The story of Captain Scott's first expedition, by one who went with him. Louis Bernacchi's book Saga of the 'Discovery' is a comprehensive history of the fascinating ship which was built specifically for Antarctic exploration, and which was used intermittently for such purposes until the early 1930s, when she was given to the Boy Scouts Association. For the next 50 years the Discovery was a training ship for the Sea Scouts and the Royal Naval Reserve, moored on the Embankment in London. Then in 1986 the Discovery returned to Dundee, where she was built, and is now berthed at Discovery Point, where visitors can go on board, and learn the history of the ship in the adjoining museum. The book covers the ship's building in Dundee, its first - and most famous - expedition as Captain Scott's ship for his first foray to Antarctica, from 1901-1904, and its subsequent history up until retirement. Long after the return of Scott's expedition in 1904 the Discovery continued to serve the cause of Antarctic exploration, most notably when commanded by Sir Douglas Mawson on the B.A.N.Z.A.R.E expedition of 1929-1931. Bernacchi accompanied Scott on his first expedition. As the physicist, he was responsible for the scientific work, and here recounts the experiences, accomplishments, and setbacks they encountered. Also on that expedition were some of the legendary figures of Antarctic exploration: besides Captain Robert Falcon Scott himself, Dr Edward Wilson and Ernest Shackleton were to experience these harsh conditions for the first time, to be enchanted and enthralled, and enticed back to the continent with, for the first two, fateful results. Apart from recounting the various expeditions that Discovery accomplished, Bernacchi also provides a useful introduction to the wild life, flora and fauna of the region. Louis Bernacchi was the only person on Scott's first expedition to have prior Antarctic experience, having been amongst the first party ever to overwinter in Antarctica, from 1898 to 1900.

Britain and the world were shocked in October 1966 by live television pictures coming from a small mining village in Wales. They showed a human tragedy unfolding after thousands of tons of coal waste fell from a mountainside onto its primary school and surrounding houses. The majority of the 144 people killed were children under 12. After more than 50 years the survivors of that disaster -- among the worst in Britain's peacetime history -- still live with painful memories and all-too-real after effects. In this first ever oral history of the tragedy, people who were there tell their stories, some speaking publicly for the first time. Built around 27 extensive interviews, Surviving Aberfan is a story of official neglect and betrayal, horror and great sadness. But it also demonstrates how courage, hope and effort can rebuild a devastated community and move forward.

For Felicity, growing up with her unmarried mother and grandparents in a tiny bungalow in Scarborough, life could be frightening and confusing. Why did her beloved granddad just make excuses when her gran subjected her to physical and psychological abuse? Why did her dad, who lived alone nearby, call her by a different name and hide her from his family? What was wrong with her? Sick of it all, Felicity ran away from home aged fifteen and for years she struggled to find her way until she qualified as a teacher and found a career she loved. But at the age of fifty, a successful woman, she still felt hollow inside. Needing to understand why her gran had abused her, she started to research her family's history and uncovered their secrets one by one, including a shocking truth kept buried out of shame. Her great-grandmother Emily Swann, a brutalised wife, had been hanged for the murder of her violent husband... Powerful and moving, Sins of the Family shows how tragedies can impact generations to come but understanding and forgiveness can heal the past. PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED AS GUARD A SILVER SIXPENCE

Kate Holden's] road to recovery begins when she starts working in a brothel. The clients seem to fit the same distribution curve - brutish at one end, sweet at the other - but now that the trade is coming to her, she draws strength from the power of her allure, starts to take pride in her work, and discovers she's good at it. This surprising trajectory, along with its searing intellectual and emotional honesty and the quality of the writing, easily sets In My Skin apart from most other my-substance-abuse-hell memoirs. - The Independent on Sunday 21/05/06. Her vivid narrative voice lends a gritty poetry to her tale of heroin addiction, half-hearted rehab and prostitution. The book's power to shock rests in its contrasts; the life Kate led during her 20s may have been unexceptional for many young women, but not for a pretty, intelligent, middle-class girl with a classics degree, a job in a bookshop and a loving family of liberal, politically aware academics. She conjures with glittering clarity the sense of invincibility that comes with the first taste of adult life, the belief that drugs can make love and art transcendent, the conviction that you are in control.In My Skin is a compelling story of love and squalor that retains humanity and sympathy. - The Observer, 14/05/06.

