Yes, the 'F' word. Tipping the scales at nearly 20 stone, with creaking knees and a dodgy ankle to boot, at the beginning of 2011 Pauline had reached a crisis point. Something had to change, and fast. It was never going to be an easy ride, but with her trademark warmth and sense of humour, Pauline recounts the highs and lows of the rollercoaster year in which she whips herself, and her life, into shape - with a fair few tales from her celebrated forty-year acting career thrown into the bargain. She reveals all: from the strain of working long hours away from home on one of Britain's most popular soaps to renewing her wedding vows and reuniting with her Birds of a Feather co-stars; from battling the bulge and facing the naysayers to rediscovering the joys of airline travel . . . without a seatbelt extension.Honest and revealing, Where Have I Gone? is brimming with brilliantly funny anecdotes and truly moving moments. So put your feet up and join Pauline as she embarks on the most incredible year of her life.

    It may be hard to believe but it was against the background of all this that Eamonn won the WBU world welterweight and Commonwealth light welterweight titles. The author, Paul Gibson, has managed to decipher a very dark, very troubled, very flawed individual who happened to have an exceptional gift to box at the highest world level. The Lost Soul of Eamonn Magee reads like the screenplay of the kind of gritty rags-to-riches-to-rags boxing story that Hollywood producers seem to love.

    Sharad Pawar. The book is a rich, insightful and remarkably frank memoir and a valuable document of the country's recent political history. Sharad Pawar is one of India's key public figures. Through his five- decade-long career, during which he has never lost an election, he has served as chief minister of Maharashtra four times and as India's defence minister and minister for agriculture. On two occasions he came close to becoming the country's prime minister. He has often bucked the trend, preferring policy and pragmatism over populism, and won admiration for his administrative acumen and consensual politics. Eyewitness-at the highest levels-to India's and Maharashtra's history since the 1960s, he shares in this memoir his reflections on coalition politics, the loss of democracy in the Congress Party (with which he began his political life), the state of agriculture and industry in the country, and the absolute necessity of social harmony and a liberal, inclusive ethos for India's future. As he does this, he also gives us rare information about many crises and turning points: Emergency and its impact on national and regional politics; the fall of the Chandrashekhar government in 1991; the signing of the Punjab Accord between Rajiv Gandhi and H.S. Longowal; the Babri Masjid demolition; the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993; the devastating earthquake in Latur; the controversy over the Enron power project; and Sonia Gandhi's dramatic decision to give up the chance to occupy the country's highest office. Throughout, the narrative also contains candid and fascinating assessments of some of the biggest names in Indian politics, among them, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, Y.B. Chavan, Morarji Desai, Biju Patnaik, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narasimha Rao, George Fernandes and Bal Thackeray.

    Born into a poor family marred by alcohol abuse, Colt had the local sheriff after him before the age of ten. Colt survived by breaking into homes to forage for food, and learned to evade the police by melting into the Pacific Northwest wilds. As a teenager, he escalated to stealing cars, boats, and identities. An extensive manhunt finally caught Colt, but he escaped juvenile prison and fled to nearby Orcas Island, where he assured his place alongside outlaw legends such as D. B. Cooper by stealing an airplane without ever having a formal flight lesson. And that was just the beginning. As a resident of Orcas Island, author Bob Friel witnessed firsthand as local police, FBI agents, SWAT teams, and even Homeland Security helicopters pursued Colt around the island. Colt's crime spree infuriated and terrified many locals, while others sympathized with the barefoot young criminal-the controversy tearing at the formerly quiet community. The story gained international fame, with Time calling Colt "America's Most Wanted Teen" when he stole and crashed his third airplane. After more than two years on the run in the Northwest, Colt fled Orcas and began a spectacular cross-country trek. Friel followed the Barefoot Bandit all the way to the Bahamas, where the chase finally ended in a hail of gunfire at 3 a.m. on a dark sea. Through his personal experiences and hundreds of interviews with witnesses, victims, local authorities, Colt's family, and, indirectly, Colt himself, Friel gives readers an exclusive look at an outlaw legend. Set against the backdrop of the Pacific Northwest's evergreen islands, where Internet millionaires coexist with survivalists and ex-hippies, this is a gripping, stranger-than-fiction tale about a neglected and troubled child who outfoxed the authorities, gained a cult following, and made the world take notice.

