As a senior aeronautical engineer with Britain's flagship airlines in the 60s, 70s and 80s, it was engineer and playboy Nazie El Masry's job to keep these man-made birds in perfect flying condition. Turbulent Times and Clear Skies is the story of his colourful exploits in the most glamorous industry of all, as he defeated the odds to build an international aviation business of his own - with offices in Singapore, Miami, Holland and the UK. From the crew and pilots' parties to which he supplied contraband liquor and introductions to the wildest international hotspots in Libya, Tunis, Casablanca and Europe; to his early adventures wheeling and dealing in 1970s Britain, along the way Nazie has rubbed shoulders with slum landlords, show girls, heads of state and movie stars. This is also the story of an Egyptian childhood and a young man who lost his father but found happiness.

The album The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill sold over 420,000 copies in its first week, received ten Grammy nominations (winning five). Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood: The Lauryn Hill Reader critically engages the work of Ms. Hill, highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the album. Beyond the album's commercial success, Ms. Hill's radical self-consciousness and exuberance for life led listeners through her Black girl journey of love, motherhood, admonition, redemption, spirituality, sexuality, politics, and nostalgia that affirmed the power of creativity, resistance, and the tradition of African storytelling. Ms. Hill's album provides inspirational energies that serve as a foundational text for Black girlhood. In many ways it is the definitive work of Black girlhood for the Hip Hop generation and beyond because it opened our eyes to a holistic narrative of woman and mother. Twenty years after the release of the album, we pay tribute to this work by adding to the quilt of Black girls' stories with the threads of feminist consciousness, which are particularly imperative in this space where we declare: Black girls matter. Celebrating Twenty Years of Black Girlhood is the first book to academically engage the work of the incomparable Ms. Hill. It intellectually wrestles with the interdisciplinary nature of Ms. Hill's album, centering the connection between the music of Ms. Hill and the lives of Black girls. The essays in this collection utilize personal narratives and professional pedagogies and invite students, scholars, and readers to reflect on how Ms. Hill's album influenced their past, present, and future.

Born a humble village boy in Pakistan's Swat Valley, Sher Khan had the curiosity, the intelligence and the determination to succeed in a career in medicine, becoming a senior registrar in a UK hospital. Sensitive, wide-ranging and often very funny, Sher's story portrays the life of a wise and kind man - a village boy who became a world traveller, an expert in nuclear medicine and a philanthropist who has done his best to overcome the inequity and suffering he sees around him. Dismayed at the dishonesty, favouritism and profiteering that have pervaded Pakistan since independence, he talks freely of the power struggles and posturing which have riddled his homeland's affairs over the past half century. A colourful description of a vanished world and of the new world that is replacing it.

Trapped was a Sunday Times bestseller and the first memoir from foster carer Rosie Lewis. Phoebe, an autistic nine-year-old girl, is taken into police protection after a chance comment to one of her teachers alerts the authorities that all might not be what it seems in her comfortable, middle-class home. Experienced foster carer Rosie accepts the youngster as an emergency placement knowing that her autism will represent a challenge - not only for her but also for the rest of the family. But after several shocking incidents of self-harming, Pica and threats to kill, it soon becomes apparent that Phoebe's autism may be the least of her problems. Locked for nine years in a secret world of severe abuse, as Phoebe opens up about her horrific past, her foster carer begins to suspect that Phoebe may not be suffering from autism at all.

Great American Shipwreck Stories is a magnificent collection of gripping accounts of a ship's encounter with a great whale or an overwhelming monsoon or a disastrous passage through the Straits of Magellan, leading to a wreck and a crew's harrowing plight for survival on the open seas or on a desert island. Capturing all the elements of ancient and powerful tragedy, this book is chockful of thrilling tales of survival - as well as a frightful examination of man's darkest impulses - which allow the reader a gruesome glimpse behind the veil of honor and bravery that history often ascribes to such men of the sea. These are all stories that have endured the test of time, and have attracted discerning readers for generations. Includes stories by George Byron Merrick, Owen Chase, Henry Cabot Lodge, Theodore Roosevelt, Riley Brown, J. S. Ogilvie, Horace Holden, and many others.