On 13 November 1943, Jerzy Feliks Urman (known as Jerzyk) killed himself, thinking the Gestapo had arrived. He was eleven and a half. He and his family were in hiding in Drohobycz, during the German occupation of East Galicia, now western Ukraine. A year earlier the family had quit Stanislawow in the wake of brutal round-ups and deportations of Jews. The boy's parents, uncle, and grandmother survived the war. He kept a diary and jottings during the two months before he died. Anthony Rudolf, Jerzyk's second cousin once removed, published these texts in 1991 in a translation made from a family typescript of the original. The recent discovery of the diary of Sophie Urman, Jerzyk's mother, led Rudolf to commission a translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. She has also revised the earlier translation of Jerzyk's own diary after comparing the typescript and the original manuscript, which is now in Rudolf 's possession. The editor has written new introductions and made extensive annotations in an attempt to clarify complex and troubling issues.Drawing attention to specific remarks and episodes, he interprets the death of Jerzyk - the only child suicide in the extensive archive at Yad Vashem - not only as the tragic action of a child under pressure but also as a noble and heroic act. Likewise, the keeping of a diary, as with Anne Frank and other children in hiding, was a form of defiance, an example of what has come to be called spiritual or cultural resistance. The book also contains two more texts by Sophie, testimonies by Jerzyk's father and uncle, maps and family photographs. It ends with Rudolf 's account of the tragic death of Mark Rothstein, another second cousin. Mark was a few months younger than Jerzyk when he died in the East End of London on 27 March 1945, during the last day of the V2 bombing raids.

From the time she was a little girl, Maryam rebelled against the terrible second-class existence that was her destiny as an Afghan woman. She had witnessed the miserable fate of her grandmother and three aunts, and wished she had been born a boy. As a feisty teenager in Kabul, she was outraged when the Russians invaded her country. After she made a public show of defiance, she had to flee the country for her life. A new life of freedom seemed within her grasp,but her father arranged a traditional marriage to a fellow Afghan, who turned out to be a violent man. Beaten, raped and abused, Maryam found joy in the birth of a baby son. But then her brutal husband stole him away far beyond his mother's reach. For many long years she searched for her lost son, while civil war and Taliban oppression raged back home in Afghanistan. Set against a landscape littered with tragic tales of horrific suffering, Jean Sasson, author of Princess, chronicles the story of one resolute but tormented woman determined to achieve freedom and equality with men.

From Hagar to Rachel, is the vehicle that the author Dr Rachel Andrea Palmer has chosen to use to describe how she evolved over the course of her life from the bound and unhappy Hagar to Rachel the beloved. While it draws upon portions of her life, with the setting changing from the lush Caribbean scenery of her native country Trinidad to the metropolitan area of New York, it is still much more of a psychological journey than an autobiographical book.
From Hagar to Rachel is deeply spiritual, powerful and moving. In it Dr Palmer seeks to show how through developing an intimate relationship with God she was able to overcome her childhood pain, the sorrow of divorce, the bewilderment of being physically afflicted from birth and despite all the suffering and hardship develop into the beautiful, gracious and brilliant woman that she is.
Dr Palmer conjures up the images of her life so vividly that the readers will find themselves laughing at times, crying at others as they vicariously participate in her experiences. She takes the readers with her on the journey, showing clearly how the touch of the Master's hand and His love transformed, empowered and beautified her. This book will similarly touch each and every reader.

Undergoing more than 20 operations and surviving major organ failure would take its toll on anybody. But Helen Haynes not only survived these life-challenging experiences...she fought her way back to a successful working and sporting life, winning gold medals at the World Transplant Games and mastering her charity and professional speaking career. Helen was a determined and talented tennis player with a very promising future when she was diagnosed with kidney failure at the age of 20 - the result of taking too many anti-inflammatories while coping with training injuries. Helen endured years of ill-health, fighting for her life, before the generosity of not one, but two organ donors - including her own mother - ultimately saved and transformed her life. Now running her own business as a public speaking consultant and professional speaker, Helen shares her remarkable story in a candid and very moving way.

'I can tell you exactly the day it all went wrong - the day my mum attacked my dad with a kitchen knife. In those few, short seconds, a black hole opened up in my life and I fell right in.' Tina McGuff's life was perfect - or so she thought. Living in Dundee with her devoted parents and three younger sisters, she was a happy, healthy and confident thirteen-year-old. But all that changed in one horrifying act of revenge and Tina's world collapsed overnight. Terrified, lost and confused, she turned to the one thing she thought she could control - food. And so began the biggest fight of her life. Tina's life-or-death struggle with anorexia is told with devastating honesty in this extraordinary account of a girl at war with herself. Through her years in and out of psychiatric wards, Tina takes us to some of the darkest places of the mind. But in the end her courage, conviction and sheer determination win out. It took Tina seconds to snap and a lifetime to recover - but today, as a passionate campaigner for mental health, she is living proof that there is always a reason to hope that one day, things will get better.

