When Jess Green joined the Labour Party at university she doubled the number of members who met weekly in the Liverpool Philarmonic pub. Since then she's stuck by them through the downfall of Tony Blair, the disappointment of Gordon Brown and the monolith of Ed Miliband. After a decade of keeping her membership card firmly at the back of her wallet she's suddenly, like most frustrated lefty activists, fallen head over heels in love with Jeremy Corbyn and is raw Communist sex appeal.

'Mary careens across these pages with her usual wit, wisdom and honesty' - Julie Andrews '[A] thoughtful chronicle of one woman's journey through experience to understanding - and a lot of fun to read' - The Washington Post 'Pure pleasure . . . jaw-droppingly shocking' - Daniel Okrent, The New York Times The wonderfully funny, candid and outrageous NYT bestselling memoirs of Mary Rodgers - writer, composer, Broadway royalty, and 'a woman who tried everything.' Mary Rodgers was the daughter of Richard Rodgers, who, with Oscar Hammerstein, wrote some of the biggest musicals of the 20th century-from Oklahoma! and Carousel to South Pacific and The King and I. Shy is the story of how Mary went from angry child, constrained by a self-absorbed mother and her father's overwhelming gift, to finally living life on her own terms-falling in love, often unwisely, marrying twice, having six children, and forging a career of her own. Through her long and rich life Mary grabbed every chance possible-and then some. Her musical Once Upon A Mattress remains one of the rare revivable Broadway hits written by a woman. She was the renowned author of the much-loved Freaky Friday books, as well as a close friend and collaborator of Stephen Sondheim, falling in love with him at 13 over a game of chess. She also dated producer Hal Prince and worked alongside composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. With copious annotations, contradictions, and interruptions from Mary's collaborator Jesse Green, the chief theatre critic of The New York Times, the result is laugh-out-loud funny and frequently moving. Above all, Shy is a chance to sit at the feet of the kind of woman they don't make any more. They make themselves.

The first collection by poet Jess Green is taken from her spoken word show set in an inner city secondary school suffering the cuts and blows of the Coalition government. Burning Books champions the underdogs; the unnoticed and unheard stories bearing the gritty reality of the UK's education system.