Ed Husain's The Islamist is the shocking inside story of British Islamic fundamentalism, told by a former radical. 'When I was sixteen I became an Islamic fundamentalist. Five years later, after much emotional turmoil, I rejected fundamentalist teachings and returned to normal life and my family. As I recovered my faith and mind, I tried to put my experiences behind me, but as the events of 7/7 unfolded it became clear to me that Islamist groups pose a threat to this country that we - Muslims and non-Muslims alike - do not yet understand.' 'Why are young British Muslims becoming extremists? What are the risks of another home-grown terrorist attack on British soil? By describing my experiences inside these groups and the reasons I joined them, I hope to explain the appeal of extremist thought, how fanatics penetrate Muslim communities and the truth behind their agenda of subverting the West and moderate Islam. Writing candidly about life after extremism, I illustrate the depth of the problem that now grips Muslim hearts and minds and lay bare what politicians and Muslim 'community leaders' do not want you to know.' 'A complete eye-opener' The Times 'Captivating, and terrifyingly honest' Observer 'Persuasive and stimulating' Martin Amis 'Read this articulate and impassioned book' Simon Jenkins, Sunday Times Ed Husain was an Islamist radical for five years in his late teens and early twenties. Having rejected extremism he travelled widely in the Middle East and worked for the British Council in Syria and Saudi Arabia. Husain received wide and various acclaim for The Islamist, which was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for political writing and the PEN/Ackerley Prize for literary autobiography, amongst others.

Police spokesperson and former TV journalist McIntosh Polela has been on our screens for many years. But behind his seemingly unfazed demeanour, a troubled past haunts him. His parents disappeared when he was a little boy, leaving him and his sister Zinhle to suffer years of brutal abuse. When the truth of his parents' disappearance is revealed, the teenage McIntosh makes a fully functioning gun from found object which he keeps for the day when he finds his father. He knows that he must come face to face with the man who robbed him of his childhood. McIntosh has to confront his father about his mother's brutal death. How can he possibly forgive, when his father remains a remorseless brutal and heartless monster?

Includes . . . - Lee Shelton's murder of Billy Lyons in St. Louis, which inspired the popular song "Stagger Lee" - The vigilante killing of the "town bully" of Skidmore, Ken McElroy - The kidnapping of millionaire Robert Greenlease's son in Kansas City - The Kirkwood City Council massacre - Serial killings of 13 young women in Kansas City by Lorenzo J. Gilyard

In the bestselling tradition of Seabiscuit, the extraordinary true story of the world's most famous racehorse, and the rogue who owned him.
Epsom Downs racetrack, 3rd May, 1769: a chestnut with a white blaze scorches across the turf towards the finishing post, leaving his rivals in the dust. Awestruck, his spectators know they are in the presence of greatness.
This is a vivid portrait of high society and low life, of passionate sport and ferocious gambling. It's the story of Eclipse's owner, an adventurer who made his money through roguery and gambling -- a rank outsider who went on to become a national celebrity -- and of his horse, which went on to become the undisputed champion of horse racing; founded dynasties that dominated the bloodstock market in every country where Thoroughbreds raced; and whose influence was such that ninety-five percent of horses racing today are Eclipse's male-line descendants.

This is the true account of a young man's journey, sailing his 21 foot, wooden boat single-handed over 7,000 miles. Over a period of seven years, he set off from British Columbia in the spring of 1979 and sailed first to San Francisco, then the Hawaiian Islands and on to a remote Pacific coral atoll called Fanning Island. It was here that he was offered the position of Relief Manager of a coconut plantation for a few months and ended up staying for six years. The book is part sailing log and part travelogue and expertly describes the conditions he endured, the power of the elements and his experience of living and working thousands of miles from home.