Inspiring and powerful true stories of communication with beings from the Afterlife from one of the country's most successful and sought after psychics. Includes amazing accounts of guardian angel interventions, mysterious rescues, miraculous recoveries, unexplained powers of psychic children and animals. In her new book, outstanding psychic Dorothy Chitty presents an incredible collection of real-life stories taken from both her own life and from others who have experienced the power of the Afterlife. Find out the truth behind what happens when our guardian angels appear to us in various guises when we need them most - and often when we least expect it. Stories include: Guardian angels we know - like the woman's family who cheated death on the Zeebrugge ferry when she heard her mother's warning from beyond the grave Not our time to go - when unknown forces save us, like the rock climber who was saved when he was lifted up by invisible hands when he fell thirty feet Healing miracles - when asking the angels for help can save us, like the young woman with a brain tumour who asked the spirits for and her next scan showed it had gone, leaving just a cross where it had been Guidance from the other side - signs that point you on your life path, like the man who's life changed when he was told to go to Canada and he discovered his ideal career Psychic children - how children are more open to seeing spirits and guardian angels, like the little girl who saw how she had died in a previous life, and now passed on messages from her dead brother Psychic animals - the bond between animals and their owners that continues after death, like the man whose dead dog carried on leaving his newspaper on the front porch

'A moving true story that will pull at the heartstrings' - Woman & Home The first book in the Paws of Fame series, which follows movie animal trainer Julie Tottman as she rescues, nurtures and transforms animals in need of a second chance into film stars. Pickles the Yorkshire Terrier has just had her litter of puppies taken away from her - who knows how many litters she's delivered and watched the same thing happen to. She's been left behind in an overcrowded, noisy and dirty barn. She's very weak and her body is burning all over from a painful skin condition. This has been her life for six years and it will likely never change. Or will it? Julie is a young animal trainer for the movies and is looking for a Yorkshire Terrier for a new film she's working on with Colin Firth and Amanda Bynes. By chance, she hears of a puppy farm that has been raided by the authorities - the dogs were kept in appalling conditions and among them was a poor Yorkshire Terrier called Pickles. Julie doesn't know whether Pickles will be the right dog for the film, but she doesn't care: Pickles needs a safe home with love and care and Julie can give it. Will Pickles recover from the traumas of her past? Can she be the movie star Julie is looking for? And will Julie be able to make it in the world of movie animal trainers? Will You Take Me Home? is the moving true story of one woman and her dog. The second book in the Paws of Fame story - Rescue Me, about the abandoned Mastiff who went on to play Fang in Harry Potter - is available now

In April 2016, Dr. Nasser Al-Mohannadi became one of the first Qataris ever to complete a full Ironman race. He swam 3.8km, biked 180km and ran 42.2km on one of the most difficult Ironman courses in the world. It was the fulfilment of a childhood dream and the climax of 28 years of preparation and training. In this book, Al-Mohannadi shows how he overcame childhood fears, cultural misunderstanding, and physical injuries to reach his goal. Through careful planning, persistence and learning through mistakes, he achieved what seemed impossible.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERChasing Daylight is the honest, touching, and ultimately inspirational memoir of former KPMG CEO Eugene O'Kelly, completed in the three and a half months between his diagnosis with brain cancer and his death in September 2005. It's haunting yet extraordinarily hopeful voice reminds us to embrace the fragile, fleeting moments of our lives: the brief time we have with our family, our friends, and even ourselves. Glimpse the strategies Gene embraced to accept and live the final stages of his life with vibrancy and calm - and what his preparations for death taught him about life.This paperback edition features a new foreword by his wife, Corinne O'Kelly and a readers' group guide and questions "A moving memoir" The Times "Challenging and thought-provoking" The Financial Times "[A] well-written and moving book." The Economist.com "Voicing universal truths not often found in business or how-to tracts...[O'Kelly] made a success out of his final mission."-Janet Maslin, The New York Times

Brian Cunningham's popular first book, Under the Bonnet, was a colourful and humorous collection of memories of his time as a car mechanic in the 1970s and '80s. When he wrote it, he was sure he had put everything of interest down, but it turns out there were quite a few escapades he'd forgotten to mention. Time, then, for part two . . . When the Wheels Come Off is a joyous return, covering what he missed first time round: cars fixed and some broken, fads and crazes, crashes and scrapes and near misses, evolutionary dead-ends in technology, underhanded practices and downright skulduggery, run-ins with management, the tools used, the cars 'stolen' and scrapyards visited. A lively and engaging trip back to the workshop.

