Walk a mile in someone else's shoes. Immerse yourself in the lives of the famous and people whose stories you can relate to. Our biography titles come in book, eBook, eAudiobook or large print. This list updates when we add new titles to our collection.
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eBook
"When Neil Reynolds was first asked in 2003 whether he'd like to work in Iraq as a private military contractor, he didn't even know where it was on the map. But he would soon learn the ins and outs of working and surviving in one of the world's most ...
Book
At twenty-three, Isa Mazzei was just like any other college graduate: broke, lacking purpose, and searching for an identity. She was also a compulsive seductress with a reputation as a slut and heartbreaker. One day, while working a low-paying retail...
Call me naïve, but when I was a girl-watching James Bond and devouring Harriet the Spy-all I wanted was to grow up to be a spy. Unlike most kids, I didn't lose my secret-agent aspirations. So as a bright-eyed, idealistic college grad, I sent my resume...
A memoir of family, the Holocaust, trauma, and identity, in which Adam Frankel, a former Obama speechwriter, must come to terms with the legacy of his family's painful past and discover who he is in the wake of a life-changing revelation about his own...
A vivid narrative that connects the lives of four great astronomers and the scientific discovery that ushered in the modern era. Before the invention of the telescope, people used nothing more than their naked eye to understand what took place in the...
From his first paintings to the colorful flower images of his later career, Vincent van Gogh (1853?1890) repeatedly painted still lifes. In this genre, he could try out various media and alternatives - from depicting space using light and shadow to e...
Large Print
"Between the world wars, no sport was more popular, or more dangerous, than airplane racing. Thousands of fans flocked to multi-day events, and cities vied with one another to host them. The pilots themselves were hailed as dashing heroes who cheerfully...
James Tissot (French, 1836-1902) was one of the most intriguing artists of his era. Though invited by Edgar Degas to exhibit with the Impressionist circle, Tissot instead garnered exceptional critical and commerical success on his own in London and P...
In 2011, international businessman Peter Holmes à Court left the executive world and found himself living deep in rural France with only his seven-year-old twin girls for company. Peter was struggling as a single father in a foreign country – unsettled...
Lisa Schwartz's stories and musings are all about watching her friends adult like pros, while she tries to understand why she doesn't want or can't seem to find all the things they have for herself. Like a big sister who's already seen it all, Lisa will...
By age 25, Heather Anderson had hiked what is known as the "Triple Crown" of backpacking: the Appalachian Trail (AT), Pacific Crest Trail (PCT), and Continental Divide Trail (CDT)a combined distance of 7,900 miles with a vertical gain of more than one...
"For more than four decades, Libby Davies has worked steadfastly for social justice. She became a community organizer in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside at the age of nineteen, later became active in Vancouver municipal politics, and eventually worked her...
Hermann Hesse's stories inspired nonconformity and a yearning for universal values to supplant the political fanaticism tearing Europe apart. Initially, critics thought his work inaccessible to Americans, but the counterculture of the 1960s--and subs...
eAudiobook
By the 1930s, no one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent, and to...
Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world's most isolated and unforgiving environments--Nome, Alaska. That's what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become...
A Financial Times Sports book of the Year 2018 pick Who's better: Ronaldo or Messi? Ask any football fan and they'll have an opinion. For the best part of the last decade football has seen a personal rivalry unlike any seen before. Cristiano and Leo....
A heart-rending memoir of love, loss and the unique relationship twins share. More than thirty years ago, David Loftus's cherished identical twin, John, passed away. Ever since, a day hasn't passed without David feeling the loss. In 1987, after recovering...
A genuine super-coach', Stephen Jones, Sunday Times Brilliant, honest, combative - Eddie Jones is a gigantic yet enigmatic figure in world rugby and a true legend of the game. In My Life and Rugby he tells his story for the first time, including the ...
Françoise Malby-Anthony never expected to find herself responsible for a herd of elephants with a troubled past. A chic Parisienne, her life changed forever when she fell in love with South African conservationist Lawrence Anthony. Together they founded...
Through his experience of boxing - learning to get hit, and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body - McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes...
Sitting down to write a book about his hero D.H. Lawrence, Geoff Dyer finds himself compelled to write about anything else. He is in fact compelled to do more or less anything else instead of write. In Sicily he is too preoccupied by his hatred of seafood...
From the debris of her troubled early life, Lidia Yuknavitch weaves an astonishing tale of survival. A kind of memoir that is also a peon to the pursuit of beauty, self-expression, desire - for men and women - and the exhilaration of swimming, The Ch...
