Biographies

From declaring my love to Vanessa Redgrave to being fed cockroaches by Steve Buscemi, from turnip-based comedy with Blackadder to being farted on by Arnold Schwarzenegger, from Graham Norton's sofa to Alan Cumming's campervan, my life has been (and continues to be) a riotous adventure. Oh Miriam! has been such a constant refrain in my life, said in all kinds of tones - laughs, surprised gasps and orgasmic sighs (I'm hoping for all those from you as you read on!) - that it had to be the title of this book. And with a castlist that stretches from Churchill to di Caprio, Dahl to Dietrich, Princess Margaret to Maggie Smith, I've got so much more to tell you and so much more to say. My chapters range from 'How to Stay Married' to 'Don't Let the Bastards Get You Down'. Discover how to break the thickest conversational ice; why swearing is actually good for you (though not on the Today programme); the unexpected things I actually learnt at school and what my Spice Girl name would be. Not to mention my Tale of the Unexpected and my very own Vagina Monologue. Buckle up and join me on another unforgettable adventure, but this time through my heart and head...  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781399803359 • Author: Miriam Margolyes • Publisher:  John Murray • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  336 • Dimensions: 15.29 x 1.78 x 23.39 cm 

Welcome back to Clarkson's Farm. At the end of Jeremy's first year in the tractor's driving seat, Diddly Squat farm rewarded him with a profit of just £144. So, while he's the first to admit that he's still only a 'trainee farmer'*, there is clearly still work to be done. Because while he's mastered the art of moaning about nearly everything, some of the other attributes required of a successful farmer prove more of a challenge. Did you know that loading a grain trailer was more demanding than flying an Apache gunship? Or that cows were more dangerous than motor-racing? Or whether would have been easier to get planning permission to build a nuclear power station than to turn an old barn into a farm restaurant? But if the council planning department and the local red trouser brigade seem determined to frustrate his schemes at every turn, at least he's got Lisa, Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald, his dry-stone-walling Head of Security to see him through.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9780241695791 • Author:  Jeremy Clarkson • Publisher:  Michael Joseph • Format:  Hardback • Pages:  240 • Dimensions:  15.24 x 1.3 x 23.5 cm

I was unwanted, beaten, sold, swapped, photographed, filmed, left for dead, corrupted, blamed, betrayed, ignored and orphaned. But I was also born with a fire inside me. I call it my Phoenix Fire. I am no victim – that word only describes what happened to me. Nor am I a survivor because that implies I am over it. I am a Phoenix – a work in progress. This is my story…” Product Information: • ISBN: 9781914451003 • Author: Shy Keenan • Publisher: Mardle Books • Format: Paperback • Pages: 311 • Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.9 cm

Online Only! Get more for less with The Work’s expertly hand-picked Book Bundles. These are a collection of great quality products, grouped together to give you amazing value. Welcome to Jeremy Clarkson's Diddly Squat Farm! This incredible three-book bundle includes Jeremy Clarkson's Diddly Squat: ‘Til The Cows Come Home and his latest release, Diddly Squat: Pigs Might Fly!

Otto Rosenberg is 9 and living in Berlin, poor but happy, when his family are first detained. All around them, Sinti and Roma families are being torn from their homes by Nazis , leaving behind schools, jobs, friends, and businesses to live in forced encampments outside the city. One by one, families are broken up, adults and children disappear or are 'sent East'. Otto arrives in Auschwitz aged 15 and is later transferred to Buechenwald and Bergen-Belsen. He works, scrounges food whenever he can, witnesses and suffers horrific violence and is driven close to death by illness more than once. Unbelievably, he also joins an armed revolt of prisoners who, facing the SS and certain death, refuse to back down. Somehow, through luck, sheer human will to live, or both, he survives. The stories of Sinti and Roma suffering in Nazi Germany are all too often lost or untold. In this haunting account, Otto shares his story with a remarkable simplicity. Deeply moving, A Gypsy in Auschwitz is the incredible story of how a young Sinti boy miraculously survived the unimaginable darkness of the Holocaust. Product Information: • ISBN: 9781800961128 • Author: Otto Rosenberg • Publisher: Monoray • Format: Paperback • Pages: 240 • Dimensions: 19.6 x 12.6 x 2.2cm

January, 1945. 14-year-old Moshe Kessler steps off the train at Buchenwald concentration camp. Having endured the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, lost touch with his entire family, and survived the death march in the freezing European winter, he has seen more than his share of tragedy. Moshe knows only one thing about Buchenwald. Everyone knows it. If you want to survive, you have to get to Block 66. The Germans are cruel and determined - but they are not prepared for Buchenwald's secret resistance, which rises up with one mission only: to protect the camp's children from harm. This is the incredible true story of Moshe Kessler and Block 66 - the children's block that was at the forefront of one of the most shocking and inspiring stories of Holocaust survival. Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781802472509 • Author:  Limor Regev • Publisher:  Ad Lib Publishers Ltd • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  244 • Dimensions: 19.7 x 12.8 x 1.8 cm