How do I give myself to God completely? What happens when I do? I Dared to Call Him Father is a book for everyone who has ever asked these questions. It is the fascinating true story of Bilquis Sheikh, a prominent Muslim woman in South Asia who faced these questions at the crossroads of her life-and found the astonishing answers. Her entire life turned upside down as a series of strange dreams launched her on a quest that would forever consume her heart, mind and soul. This 25th anniversary edition contains a new afterword by a Western friend of Bilquis and a new appendix on how the East enriches the West.

Before reality TV, GPS devices, and dashboard computers, there was a coming of age for the Maine Warden Service. It was a time when a compass, map, and one's wits were what mattered most in the field. Every day offered the potential for an exciting new adventure, many of which endangered the wardens' lives. Recreating the full warden experience, Open Season includes 20 stories from two former colonels, two lieutenants, two sergeants, four district wardens, a warden pilot, and one currently active-duty corporal. Altogether, their cumulative experiences account for more than 300 years of north woods law. In addition to hair-raising, life-and-death scenarios, the collection covers moments such as a child innocently outing his parents as "looking for deer" at night, the doldrums of a stakeout, and the grief of tragedy. You'll live through the eyes of these twelve wardens and feel the excitement of a twig snapped in the dark...the frustration of second guessing yourself when lives are at stake...and the duty to do what's right, even when it means breaking the law.

Prison, Inc. provides a first-hand account of life behind bars in a controversial new type of prison facility: the private prison. These for-profit prisons are becoming increasingly popular as state budgets get tighter. Yet as privatization is seen as a necessary and cost-saving measure, not much is known about how these facilities are run and whether or not they can effectively watch over this difficult and dangerous population. For the first time, Prison, Inc. provides a look inside one of these private prisons as told through the eyes of an actual inmate, K.C. Carceral who has been in the prison system for over twenty years.

Tim Cotton has been a police officer for more than twenty years. The writer in him has always been drawn to the stories of the people he's met along the way. Sure, he's dealt with his share of ne'er-do-wells-as a homicide lieutenant, he's convicted eighteen murderers-but more often he writes about the regular folks he encounters, people who need his help or just want to share a joke. The Detective in the Dooryard is comprised of stories about the people, places, and things of Maine. There are sad stories, big events, and even the mundane, all told from the perspective of a seasoned police officer and in the wry voice of a lifelong Mainer. Many of the stories will leave you chuckling, some will invariably bring tears to your eyes, but all will leave you with a profound sense of hope and positivity.

The true-crime cult classic that inspired the Netflix docuseries The Sons of Sam: A Descent into Darkness and a companion podcast, The Ultimate Evil follows journalist Maury Terry s decades-long investigation into the terrifying truth behind the Son of Sam murders. On August 10, 1977, the NYPD arrested David Berkowitz for the Son of Sam murders that had terrorized New York City for over a year. Berkowitz confessed to shooting sixteen people and killing six with a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, and the case was officially closed. Journalist Maury Terry was suspicious of Berkowitz s confession. Spurred by conflicting witness descriptions of the killer and clues overlooked in the investigation, Terry was convinced Berkowitz didn t act alone. Meticulously gathering evidence for a decade, he released his findings in the first edition of The Ultimate Evil. Based upon the evidence he had uncovered, Terry theorized that the Son of Sam attacks were masterminded by a Yonkers-based cult that was responsible for other ritual murders across the country. After Terry s death in 2015, documentary filmmaker Josh Zeman (Cropsey, The Killing Season, Murder Mountain) was given access to Terry s files, which form the basis of his docuseries with Netflix and a companion podcast. Taken together with The Ultimate Evil, which includes a new introduction by Zeman, these works reveal the stunning intersections of power, wealth, privilege, and evil in America from the Summer of Sam until today.

