Nonfiction Memoir

From its inception in 1829 up to the eve of World War II, Scotland Yard: A Bloody History tells the full story of how the Yard developed and advanced modern crime-fighting techniques one infamous case at a time. Following detectives in pursuits across the sea, midnight hunts through Whitechapel and a grand manor death that inspired many a murder mystery, this enthralling book shows how the Yard helped pioneer bloodstain analysis, criminal profiling, fingerprinting, ballistics and more to 'catch their man' (or, sometimes, woman).

Widely known in the criminal underworld as the 'Black Widow', Linda Calvey spent the first half of her life running with the UK's top gangsters, robbing banks and rubbing shoulders with the Kray twins. That is, until, in 1990, her lover Robbie Cook was murdered at point-blank, and she found herself falsely convicted. Linda was sent away for decades, and would go on to become Britain's longest-serving female prisoner. This is her story of life inside, and how she learnt to survive the many years she spent behind bars.

As Viv Groskop knows from personal experience, everything that has ever happened to a person has already happened in the Russian classics: from not being sure what to do with your life (Anna Karenina) to being hopelessly in love with someone who doesn't love you back (Turgenev's A Month in the Country). In this sort of literary self-help memoir, Groskop mines these and other works, as well as the lives of their celebrated creators and her own experiences as a student of Russian, to answer the question, "How should you live your life?"

Physicians used to make house calls. Today, a few veterinarians still do. Duncan MacVean, DVM, is one such vet. His patients range from cats and dogs to pigs and lizard - each of them a unique personality. Every animal and every home is different, but every owner is the same in their affection for their companions. Without warning, MacVean finds himself in odd situations: stepping into a basement full of free-flying bats or struck speechless by a pig who loves opera so much that she falls into a trance.

On the trail of Soviet infiltrator Agent Blériot, Svetlana Lokhova takes the reader on a thrilling journey through Stalin’s most audacious intelligence operation. On a sunny September day in 1931, a Soviet spy walked down the gangplank of the luxury transatlantic liner SS Europa and into New York. Attracting no attention, Stanislav Shumovsky had completed his journey from Moscow to enrol at a top American university. He was concealed in a group of 65 Soviet students heading to prestigious academic institutions. But he was after far more than an excellent education.

Jason Sommer's father, Jay, is ninety-eight years old and losing his memory. More than seventy years after arriving in New York from WWII-torn Europe, he is forgetting the stories that defined his life, the life of his family, and the lives of millions of Jews who were affected by Nazi terror. Observing this loss, Jason vividly recalls the trip to Eastern Europe the two took together in 2001.

If your life was committed to pages, what would your diary say? Where would it start and what secrets would it hold? Lose yourself in a dark, spiraling tale of sex, drugs, and money told by author Karen Joy who provides a survivor’s eye view of the allure and hidden perils of sex trafficking in Diary of a Pimp’s Wife! In a bold baring of soul and memory, Joy chronicles the trials and tribulations of her once common-law husband, an up-and-coming pimp named AZ. Recounting her life with a toxic bad-boy husband and experiences with rap legend, Mr. Cheeks, Joy details AZ’s riotous rise ...

Elegant, provocative and hugely entertaining, Kingsley Amis's memoirs are filled with anecdotes, experiences and portraits of famous friends, family, acquaintances (and a few eminent foes). From his childhood days to Oxford and army life, his travels abroad and his years as a successful novelist, Memoirs offers extraordinary insights into a unique literary life.

David Aguilar was born missing part of one arm, a small detail that seemed to define his life and limit people’s ideas of who he was and who he could be. But in this funny and heartfelt memoir, David proves that he can throw out the rulebook and people’s expectations and maybe even make a difference in the world—and all with a sense of humor.

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

Raised in sleepy English suburbia, Georgina Lawton was no stranger to homogeneity. Her parents were White; her friends were White; there was no reason for her to think she was any different. But over time her brown skin and dark, kinky hair frequently made her a target of prejudice. In Georgina’s insistently color-blind household, with no acknowledgement of her difference or access to Black culture, she lacked the coordinates to make sense of who she was.

Why do we want to write and what stops us? How do we fight the worry that no-one will care what we have to say? What can we do to overcome the obstacles in our way? Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was arguably the greatest figure of the 20th century. While FDR's official circle was predominantly male, it was his relationships with women - particularly with Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd - that most vividly bring to light the human being beneath this towering statesman.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of Mark Twain's Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

PRELUDE TO THE FIFTH VITAL Mike Majlak was a seventeen-year-old from a loving, middle-class family in Milford, Connecticut, when he got caught up in the opioid epidemic that swept the nation. For close to a decade thereafter, his life was a wasteland of darkness and despair. While his peers were graduating from college, buying homes, getting married, having kids, and leading normal lives, Mike was snorting OxyContin, climbing out of cars at gunpoint, and burying his childhood friends. Unable to escape the noose of addiction, he eventually lost the trust and support of everyone who had ever ...

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.

A surreal, high-wire act of narrative nonfiction that redefines the genre, Avoid the Day is part detective story, part memoir, and part meditation on the meaning of life - all told with a dark pulse of existential horror. What emerges is an unforgettable study of mortality and the artist’s journey.

Anshel Brusilow started playing violin in 1933 at age five, in a Russian Jewish neighborhood of Philadelphia where practicing your instrument was as ordinary as hanging out the laundry. His playing wasn’t ordinary, though. At 16, he was soloing with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Brusilow turned in his violin bow for the baton and created his own Philadelphia Chamber Symphony. Next he took on the then-troubled Dallas Symphony Orchestra. Brusilow played with or conducted many top-tier classical musicians and has something to say about each one. He also made many recordings.

Essential life lessons from the world's most famous monk. Through a beautiful collection of autobiographical stories and teachings, At Home in the World tells the remarkable life of the beloved Zen Master, Thich Nhat Hanh. With his signature clarity and warmth, he shares tales from his childhood in rural Vietnam through to his travels teaching the world the art of mindfulness.

With the coming of the railroads, the American cowboy's job changed drastically, as the great trail herds became a thing of the past. Many cowboys faded into history, but there was a place in northwest Colorado and northeast Utah that still prized their skills. Val FitzPatrick's family homesteaded in this region, and Val became a rider for the Two-Bar at the age of 14. In later years, Val wrote many accounts of his life, and The Arbuckle Cafe is a collection of the best of his stories, all classic and authentic insights of what life on the range was really like.