LEAD TITLE PUBLISHING FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE UK THE LANDMARK, CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED BOOK HAILED BY ARIEL DORFMAN AND EDUARDO GALEANO, PUBLISHED TO COINCIDE WITH THE FIRST ARGENTINE WAR CRIMES TRIALS. News hook: Trials of high-level military officials, including the subject of this book, began in July 2004 in Spain. New introduction by the judge who declared the Argentine impunity laws null and void; the new epilogue is by the author Torrid aftermath of hardcover publication: The New York Times reported on its front page that the Argentine Navy captain whose story is at the heart of this book had had his face slashed by four attackers and was warned to stop speaking with journalists about military crimes - violent retribution for his breaking of the military's code of silence about the atrocities. Author's reputation: Verbitsky is Argentina's leading investigative journalist. He won a major award from the Latin American Studies Association when this book was first published in America in 1996. Author visit at the beginning of August for publicity and promotion. Argentine military's code of silence, stunning his compatriots and the world by openly confessing his participation in the hideous practice of pushing live political dissidents out of airplanes during Argentina's dirty war. Available for the first time in the UK, with a new introduction by Judge Gabriel Cavallo on the upcoming military trials and a new epilogue by the author, Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior includes the complete text of Scilingo's confession in the form of interviews given to Argentina's best-known investigative journalist, Horacio Verbitsky. The afterword by Juan Mendez, General Consel of Human Rights Watch, puts Adolfo Scilingo confession of atrocities committed during the 'dirty war' into a historical and international context.

One day a woman of average means waltzes by a jewellery shop window and spots a GBP20,000 diamond necklace. She can't get it out of her head. Eventually she gets the idea of sharing it with friends, persuading them to chip in a grand each to buy the necklace. This is the true story of 13 ordinary women, and one extraordinary adventure. The Necklace is the amazing true story of thirteen women who didn't want to give up on their dreams. They clubbed together to buy a gorgeous diamond necklace, agreeing that each of them would have it for four weeks at a time. They would meet every month to find out what the necklace (now dubbed 'Jewelia') had been up to. The club had some rules: if someone went to Paris, they got the necklace. At least once, everyone had to wear the necklace whilst making love. After two years, the necklace had been loaned out to nieces, grandmas, friends and granddaughters. It had been worn by brides and colleagues and sisters and friends. And when it was their turn for the necklace the women of Jewelia wore it for both the daily routines and special events of their lives, to teach school, to work in the farmer's market, to go fishing and skydiving. It started something. The Necklace is the story of how an object of desire became a catalyst for connection, friendship and more. It's like Calendar Girls, only maybe a bit more glamorous, glitzy and sparkling.

Corinne Hofmann describes her return to Switzerland and the difficulties that faced her there, detailing how she built a new life for herself and her daughter and overcame all obstacles, with the same courage and optimism with which she faced the demands of her life in the Kenyan outback.

Based upon conversations recorded by a French journalist, this book mixes autobiographical reflections with a critique of the contemporary state of the Middle East. It tells the stories of many individuals working for peace and of his own work, especially with children and students of the school and college he has founded. Fr Elias Chacour, author of the bestselling books Blood Brothers and We Belong to the Land, is the Archbishop of Galilee. Seeing the lack of educational opportunities for Palestinian youth, he created a school open to all local children which opened in the early 1980s. The Mar Elias Educational Institution and now caters for 4,500 students, representing all major religions and ethnicities in Israel. Fr Chacour has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times and has received other prestigious peace awards.

Born to shell-shocked parents in shell-shocked London shortly after the end of World War II, Paul 'Sailor' Vernon came into his own during the 1960s when spotty teenage herberts with bad haircuts began discovering The Blues. For the Sailor it became a lifelong obsession that led him first to record collecting and stalking unsuspecting visiting bluesmen, and then into a whirlwind of activity as a rare record hunter, record dealer, magazine proprietor/editor, video bootlegger and record company director before a variety of personal and business setbacks eventually ushered him into seeking a more stable form of existence. The many twists and turns in the author's roller-coaster adventure of a life are all vividly charted in this hilarious illustrated autobiography. GASP as you read how he road-tripped his way through the Deep South armed only with a Rand McNally map, a Swiss army knife and an emergency jar of Marmite! MARVEL as you absorb in-depth descriptions of legendary performances by long-departed giants of the Blues! CHOKE on your coffee as one rotten gag after another blindsides you! REND YOUR GARMENTS as you realise just how many original Blues 78's went through his sweaty hands! SHOUT "BLIMEY!" within earshot of surprised elderly relatives as you follow the rags-to-riches tale of his extraordinary life! It's all here in this one-of-a-kind life history that will leave you reaching for an enamel bucket and a fresh bottle of disinfectant!

