From special duties selection to an earthquake on the side of Mount Everest, from a gunfight in Afghanistan to a year of endurance challenges, Tim Bradshaw has had to develop a robust toolkit and mindset to enable him to overcome serious challenges in hostile circumstances. What's remarkable is that he achieved these feats in the face of imposter syndrome and depression. Tim's mantra is 'Because I can', because whatever you're facing, you can do so much more than you think. This is a toolkit to help you take on any challenge. Whether you're making an attempt on Everest or taking the next big career step this toolkit will make you more effective. Tim attended the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst aged just 19. His first job was to lead 37 soldiers. Since then, he has served as a surveillance and target acquisition patrol soldier and covert human intelligence officer. In 2015 he attempted to climb Mount Everest to persuade mental health sufferers to ask for help. After a year of physical endurance challenges, he is now a Director of Sandstone Communications, an international leadership and team building consultancy.

A vivid recount of the little known exploits of 17 courageous Special Operations Executive (SOE) officers in Italy during World War II In this inspiring new study of the SOE and Italian Resistance, 17 extraordinary stories of individual SOE officers illustrate the many and varied tasks of SOE missions throughout the different regions of Italy from 1943-1945. Through their gallantry, ingenuity, and determination, a small handful of SOE missions were able to arm and inspire thousands of Italians to fight the occupying German army after 1943 and in the process give invaluable support to the advancing Allied armies as they pushed north towards Austria.

Inspired by the old African proverb: "When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground," high-school student Morgan Rielly sought to preserve as many Maine libraries as he could by interviewing men and women from Maine who served in World War II and preserving their stories. All of these veterans taught him something, too, not just about how to fight a war, but how to live a life. They were never preachy, never full of themselves. Each of them knew they had participated in something great and special, but none of them thought that they, themselves, were great or special. There was Fred Collins, the sixteen-year-old Marine who used his Boy Scout training to clip a wounded soldier's chest together using safety pins from machine gun bandoliers while under withering fire on Iwo Jima. Or Inex Louise Roney, who served as a gunnery instructor for the Marines, hoping she could end the war sooner and bring her brother home. Or Harold Lewis, who held onto hope despite being shot down out of the sky, nearly free-falling to his death, and spending four months behind enemy lines in Italy. Or Jean Marc Desjardins, whose near-death experiences defusing German bombs with his buddy Puddinghead, taught Rielly the value of a good friend.

The shocking first-hand account of one man’s remarkable fight for freedom; now an award-winning motion picture.

‘Why had I not died in my young years – before God had given me children to love and live for? What unhappiness and suffering and sorrow it would have prevented. I sighed for liberty; but the bondsman's chain was round me, and could not be shaken off.’

1841: Solomon Northup is a successful violinist when he is kidnapped and sold into slavery. Taken from his family in New York State – with no hope of ever seeing them again – and forced to work on the cotton plantations in the Deep South, he spends the next twelve years in captivity until his eventual escape in 1853.

First published in 1853, this extraordinary true story proved to be a powerful voice in the debate over slavery in the years leading up to the Civil War. It is a true-life testament of one man’s courage and conviction in the face of unfathomable injustice and brutality: its influence on the course of American history cannot be overstated.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER 'Beautifully-penned story on the harshness of life and how hope survives' - Sun 'Absorbing . . . Marsh writes with a novelistic flair' - Daily Mail From the grimy streets of Acton and Notting Hill to the bright lights of the West End, Sunday Times bestselling author Beezy Marsh's All My Mother's Secrets is a powerful, uplifting story of a young woman's struggle to come to terms with her family's tragic past. Annie Austin's childhood ends at the age of twelve, when she joins her mother in one of the slum laundries of Acton, working long hours for little pay. What spare time she has is spent looking after her younger brother George and her two stepsisters, under the glowering eye of her stepfather Bill. In London between the wars, a girl like Annie has few choices in life - but a powerful secret will change her destiny. All Annie knows about her real father is that he died in the Great War, and as the years pass she is haunted by the pain of losing him. Her downtrodden mother won't tell her more and Annie's attempts to uncover the truth threaten to destroy her family. Distraught, she runs away to Covent Garden, but can she survive on her own and find the love which has eluded her so far?

