Showbusiness: Diary of a Rock 'n' Roll Nobody


Mark Radcliffe - 1998
    Combining his trademark humor with an acute eye for the ridiculous, Mark admits his part in bands like The Berlin Airlift, the life-changing punk revolution in Bob Sleigh and The Crestas, and even a flirtation with thirty-something pub rock. Interwoven with the musical disasters is the appealing rites-of-passage story of a middle-class grammar school boy who finally leaves Bolton for university. Splattered with memorable episodes and Viz-like characters, Showbusiness retraces the steps that should have led Mark to headlining Wembley Arena, but which took him to Radio 1 instead.

Rolling with the Punchlines: A Memoir


Urzila Carlson - 2020
    Urzila talks candidly about her childhood with a great family, apart from her abusive dad, and about growing up in South Africa. She shares crazy but true tales about her OE, her move to New Zealand, coming out, getting married and having children, and her life in comedy. This is a great listen from one of our most loved and most popular comedians.

Catch a Fire: The Autobiography


Melanie B. - 2002
    Not bad for the rebellious, mixed-up girl from Leeds who is still only in her 20s. Born to a working-class mixed-race family from Leeds, Melanie B grew up feeling different from her schoolfriends. Her hyperactive energy was channelled into drama school, and in 1994 the Spice Girls were formed. The rest is history.

Drops of Reality: Tales from a doctor's surgery


M.A. Moss - 2017
    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…

Fighting Back: The Rocky Bleier Story


Rocky Bleier - 1975
    Book by Rocky Bleier, Terry O'Neil

A Nurse In Time


Evelyn Prentis - 1979
    It was in 1934 that Evelyn left home for the first time to enrol as a trainee at a busy Nottingham hospital in the hope of GBP25 a year. This book gives her account of those days of dedication and hardship.

Perfect Sound Whatever


James Acaster - 2019
    Thinking this is his rock bottom, little does James know that by the end of the year he will have befouled himself in a Los Angeles steakhouse and disrespected a pensioner on television. Luckily, there is one thing he can rely on for comfort – music. In true Acaster fashion, this ends up with a completely unnecessary mission: to buy as much music as he can released in 2016, the year before everything went wrong (for James, at least). Some albums are life-changing masterpieces, others are ‘Howdilly Doodilly’ by Okilly Dokilly, a metalcore album devoted to The Simpsons character Ned Flanders. But all of them play a part in the year that James gets his life back on track.In PERFECT SOUND WHATEVER, James takes us through the music of 2016, the bullshit of 2017, and how the beauty of one defeated the ugliness of the other. He will also reveal how he stole a cookie from Clint Eastwood and attempted to complete his musical odyssey by reforming one of Kettering’s most overlooked bands.

Billy the Kid: An Autobiography


Daniel A. Edwards - 2014
    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.

India’s Bravehearts : Untold Stories from the Indian Army


Satish Dua - 2020
    This book tells gripping stories of death-defying operations and daring surgical strikes, the intense training soldiers have to undergo to become battle-fit, what life is really like on the LoC and the lives of the young men who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Page-turning, thrilling and heart-breaking, you will see the Indian Army and our soldiers close up, like you have never seen them before.

Monsters of River and Rock: My Life as Iron Maiden’s Compulsive Angler


Adrian Smith - 2020
    But once a fisherman, always a fisherman. The gear went with him; the fish got bigger; the adventures more extreme.Welcome to the world of Adrian Smith, as he clocks in to his day job furthering the geographical boundaries of hard rock, and clocks out to explore far-flung rivers, seas, waterways, lakes, and pools on his fearless quest for fishing nirvana. His first sturgeon was a whopping 100-pounder from Canada’s swirling Fraser River that nearly wiped him out mid-Maiden tour. And how about the close shave with a large shark off the Virgin Islands while wading waist-deep for bonefish? Not to mention an enviable list of specimen coarse fish from the UK. It's a lifetime adventure in fishing.

Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers: The Rise of Motörhead


Martin Popoff - 2017
    Through interviews with all of the principal troublemakers, Martin Popoff celebrates the formation of the band and the records that made them legends: Motörhead, Overkill, Bomber, Ace of Spades, No Sleep ’til Hammersmith, and Iron Fist. An in-depth coda brings the story up to date with the shocking recent deaths of Taylor and Kilmister.Motörhead comes to life in this book as bad-luck bad boys — doused in drink and drugs, most notably speed — incapable of running their lives right, save for Fast Eddie, who is charged with holding things together. Popoff also examines the heady climate of music through the band’s rise to prominence during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, with detailed reflection on Motörhead’s unique position in the scene as both originators and embattled survivors who carried on the renegade spirit of those times.

Struck: A Husband’s Memoir of Trauma and Triumph


Douglas Segal - 2018
    Miraculously, his daughter was unharmed, but his wife faced a series of life-threatening injuries, including the same one that famously left Christopher Reeve paralyzed. Following the accident, Segal began sending regular email updates to their circle of friends and family—a list that continued to grow as others heard of the event and were moved by the many emotional and spiritual issues it raised. Segal's compelling memoir is an intimate and honest chronicle built around these email updates, and is a profound example of how people show up for one another in times of crisis.Alternatingly harrowing, humorous, heartbreaking, and hopeful, this is an uplifting tribute to love, determination, and how the compassion of community holds the power to heal, serving as an inspiring testament to the resilience of the human spirit when faced with pain and adversity.

The Exmoor Files: How I Lost A Husband And Found Rural Bliss


Liz Jones - 2009
    Full description

Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine


Joe Hagan - 2017
    Joe Hagan provides readers with a backstage pass to storied concert venues and rock-star hotel rooms; he tells never before heard stories about the lives of rock stars and their handlers; he details the daring journalism (Tom Wolfe, Hunter S. Thompson, P.J. O'Rourke) and internecine office politics that accompanied the start-up; he animates the drug and sexual appetites of the era; and he reports on the politics of the last fifty years that were often chronicled in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine.Supplemented by a cache of extraordinary documents and letters from Wenner's personal archives, Sticky Fingers depicts an ambitious, mercurial, wide-eyed rock and roll fan of who exalts in youth and beauty and learns how to package it, marketing late sixties counterculture as a testament to the power of American youth. The result is a fascinating and complex portrait of man and era, and an irresistible biography of popular culture, celebrity, music, and politics in America.

Love, Alice: My Life as a Honeymooner


Audrey Meadows - 1994
    The book is full of many personal stories never told or published before. 16-page photo insert.