The gripping true story of how Detective Superintendent Julie Mackay brought Melanie Road's murderer to justice. BATH, 1984 Jean Road, a 49-year-old mother of three, awakens to news that her daughter Melanie has been murdered in a nearby street as she walked home from a club in the early hours. Britain's biggest manhunt begins. A trail of blood is found leading away from the scene. It's a rare blood type. But despite a year-long inquiry and 94 arrests, the case is wound down. No one is charged with Melanie's murder. AVON & SOMERSET POLICE HQ, 2009 Detective Sergeant Julie Mackay, a 41-year-old single mother of three who has been overlooked for promotion for years, transfers to the Cold Case Unit. She unearths a file from the original inquiry and becomes hooked by the details: the rare blood type, Bath on a summer's night, the investigative wrong turns ... She takes on the case, and with the help of Melanie's inspirational mother works tirelessly to rebuild it. This is the true story of how she did it.

In the week before Christmas, on a cosy bed beside a log burner, a dog snoozes happily, her belly full of lobster. Just a few months earlier she had been laying in the cold and filth of a Welsh puppy farm, her belly empty of food but full of yet another litter of puppies. For six years Susie-Belle had been trapped in a life of misery as a breeding bitch in a puppy farm, tied up in the back of a putrid shed and experiencing neglect to a horrifying degree. For dogs like her, the end is usually a grim death, whether it's because they fail to be a good breeder or because they have simply become too old and weary to produce and raise the puppies that are demanded of them. A far happier ending awaited this little dog as she was rescued from the nightmare that is puppy farming and brought to safety. This is the moving tale of what life was like for one small dog and why no dog should be allowed to suffer at the hands of humans who value commercial profits more than life itself. This is the story of Susie-Belle and her road to recovery.

On September 11th 2001, Battalion Commander Richard Pitch Picciotto lead seven companies of fire fighters up the B stairway to Tower 1 of the World Trade Centre. Pitch and his men were on the 17th floor racing upward when the world seemed to explode around them. Out of radio communication with the command centre and with no time to reflect Pitch ordered the evacuation of Tower 1. Firefighters staged an orderly retreat until word came that the stairwell was blocked with debris. From his knowledge of the towers gained during service after the 1993 WTC bombing, Pitch lead the firefighters to an alternate stairwell, and the descent continued. After eight minutes when they reached floor 12 Pitch and his men discovered 50 traumatized civilians. Fourteen minutes had elapsed since the collapse of Tower 2. Pushing and cajoling them down and out Pitch was in the 7th floor stairwell when a sound of thunder was heard from above. It took eight seconds for Tower 1 to fall. Pitch and a handful of survivors woke to find themselves buried on the landing of floor 2, in an inky cavity broken by the screams of hurt men. This is the story of how they made it out.

'I am one of few Jewish survivors of World War Two, but one of many Jewish people to fight the Nazi regime. My story illustrates what happened to thousands of Jews and non-Jews alike. I have recorded the small details that made up our lives, the sheer luck that saved some of us and the atrocities that led to the deaths of so many, as a tribute to all those who suffered and died...' _______________ Selma van de Perre was seventeen when World War Two began. Until then, being Jewish in the Netherlands had been of no consequence. But by 1941 this simple fact had become a matter of life or death. Several times, Selma avoided being rounded up by the Nazis. Then, in an act of defiance, she joined the Resistance movement, using the pseudonym Margareta van der Kuit. For two years 'Marga' risked it all. Using a fake ID, and passing as Aryan she travelled around the country delivering newsletters, sharing information, keeping up morale - doing, as she later explained, what 'had to be done'. In July 1944 her luck ran out. She was transported to Ravensbruck, the women's concentration camp, as a political prisoner. Unlike her parents and sister - who, she would later discover, died in other camps - she survived by using her alias, pretending to be someone else. It was only after the war ended that she was allowed to reclaim her identity and dared to say once again: My name is Selma. Now, at ninety-nine, Selma remains a force of nature. Full of hope and courage, this is her story in her own words.

Janet Andrews has enjoyed a happy and fulfilled life, as packed with adventure and drama, love and laughter as she could have wished. But it has not been a carefree one. As a young woman she developed an acute form of multiple sclerosis, which has progressed until Janet, now in her sixties, is largely paralysed with the exception of partial movement in one arm and hand. It has progressed to the point where she cannot get up or go to bed without the assistance of carers and a mechanical hoist. Yet her remarkable sense of humour and her love for her family and the world around her shine on undiminished. Funny, moving and inspirational, A Day In A Life is Janet's story.