Based upon detailed observation in the New Forest, this delightful book tells the story of Buckie, a fawn from a small herd of fallow does which the author was first privileged to observe just before sunset one magical June evening. Following this defining moment, the author, accompanied by her dachshund George, spent every spare moment watching deer - red, sika and roe but mostly the beautiful fallow deer. She observed the deer in all weathers, how they interacted with each other or with other wild creatures amongst the New Forest's ancient stands of oak and beech. Buckie's contacts with a variety of people such as those who befriend him, the local keepers and poachers are all described in realistic detail. Every November the author went to the New Forest to observe the rut, an exciting time in the deer world, when the great belching roars echoed out over twilight in autumnal woods, evoking a thrill of pleasure. Ferny Wood is a closely observed, lovingly detailed account of a deer's first three years of life and also an illuminating portrait of a forest in all its moods.

A tale of obsession and very big fish from Jeremy Wade, the presenter of ITV's RIVER MONSTERS. Over ten feet long, it weighs in at nearly a quarter of a ton. Covering its back are armoured plates made of bone. Five hundred stiletto-sharp teeth line its long crocodilian jaws. It's a prehistoric beast of staggering proportions; a fearsome creature from the time of the dinosaurs. But the Alligator Gar, an air-breathing survivor from the Cretaceous period is still with us today, patrolling inland rivers, hunting in murky waters shared by human communities. And for Jeremy Wade, described as the 'greatest angling explorer of his generation', the Gar and other outlandish freshwater predators have been an obsession for all his adult life. With names like Arapaima, Snakehead, Goonch, Goliath Tigerfish and Electric Eel, many of them have acquired an almost mythical status. In a quest that has taken him from the Amazon to the Congo, and from North America to the mountains of India, Wade has pursued the truth about these little known, often misunderstood animals. Along the way he's survived a plane crash, malaria and a fish-inflicted blow to the chest that, according to a later scan, caused permanent scarring to his heart. In RIVER MONSTERS, Wade delivers a sometimes jaw-dropping blend of adventure, natural history, legend and detective work. It reads like a hunt for the Loch Ness Monster. But it's all true. These are fisherman's tales like you've never heard before. The stories of the ones that didn't get away ...

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.

She doesn't want this baby. She can't look after this baby. She will never be able to love this baby. Little Abby's life begins badly, then just gets worse. Now foster mum Louise and her family must help her deal with the truth of her past to give her the chance of a future. Abby's Story is the latest book in the series THROWN AWAY CHILDREN by author and foster mum Louise Allen.

In The Secret Life: Three True Stories, Andrew O'Hagan issues three bulletins from the porous border between cyberspace and the 'real world'.

'Ghosting' introduces us to the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography the author agrees to ghostwrite, with unforgettable consequences.

'The Invention of Ronald Pinn' finds O'Hagan using the identity of a deceased young man to construct an entirely new one online, leading him on a journey into the deep web's darkest realms.

'The Satoshi Affair' chronicles the strange case of Craig Wright, the Australian web developer who may or may not be the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, and who may or may not be willing, or even able, to reveal the truth.

A haunting and exquisitely-observed collection of medical vignettes that brilliantly captures the intense drama of the Emergency Room Reminiscent of Chekhov's stories, The Blood of Strangers is a visceral portrayal of a physician's encounters with the highly charged world of an emergency room. In this collection of spare elegant stories, Dr Frank Huyler reveals a side of medicine - the intricacy of suturing a facial wound, the bath a patient receives from her husband and daughter - interwoven with the lives of the sick and injured. The author presents an array of fascinating characters, both patients and doctors - a neurosurgeon who practices witchcraft, a trauma surgeon who unexpectedly commits suicide, a wounded murderer, a man chased across the New Mexico desert by a heat-seaking missile. At times surreal, at times lyrical, at times brutal and terrifying, The Blood of Strangers is a deeply affecting first book from one of the most dramatic specialities of modern medicine.