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Books > Fiction > True stories > General
In January 2003 Asne Seierstad entered Baghdad on a ten-day visa.
She was to stay for over three months, reporting on the war and its
aftermath. A Hundred and One Days is her compelling account of a
city under siege, and a fascinating insight into the life of a
foreign correspondent. An award-winning writer, Seierstad
brilliantly details the frustrations and dangers journalists faced
trying to uncover the truth behind the all-pervasive propaganda.
She also offers a unique portrait of Baghdad and its people, trying
to go about their daily business under the constant threat of
attack. Seierstad's passionate and erudite book conveys both the
drama and the tragedy of her one hundred and one days in a city at
war.
The bestselling author of The Endurance reveals the startling truth
behind the legend of the Mutiny on the Bounty -- the most famous
sea story of all time. More than two centuries have passed since
Fletcher Christian mutinied against Lt. Bligh on a small armed
transport vessel called Bounty. Why the details of this obscure
adventure at the end of the world remain vivid and enthralling is
as intriguing as the truth behind the legend. Caroline Alexander
focusses on the court martial of the ten mutineers captured in
Tahiti and brought to justice in Portsmouth. Each figure emerges as
a richly drawn character caught up in a drama that may well end on
the gallows. With enormous scholarship and exquisitely drawn
characters, The Bounty is a tour de force.
***LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 JHALAK PRIZE*** A leading new
exploration of the Windrush generation featuring David Lammy, Lenny
Henry, Corinne Bailey Rae, Sharmaine Lovegrove, Hannah Lowe, Jamz
Supernova, Natasha Gordon and Rikki Beadle-Blair. For the pioneers
of the Windrush generation, Britain was 'the Mother Country'. They
made the long journey across the sea, expecting to find a place
where they would be be welcomed with open arms; a land in which you
were free to build a new life, eight thousand miles away from home.
This remarkable book explores the reality of their experiences, and
those of their children and grandchildren, through 22 unique
real-life stories spanning more than 70 years. "The story of
Windrush, is, like any other, a story of humanity. Of life, love,
struggle, hope, misery, success and failure. It's one that is too
often neglected in our media ... but this volume acts as a remedy
to that failure of story-telling, which I ask you to both savour
and share." - David Lammy MP Contributors include: Catherine Ross,
Corinne Bailey-Rae, David Lammy, Gail Lewis, Hannah Lowe, Howard
Gardner, Jamz Supernova, Kay Montano, Kemi Alemoru, Kimberley
McIntosh, Lazare Sylvestre, Lenny Henry, Maria del Pilar Kaladeen,
Myrna Simpson, Naomi Oppenheim, Natasha Gordon, Nellie Brown, Paul
Reid, Riaz Phillips, Rikki Beadle-Blair, Sharmaine Lovegrove,
Sharon Frazer-Carroll.
Chaos. Frustration. Compassion. Desperation. Hope. These are the
five words that author Wendy Welch says best summarize the state of
foster care in the coalfields of Appalachia. Her assessment is
based on interviews with more than sixty social workers, parents,
and children who have gone through "the system." The riveting
stories in Fall or Fly tell what foster care is like, from the
inside out. In depictions of foster care and adoption, stories tend
to cluster at the dark or light ends of the spectrum, rather than
telling the day-to-day successes and failures of families working
to create themselves. Who raises other people's children? Why?
What's money got to do with it when the love on offer feels so
real? And how does the particular setting of Appalachia-itself so
frequently oversimplified or stereotyped-influence the way these
questions play out? In Fall or Fly, Welch invites people bound by a
code of silence to open up and to share their experiences. Less
inspiration than a call to caring awareness, this pioneering work
of storytelling journalism explores how love, compassion, money,
and fear intermingle in what can only be described as a marketplace
for our nation's greatest asset.