    

    It was the U.K.’s worst rail disaster in years. On the morning of October 5, 1999, two rush-hour commuter trains collided just outside London. Hundreds were feared dead. Though he was traveling in the front-most carriage, the novelist Andrew Rosenheim survived the crash. In “The Secrets of Carriage H,” Rosenheim recalls in heart-pounding detail the events of that day and opens up about the emotional rollercoaster that consumed him for months thereafter. Told with the rich textures of a novel and the bare heart of a memoir, “The Secrets of Carriage H” explores the unspoken consequences of survival and offers brutal, sometimes hilarious insight into the human condition. Andrew Rosenheim was born and raised in Chicago, but has lived in England for the last thirty-five years. He worked in publishing for many years at Oxford University Press and then as the Managing Director of Penguin Press. He is the author of seven novels, most recently Fear Itself and The Little Tokyo Informant. His writing has appeared in The Times, The New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. Married, he lives with his wife and twin daughters near Oxford and is the editor of Kindle Singles in the U.K.Cover design by Evan Twohy.

    ‘Flying the Knife Edge’ is the story of an ordinary man experiencing extraordinary things as a pilot in Papua New Guinea in the 1990s. After an untimely exit from the Royal New Zealand Air Force, New Zealander Matt McLaughlin took a leap into the unknown, travelling to Papua New Guinea to work as a missionary pilot. He soon switched from missionary to mercenary, and over the next three and a half years, as he built up the necessary experience to chase his goal of becoming an airline captain, his life was a rollercoaster ride of adventure, risk, near-misses, and tragedy. Matt lived on the knife edge of bush pilot ops in one of the world’s most dangerous flying environments. Along the way he soaked up some fascinating local history: the country's vital role in WWII’s Pacific Theatre; the disappearance of aviator Amelia Earhart; the chaos of the Bougainville civil war; the Morobe gold rush of the 1930s... “The gap in the cloud became smaller and smaller as I descended, a shrinking tunnel twisting down the gorge. In a matter of seconds I was so low my wheels barely cleared the trees on the valley floor as I passed, and jungle-clad walls closed in on me until I was a mere wingspan from both sides of the valley. And then, in an instant, the gap was gone and I was flying blind. In cloud. In the bottom of a gorge. With terrain on both sides rising thousands of feet above me. Time stopped. The passengers started screaming, anticipating the aircraft impacting the side of the mountain. And their deaths. I had the capacity for just one other thought: Will I hear the sound of the airframe smashing into the trees as we crash, or will I be dead before it registers?”

    Like that of many white farmers, his family's land was 'reclaimed' by Mugabe's government for redistribution. But Ben's family fought back. Appealing to international law, they instigated a suit against Mugabe's government via the SADC (The Southern African Development Community). The case was deferred time and again while Mugabe's men pulled strings. But after Freeth and his parents-in-law were abducted and beaten within inches of death in 2008, the SADC deemed any further delay to be an obstruction of justice. The case was heard, and successful on all counts. But the story doesn't end there. In 2009 the family farm was burnt to the ground. The fight for justice in Zimbabwe is far from over - this book is for anyone who wants to see into the heart of one of today's hardest places, and how human dignity flourishes even in the most adverse circumstances.

    Foster carer Mia Marconi was thrilled when he first arrived – a boy the same age as her son.It can be so bewildering for foster children when they arrive. The older ones are usually withdrawn and sullen. The younger ones will be screaming, spitting at you, making themselves sick and throwing themselves on the floor.For Mia, it’s normally her boisterous, happy children who provide the comfort at the beginning, because why should they trust another adult. Children always feel safe and secure when there are other children about. Mia believes it’s through making relationships with other children that they begin to trust adults again. But little did she know that six-year-old Brody was actually taking his anger and frustration out on her son. She quickly begins to realise the heavy price her family has had to pay. (Amazon.com)

    These were household names with glory-laden careers whose exploits on the pitch will never be forgotten. Yet, despite access to such fabulous raw material, they have mostly produced bloody awful books – predictable, plodding, repetitive, self-important and just plain boring. They may have been better footballers than Howey, but he has written the most entertaining football memoir you are ever likely to read. Not that Lee Howey’s football career is in any way undistinguished. He won the First Division Championship with his beloved Sunderland in 1995 and played in the Premier League against some of the most celebrated names in English football, including Jürgen Klinsmann, Ryan Giggs, Eric Cantona, Gianfranco Zola, Peter Schmeichel, Ian Wright, Alan Shearer and Fabrizio Ravanelli – and not always unsuccessfully. It wasn’t all assaults upon the kneecaps on wet Tuesday nights in Hartlepool (though there is plenty of that too).This honest, thoughtful and hilarious book may not end with an unforgettable game at Wembley, or a 100th England cap. However, it will amuse and delight fans of all teams in its portrait of the game of football before it disappeared up its own backside.