Investigate 27 horrifying cases in the recent history of true crime… This book presents some of the most disturbing cases of the past hundred and fifty years, and the people who solved them. Each compelling case combines an account of what happened with contemporary photos that help set the scene. Cases include: Jack the Ripper and his reign of terror, Fred and Rosemary West’s House of Horrors, John Wayne Gacy, the Killer Clown and Alexander Pichushkin, the Chessboard Killer. Why did they kill and why did they initially avoid detection? Investigate the theories surrounding the case, media commentary and follow the trials. Look at forensic evidence and find out how the case was solved… Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781802420616 • Author:  Leo Moynihan • Publisher:  New Burlington • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  176 • Dimensions:  23 x 17 x 1.5cm

"My life will always be in danger. My beautiful sister Banaz Mahmod was murdered in an ‘honour killing’ ordered by our father and uncle. If those evil men find me, they will kill me too." Bekhal Mahmod was one of six siblings from a Sunni Muslim family in Iraqi Kurdistan who sought a new life as asylum seekers and arrived in London in 1998. When Bekhal's father tried to force her into an arranged marriage at 15, she ran away. This caused her father to ‘lose respect’ within the Kurdish community and Bekhal became the target of an honour killing and her younger sisters Banaz and Payzee were quickly married off to restore the family's reputation. When Banaz left her husband, claiming he'd beaten and raped her, Mahmod decided this 'shame' to the family meant Banaz must die. Within weeks, she had vanished. Her body was finally discovered, crammed into a suitcase and buried in a garden in Birmingham. Banaz, age 20, had been raped and killed in a sickening plot orchestrated by her father and uncle. Still fearing for her own life, Bekhal bravely faced her father and uncle in court - making her the first female in British legal history to give evidence against family members in an honour killing trial - and won justice for her beloved sister Banaz. Bekhal now has a new identity after entering the police witness protection programme. She lives in terror of her father’s release from jail. This is her story. Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781913543051 • Author:  Bekhal Mahmod  • Publisher:  Ad Lib Publishers Ltd • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  240 • Dimensions: 12.7 x 2.03 x 19.69 cm

A story of astonishing resilience and compassion... In 1943, the Dutch champion boxer, Leen Sanders, was sent to Auschwitz. His wife and children were put to death while he was sent 'to the left' with the others who were fit enough for labour. Recognised by an SS officer, he was earmarked for a 'privileged' post in the kitchens in exchange for weekly boxing matches for the entertainment of the Nazi guards. From there, he enacted his resistance to their limitless cruelty. With great risk and danger to his own life, Leen stole, concealed and smuggled food and clothing from SS nursing units for years to alleviate the unbearable suffering of the prisoners in need. He also regularly supplied extra food to the Dutch women in Dr. Mengele's experiment, Block 10. To his fellow Jews in the camp, he acted as a rescuer, leader and role model, defending them even on their bitter death march to Dachau towards the end of the war.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781788404303 • Author:  Erik Brouwer  • Publisher:  Cassell • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  336 • Dimensions:  12.7 x 1.91 x 20.32 cm

In 1930, at the age of twenty-seven, Liesl Herbst was the Austrian National Tennis Champion, a celebrity in Vienna. Liesl, her husband David and their daughter Dorli came to Britain after escaping the Nazis. In London, though initially stripped of their Austrian passports and rendered stateless aliens, both Liesl and her daughter Dorli competed at Wimbledon. They remain the only mother and daughter ever to have played doubles together at Wimbledon. This moving story of escape and survival is told by Liesl’s grand-daughter, Dorli’s daughter. Some of the story, the author heard first-hand from her grandmother; the rest, she has meticulously researched over many years in four countries.  It is as much a search for the author’s own identity as for her own children and grandchildren to ensure that their remarkable family history is never lost again.  Illustrated throughout with family photographs and original documents, this is a story of survival against terrible odds, an inspiring tale of resilience and hope.     Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781802471199 • Author:  Felice Hardy • Publisher:  Ad Lib Publishers • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  286 • Dimensions: 12.7 x 2.03 x 19.69 cm