This is the life story of Father Bob Maguire - a rare behind-the-scenes look at the much-loved 'people's priest'. The enigmatic champion of the down-and-out was shaped by a lonely childhood in poor circumstances, an early priesthood that collided with...
In 2015 Natalie Yule Yeoman was diagnosed with breast cancer. A maze of grace is the story of her response to the illness over a year, through diary entries, correspondence, poems, medical reports and family writings. By cultivating her inner resourc...
The only New Zealander to have been attacked by a library, former diplomat Nick Bridge writes of his liberation from English class constraints and an education at a Hampshire prep school to the opportunities of 1950s New Zealand and a co-ed state school...
Graphic novel
"In 1778, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart leaves Salzburg for Paris. The French capital promises to liberate the 22-year-old from the suffocating grip of his father, and from a city that is unable to accommodate his genius. But there is no grand entrance for...
You may know Jerry Lee Lewis married his thirteen-year-old cousin but did you know he shot his bass player in the chest with a shotgun or that a couple of his wives died under extremely mysterious circumstances? Or that Sam Cooke was shot dead in a seedy...
Sophie Crockett spent most of her childhood suffering from crippling anxiety. Diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome, she became a virtual prisoner in her own home, afraid to venture outside. After battling with depression, eating disorders and self-harm,...
You might recognize him as an NFL All-Pro or as an elite magician who made the finals of America's Got Talent and regularly appears on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But Jon Dorenbos says that what he does is not who he is. Who he is is someone forced, at...
The international supermodel shares personal stories and lessons learned from a life of "living dangerously--carefully." Maye Musk at seventy-one is a fashionable, charming, jet-setting supermodel with a fascinating and tight-knit circle of family and...
Perhaps we have done to our bodies what we have so long done to God? We have demanded they conform to the image we find the most desirable. We have treated them as rubbish bins, weapons and punching bags. We have muted their wills until their voices...
Ben Moon had no intention of getting a dog until he met the soulful gaze of a husky-pit bull cross pup in a rescue shelter. Ben instantly felt a connection, and his friendship with the extraordinary Denali was born. The two friends set out on the road...
Brilliant, honest, combative - Eddie Jones is a gigantic yet enigmatic figure in world rugby and a true legend of the game. In My Life in Rugby he tells his story for the first time, including the full inside story of England's 2019 World Cup campaign....
Alison Light met the radical social historian, Raphael Samuel, in London in 1986. Twenty years her senior, Raphael was a charismatic figure on the British Left, utterly driven by his work and by a commitment to collective politics. Within a year they...
"Written between 1946 and 1954, these accounts of four controversial trials explore the nature of crime and punishment, innocence and guilt, retribution and forgiveness. The centerpiece of the book is "Greenhouse with Cyclamens," a three-part essay on...
Acclaimed writer, bestselling author, and founder of Salon magazine, David Talbot has brought us masterful and explosive headline-breaking stories for over 25 years with books like the New York Times bestsellers Brothers, The Devil's Chessboard, and ...
At eighteen, Jillian Lauren was an NYU theater school dropout with a tip about an upcoming audition. The "casting director" told her that a rich businessman in Singapore would pay pretty American girls $20,000 if they stayed for two weeks to spice up...
‘Forgotten Philanthropist’ — these two words summarise this book. Robert McDougall was one of Christchurch’s most generous benefactors. His gift to Christchurch in autumn 1928 of the art gallery that bears his name is, in today’s monetary terms, the ...
Graham Hannah was that rare diamond, a Waikato businessman more at home in a sarong than a suit. He shimmers in this gritty memoir which takes root in Yorkshire, the home of his childhood. He honed his sales skills selling Bon Brushes door to door and...
Paul Gallen's career in rugby league is extraordinary. For his club, his state and his country he's given everything he's got, and then some. He's captained his club, The Cronulla Sharks, to their first every premiership, he's led the NSW Blues to a....
For as long as they can remember, Cyrus Grace Dunham felt like a visitor in their own body. Their life was a series of imitations--lovable little girl, daughter, sister, young gay woman--until their profound sense of alienation became intolerable. Mo...
Louis XIV wanted to conquer time and space - to push the borders of France which he inherited out into Flanders, Burgundy and Alsace, and beyond, to expand French dominion in the Americas and the East, to win what he called 'the exquisite praises of ...
Rudyard Kipling once towered over not just English literature, but indeed the entire literary world. In 1907, at just forty-two, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, becoming its youngest winner and the first in the English language. Today,...
