You'd expect a drummer to have better timing. Yes, he parted ways before The Patrol became the Stone Roses. Yes, he turned down The Smiths because he didn't like Morrissey's voice. Right place, right time, wrong choices. Timing is everything.But the beat goes on and while Simon Wolstencroft can see what might have been, cultivating bitterness bears no fruit. And 'Funky Si' has tasted the nectar. Spending an unlikely 11 years in The Fall and hooking up with his old mate Ian Brown during his solo days, 'You Can Drum But You Can't Hide' reflects on a life driven by a passion for playing. Taking you from the warehouses of Manchester and the beaches of Rio de Janeiro to the high rises of Tokyo, this book hands you a backstage pass to an evocative age that restored pride to the city of Manchester. With humour and detail, Si recounts a fascinating tale of drumming and drugs, friendships and fall outs, but, above all, a love of music.

    Inspired by colourful characters, he tells us tales that run the emotional roller-coaster, from heart-warming to hilarious and thought-provoking to, at times, almost unbelievable. Dr Moss invites us to see something of what really goes on behind the surgery door…

    Jesse walked out of prison a free man and disappeared, never to be heard from again. Never, that is, until 1949 when he came out of hiding after almost 60 years to claim his inheritance. In the course of proving his identity to a court Jesse told some amazing stories of his time when he was an outlaw but his biggest revelation of all was that his good friend Billy the Kid was still alive. Jesse led a young lawyer to an old man named not William H. Bonney but William H. Roberts who after some consideration finally agreed to come forward and reveal himself as Billy the Kid only if he would help him obtain a pardon from the Governor before his death so he could die a free man. You see, Billy the Kid was still wanted for murder and was condemned to hang. To come forward and reveal himself was to risk being arrested and put to death. This was a risk that William H. Roberts was willing to take. He sat down with the young lawyer and told his story. That story is the one true autobiography of Billy the Kid and told only one time, to one man. This is his story.

    From the day they met, they’d been talking about “travelling more”, but in ten years they hadn’t advanced very far toward that dream and it had become more of a nagging dissatisfaction than an inspiring goal. Every time they returned from one of their brief yearly vacations, Joyce would spend weeks depressed, thinking there had to be a way to do more than this. They gradually came to the somewhat obvious realization that “travelling more” wasn’t just going to happen, they would need to decide what exactly they wanted, make a plan and commit to a lot of work. In early 2012, they made a decision to go all in on their travel dream, sell everything, and hit the road for an open-ended period of time.On March 31, 2013, they locked up their house one last time and left on a tour that would take them to 23 countries and 23 U.S. states over the next 14 months. This book is the chronicle of the first six months, spent in Central America and Africa, as they learned to slow down, look around and embrace wherever the heck they were. Alternately funny, frustrating and inspiring, their journey proves that anyone can travel more and that you don’t have to be rich, young or all that brave to get out and see the world.

    Part memoir, part love story, part wildly scenic travel piece, 'The Greek for Love' is James Chatto's account of life on Corfu, recalling the idyllic lifestyle and hospitable reception of the islanders.

    The fewer, the better.”Most people equate success with having more, but Sanya’s quest was always for less. She started running track as a little girl in Jamaica and began competing when she was only seven. At 31 she’s had a career’s worth of conditioning to run a 400-meter race in 50 seconds, hopefully 49, or even better, 48.When she started training with her coach, Clyde Hart, they divided her race into four phases: push, pace, position, poise, and with the inherent prayer. For years Sanya worked to hone every phase in practice so that when it came time to race, her body would respond as her mind instinctively transitioned from one phase to the next. As she got older and embraced a life that measures more than just a number on the time clock, she has realized the genius of this strategy for not just racing the 400 meters, but for living her best life.Sanya shares triumphant as well as heartbreaking stories as she reveals her journey to becoming a world-class runner. From her childhood in Jamaica to Athens, Beijing and London Olympics, readers will find themselves inspired by the unique insights she’s gained through her victories and losses, including her devastating injury during the 2016 Olympic Trials forcing career retirement just weeks before Rio. Sanya demonstrates how even this devastating loss brought her closer to the ultimate goal of becoming all God created her to be.”Sometimes you think you are chasing a gold medal, but that’s not what you are chasing. You’re racing to become the best version of yourself.”

    The book is short - around an hour of reading - and details everything from when I first decided naturism appealed to me, to my thoughts after the holiday.