Alan Rickman remains one of the most beloved actors of all time across almost every genre, from his breakout role as Die Hard's villainous Hans Gruber to his heart-wrenching run as Professor Severus Snape, and beyond. His air of dignity, his sonorous voice and the knowing wit he brought to each role continue to captivate new audiences today. But Rickman's artistry wasn't confined to just his performances. Rickman's writing details the extraordinary and the ordinary in a way that is anecdotal, indiscreet, witty, gossipy and utterly candid. He takes us behind the scenes on films and plays ranging from Sense & Sensibility, the Harry Potter series, Private Lives, My Name Is Rachel Corrie and many more. The diaries run from 1993 to his death in 2016 and offer insight into both a public and private life. Here is Rickman the consummate professional actor, but also the friend, the traveller, the fan, the director, the enthusiast: in short, the real Alan Rickman. Here is a life fully lived, all detailed in intimate and characteristically plain-spoken prose. Reading the diaries is like listening to Rickman chatting to a close friend.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781838854805 • Author:  Alan Rickman  • Publisher:  Canongate Books • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  496 • Dimensions:  12.9 x 3 x 19.8 cm

So, I’ve written a book. I have decided to write these stories just as I have always done, in my own hand. The joy that I have felt from chronicling these tales is not unlike listening back to a song that I’ve recorded and can’t wait to share with the world, or reading a primitive journal entry from a stained notebook, or even hearing my voice bounce between the Kiss posters on my wall as a child.  From hitting the road with Scream at 18 years old, to my time in Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, jamming with Iggy Pop or playing at the Academy Awards or dancing with AC/DC and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, drumming for Tom Petty or meeting Sir Paul McCartney at Royal Albert Hall, bedtime stories with Joan Jett or a chance meeting with Little Richard, to flying halfway around the world for one epic night with my daughters…the list goes on.  I look forward to focusing the lens through which I see these memories a little sharper for you with much excitement.  Product Information: • ISBN: 9781398503724 • Author: Dave Grohl • Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK • Format: Paperback • Pages: 384 • Dimensions: 19.8 x 13 x 2.7 cm

Check out this terrifying True Crime Stories book by Al Cimino! Learn more about the world's most monstrous murderers...  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781398827769 • Author:  Al Cimino • Publisher:  Arcturus Publishing Ltd • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  96 • Dimensions:  23.4  x 1.6 x 15.3 cm

All the varieties of power – star, political, sexual, criminal and emotional – are on show in this definitive, untold story of Frank Sinatra and the Mafia. Drawing on an enormous archive of previously unseen records held by international law agencies, the FBI, the CIA and big-city police departments, Rothmiller and Thompson reveal Sinatra’s pact with the Mob in shocking detail. With additional evidence from decades of investigations and testimony, they expose Sinatra’s lifelong association with the Mafia, which he always denied, and its deadly collateral damage. This revelatory showstopper is a wild dance made coherent by intelligent choreography. Sinatra may not have been an actual made man, but the Mafia certainly made him. Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781802470840 • Author:  Mike Rothmiller & Douglas Thompson   • Publisher:  Ad Lib Publishers • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  256 • Dimensions: 12.8 x 19.8cm

US President John F. Kennedy's killing in Dallas, Texas, in November 1963, sent a shockwave around the world. The charismatic young Democrat was seen as a beacon of hope in the West, but his liberal reforming policies had made him many powerful enemies at home. For sixty years, numerous theories have swirled around this key event in American - and world - history. Yet whatever the conclusions of the official Warren Report - that the President had been assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald - many people doubt that to be true. Indeed, President Nixon later admitted on tape that the report was 'a hoax committed on the American people.' John Hughes-Wilson, a former colonel in British Intelligence, has sifted through the millions of words and thousands of pieces of evidence, to put together an intelligence assessment of what really happened that dreadful high noon in Dallas in 1963. Reading this astounding book, no one can be in any doubt that JFK's death was not at the hands of a lone deranged gunman, but a deadly plot to remove a President who threatened vested interests at home and abroad.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781789467376 • Author:  John Hughes-Wilson • Publisher:  John Blake • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  368 • Dimensions: 12.9 x 2.1 x 19.8 cm   

In 1974, Liz Harvie – born Claire Elaine Watts – was given up for adoption by her birth mother Yvonne. Claire was just eight weeks old when her adoptive parents took her in – and renamed her Elizabeth.  Although brought up in a ‘perfect’ household, the emotional – and physical – trauma of being taken from her biological mother would never leave Liz. She constantly wondered: what does my real mum look like? Will she come back for me? Why did she abandon me? But whenever Liz voiced such questions, she invariably received the same response: “Your birth parents were not married. They couldn’t look after you.” Years later, aged twenty-eight, Liz reconnected with her birth mother – and finally learned the shocking truth surrounding her adoption. Yvonne had not abandoned her daughter. A social worker had snatched her ten-day-old baby from her arms. “I didn’t even get a final cuddle. She just took her away from me,” says Yvonne.  Liz became one of 185,000 victims of forced adoption between 1949 and 1976 in England and Wales. As a young unmarried mum, Yvonne was deemed unfit as a parent by the government, churches, adoption agencies and her father – and made to give up her child against her will.  Although reunited, Liz and Yvonne are still struggling to cope with the agony resulting from their devastating separation. As Liz says, “We can’t just skip hand in hand into the sunset. The trauma of being a forced adoptee is lifelong.”  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781837700462 • Author:  Liz Harvie & Eve Hatton • Publisher:  Mardle Books • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  240 • Dimensions:  19.9 x 2.4 x 12.9 cm