Join Jenson Button as he reveals how not to race a stupid big truck, why driving Le Mans is like having five shots of tequila before lunch, and what to do when you finally hang up your helmet-hat.
The bestselling author of The Things They Carried and If I Die in a Combat Zone shares wisdom from a life in letters, lessons learned in wartime, and the challenges, humour and rewards of raising two sons. When Tim O'Brien became an older father, he ...
What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? How can we love in the absence of faith? In a heartbreaking yet hopeful collection of pers...
Maurice Blackburn brought into public life a rare character, complete indifference to personal consequences, an uncommon scholarship, great zeal for humanity, and a firm belief, which I am happy to share, that men are immeasurably more important than...
Since Houston's death in 2012 Crawford has stayed out of the limelight and held the great joys, wild adventures, and hard truths of her life with the artist close to her heart. Crawford breaks her silence to share the moving and often complicated story...
In what was a momentous year of social change, the Rolling Stones experienced the most significant twelve months of their career. At the start of 1969, they were a successful blues band returning to their rock'n'roll roots after a recent experiment w...
Robert A. Caro's legendary, multi-award-winning biography of US President Lyndon Johnson is a uniquely riveting and revelatory account of power, political genius and the shaping of twentieth-century America. This first instalment tells of the rise to...
Harriet Tubman is best known as one of the most famous conductors on the Underground Railroad. As a leading abolitionist, her bravery and selflessness has inspired generations in the continuing struggle for civil rights. Now, National Book Award nominee...
After spending most of his twenties pursuing a career as a literary agent, John Hodgman decided to try his own hand at writing. Following an appearance to promote one of his books on The Daily Show, he was invited to return as a contributor. This led...
This collection of narratives from autistic adults is structured around their decades of experience of life, covering 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60 and 70s+. These are varied and diverse, spanning different continents, genders, sexualities and ethnicities, yet...
In 1485, Henry VII became the first Tudor king of England. His victory owed much to his mother, Lady Margaret Beaufort. Over decades and across countries, Margaret had schemed to install her son on the throne and end the War of the Roses. Margaret's....
This biography, filled with photographs from his sensational career, follows Roger Federer from his first steps in tennis in the junior tournaments right through to the main professional circuit. It is an illustrated biography of a man who has graced...
Will Self writes an honest memoir about his drug addiction in the 1980s and his attempts to grapple with adult life as he left university for the professional world.
JAY-Z: Made in America is the fruit of Michael Eric Dyson's decade of teaching the work of one of the greatest poets this nation has produced, as gifted a wordsmith as Walt Whitman, Robert Frost and Rita Dove. But as a rapper, he's sometimes not given...
There was a time when the heavyweight champion of the world transcended the sport of boxing and was a globally famous celebrity. With the buildup and detailed action of every bout thoroughly chronicled, When the Heavyweight Title Meant Something takes...
"Professor Noel Fitzpatrick is a world-renowned neuro-orthopaedic veterinary surgeon, the founder of Fitzpatrick Referrals in Surrey, and the star of the hit television series The Supervet, now in its 11th series. Renowned for performing unique and.....
'I have always been proactive in my management style and decisions in that I abhor having to say, "I told you so". This has lead me to first suggesting, then persuading and finally insisting on my requirements to ensure that things happened'. So wrote...
Writer Lisa Jones went to Wyoming for a four-day magazine assignment. She was committed to a long-term relationship, building a career and searching for something she could not name. At a dusty corral on the Wind River Indian Reservation, she met Sta...
This memoir will make you question our definition of the "perfect life", laugh at the absurdity of the modern workplace and be warmed by the story of a freindship. Kasey Edwards has everything she's always wanted: a successful career and the lifestyle...
In this mesmerising, definitive new biography Carolyn Burke gives us Piaf in her own time and place, illuminating through sympathetic readings of sources hitherto unavailable both the charm and the pathos of the 'Little Sparrow' who enchanted generations...
Karma Redirected: How Did They Let You Become a Teacher is the mostly real memoirs of a mostly real character named Mo Mickus. Through a series of short stories - stories beginning at his birth - Mo's lack of understanding is revealed as he goes from...
Sick of going overseas and enjoying himself, comedian Adam Rozenbachs decided he would take his father on the trip of a lifetime to Europe. For his dad, it was a chance to return to the place he hadn't seen since fleeing post-war Germany. For Adam, a...
Stolen from his mother and placed into institutional care when he was only a few months old, Uncle Jack was raised under the government's White Australia Policy. The loneliness and isolation he experienced during those years had a devastating impact on...
