Biography For Boys

Mikey is a Romany Gypsy and grew up living in a caravan on sites across the UK. He adored his family and the rich and vibrant Romany culture he'd inherited. Eventually though he was forced to make a heartbreaking decision - to stay and keep secrets, or escape and find somewhere to finally belong. But Mikey quickly discovers that life in the outside world isn't all he expected.

One hot, humid day in July 1944, the Gestapo abducted 15-year-old Henry and his mother, forcing them onto cramped cattle cars in the Łódź Polish Ghetto. Like so many Jews before them, they had been selected to disappear–they were being sent to Auschwitz.

Stephen Smith is the boy who did not exist. Born out of wedlock in the early 1960s, Steve's parents - both devout Catholics - had felt so 'shamed' by their son's illegitimate birth that they hid him away from the world by locking him in the cellar...for 13 years. Apart from a few admissions to hospital as a result of his 'imprisonment', Steve remained in the coal cellar of the family home where he was deprived of daylight, his childhood, school and human contact until he'd reached his teenage years.

The New York Times best-selling memoir that inspired the film October Sky, Rocket Boys is a uniquely American memoir - a powerful, luminous story of coming of age at the dawn of the 1960s, of a mother's love and a father's fears, of a group of young men who dreamed of launching rockets into outer space... and who made those dreams come true. Nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, Homer Hickam's lush, lyrical memoir is a marvelously entertaining chronicle of triumph.

In 2021, Seán set out on his mission to be the first to sound record all the regularly occurring bird species in Ireland: a journey of discovery and wonder that has taken him to the four corners of Ireland. Nature Boy is the powerful story of a child who never fitted in - and a man who found his place in the world. It is a celebration of birds, connection and being true to yourself - and of the extraordinary, healing power of nature.

Saint, slave or scholar? Patrick of Ireland is known as all three, but who is he really? Let K. C. Murdarasi bring to light the real life of this father of the Christian faith. Kidnapped from his home and family as a young boy you would think forgiveness would have been far from his mind.Yet with God's grace Patrick returned to the land of his captivity where he preached the good news of Jesus Christ to slaves and kings alike - and left a legacy of faith that would last for centuries.

Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.

They all thought he was gone. But he was alive and trapped inside his own body for ten years. In January 1988 Martin Pistorius, aged 12, fell inexplicably sick. First, he lost his voice and stopped eating. Then he slept constantly and shunned human contact. Doctors were mystified. Within 18 months, he was mute and wheelchair-bound. Martin's parents were told an unknown degenerative disease left him with the mind of a baby and less than two years to live.

Without the Sex Pistols there would be no punk. And without Steve Jones there would be no Sex Pistols. It was Steve who, with his schoolmate Paul Cook, formed the band that eventually went on to become the Sex Pistols and who was its original leader. As the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of punk - the influence and cultural significance of which is felt in music, fashion, and the visual arts to this day - Steve tells his story for the very first time.

Into a memoir that is gripping, funny, heartbreaking, and unforgettable, Walter Dean Myers richly weaves the details of his Harlem childhood in the 1940s and 1950s: a loving home life with his adopted parents, Bible school, street games, and the vitality of his neighborhood. Although Walter spent much of his time either getting into trouble or on the basketball court, secretly he was a voracious reader and an aspiring writer.

In her New York Times opinion column, Jennifer Finney Boylan wrote about her relationship with her beloved dog Indigo, and her wise, funny, heartbreaking piece went viral. In Good Boy, Boylan explores what should be the simplest topic in the world, but never is: Finding and giving love. Good Boy is a universal account of a remarkable story: Showing how a young boy became a middle-aged woman - accompanied at seven crucial moments of growth and transformation by seven memorable dogs. "Everything I know about love," she writes, "I learned from dogs."

Drawing on more than 500 interviews with friends and family, teammates, and opponents, she delivers the definitive account of Mantle's life, mining the mythology of The Mick for the true story of a luminous and illustrious talent with an achingly damaged soul.

When they fell in love in 1928, Rika and Waldemar could have not been more different. She was a thirty-seven-year-old Dutch-born mother, estranged from her husband. He was her immigrant boarder, not yet twenty, and a wealthy Surinamese descendant of slaves. The child they have together, brown skinned and blue eyed, brings the couple great joy yet raises some eyebrows. Until the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands explodes their promising life. What unfolds is more than the astonishing story of a love that prevailed over convention. It’s also the quest of a young boy.

A lyrical and authentic book that recounts the story of a border-town family in Brownsville, Texas in the 1980s, as each member of the family desperately tries to assimilate and escape life on the border to become "real" Americans, even at the expense of their shared family history. This is really un-mined territory in the memoir genre that gives in-depth insight into a previously unexplored corner of America.

Charmed or cursed? Doomed by their royal birthright and their parents' marital misery? Or destined to live out the best of their late mother's legacy by selflessly involving themselves in real-world problems? Only time can tell how Prince William and his brother, Harry, will play the extraordinary hands that fate has dealt them.

Audie Award, Faith-Based Non-Fiction, 2016. In 1953, in Jonesboro, Arkansas, a baby boy was born - dead. The attending physician set his little body aside and tended to his mother for 18 minutes. Now, more than 60 years later, that boy leads an internationally known ministry that encourages hundreds of thousands every year. The Boy Born Dead tells his incredible story from the perspective of his best friend, David Wideman.

Throughout his young days at school and just afterwards, a number of things happened to Roald Dahl, which made such a tremendous impression he never forgot them. Boy is the remarkable story of Roald Dahl's childhood; tales of exciting and strange things - some funny, some frightening, all true.

It’s one of the most shocking unsolved missing-child cases in the world. Where is Kyron Horman? Why hasn’t the woman who police suspect is responsible for his 2010 disappearance - Kyron’s stepmother - been charged? That the seven-year-old disappeared from his grade school got the attention of parents around the world.

On April 6, 1965, Georges Lemay was relaxing on his yacht in a south Florida marina following one of the largest and most daring bank heists in Canadian history. For four years, the roguishly handsome criminal mastermind hid in plain sight, eluding capture and the combined efforts of the FBI, Interpol, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. His future appeared secure. What Lemay didn't know was that less than two hundred miles away at Cape Canaveral, a brilliant engineer named Harold Rosen was about to usher in the age of global live television.

The harrowing, true account from the brave men on the ground who fought back during the Battle of Benghazi. 13 Hours presents, for the first time ever, the true account of the events of September 11, 2012, when terrorists attacked the US State Department Special Mission Compound and a nearby CIA station called the Annex in Benghazi, Libya. A team of six American security operators fought to repel the attackers and protect the Americans stationed there. Those men went beyond the call of duty, performing extraordinary acts of courage and heroism.