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Join Me
(Paperback)
Danny Wallace
2
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R443
R360
Discovery Miles 3 600
Save R83 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Some men are born to lead. Others, not so much... Danny Wallace was
bored. Just to see what would happen, he placed a whimsical ad in a
local London paper. It said, simply, 'Join Me'. Within a month, he
was receiving letters and emails from teachers, mechanics, sales
reps, vicars, schoolchildren and pensioners - all pledging
allegiance to his cause. But no one knew what his cause was. Soon
he was proclaimed Leader. Increasingly obsessed and possibly
power-crazed Danny risked losing his sanity and his loyal
girlfriend. But who could deny the attraction of a global following
of devoted joinees? A book about dreams, ambition and the
responsibility that comes with power, Join Me is the true story of
a man who created a cult by accident, and is proof that whilst some
men were born to lead, others really haven't got a clue.
"Into the Wild" meets "Helter Skelter" in this riveting true story
of a modern-day homesteading family in the deepest reaches of the
Alaskan wilderness - and of the chilling secrets of its maniacal,
spellbinding patriarch.
When Papa Pilgrim appeared in the Alaska frontier outpost of
McCarthy with his wife and fifteen children in tow, his new
neighbors had little idea of the trouble to come. The Pilgrim
Family presented themselves as a shining example of the homespun
Christian ideal, with their proud piety and beautiful old-timey
music, but their true story ran dark and deep. Within weeks, Papa
had bulldozed a road through the mountains to the new family home
at an abandoned copper mine, sparking a tense confrontation with
the National Park Service and forcing his ghost town neighbors to
take sides in an ever-more volatile battle over where a citizen's
rights end and the government's power begins.
In "Pilgrim's Wilderness," veteran Alaska journalist Tom Kizzia
unfolds the remarkable, at times harrowing, story of a charismatic
spinner of American myths who was not what he seemed, the
townspeople caught in his thrall, and the family he brought to the
brink of ruin. As Kizzia discovered, Papa Pilgrim was in fact the
son of a rich Texas family with ties to Hoover's FBI and strange,
oblique connections to the Kennedy assassination and the movie
stars of "Easy Rider." And as his fight with the government in
Alaska grew more intense, the turmoil in his brood made it
increasingly difficult to tell whether his children were messianic
followers or hostages in desperate need of rescue. In this powerful
piece of Americana, written with uncommon grace and high drama,
Kizzia uses his unparalleled access to capture an era-defining
clash between environmentalists and pioneers ignited by a
mesmerizing sociopath who held a town and a family captive.
ER has become the most successful television series in the world since Charlie’s Angels. Michael Crichton created the series from his own experiences as a medical doctor in the emergency rooms, operating rooms and wards of Massachusetts General Hospital. Five Patients is Michael Crichton's true account of the real life dramas so vividly portrayed in ER. A construction worker is seriously injured in a scaffold collapse: a middle-aged dispatcher is brought in suffering from a fever that has reduced him to a delirious wreck; a young man nearly severs his hand in an accident; an airline traveller suffers chest pains; a mother of three is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease.
The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population
than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel,
in-the-trenches perspective to explain the factors - historical,
political, and institutional - that led to the current system of
mass imprisonment. The book examines the causes and impacts of mass
incarceration on both the political and criminal justice systems.
With accessible language and straightforward statistical analysis,
former prosecutor turned law professor Jeffrey Bellin provides a
formula for reform to return to the low incarceration rates that
characterized the United States prior to the 1970s.
The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population
than any other nation. Mass Incarceration Nation offers a novel,
in-the-trenches perspective to explain the factors - historical,
political, and institutional - that led to the current system of
mass imprisonment. The book examines the causes and impacts of mass
incarceration on both the political and criminal justice systems.
With accessible language and straightforward statistical analysis,
former prosecutor turned law professor Jeffrey Bellin provides a
formula for reform to return to the low incarceration rates that
characterized the United States prior to the 1970s.