When Mimi first started jogging on a treadmill as an unfit 36-year-old mother-of-three, she never imagined she would go on to become a World-Record-breaking ultrarunner. After coming to terms with the anorexia that had impacted her life from a young age, Mimi begins to reassess her relationship with food and finds a new resolve in running. With a renewed sense of purpose, she decides to take the sport that saved her life to the next level, training hard and throwing herself in at the deep end by entering the epic Marathon des Sables in the Sahara desert, despite still being a novice runner. One startling success leads to another, as she finds herself taking on ever-more-challenging races - from the Badwater Ultramarathon in Death Valley, USA, to the 6633 Arctic Ultra - all building up to her biggest challenge yet: attempting to gain the Guinness World Record time for a female running 840 miles from John o'Groats to Land's End. This incredible story of how an ordinary mum ran her way into the record books will inspire beginner runners and die-hard marathon devotees alike, proving that, no matter where life takes you, it's never too late to achieve your dreams and do the impossible.

'Somehow, the elephants got into my soul, and it became my life's work to see them safe and happy. There was no giving up on that vision, no matter how hard the road was at times.' Francoise Malby-Anthony is the owner of a game reserve in South Africa with a remarkable family of elephants whose adventures have touched hearts around the world. The herd's feisty matriarch Frankie knows who's in charge at Thula Thula, and it's not Francoise. But when Frankie becomes ill, and the authorities threaten to remove or cull some of the herd if the reserve doesn't expand, Francoise is in a race against time to save her beloved elephants . . . The joys and challenges of a life dedicated to conservation are vividly described in The Elephants of Thula Thula. The search is on to get a girlfriend for orphaned rhino Thabo - and then, as his behaviour becomes increasingly boisterous, a big brother to teach him manners. Francoise realizes a dream with the arrival of Savannah the cheetah - an endangered species not seen in the area since the 1940s - and finds herself rescuing meerkats kept as pets. But will Thula Thula survive the pandemic, an invasion from poachers and the threat from a mining company wanting access to its land? As Francoise faces her toughest years yet, she realizes once again that with their wisdom, resilience and communal bonds, the elephants have much to teach us. 'Enthralling' - Daily Mail

'Goodbye! There's my good girl.' The German got hold of Papa's arm roughly and said, 'Come on!' They got in the car and sped away, leaving the two breathless girls standing on the street corner, staring at where the car had been. 'What on earth was all that about? Why has my Daddy gone with that German?' It made no sense. It made no sense at all. France, 1940: The British have retreated, evacuating their forces from Dunkirk. Nell and her girls stand on the beach on a clear day and see the outline of Dover Castle but it will be four and a half long years before they return to Britain. Jeanne, her sisters and their mother Nell are left to fend for themselves in occupied France when her father is arrested by the Nazis and taken to an internment camp.Proudly British, they have also been raised speaking French. Nell is determined to keep going, keep food on the table and see her girls continue in education. She takes in washing, teaches English and tries growing vegetables but the soil is too poor. They apply for Red Cross Parcels but are told, as they are not behind barbed wire, they don't qualify.Yet amid the struggles come great friendships and pleasure in the smallest things; the rare treat of a piece of cake or tart, a Christmas tree decorated with cotton or singing in church. Jeanne's sisters are distinct personalities, one bookish and quiet, the other outgoing. Letters from her interned husband Tom Sarginson and occasional visits to see him only temporarily eases the pain of being parted. Nell falls in love with a kindly German soldier. When liberation comes in 1944 Nell and the girls' excitement is tempered by a shocking event in their then home village of Rieux-en-Cambresis. There follows an exhilarating and frustrating stay in newly liberated Paris and the shock of arriving back in the war weary Britain of late 1944. Nell and the Girls is a remarkable, dramatic and heartwarming true story of a family told from the viewpoint of young Jeanne Sarginson, later Gask.

Discover the truth about ENDURANCE in this superb true story of adventure, shipwreck, storms and survival on the high seas. 'Superb ... the greatest survival story of all time' Sir Chris Bonington 'One of the most remarkable tales of human courage and determination. The story is gripping and the book is a classic' Sir Ranulph Fiennes ENDURANCE is the story of one of the most astonishing feats of exploration and human courage ever recorded. In 1914 Sir Ernest Shackleton and a crew of 27 men set sail for the South Atlantic on board a ship called the Endurance. The object of the expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland. In October 1915, still half a continent away from their intended base, the ship was trapped, then crushed in ice. For five months Shackleton and his men, drifting on ice packs, were castaways on one of the most savage regions of the world. This utterly gripping book, based on first-hand accounts of crew members and interviews with survivors, describes how the men survived, how they lived together in camps on the ice for 17 months until they reached land, how they were attacked by sea leopards, the diseases which they developed, and the indefatigability of the men and their lasting civility towards one another in the most adverse conditions conceivable.

