’s Transport Police were to interview “The Fall Girl”, as the Press had labelled her, with a view to prosecution. She had boarded a moving train, they said, and trespassed onto their railway line. Her fight for justice took 5 years and was, she declares with no hesitation, a more harrowing experience than having both of her legs ‘stolen’ from her. As any young, single woman would be, Diana was shocked to the core by the sudden, catastrophic change in her body image. What man would ever love her now? The issues surrounding sexuality and disability are explored here with stark honesty as she recalls her complicated love life, the High Court dramas, and the rawness of her pain amidst a turmoil of emotion, all told with tremendous humour, charm and heart. For Diana loves to tell stories. Especially true ones. A brutally honest, heartwarming memoir that shocks and delights in equal measure – when you're not crying for her you're laughing with her: "A computer is a thing that can be disabled, not a person." Diana Morgan-Hill

    From boxing to business, from the recording industry to the charitable accomplishments of his foundation, his success is a testament to what one can achieve in the United States. But who is this man who has changed the lives of so many? Who has imprinted a positive mark upon the sport of boxing, for which many have all but given up hope? Who has become a symbol of success for an entire community, without many heroes to call their own?American Son answers these questions.Born into a boxing family, De La Hoya has defeated more than a dozen world champions and won six world titles as well as an Olympic gold medal—a moment forever marked in the memory of anyone who has followed his career. Yet within the maelstrom of this success lay a man whose earnest belief in the goodness of everyone around him sometimes led him to stray far from his intended path. This book is The Golden Boy, and he bares his most heartbreaking mistakes as well as his most stunning triumphs for all of the world to see.This thrilling tale of an immigrant's son—a quintessentially American story—is the chronicle of an amazing journey that will provide readers with new insight into the private life of a figure who has to many reached iconic status.