Tom Hart Dyke has a bit of a thing about plants. You might call it an obsession. You might call him certifiable, in fact. But it's a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large ramshackle country estate and an obsession with plant collecting could want for only one thing - in Tom's case it's a walled garden containing examples of plants collected from every corner of the globe. Tom's infectious enthusiasm for anything with chlorophyll in it and the hugely ambitious World Garden project he has undertaken at his family home, Lullingstone Castle, in Kent have been documented in a 12-part television series for BBC 2. The first six parts ("Save Lullingstone Castle") were shown in spring 2006, and the second six episodes ("Return to Lullingstone Castle") in spring 2007 to coincide with hardback publication.Tom's attempts to set up the World Garden aren't exactly straightforward. You might imagine, for example, that the easiest way to start preparing the ground inside the walled Elizabethan garden which he transforms into the main part of the world garden would be to enlist the help of a few people and a lot of hard digging. Well not for Tom, who enlists instead two large pigs, who do indeed do a great job of turning over the earth and fertilising it with great organic manure. But the problem is that they keep escaping into the Hart Dyke family burial plot next door where they start digging up Tom's ancestors..."The World Garden" is created to bring together a truly amazing collection of plants from every continent and so to show the global origins of the plants we all grow in our gardens. It's already establishing itself as a tourist attraction of some note as well as an educational resource. This is a book for all those who bought Tim Smit's "Lost Gardens of Heligan". It's stuffed full of fascinating botanical information as well as the story of Tom's hapless struggle to overcome huge logistical nightmares. It's a riveting, hilarious story of English eccentricity in full bloom.

'Of course I'm a f**king hooligan, you pr**k. I am a hooligan...there I've said it...I'm a hooligan. And, do you know why? Because that's my f**king job.' In 1995, a film called I.D., about an ambitious young copper who was sent undercover to track down the 'generals' of a football hooligan gang, achieved cult status for its sheer brutality and unsettling insight into the dark and often bloody side of the so-called beautiful game. The film was so shocking it was hard to believe the mindless events that took place could ever happen in the real world. Well, believe it now... Almost twenty years on, the man behind the film has explosively revealed that the script was largely a true story. That man, James Bannon, was the ambitious undercover cop. The football club was Millwall F.C. and the gang that he infiltrated was The Bushwackers, among the most brutal and fearless in English football. In Running with the Firm, Bannon shares his intense and dangerous journey into the underworld of football hooliganism where sickening levels of violence prevail over anything else. He introduces you to the hardest thugs from football's most notorious gangs, tells all about the secret and almost comical police operations that were meant to bring them down, and, how once you're on the inside, getting out from the mob proves to be the biggest mission of all. A disturbing but compelling read, this is the book that proves fact really is stranger than fiction.

'America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.' - Abraham Lincoln Is the story of the United States that of George Washington, John Adams and Barack Obama? Or of slave rebel Nat Turner, of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King? Or Sitting Bull and Al Capone? Or Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and OJ Simpson? Of course, it is the story of all these, of both civil war and world war, of gold rush and dust bowl, of the Pilgrim Fathers and religious cults, of Prohibition and the Mafia, of the Salem Witch Trials and the McCarthy-era witch-hunts. From the Iroquois and early European settlers to the Revolutionary War and Civil War, from slavery to segregation, from the frontier to the Reservations, The History of America is a chronological examination of the United States through politics, labour, big business, crime and culture. Featuring such varied characters as Thomas Jefferson and John Brown, Bugsy Siegel and J P Morgan, Calamity Jane, Chuck Berry and Bonnie & Clyde, it tells the story of the first 'new nation', the first major colony to revolt successfully against colonial rule, and how it became the world's most powerful country. Extensively researched and illustrated with 180 black-&-white artworks and illustrations, The History of America is a lively and fascinating account of the darker side of the story of the United States.

Warm, funny and moving; the perfect summer read. For fans of Arthur, Finding Gobi and Damien Lewis' A Dog Called Hope. When Steve Jamieson met Bilbo, a chocolate Newfoundland puppy, little did he know that the small bundle of fluff would grow to take up a huge space in his heart and change his life forever. The pair were inseparable, with Bilbo accompanying Steve to his job as head lifeguard of Sennen beach in Cornwall every day. With his webbed paws and thick, double layer of fur, Bilbo was an excellent swimmer and he was soon promoted to honorary lifeguard. He was even credited with saving the lives of three people. Word about Bilbo spread and fans flocked from miles around to meet the friendly giant. But Bilbo and Steve couldn't have foreseen the obstacles that life would throw at them. Together, they would have to gather every bit of their strength to fight for their livelihood. Warm, heartfelt and moving, Bilbo the Lifeguard Dog is a tale of heroism and friendship, and is one man's tribute to his extraordinary dog.