    Moreover, he was as legendary a figure on the streets of New York as on the streets of London.Pearson persuaded the mysterious criminal leader to talk to him - and the result was a story even more extraordinary than that of the Kray twins. Here Pearson reveals the true story of the Englishman who became the adopted son of Joey Pagano, the head of one of the major New York crime families. Here the Englishman tells the story that no-one else dared to tell.

    We opened for business at 5 p.m. and already there was a queue of hungry customers on the cobbled street of London's East End. In 1950s and 60s Bermondsey, the fish-and-chip shop was at the centre of the community. And at the heart of the chippy itself was 'Hooray' Hilda Kemp, a spirited matriarch who dispensed fish suppers and an abundance of sympathy to a now-vanished world of East Enders. For 'Hooray' Hilda knew all to well what it was like to feel real, aching hunger. Growing up in the slums of 1920s south-east London, the daughter of a violent alcoholic who drank away his wages rather than put food on the table, she could spot when a customer was in need and would sneak them an extra big portion of chips, on the house. As Hilda works in the chippy six days a week - cutting the potatoes and frying the fish, yesterday's rag becoming today's dinner plate - she hears all the gossip from the close-knit community. There are rumours that the gang wars are hotting up: the Richardsons and the Krays are playing out their fights across south-east London. And the industrial strike is carrying on for a painfully long time for the mothers with many mouths to feed. At home, Hilda's children are latchkey kids, letting themselves in from school and helping themselves to whatever is in the larder until she gets in from her long, hard day at work. Despite tragedy striking her family, Hilda never complained of the loss of her daughter at a tragically young age, nor the tough upbringing she narrowly escaped. With a cast of colourful characters - dirty ragamuffins, struggling housewives, rough-diamond gang members - 'Hooray' Hilda's story is one of grit, romance, nostalgia and British endurance. Told to her granddaughter Cathryn, this memoir is the uplifting sequel to 'WE AIN'T GOT NO DRINK, PA' and is a testament to a woman who lived life to the full, who enjoyed laughter and loved fiercely - even though her heart was broken many times over.

    But she escaped a life of drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity for a fresh start with Jesus. Cleaned up and happy, with a handsome husband, a nice house, and two wonderful children, her life seemed perfect. Then, the unthinkable: In an instant, everything changed. That one moment triggered a chain reaction of unwanted challenges, and her life would never be the same. Can you relate? In an instant... • the marriage is over, • the job ends, • the car’s wrecked, • the money’s gone, • the diagnosis is pronounced ... ... and your dreams are crushed. All you can do is cry, “Why?” You long for the lost to be found, for the broken to be fixed, for the stolen to be returned. You want your life back! In The Widow Wore Pink, you’ll discover that the God who was faithful to Robyn will also be faithful to you. Learn to face the unwelcome changes in your life by knowing and trusting the promises of God for yourself. Robyn Dykstra is an author, speaker, and Bible teacher who loves Jesus. For decades, Robyn has been presenting life-changing messages to help thousands energize their faith in God and find the strength to face life’s challenges. WWW.ROBYNDYKSTRA.COM

    Army base in Germany in the 1950s. There, he becomes a fan of a G.I. stationed at the base, one Elvis Presley, whose music is played over and over on the radio. When Orson is caught stealing recordings of Elvis's tunes from the PX, the attendant publicity catches the star's attention, and he comes to visit his young fan. Thus begins a lifelong friendship. As Elvis's career rockets ever higher and his behavior becomes ever more erratic, the two share many adventures. The sixties explode, and Elvis becomes the icon of the nation, while Orson, a college demonstrator, drifts away from regular life while looking for something of substance to believe in. Each man is an emblem of his time, as social conventions crumble, barriers fall, and the cultural landscape changes forever.A panorama of change and dissent, of the ability of friends to stay true despite distance and time, Elvis in the Morning portrays a nation in change and the effects of celebrity on innocence.