Letters from Serial Killers is a unique study of the criminal mind based on the author's extensive correspondence with convicted serial murderers.  Such a collection is extremely rare, and among the killers whose correspondence is examined are: Arthur John Shawcross, aka 'The Genesee River Killer'; Phillip Carl Jablonski, aka 'The Death Row Teddy'; Melanie Lyn McGuire, aka 'The Ice Queen'; Harvey 'The Hammer' Louis Carignan, aka 'The Want-ad Killer'; Ian Stewart Brady, aka 'The Moors Murderer'; Hal Karen and Ronald 'Butch' Joseph DeFeo Jr, aka 'The Amityville Horror'; Gary Ray Bowles, aka 'The I-95 Killer';John 'J.R.' Edward Robinson, aka 'The Slavemaster' Letters from Serial Killers is Christopher Berry-Dee at his steeliest best - exploring the downright creepy correspondence with murderers, serial killers and psychopaths behind bars, with exclusive scans of letters and eerily decorated envelopes. A must-have for fans of the series, based on a collection that will eventually be bequeathed to the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit at its headquarters at Quantico, Virginia.  Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781789466584 • Author:  Christopher Berry-Dee • Publisher:  John Blake • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  336 • Dimensions:   33.5 x 19.9 x 3.6 cm

What does it take to catch a predator who has terrorised southeast England for over fifteen years? Delroy Grant - dubbed the Night Stalker - was one of the nation's most wanted men, a shocking sex predator. During his seventeen-year reign of fear, he established a clear MO. Visit a target at night. Remove a window pane and slide in. Unscrew the lightbulbs. Cut the power. Rip out the telephone wires. Tiptoe to the bedroom. Wake the victim by shining a torch in their eyes. What followed was often unspeakable. When SIO Colin Sutton was drafted into the case, Grant had been at large for over a decade. Stepping up where others had failed, he began the determined, relentless police work that had marked the end for infamous serial killer Levi Bellfield. Case by case, clue by clue. Night Stalker is the chilling true story of one of the most testing manhunts the Metropolitan Police have ever undertaken. It is a glimpse into the heart of darkness - and into the mind and work of the brilliant detective who brought one of London's most feared monsters to justice. Product Information: • ISBN: 9781789462258 • Author: Colin Sutton • Publisher: John Blake • Format: Paperback • Pages: 304 • Dimensions: 19.5 x 13 x 2 cm

When they are little girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father - that they will stay together, no matter what. Years later, at just 15, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister, or die with her. Together, they fight to survive through unimaginable cruelty and hardship. Magda, only 17, stays with her mother and grandfather, hiding out in a neighbour's attic or in the forest when the Nazi militia come to round up friends, neighbours and family. She escapes for a time, but eventually she too is captured and transported to the death camp. In Auschwitz-Birkenau the three sisters are reunited and, remembering their father, they make a new promise, this time to each other: That they will survive. Product Information: • ISBN: 9781838774592 • Author: Heather Morris • Publisher: Zaffre • Format: Paperback • Pages: 400 • Dimensions: 19.8 x 12.8 x 2.54 cm

A leading journalist's intense, riveting and personal investigation into the worlds and minds of cults. At a new age festival in Byron Bay, Australia, German journalist Anke Richter is finding her spiritual awakening when she meets a woman – a survivor of the Centrepoint cult – who will change the course of her life and career. Over the next ten years, Anke pursued a labyrinthine investigation into how and why cults attract, entrap and destroy otherwise ordinary people, asking what the line is between tribe and cult, participant and perpetrator, seduction and sexual abuse.  From the emotional and criminal carnage of Centrepoint in Auckland, New Zealand, to an anti-cult conference in Manchester, the infamous Osho’s ashram in India, the tantric Agama Yoga school in remote Thailand and culminating in a visit to Gloriavale on the west coast of New Zealand’s South Island, Anke uncovers a disturbing pattern of violence and suffering.  Cult Trip is a powerful exploration of what really goes on inside the groups we call cults, and how to reckon with their aftermath. Product Information:  • ISBN:  9781802471762 • Author:  Anke Richter  • Publisher:  Ad Lib Publishers Ltd • Format:  Paperback • Pages:  352 • Dimensions: 20.5 x 2.5 x 12.8 cm