    Perry Groves spent over a decade in the footballing spotlight. Sometimes he was at the top, often he was at the bottom and that's half the reason the fans loved him so much--and still do. This is the most truthful and hilarious book about professional football you will ever read. Perry Groves was the first signing by the legendary Arsenal manager George Graham, and that unmistakeable figure with his Tin-Tin haircut and cheeky grin was a player in one of the Gunners' greatest sides. Now he has decided to tell all about his rollercoaster years of booze binges, girl-chasing and gambling sprees. He's a nonstop fund of of hilarious anecdotes, recounting top-flight games played with a hangover, 125 mph motorway chases with international stars, visits to a brothel with an England World Cup hero and revealing how one drunken escapade ended with a group of internationals beting questioned over an attempted murder charge. This is a unique chance to find out what top-flight footballers really get up to off the field and how they behave when the dressing room door is closed.

    Since exploding onto our screens, Ferne has become one of TOWIE’s standout cast members and is widely regarded for her style and inimitable personality. Renowned for her straight talking attitude and unbridled wit, Ferne is a regular on TV and chat shows. She is currently working on This Morning as a showbiz reporter and her exclusive column in Star Magazine is the longest running celebrity column to date. Before Fern found fame, she was one of London's top hair stylists & colourist, which provided major grounding for her passion and talent for fashion and beauty.

    Songwriter. Swamp child. Soul man. Tex Perkins is a true rock'n'roll animal. In this loud, uncut, no-holds-barred, laugh-out-loud and take-no-prisoners memoir, the enigmatic king of the Australian music underground lays bare an extraordinary life lived on the road, on the stage and on the edge.Raised a bible-thumping Catholic and beaten bloody on the streets of Brisbane for being a "cow-punk", skinny Gregory Perkins flees to Sydney and mutates into "Tex", rogue leader of the Dums Dums, Thug and Salamander Jim before finding a strange kind of success, celebrity, sex symboldom and icon status as Tex Perkins, snake-hipped, honey-voiced, often bloodied frontman of influential Aussie bands the Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon and Tex, Don & Charlie... and inventor of "Zoneball".Gigs. Albums. Tours. Fights. Feuds. Arrests. Drugs. High times. Low roads. This is a wild ride of a life written loudly, proudly and full of punk energy.

    I remember moments of enlightenment that arrived with a bang, and moments born of the self-reflection only true boredom can provide. I made a few decisions while painting a fence once. Those decisions turned out to be very noisy indeed.'Comedian and radio and TV personality Meshel Laurie was once Michelle Laurie, whose story begins in Queensland. Michelle survived her Catholic schooldays but by Year Nine had morphed into Meshel, who daydreamed of moving to Melbourne - home of Dogs in Space and the back room of the Espy.Meshel's insider's perspective on the 1990s comedy scene is intimate and more than a little surprising. She paints a picture of a close-knit environment and tells before-they-were-famous stories about up-and-comers who are today's household names, and about the kindness of comic superstars she encountered along the way: Dave Hughes, Julia Morris, Rove, Wil Anderson, Wendy Harmer and others. We find out about the workings of an inner-city brothel, what it's like to be 'the girl on Rove' and how fence-painting can help save a life.The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny is an honest and heartfelt look at life in all its messiness and unpredictability.

    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.

    I want to be big. I want to be gracious and cool. I want to be the Audrey Hepburn of cancer…” Gail Konop Baker was a runner, yoga practitioner, and lifelong subscriber to Prevention magazine. As her forty-sixth birthday approached, she looked forward to a time when she could at last take a deep breath, with one child heading off to college and the other two busy with their lives. She finally felt as if she was getting her life back.Then, right before Valentine’s Day 2006, she heard the words that would forever change her: Just to be safe, I think we should biopsy.It was the beginning of her year-long struggle with breast cancer and its fallout—one that would upstage any midlife crisis she’d fretted was waiting in the wings. “I want to feel bad about my neck. I do,” she writes. “But I feel bad I may not ever get to feel bad about my neck.” Gail was suddenly faced with the truth that awaits us all—this was her life, and she would do anything to hold on to it. As a doctor’s wife, she knew more than she should about her diagnosis and treatment. As a mother, she found unbearable the idea of not being there for the next birthday, next graduation, next anything. And as a woman who’d put her dreams on hold for years, she was determined to make every minute count.But Cancer Is a Bitch is about much more than the “C” word; it's about the outrageous challenges of marriage, the joys and unpredictability of motherhood, about figuring out what it is you want to do with your life, about wanting to live now.Funny, raw, and moving, this story will resonate with every mother and wife, and with anyone who has been affected by cancer. It is one woman’s unforgettable, beautifully told account of juggling midlife and motherhood with a rogue boob—and, ultimately, triumphing.

    

    But how else do you cope when your mentally ill mother has killed your little brother and sister by scalding them with boiling water?This is a harrowing true story of how one little girl endured the most tragic of childhoods. But it's also the ultimate tale of forgiveness.Follow Nikkia on her heartbreaking journey, as she attempts to find answers and rekindle a relationship with her mother behind the gates of a secure psychiatric hospital.Deeply moving, Mummy is a Killer proves that love really is the strongest emotion of all.