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Joshua Cody
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408822463
Joshua Cody was about to receive his PhD from Columbia University when he was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer. He underwent six months of chemotherapy. The treatment failed. Expectations for survival plummeted. After consulting with several oncologists, he embarked on a risky course of high-dose chemotherapy, full body radiation, and an autologous bone marrow transplant. In a fevered, mesmerising voice, slaloming ... More/Buy
Camp David: The Autobiography
David Walliams
Michael Joseph, HB, 9780718158613
Famous comedian, funniest judge on Britain's Got Talent, irresistible ladykiller and high-achieving sportsman, David Walliams is a man of many talents. Launched to fame with the record-breaking Little Britain, his characters - Lou, Florence, Emily, amongst others - became embedded in our shared popular culture. You couldn't enter a playground for a long while without hearing 'eh, eh, eh' or 'computer ... More/Buy
Cezanne: A Biography
Alex Danchev
Profile Books, HB, 9781846681653
Today we view Cezanne as a monumental figure, but during his lifetime (1839-1906), many did not understand him or his work. With brilliant insight, drawing on a vast range of primary sources, Alex Danchev tells the story of an artist who was never accepted into the official Salon: he was considered a revolutionary at best and a barbarian at worst, whose ... More/Buy
Chanel: An Intimate Life
Lisa Chaney
Penguin, PB, 9780141036854
A provocative and revealing account of Chanel that explores her dalliances with bisexuality, drugs and an affair with a Nazi spy. Coco Chanel was many things to many people. Raised in emotional and financial poverty, she became one of the defining figures of the twentieth century. She was mistress to aristocrats, artists and spies. She broke rules of style and decorum, ... More/Buy
Counting One's Blessings: The Selected Letters of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother
William Shawcross (ed)
Macmillan, HB, 9780230754966
One of the great revelations of William Shawcross's official biography was the Queen Mother's private correspondence. Indeed, the Sunday Times described her letters as "wonderful... brimful of liveliness and irreverence, steeliness and sweetness." Now, drawing on the vast wealth of material in the Royal Archives, at Glamis Castle, and elsewhere, Shawcross has put together a selection of those letters. A prolific ... More/Buy
Daughter of Empire: Life as a Mountbatten
Pamela Hicks
W & N Non Fiction, PB, 9780297864837
Pamela Mountbatten was born at the end of the Twenties into one of Britain's grandest families. The daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten and his glamorous wife Edwina Ashley, she was bought up by nannies and governesses as she was often parted from her parents as they dutifully carried out their public roles. A solitary child, she learned to occupy her days ... More/Buy
David Mitchell: Back Story
David Mitchell
Harper Collins, PB, 9780007351732
David Mitchell, who you may know for his inappropriate anger on every TV panel show except Never Mind the Buzzcocks, his look of permanent discomfort on C4 sex comedy Peep Show, his online commenter-baiting in The Observer or just for wearing a stick-on moustache in That Mitchell and Webb Look, has written a book about his ... More/Buy
Dogs of Courage: The Heroism and Heart of Working Dogs From Around the World
Lisa Rogak
Pan, PB, 9781742612553
Dogs don't just make loveable pets. They also do an incredible number of jobs - police work, therapy, service, and more - and help humans in countless roles. From working with search-and-rescue teams to finding missing persons to helping patients recover from injuries, Lisa Rogak covers the many ways in which dogs are an essential part of our world. And she ... More/Buy
George F Kennan: An American Life
John Lewis Gaddis
Penguin, PB, 9780143122159
Winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Biography. Widely and enthusiastically acclaimed, this is the authorized, definitive biography of one of the most fascinating but troubled figures of the twentieth century by the nation's leading Cold War historian. In the late 1940s, George F. Kennan - then a bright but, relatively obscure American diplomat - wrote the 'long telegram' and the ... More/Buy
Give Me Excess of It: A Memoir
Richard Gill
Macmillan, HB, 9781742611617
Richard Gill is one of Australia's best-known - and best-loved - musical figures. His career has taken him from teaching music in Sydney's western suburbs to Music Director of the Victorian Opera, and along the way an involvement with almost every major opera company and orchestra in Australia. What truly distinguishes Richard is his passion and enthusiasm for spreading not just ... More/Buy
The Horse That Bart Built
Helen Thomas
Ebury Press, PB, 9781742755014
So You Think's incredible journey. As a youngster, So You Think caught the eye of Australia's legendary trainer Bart Cummings. He liked the future he saw in his gangly frame, and So You Think soon captivated Australasia with his brilliance, strength and rockstar good looks. At just his fifth race start, he led all the way to win the prestigious W.S. ... More/Buy
The Imperfect Life of T S Eliot
Lyndall Gordon
Virago, PB, 9781844088935
Exploring Eliot's poetry, drama and essays in relation to his life in America and England, and to four quite different women who offer clues to his guarded character, this biography sees life and work as reciprocal parts of one design, the search for faith. Eliot once spoke of a lifetime burning in every moment. He had the mind to conceive a ... More/Buy
J M Coetzee
J C Kannemeyer
Scribe Publications, HB, 9781922070081