Soldier Magazine's Book of the Month Fascinating... Incredibly dangerous. The Times Gripping. Adrenalin fuelled true-life account with all the makings of a military thriller. The action unfolds like a Le Carre novel. Soldier Magazine 'Jihad isn't a war. It's an objective. An aberration. If there are young women with children, lost boys... If they are trapped in that hell and we can get them out, don't we have a duty to do so? Every person we can bring back is living proof that Islamic State is a failure.' Ex-British Army soldier John Carney was running a close protection operation for oil executives in Iraq when the family of a young Dutch woman asked him to extract her from the collapsing 'Islamic State' in Syria. Hearing first-hand about the naive young girls, many from the West, who'd been tricked, sexually abused and enslaved by ISIS, he knew only one thing - he had to get them out of that living hell. This is the incredible true story of how - armed with AK-47s and 9mm Glocks - Carney launched a daring, dangerous and deadly operation to free as many of them as he could. From 2016 to 2019, he led his small band of committed Kurdish freedom fighters into the heart of the Syrian lead storm. Backed by humanitarian NGOs, and feeding intel to MI6, Carney and his men went behind enemy lines to deliver the women and their children to the authorities, to deradicalization programmes and fair trials. Carney, a born soldier, was moved to action by the women's terrifying stories. He and his men risked their lives daily, not always making it safely home... Gripping, shocking and thought-provoking, Operation Jihadi Bride tackles the complex issue of the jihadi brides head on - an essential read for our troubled times.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed West Face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into Base Camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead. For three days he wrestled with guilt as they prepared to return home.

Then a cry in the night took them out with torches, where they found Joe, badly injured, crawling through the snowstorm in a delirium. Far from causing Joe's death, Simon had paradoxically saved his friend's life. What happened, and how they dealt with the psychological traumas that resulted when Simon was forced into the appalling decision to cut the rope, makes not only an epic of survival but a compelling testament of friendship.

With the help of friends who recognized her extraordinary talent, Althea Gibson rose from a childhood of playing stickball on Harlem streets to claim victory at Wimbledon. It is widely recognized that her sacrifices along the way paved the road for the successes of Venus and Serena Williams. But Althea's was a victory hard fought and painfully won.

She had no idea the turn her life would take when she met Angela Buxton at the French Indoor Championships. Despite her athletic prowess, Althea was shunned by the other female players. Her failing was her skin color. Angela, the granddaughter of Russian Jews, was also shunned. Her failing was her religion. Finding themselves without doubles partners, the pair decided to join forces, and together they triumphed, going on to win the 1956 championship at Wimbledon. The two women would become lifelong friends, and Angela would prove to be among Althea's greatest supports during her darkest times.

Gibson died in 2003, but her life and her contributions to tennis and race relations in the United States are well preserved in this valuable book. Bruce Schoenfeld delivers not only the true story of Gibson's life but also an inspiring account of two underdogs who refused to let bigotry win -- both on and off the courts.

A TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 SPORTS BOOK AWARDS LONGLISTED FOR THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR 2017 The incredible true story of four ordinary working mums from Yorkshire who took on an extraordinary challenge and broke a world record along the way. Janette, Frances, Helen and Niki, though all from Yorkshire, were four very different women, all juggling full time jobs alongside being mothers to each of their 2 children. They could never be described as athletes, but they were determined to be busy and the local Saturday morning rowing club was the perfect place to go to have a laugh and a gossip, get the blood pumping in the open air, and feel invigorated. Brought together by their love of rowing, they quickly became firm friends, and it wasn't long before they cooked up a crazy idea over a few glasses of wine: together, they were going to do something that fewer people than had gone into space or climbed Everest had succeeded in doing. They were going to cross 3,000 miles of treacherous ocean in the toughest row in the world, The Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Yes, they had children and husbands that they would be leaving behind for two months, yes they had businesses to run, mortgages to pay, responsibilities. And there was that little thing of them all being in their 40s and 50s. But two years of planning, preparation, fundraising, training and difficult conversations later, and they found themselves standing on the edge of the San Sebastian harbour in the Canary Islands, petrified, exhilarated and ready to head up the race of their lives. This is the story of how four friends together had the audacity to go on a wild, terrifying and beautiful adventure, not to escape life, but for life not to escape them.