Rebekah Robertson's extraordinary personal story of raising her transgender child, Georgie Stone, who has become a voice not just for other transgender kids - but for an emerging generation. In 2000, Rebekah gave birth to twin boys, George and Harry....
Brilliant, honest, combative - Eddie Jones is a gigantic yet enigmatic figure in world rugby and a true legend of the game. In -- My Life in Rugby is the story of one of the most compelling and singular figures in rugby, told with unflinching honesty...
"In 1990, Dave Muller sails to Mozambique with his wife, Sandy, and two young children, to fulfil a boyhood dream of voyaging to the tropics on the yacht he's spent ten years building. The fantasy holiday comes to a shocking end when the yacht runs aground...
Bill Haley - the man who brought rock 'n' roll into the mainstream. His song "Crazy Man, Crazy" was the first rock 'n' roll song to break the Billboard Top 20 in 1953 and was followed by his evergreen "We're Gonna Rock Around the Clock " the first song...
Brought to you by Penguin. 'Hysterical, important, moving, wonderful' Sara PascoeI'm Jen Brister, stand-up comedian, middle-aged adolescent and, more recently, a mum. But not that mum - I'm the other one. Confused? Let's back up a bit. Two years ago,...
Brought to you by Penguin. Pre order and become one of the first to read Sir Alastair Cook's new book, the whole story behind an exceptional life and career . . . To understand England's greatest cricket player is to know what it takes to succeed. Al...
Christopher Schacht shares his incredible experiences, revealing what he has learned along the way about life, love, and God, describing touching and bizarre encounters and insights that aren't found in any travel guide. Christopher Schacht was only ...
Colin O'Brady's awe-inspiring memoir spans his triumphant recovery from a tragic accident to his gripping 932-mile solo crossing of Antarctica. Prior to December 2018, no individual had ever crossed the landmass of Antarctica alone, without support a...
The astonishing untold story of the WWII airmen who risked it all in the deadly race to become the greatest American fighter pilot. In 1942, America's deadliest fighter pilot, or "ace of aces"'the legendary Eddie Rickenbacker'offered a bottle of bourbon...
Brought to you by Penguin.First class honors law degree. 102 appearances for England women's national football team. First female pundit on Match of the Day. UN Women UK ambassador. Guardian columnist. All of these achievements belong to Eni Aluko, who,...
Outlines the dramatic 2006 survival story of a famed Australian mountain climber who was pronounced dead and abandoned by Sherpas during a climb of Mount Everest only to be discovered alive the next day.
Vive la difference! Here are stories and advice to help Aspergians and ordinary geeks alike! The author of the New York Times bestselling Look Me In the Eye returns with endearing stories and actionable advice that will help Aspergians, and even ordi...
The hilarious, charming, and candid story of writer Christopher Ingraham's decision to uproot his life and move his family to Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, population 1,400-the community he made famous as "the worst place to live in America" in a story he...
"The Beautiful Ones no es solo el tributo a un icono, también es una obra literaria poderosa y original por derecho propio, donde bullen las ideas de Prince, su manera de ver el mundo, su voz y su efigie, su ofrenda imperecedera al mundo. Esta es la...
The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas, a doomed lesbian biker gang, and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human figures that populate Michelle Tea's excavation of America's fringes....
"High-flying Harley-Davidson executive Shelley Paxton had an enviable life by most measures - money, travel, excitement. Yet the trappings of success hid a growing discontent, which spiraled into addiction, divorce and despair before a long-overdue b...
"In 1986, as part of a Canadian team, Sharon Wood became the first woman from the Americas to summit Mount Everest--and the first woman in the world to do so via the West Ridge from Tibet and without Sherpa support. But it's how she got there that is...
"Collection of personal essays about what it means to look a certain way. Or rather, certain ways. Navigating Kimberly Dark's experience of being fat since childhood--as well as queer, white-privileged, a gender-confirming 'girl with a pretty face,' ...
Escucha el íntimo, poderoso e inspirador libro de memorias de la exprimera dama de Estados Unidos Protagonista de una vida plena y exitosa, Michelle Obama se ha convertido en una de las mujeres más icónicas y cautivadoras de nuestra era. Como primera...
Sidney Lumet: A Life is the first-ever biography of this seminal American director whose remarkable life traces a line through American entertainment history. His biography takes us from the world of Yiddish theater to Broadway spectacles, then inside...
The gritty prison memoir of Michaella McCollum, one half of the infamous 'Peru Two', imprisoned in a Peruvian jail for attempting to smuggle 11kg of cocaine from Peru to Madrid in August 2013. She was just a regular girl, spending the summer working at...