J.M. Coetzee: a life in writing is the first biography of Nobel prize-winning author J.M. Coetzee. A global publishing event of the rarest kind, the book has been written with the full co-operation of Coetzee, who granted the author interviews, and put him in touch with family, friends, and colleagues who could talk about events in Coetzee's life. For the first ... More/Buy
Life Without the Boring Bits
Colleen McCullough
Harper Collins, PB, 9780732295783
World-famous writer and national treasure Colleen McCullough has always resisted the idea of writing an autobiography. But her mind has a life of its own. Here, finally, is its portrait. Among the personal reminiscences and thought-provoking musings lie clues as to the shaping of this extraordinary mind: the confused, impulsive, thoughtlessly cruel mother; the miserly absentee father; the far-reaching effects bureaucrats ... More/Buy
Love on the Forrest Downs
Sheryl McCorry
Macmillan, PB, 9781742611655
Sheryl McCorry is a woman in a million. In her bestselling memoir Diamonds and Dust and its follow up Stars over Shiralee, Sheryl shared her amazing life story from a childhood in the Top End to mustering cattle in the outback to becoming the first woman in the Kimberley to run two million-acre cattle stations. In Love on Forrest Downs, Sheryl's ... More/Buy
Marjorie Bligh's Home: Hints on Managing Everything
Danielle Wood (ed)
Text Publishing, PB, 9781922079077
In Housewife Superstar, Danielle Wood introduced us to the life (three husbands, Campbell Town and Devonport dream homes, inspiration for Dame Edna Everage) and work (countless writings, prizes, cakes, and things knitted, crocheted, sewed) of Mrs Marjorie Bligh: domestic goddess, original recessionista and all-round force of nature.The follow-up, HOME, collects the finest Marjorie moments in hints, advice, recipes, poems, gardening and ... More/Buy
Mr Foote's Other Leg
Ian Kelly
Picador, HB, 9780330517836
When Samuel Foote was buried clandestinely in the cloisters of Westminster Cathedral, he may or may not have been reunited with his missing leg. (In eighteenth-century London it was customary for amputees to be buried with their sawn-off limbs, which were kept embalmed for this purpose.) How Samuel Foote lost his leg is one of the many extraordinary and gruesome elements ... More/Buy
On Helwig Street: A memoir
Richard Russo
Chatto & Windus, HB, 9780701187767
In its heyday Gloversville, New York was a prosperous beacon of the leather-goods industry, famously producing nine out of ten pairs of American gloves. But by the time Richard Russo was growing up there in the 1950s, the only son of a largely absent father and a mother, Jean, who suffered from 'nerves', Gloversville had fallen victim to changing fashions and ... More/Buy
Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure
Artemis Cooper
H & S Non Fiction, HB, 9780719554490
Patrick Leigh Fermor (1915-2011) was a war hero whose exploits in Crete are legendary, and above all he is widely acclaimed as the greatest travel writer of our times, notably for his books about his walk across pre-war Europe, A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods & the Water; he was a self-educated polymath, a lover of Greece and the ... More/Buy
The Pinecone: The Story of Sarah Losh, Forgotten Romantic Heroine
Jenny Uglow
Faber, HB, 9780571269501
In the village of Wreay, near Carlisle, stands the strangest and most magical church in Victorian England. This vivid, original book tells the story of its builder, Sarah Losh, strong-willed and passionate and unusual in every way. Born into an old Cumbrian family, heiress to an industrial fortune, Sarah combined a zest for progress with a love of the past. In ... More/Buy
Queen of Katwe: A story of life, chess, and one extraordinary girl
Tim Crothers
Scribe Publications, PB, 9781922070159
Phiona Mutesi sleeps in a mud hut with her mother and siblings, and struggles to find a meal each day. She is also one if the best chess players in the world. One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, a refugee who had also grown up ... More/Buy
Scandalands
Kyle Sandilands
Macmillan, PB, 9781742611839
Kyle Sandilands has been nominated as the most hated man in Australia, yet at the same time he's one of our most successful and highest rating on-air personalities. His career has been riddled with scandal and controversy, yet his breakfast radio show consistently sits at number one. It's fair to say that Kyle polarises people. Now, in Scandalands, we have a ... More/Buy
There Was a Country: A Personal History of Biafra
Chinua Achebe
Allen Lane, HB, 9781846145766
The defining experience of Chinua Achebe's life was the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Biafran War of 1967-1970. It became infamous around the world for its impact on Achebe's people, the Biafrans, who were starved to death by the Nigerian government in one of the twentieth century's greatest humanitarian disasters. Caught up in the atrocities were Chinua Achebe and ... More/Buy
Victor Serge: A Biography
Susan Weissman
Verso Books, PB, 9781844678877
Revolutionary novelist, historian, anarchist, Bolshevik and dissident - Victor Serge is one of the most compelling figures of Soviet history. Set against some of the momentous events of the twentieth century, Victor Serge reveals the dauntless vigor of a man whose views often reflect the struggles of our own ... More/Buy
The Waterlow Killings: A Portrait Of A Family
Pamela Burton
Victory Books, PB, 9780522862317
Anthony Waterlow left his decrepit room in a run-down boarding house at 4.45 p.m on Monday 9 November 2009. By 6 p.m, the 42-year-old was seen leaving another home: his sister Chloe's in Randwick. He left behind her slaughtered body and that of their father; celebrated art curator Nick Waterlow. The pair had been stabbed multiple times, in front of Chloe's ... More/Buy