Theresa was a normal happy little girl till one day her whole world came crashing down. The first turning point for her was when her father left the family home, she adored her father she couldn't understand why he had walked out of her life. She grew up being bitter to-wards life especially men, but when she was 17yrs she met a young man, and the following year they married . Some years later, Theresa now aged 37yrs and after divorcing her 1st and later her 2nd husband - life began to improve for her. Then one day returning home from work she realised she was being followed, as she neared a row of shops she was suddenly attacked from behind, it was her ex-husband Richard. He pushed her hard to the wall and held her with his body restraining her from running, one hand around her throat the other raised into a fist. She wanted to scream, but his grip was too tight, expecting his fist she closed her eyes and prayed. In desperation she kicked out, catching him on the leg with the heel of her shoe, he cried out loosing his grip on her. She tried to run, he lunged at her once again, catching her by her hair pulling her violently backwards, she lost her footing and fell through the glass shop window. Richard then turned and fled as the shopkeeper, upon hearing the crash, came running shouting -- he would call the police, she was saved. She managed to reach home and once inside, doors firmly locked and bolted, she sank into her big arm chair and sobbed uncontrollably, she was lucky, no major injury's. Life she realised was slowly once again turning against her, everything she had fought so hard for was slowly slipping away, she could not and would not go through her past life style again it was too painful and horrific, she had to fight against the cruel hand of fate anyway she could, her strength yet again would be put to the test. Her only solace was her beloved Adam.

The astonishing true story of Beverli Rhodes, child victim of a sick, high-profile paedophilia ring and, years later, of the London Tube Bombings, who rebuilt her life with the help of one very special animal - the horse. Horses saved Beverli Rhodes' mind, and life. As a child, her world consisted of sexually abusive men, and her beautiful saviour horses. She survived to make a life for herself - only to suffer a second, devastating blow when she was caught up in the London Underground bombings of 7 July 2005, in which she was seriously injured. With the British healthcare system failing her, she sought other avenues to cop with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, her recovery directly resulting from contact with horses. She is now able to live a peaceful life, and continues to maintain her strong connection with the animals that helped save her. Moving and at times horrific, The Horse Girl is an extraordinary story of hate redeemed by love, as well as a testament to the triumph of the human spirit over the most terrible adversity.

When the colonial powers divided the Great Lakes Region of Africa in the nineteenth century, new states were created based on nothing more than lines drawn on a map. Despite having their homelands in the Congo, the Banyamulenge tribe have always been perceived as foreigners in their own country. Alex's extraordinary journey begins with childhood memories of grazing cattle on the plains and mountains of South Kivu. As a teenager, living away from his family, his joy of attending school in the city is tempered by the challenges he faces as an outsider. Struggling to make sense of social, tribal and economic divisions, he witnesses the catastrophic breakdown in order that precipitates the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and the subsequent violence and conflict in the region fuelled by tensions linked to Tutsi and Hutu ethnicity. As a result, tragically, he lost eleven members of his family in the violence. Not My Worst Day is a coming of age tale, set against a backdrop of nightmarish events. While pursuing an education and a dream to publicise the plight of his people, Alex must navigate the dangers of a life lived in the shadow of poverty and discrimination. His journey through the complicated realities of life in the Great Lakes Region of Africa in the 1990s is a triumph of hope, persistence and the will to succeed in his quest. It is "an essential book for anyone who wishes to know - or thinks they know - what life is really like for those caught up in the terrible wars in DRC. This is book offers an explanation of what lies behind the violence and is a moving account from a brave and resilient survivor." Linda Melvern, Investiguative Journalist. The book is "a compelling story of the triumph of humanity over ludicrous odds. This book gives a rich and unprecedented insight into the life of a community fighting for its very existence while a failing state falls apart around them." Richard Wilson, author of Titanic Express and Don't Get Fooled Again

Hungry for Love is a true life story of a young lady's struggle to survive the effects of sexual and emotional abuse. Yvonne's candid account of her life, her thoughts and feelings makes this book a real page turner and has been likened to Ugly and A Piece of Cake. Hungry for Love goes very deep and it covers many issues all in one place. It helps people to recognise why they may behave in a certain dysfunctional/unhealthy way. People who read the book are likely to relate to at least one of the issues highlighted within it. An inspirational book and a must read.

With one in four adults having been abused or maltreated as a child, Chris Tuck is trying to bring awareness of child abuse and the fact that it's happening behind closed doors in her powerful, new book, 'Through the eyes of a child'. As a child, Chris and her siblings could have wound up being just another statistic of child abuse. For them, it wasn't just one or a few isolated incidents, but a tidal wave of neglect, bullying, starvation and survival. Recent statistics show that nine out of 10 children who have been abused were abused by someone they knew, and this was the case for Chris and her siblings, who were abused by their parents and step-parents. Chris says: "Child abuse never leaves you. You're not supposed to be beaten, touched or starved when you're a child. Mummies and daddies are supposed to love you, not leave you, beat you, or molest your little sister." For many victims of child abuse, they never get over that experience and it will completely change the course of their live. Chris was determined that would never happen to her, and wants to give strength to others who have had the same experience by sharing her story. She says: "No matter what has happened in the past, it doesn't need to dictate your future."