This book offers an intimate portrait of early twentieth-century
Harbin, a city in Manchuria where Russian colonialists, and later
refugees from the Revolution, met with Chinese migrants. The deep
social and intellectual fissures between the Russian and Chinese
worlds were matched by a multitude of small efforts to cross the
divide as the city underwent a wide range of social and political
changes. Using surviving letters, archival photographs, and rare
publications, this book also tells the personal story of a
forgotten city resident, Baron Roger Budberg, a physician who,
being neither Russian nor Chinese, nevertheless stood at the very
centre of the cross-cultural divide in Harbin. The biography of an
important city, fleshing out its place in the global history of
East-West contacts and twentieth-century diasporas, this book is
also the history of an individual life and an original experiment
in historical writing.
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True Story
(Paperback)
Michael Finkel
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R384
R312
Discovery Miles 3 120
Save R72 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Michael Finkel was a top New York Times Magazine journalist
publicly fired and disgraced for making up a composite character
for a big investigative news piece about Africa. This book is about
how this brilliant, high achieving journalist found himself at that
point in his life. But in parallel it's also about Christian Longo,
a man accused of the multiple murder of his own wife and three
children. After the deaths, Longo fled to Mexico, where he passed
himself off as Michael Finkel, New York Times journalist. These two
weird stories come together as Finkel in turn becomes fascinated
(perhaps obsessed) with Longo the accused murderer, who while in
prison and during his trial would talk only to Finkel. Who is using
whom...?
'Clear, dispassionate and selfless' Spectator 'Exhaustive in her
research, tenacious in spotting errors, indignant in denouncing
lies.' Guardian 'A compelling account of an extraordinary political
scandal, written from inside the Stonehouse family'. Martin Bell **
The authoritative account of the infamous runaway MP, by his
daughter ** On 20 November 1974, British Labour MP and Privy
Counsellor John Stonehouse faked his death in Miami and, using a
forged identity, entered Australia hoping to escape his old life
and start anew. One month later his identity was uncovered and he
was cautioned; the start of years of legal proceedings. In a tale
that involves spies from the communist Czechoslovak secret service,
a three-way love affair and the Old Bailey, John's daughter
examines previously unseen evidence, telling the dramatic true
story for the first time, disputing allegations and upturning
common misconceptions which are still in circulation. The story was
never far from the front pages of the press in the mid-70s, and yet
so much of the truth is still unknown. A close look at the
political dynamics of the time; paced like a thriller, it's time
for the world to know the real John Stonehouse. 'No book before
this has delved into this fascinating political scandal in so much
detail and with empathy.' Reaction
'Compelling' The Daily Mail 'So many gripping moments... a real
cracker' The Evening Standard The jaw-dropping and inspiring story
of accidental queer icon Norman Scott (the hero of TV drama A Very
English Scandal) and the part he played in one of the greatest
political scandals of the 20th century. In October 1975 an assassin
tried to murder Norman Scott on Exmoor but the trigger failed and
he only succeeded in shooting Scott's beloved dog, Rinka. Scott
subsequently found himself at the centre of a major political
scandal and became an unlikely queer icon. But this was never his
intention... He was born in 1940 into a poor, dysfunctional and
abusive family. Aged sixteen he began an equestrian career, animals
having been the one source of comfort in his childhood. By the age
of twenty he had run into debts and had suffered a nervous
breakdown. In 1960 Scott began a sexual affair with Jeremy Thorpe.
By the time of the attempted assassination of Scott, Thorpe was
married, leader of the Liberal Party and a figure at the heart of
the establishment. He was embarrassed by their former relationship
and wanted to cover it up. But he failed. The assassination attempt
culminated in a sensational trial in 1979, where Thorpe was tried
for conspiracy to murder. The press labelled Scott a madman and the
establishment protected Thorpe, who was acquitted. Only recently
has Scott's version of events been vindicated. An Accidental Icon
tells a story that is inspiring and jaw droppingly unbelievable: it
is the tale of the courage and survival of one man who took on the
establishment
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