Don't Eat the Puffin: Tales From a Travel Writer's Life


Jules Brown - 2018
    Get paid to travel and write about it.Only no one told Jules that it would mean eating oily seabirds, repeatedly falling off a husky sled, getting stranded on a Mediterranean island, and crash-landing in Iran.The exotic destinations come thick and fast – Hong Kong, Hawaii, Huddersfield – as Jules navigates what it means to be a travel writer in a world with endless surprises up its sleeve.Add in a cast of larger-than-life characters – Elvis, Captain Cook, his own travel-mad Dad – and an eye for the ridiculous, and this journey with Jules is one you won’t want to miss.

Polish Girl In Pursuit of the English Dream: INTIMATE & INSPIRING TRUE STORY ON THE JOURNEY TO ENLIGHTENMENT


Monika Wiśniewska - 2018
    Finding the SECRET to a happy, peaceful life in self-love was worth the 13- year journey in a foreign country because without it, I may have never found THAT SECRET. Life is about the choices we make. Each choice decides about our destiny. WE are in charge of our destiny, especially when it comes to love and relationships...’Author's dream to live in England came true in 2004 but when she suddenly lost most of her belongings, health, career, money, home and her soulmate, she decided to share the story which led to this tragic moment. Will she find the courage, resilience and determination to start her life abroad all over? Will she make the right choices that life presents her with? How will she deal with poverty, pain, homelessness and betrayals whilst looking for love?Travel to around fifty European locations, fall in love, have your heart broken, fall in love again and find strength to keep going but never, ever give up on life! It truly is a brave record of one woman's relationships and heartbreaks, dealing with depression in the wake of Brexit and her life as a newly named 'immigrant' or simply an EU citizen. Are you truly ready for a journey to feel UNCONDITIONAL LOVE together with one brave 'Polish Girl' ? REVIEW FROM THE DAILY BRUNCH:THE MOST INSPIRING BOOK ON LOVE!'For me, ‘Polish Girl; In Pursuit of the English Dream’ is a true masterpiece of reflections on love and life, making me want to recommend it to everyone who is ready to set off on their own spiritual journey to find out more about their own soul together with one courageous, unique and life-loving Polish girl. I can guarantee that you will relate to at least one thing in her life story, if not a few. I wish there were more stories like this published which millions of people can so easily relate to. After all, the spiritual journey is what we are all here for. If we cannot evolve and learn from the past to have a better future, is life really worth living?'

Too Scared to Cry: A True Short Story


Maggie Hartley - 2016
    Also contains a sneak peek chapter from Maggie's highly anticipated debut memoir, TINY PRISONERS.Brothers Ben and Damien are shockingly quiet when they arrive on Maggie's doorstep. They don't shout or play like normal three and four year olds. They hardly dare make a sound, so much have they been conditioned to be 'seen and not heard' by their mother and controlling stepfather.More disturbingly, their little baby half-brother Noah is completely unresponsive. He doesn't play, he doesn't smile, he doesn't crawl - he doesn't even cry. In a state of blankness brought about by emotional neglect, poor baby Noah is disconnected from the world. Maggie has never seen such a young life so affected before. Yet with time, love and care, Maggie gradually unpicks what has caused this terrible void. She teaches the children to play and laugh and to not be afraid to make noise. We see Ben, Damien and Noah take steps towards a positive future and their journey reaches a happy conclusion when they are adopted by a loving family. With love and affection, they are no longer scared to be themselves. They are free to make their voices heard.

A Sunburnt Childhood


Toni Tapp Coutts - 2016
    But there was no 'big house' here - Toni did not grow up in a large homestead. She lived in a shack that had no electricity and no running water. The oppressive climate of the Territory - either wet or dry - tested everyone. Fish were known to rain from the sky and sometimes good men drank too much and drowned trying to cross swollen rivers.Toni grew up with the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on the station, and got into scrapes with her ever-increasing number of siblings. She loved where she grew up - she was happy on the land with her friends and family, observing the many characters who made up the community on Killarney. When she was sent to boarding school all she wanted to do was go back to the land she loved, despite the fact that her parents' marriage was struggling as Bill Tapp succumbed to drink and June Tapp refused to go under with him.Toni's love of the natural world and of people alike has resulted in a tender portrait of a life that many people would consider tough. She brings vividly to the page a story seldom seen: a Territory childhood, with all its colour, characters and contradictions.

The Way I See It


Patti Davis - 1992
    The daughter of Ronald and Nancy Reagan offers an insider's view of growing up Reagan, describing her father's emotional abandonment of her, her mother's cruelty, and the family's bitter rivalries, uncontrollable rage, and dark secrets.

