At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state - and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise - a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet. About ... View More...
It's 3 a.m. and Elizabeth Gilbert is sobbing on the bathroom floor. She's in her thirties, she has a husband, a house, they're trying for a baby - and she doesn't want any of it. A bitter divorce and a turbulent love affair later, she emerges battered and bewildered and realises it is time to pursue her own journey in search of three things she has been missing: pleasure, devotion and balance. So she travels to Rome, where she learns Italian from handsome, brown-eyed identical twins and gains twenty-five pounds, an ashram in India, where she finds that enlightenment entails getting up in the m... View More...
The biography of David Helfgott, a gifted young Australian pianist who suffered a severe mental breakdown and was institutionalized. Although brilliant and charismatic, he was insecure and reliant on anti-psychotic medication, but eventually overcame his illness to achieve artistic greatness. This story was written by his wife Gillian, who tells of the powerful bond between them and of sharing her life with a man who came through the darkness of his past. View More...
Jennifer Worth's tales of being a midwife in 1950s London, now a major BBC TV series. Jennifer Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were ... View More...
The third and final book in the bestselling CALL THE MIDWIFE series, now a major BBC TV series. This final book in Jennifer Worth's memories of her time as a midwife in London's East End brings her story full circle. As always there are heartbreaking stories such as the family devastated by tuberculosis and a ship's woman who 'serviced' the entire crew, as well as plenty of humour and warmth, such as the tale of two women who shared the same husband! Other stories cover backstreet abortions, the changing life of the docklands, infanticide, as well as the lives of the inhabitants of Nonnatus ... View More...
The phenomenal international bestseller Before you can fly, you have to be free.In a small, desperately poor village in north-east China, a young peasant boy sits at his rickety old school desk, more interested in the birds outside than in Chairman Mao's Red Book and the grand words it contains. But that day, some strange men come to his school - Madame Mao's cultural delegates. They are looking for young peasants to mould into faithful guards of Chairman Mao's great vision for China. This is the true story of how that one moment in time, by the thinnest thread of a chance, changed the course ... View More...
One day, not so very many years ago, a small peasant boy was chosen to study ballet at the Beijing Dance Academy. His mother urged him to take this chance of a lifetime. But Li was only eleven years old and he was scared and lonely, pushed away from all that he had ever known and loved. He hated the strict training routines and the strange place he had been brought to. All he wanted to do was go home - to his mother, father and six brothers, to his own small village. But soon Li realised that his mother was right. He had the chance to do something special with his life - and he never turned ba... View More...
Michael Parkinson occupies a unique place in the public consciousness. Through his perceptive onscreen interviews over the past five decades, he has introduced millions of people to the personalities of major international figures in sport, showbiz, politics, the arts and journalism. In Parky's People, Parkinson sets down on record the highlights of his interviews which provide an intimate insight into the private lives and personal characters of great celebrities from around the world, from Tony Blair and Henry Kissinger, John Betjeman and WH Auden, to Ken Dodd and Elton John. Now an internat... View More...
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