While searching for a home to buy, Cindy and her family settled for the house on the hill. It wasn''t long before Cindy was aware there was something other than her family in the house. It started with small occurrences that eventually turned into a nightmare. Every night at midnight, she would awake by being hit by something she could not see. No one was there yet her eyes would be fixed on the wall. Later when things began to materialize, she realized, the wall was an entrance to hell.

This book covers the author's flying career from the finish of World War II until his final appointment as CO of the Naval Test Squadron at Boscombe Down. Having had an outstanding wartime record 'Mike' Crosley became heavily involved with the introduction of Britain's first carrier-borne jet aircraft. The book explains how modern techniques, such as the angled flight deck, steam catapult and deck landing mirror sights were developed and tested. At Boscombe down he developed the 'hand's-off' launch technique for the Buccaneer which saved it from probable cancellation at a very difficult time for British naval aviation.

In the second volume of Vincent Roth's Guyana memoirs, Vincent is a mature adult who is very sure of himself and bound to his adopted country. Roth's memoirs, while revealing colonial petty-minded bureaucracy, jumped-up officialdom, and incompetence, nevertheless present a picture of a country that worked, where the mail reached the remotest parts of the interior, but where the obliterating power of nature over human effort had to be constantly resisted.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis faces a battle to uncover the dark family secret that is tearing a family apart. Rosie is used to looking after children from difficult home situations, but she finds herself struggling when she agrees to take in Taylor and her younger brother, Reece, for a short while. Taylor tries desperately not to fit in, to be the tough young teen that she has had to become, making it clear that she cares about nothing and no-one, while Reece is just desperate for someone to love him. Rosie finds herself battling an unknown monster in their past, as social media and the Internet become a means to control and manipulate the siblings while in her care. And then a more sinister turn of events causes Rosie to dig into their past, desperate to discover the truth before her time with them is over and they must be returned to their family.

Gleeful and noisy celebrations greeted several dozen nervous young women when, after 99 tumultuous days at sea aboard the Tynemouth, they stepped ashore in Victoria in September 1862. Immediately they were faced with an ordeal of a different kind -- walking in single file up the ceremonial pathway through a jostling crowd of boisterous, eager men. One astonished young woman, proposed to on the spot, accepted her suitor to the delighted cheers of the throng and married him the next day. However, it took most of the bride-ship women longer to find their new destinies. Why did these women leave everything behind in England and come to the west coast of Canada? The answers lie in the atrocious disruptions of industrial Britain, the conflicting aims of earnest Christians and early feminists, and the lusty turmoil of a gold-rush frontier. All three elements shaped this complex and intriguing true story. The hardships and happiness of Louisa and Charlotte Townsend, Isabel Curtis, Jane Saunders, Emma Tammadge, Minnie Gillan and others who left no records are brought to life in this book.

It's 1971 and seventeen-year-old Christine is about to give birth to her son. When her family throw her out, Christine has the biggest fight of her life to bring up her son safe on the infamous Canterbury Estate in Bradford, rife with crime, alcohol and drugs, a place where family is everything and nothing. It's Friday evening on the Canterbury Estate in Bradford and Christine, who's been rushed to hospital by her friend, Josie, is on the maternity ward giving birth. She's 17 and terrified. Not just of the pain, which is ripping her in two, but because she knows that once the baby arrives, her family is never going to speak to her again. Her beautiful baby boy is about to start a chain of events that will lead to tragedy - and only her own family can save her.

Chicken Soup for the Soul is a heartwarming collection of tales that will inspire you to live your dreams. The stories demonstrate the best qualities we share as human beings: compassion, grace, forgiveness, generosity and faith and they share a collected wisdom on love, parenting, teaching, death and the overcoming of obstacles. The Chicken Soup series has touched the lives of millions of people worldwide. Discover how your life could be turned around too.