"The fascinating story of two American giants--Henry Ford and Thomas Edison--whose annual summer sojourns introduced the road trip to our culture and made the automobile an essential part of modern life, even as their own relationship altered dramatically....
Tom Brokaw recounts the endgame of the Watergate scandal and the Nixon presidency in real time, from his perspective in the press corps as a young White House correspondent for NBC News. The last year of the Nixon presidency was filled with power pol...
November 21, 2010. U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Kyle Carpenter was posted atop a building in violent Helmand Province, Afghanistan, when an enemy grenade skittered toward him and fellow Marine Nick Eufrazio. Without hesitation, Carpenter jumped on the ...
The one hundred biographies included here give voice not only to ancient Egypt's rulers but also to the people who built the great monuments, staffed government offices, farmed, served in the temples, and fought to defend the country's borders. Spann...
In her most personal book yet, popular speaker and bestselling author Sarah Bessey invites us into her long--and sometimes miraculous--road to recovery after a terrible accident and shares how it changed everything she believed about God.
Dealing with unimaginable loss-- the death of her young son, followed a year later by the shocking loss of her husband-- Pages began to reflect on the persistence and nature of belief. Here she illuminates how, for better and worse, religious traditions...
"Available in English for the first time, the latest astonishing, bestselling, and award-winning book by Annie Ernaux. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present -- even....
""Exuding the same passion and purpose as the author herself, Joani Gammill's The Interventionist is a heartfelt game changer and long overdue. You deserve to read it.""--Dr. Phil McGraw, host of CBS's nationally syndicated show Dr. Phil Inspiring stories...
Each year in Australia, over sixty thousand people suffer from stroke. Within the first few weeks over one third of those affected die. For the survivors there is an uphill battle of physical and emotional rehabilitation: anger, confusion, grief, dep...
No Experience Necessary is Chef Norman Van Aken's joyride of a memoir. In it he spans twenty-plus years and nearly as many jobs--including the fateful job advertisement in the local paper for a short-order cook with "no experience necessary. "Long considered...
My Usual Table is a love letter to the great restaurants that have changed the way we eat--from Trader Vic's to Chez Panisse and Spago to elBulli--and a vivid memoir of a life lived in food, from a founding editor of Saveur and James Beard Award-winning...
Offering an intimate perspective on the life of an important, prolific author, this revealing biography uncovers the inner workings of a cult figure through his tumultuous relationship with his third wife. Brilliant and charismatic, Philip K. Dick was...
Fra Angelico and the Rise of the Florentine Renaissance investigates the beginnings of Florentine Renaissance art, with the friar painter Fra Angelico at the centre of the story. Fra Angelico is one of the great masters of Renaissance art and responsible...
The question "What is American art?" might conjure the hyperrealism of Raphaelle Peale and William Harnett, the bold graphic style of Stuart Davis and Jacob Lawrence, or the Precisionist forms of Charles Sheeler. Little known, however, is that such notions...
As Lucien Pellat-Finet and his eponymous fashion label celebrate 25 years, he looks back on his life and career and how he became the King of Cashmere. A proponent of streetwear chic, he is reputed for his signature use of symbols such as the hemp leaf,...
Celebrate an obscene number of years of low art and high art, failure and success, and the many other mistakes of multi-award winning writer and artist Eric Powell! In Nashville, Tennessee lives a man, a recluse, a curmudgeonly highfalutin cartoonist-type...
In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener -- stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial -- left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York...
Celebrating his work and vision, Alexander McQueen: Fashion Visonary traces the designer's ascent from student to graduate and on to becoming one of the world's most respected couturiers - a story marked by celebrity friendships, unrestrained creativ...
The CEO of The Walt Disney Company shares the ideas and values he has used to reinvent one of the most beloved companies in the world, and inspire the people who bring the magic to life.
A major new biography of one of the most extraordinary of all rulers, and the father of present-day Europe. Charles, king of the Franks, is one of the most remarkable figures ever to rule a European super-state. That is why he is so often called by the...
Once known for successful pop records and a wardrobe of polyester jump suits, this is a reassessment of a band now cemented in their position as one of the all time great pop acts. Abba were once reviled by most critics, but now bands like Bjorn Again...
She was stunning. She was ruthless. She was brilliant and had a will of iron. Born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Bucharest, she became Vera Atkins. William Stphenson, the spymaster who would later be known as "Intrepid", recruited her when she was twenty-three....
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