Death in the A Shau Valley: L Company LRRPs in Vietnam, 1969-70


Larry Chambers - 1998
    But his unit's mission stayed the same: act as the eyes and ears of the 101st deep in the dreaded A Shau Valley--where the NVA ruled.Relentless thick fog frequently made fighter bombers useless in the A Shau, and the enemy had furnished the nearby mountaintops with antiaircraft machine guns to protect the massive trail network that snaked through it. So, outgunned, outmanned, and unsupported, the teams of L Company executed hundreds of courageous missions. Now, in this powerful personal record, Larry Chambers recaptures the experience of the war's most brutal on-the-job training, where the slightest noise or smallest error could bring sudden--and certain--death. . . .

Lost Daughter: A Daughter's Suffering, a Mother's Unconditional Love, an Extraordinary Story of Hope and Survival.


Nola Wunderle - 2013
    I hadn't slept properly for weeks. All of us had been waiting for this moment for months. Our fourth child was soon to arrive ...This is the story of 18-year-old Kartya Wunderle, one of 64 babies flown out of Taiwan in the early 80s. Babies stolen from their mothers or sold by their families and adopted out to unsuspecting overseas parents. At 15, Kartya began to use heroin in an attempt to take away the pain of not knowing who she was and where she came from. Her distraught parents watched their beautiful daughter slowly slip away from them, spiralling towards a tragic and almost inevitable conclusion. Out of desperation and fired by an unconditional love for her daughter, Nola Wunderle resolved to find Kartya's birth mother and change the ending to Kartya's story. An amazing search for one woman in a country of 22 million began. The result was nothing short of miraculous, and made Kartya a national hero in her homeland. Lost Daughter is a moving testament to the power of love and the strength of the human spirit, one that will humble and inspire all who read it.

Her Ladyship's Girl


Anwyn Moyle - 2014
    At the age of sixteen, she was sent to London to earn her living, where she found a live-in job as a scullery maid. Her day began at 5 a.m., cleaning grates and lighting fires, then she would scrub floors and polish the house - all for two shillings a week, one of which she had to send home to her mother. Things improved when she secured the position of lady's maid in a house in Belgravia, on five shillings a week. Anwyn was required to be a hairdresser, beautician, confidante and secretary. Reporting directly to the lady of the house, she was expected to cover up her mistress's affairs. Her time as a lady's maid was over when she was caught with a young aristocrat in her room and banished from the house, but Anwyn found further employment in a variety of houses, working above and below stairs. However, she found her niche in the jolly working-class atmosphere of the capital city's pubs. London between the wars and during the Blitz is richly evoked and, despite all her hardships, Anwyn never asks for the readers' sympathy.

Jenniemae & James: A Memoir in Black and White


Brooke Newman - 2010
    He was also a notorious philanderer with an insatiable appetite for women and fast cars, a man who challenged intellectual and emotional limits, and a man of excess who oftentimes fell victim to his own anxiety. Jenniemae Harrington was an uneducated, illiterate African American maid from Alabama who began working for the Newman family in 1948—and who, despite her devout Christianity, played the illegal, underground lottery called “policy,” which she won with astonishing frequency. Though highly implausible, these two dissimilar individuals developed a deep and loyal friendship, largely because of their common love of numbers and their quick wits.Theirs was a friendship that endured even during an era when segregation still prevailed. For James, Jenniemae provided a particular ease and shared sense of irreverent humor that he found difficult to duplicate with his beautiful, intelligent, and artistic wife, Ruth. And when the Newman home was darkened by the tensions of the political climate during the Cold War, or by James’s affairs, or by Ruth’s bouts of depression, it was Jenniemae who maintained the point of gravity, caring for the family’s children when their parents were often lost in their own worlds. From Jenniemae’s perspective, James offered more than just a steady income. He became an unlikely and loyal friend. He taught her to read, and he drove her to and from his upscale suburban house and her home in the impoverished section of Washington, D.C. (and sometimes, much to her chagrin, in his Rolls-Royce), after she had been raped by a white bus driver. Intrigued by her uncanny wins at the lottery, James even installed a second telephone line in the house so that Jenniemae could keep track of her bets—a decision that raised a few eyebrows at the time.It is this extraordinary relationship that the Newmans’ daughter, Brooke, reveals in Jenniemae & James, as she elegantly weaves together the story of two very distinct and different people who each had a significant impact on her upbringing. In doing so, she also paints a vivid political and cultural picture of the time—when the world was terrified by the possibility of nuclear war; when America was reeling from the McCarthy hearings; when technological advances like televisions, satellites, and interstate highways were changing the country; when America was just beginning to venture into Vietnam; and when African Americans were still considered second-class citizens with limited rights, before the explosion of racial tensions in the early 1960s. Jenniemae & James is an inspiring, heartwarming memoir about friendship and love across the racial barrier.

Whisper Mountain


Vivian Higginbotham Nichols - 2017
    Because it was extremely difficult to verbalize the events to her own children years later, her adult family knew very little of the details until 30 years after her passing in 1967. That is when her granddaughter discovered her writings and promised to tell the story of what she endured.

The Last Gangster: My Final Confession


Charlie Richardson - 2013
    Boss of the Richardson Gang and rival of the Krays, to cross him would result in brutal repercussions. Famously arrested on the day England won the World Cup in 1966, his trial heard he allegedly used iron bars, bolt cutters and electric shocks on his enemies.The Last Gangster is Richardson’s frank account of his largely untold life story, finished just before his death in September 2012. He shares the truth behind the rumours and tells of his feuds with the Krays for supremacy, undercover missions involving politicians, many lost years banged up in prison and reveals shocking secrets about royalty, phone hacking, bent coppers and the infamous black box.Straight up, shocking and downright gripping, this is the ultimate exposé on this legendary gangster and his extraordinary life.

Two Decades Naked


Leigh Hopkinson - 2016
    None of them fit so well, however, as stripping. She figured it couldn't be that difficult - she was just going to dance on stage in front of a bunch of strangers. She'd show them a bit of skin, but the gig wasn't going to last that long. Or so she imagined. While stripping was harder than Leigh thought it would be, she hadn't counted on it being so exhilarating - or lucrative. So when she moved to Melbourne and needed to make a living, the lure of her old job was strong. The world of the strip club had become familiar, even reassuring, though some of the people she met during the course of her job didn't exactly give her faith in the future of humanity. Over the course of Leigh's career, she learnt a lot about other people and even more about herself, and the result is a story that delves into a world that not everyone visits but everyone finds fascinating.

Jeff Gordon: Racing Back to the Front--My Memoir


Jeff Gordon - 2003
    It didn't matter that Jeff Gordon hailed from California -- hardly a fountain of stockcar pedigree -- or that they said he was too small to race with the big boys on the dirt tracks and ovals of his youth. It didn't matter that Dale Earnhardt called this upstart "Wonderboy" -- no one raced the legendary Earnhardt harder, and no two drivers had more respect for each other. And it didn't matter that the racing world said Gordon was finished with the breakup of the crew on the #24 car and the departure of Ray Evernham, his crew chief, in 1999 -- he came back two seasons later to win a record-equaling fourth Winston Cup, this time with Robbie Loomis as crew chief. In the end, all that matters is that Jeff Gordon is the greatest living NASCAR champion, and it only remains to be seen just how many championships he can win.But what's it really like to climb into a stockcar every weekend and challenge for a championship? Offering a never-before-seen entry into the thrilling world of NASCAR racing, Jeff Gordon takes us into the cockpit of the #24 DuPont Chevrolet car; right into the garages where his cars are made; and inside the lives and efforts of his extraordinary team, the Rainbow Warriors. Just how does his car get built, tested, and driven, and how do these personalities mesh into a championship team? Along the way we find out what he thinks of life as both a NASCAR champion and a never-left-alone celebrity, where he came from and to whom he owes all his successes, and above all, what it takes to be a champion in one of the most dangerous and thrilling sportsof all."Jeff Gordon: Racing Back to the Front" -- My Memoir is a pit pass all its own, giving passionate NASCAR fans unique access into the life and career of one of the most storied champions in the sport.

Court in the Middle


Andrew Fraser - 2007
    Then it all went horribly wrong. In 1999 he was charged with being knowingly concerned with the importation of a commercial quantity of cocaine. Fraser pleaded guilty to a charge of possessing, trafficking a small quantity, and using cocaine over a period of time. He was sentenced to seven years in maximum security prison. Court in the Middle describes his early years—growing up in a family of lawyers, running hard to build a criminal law practice; his successful years with a national practice, and defending high profile, sometimes notorious, clients. He also discusses his relationship with cocaine, addiction and deals, crime and punishment, and the shocking details of his time spent in a maximum security prison.

The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement


Virginia Lloyd - 2008
    After her beloved John's death from cancer, Virginia was faced with addressing the chronic rising damp problem in the house they had shared and, over her first year as a young widow, her house had to dry from the inside out – and so did Virginia. The Young Widow's Book of Home Improvement is a wry and touching love story that plays with the parallels between our homes and ourselves.