Memoir & biography Books 115 results

Edmund White

***A TIMES/SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025*** 'All the no-holds-barred candour you'd expect . . . A hoot, and surprisingly touching' THE TIMES, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Trousers down from page one ... NSFW' THE TIMES 'The gayest book ever written' HENRY HOKE, author of Open Throat 'Daddy's diary fully delivers' JEREMY ATHERTON LIN, author of Gay Bar ------------------------------...

Plestia Alaqad

The instant New York Times bestseller '[A] joyful, tragic account of life in Gaza' - Miriam Margolyes 'Left me both devastated and inspired' - Macklemore 'Transforms pain into poetry' - Rupi Kaur In early October 2023, Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a journalist. By the end of that November, she would be internationally known as the 'Eyes of Ga...

Kim Hana

'Gently inspiring for showing women living outside social norms and having a great time while doing so.' - Evening Standard 'Beneath the warmth likes a radical proposition: that their partnership should be treated like any family.' - Guardian 'Two Women Living Together is a wonderfully calming and cosy read. I always adore stories of women who choose to live beyond the confin...

Ben Elton

What has Ben Elton done?He's written the most eagerly anticipated show business autobiography of the year. That's what.And prior to that? Well he's pretty much done everything and worked with everybody and now he's telling the whole story in one unputdownable volume. Sixty-five years in the making, this frank, forthright and hugely entertaining autobiography takes a deep dive i...

Belle Burden

'A beautifully written eulogy for the loss of a relationship' Joyce Carol Oates How do we go on when a loved one betrays us? On a chilly day in March of 2020, in the early days of the pandemic, Belle Burden's husband of twenty years announced, with no prior warning, that he was leaving her. His decision shocked Belle to her core: she believed he was a happy man, a committed p...

Tamar Adler

From the award-winning author of An Everlasting Meal comes a record of daily delights from inside the kitchen and just outside it; designed to help you find joy every day."Delight in food, in eating, in cooking, in serving, in recognizing our luck when we feel full is available to all of us," says writer Tamar Adler. Adler found relief and ease in spending a year recording inst...

Cynthia Erivo

It is never too late to build the life you're seeking.Cynthia Erivo learned the music to Wicked a decade before she needed it, not knowing that those same lyrics would change her life. Ten years later, she has the chance to perform those songs on a world stage, showing us that there is always time to keep discovering ourselves, that the journey of becoming is not a finite one.I...

Jennette Mccurdy

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER #1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER MORE THAN 3.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD! A heartbreaking and hilarious memoir by iCarly and Sam & Cat star Jennette McCurdy about her struggles as a former child actor--including eating disorders, addiction, and a complicated relationship with her overbearing mother--and how she retook control of her life. Jennette McCu...

Patti Smith

A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award Winner Just Kids. God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper, writes Patti Smith in this indelible account of her life as an artist. A post-Second World War childhood unfolds in a condemned housing complex described in Dickensian detail: consumptive children, vanishing neighb...

Author Tbc Chatto / Margaret Atwood

'She's taken our times and made us wise to them' ALI SMITH 'She's Margaret Atwood and she can do anything' ANN PATCHETT 'She saw it all coming' TIME 'The outstanding novelist of our age' SUNDAY TIMES Immerse yourself in the creative universe of Margaret Atwood for a riot of life, art and everything in between: the greatest writer of our time tells her own story Raised by sci...

Lukas Gage

'Raw, provocative, chaotic, and - dare I say - slutty' COLLEEN HOOVER A thrilling memoir by The White Lotus and Euphoria actor, Lukas Gage, which chronicles his upbringing in a broken family, struggles with borderline personality disorder and his commitment to always being the centre of attention. Lukas Gage was having one of the shittiest weeks of his life. His beloved grandmo...

Matthew Restall

Christopher Columbus was born Cristoforo Colombo, in the autumn of 1451 in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, and he died in the Spanish city of Valladolid in May 1506, as don Cristóbal Colón. More than five centuries later, we are still arguing over his life and its significance. Millions if not billions of people have learned his name. Most have some sense of what he did, ...

Elizabeth Gilbert

In her first non-fiction book in a decade, the no. 1 bestselling writer who taught millions of readers to live authentically (Eat Pray Love) and creatively (Big Magic) shows how to break free. In 2000, Elizabeth Gilbert met Rayya. They became friends, then best friends, then inseparable. When tragedy entered their lives, the truth was finally laid bare: the two were in love. T...

Arundhati Roy

Arundhati Roy's first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother Mary, who she describes as 'my shelter and my storm'. Distraught and even a \"little ashamed\" at the intensity of her response to...

Luke Evans

From his humble beginnings in a quaint Welsh mining village to the dazzling lights of Hollywood, much-loved star, Luke Evans takes us on a poignant and inspiring journey that spans from the heart of Wales to behind the scenes of the global stage. Growing up in a small village in the Rhymney Valley, Luke's life was shaped by his Jehovah's Witness upbringing, a path he'd eventua...

Canyon Hohenstein

The First Flicker: A Glimpse Before the BurnGully is a seasoned wildland firefighter who quit the profession. Years later, as Montana faces its worst fire season in over 100 years, Gully is on the cusp of suicide. He calls his old friend and mentor, Elsen, searching for purpose in the only place he's ever found it. Upon his return, Elsen thrusts him into the most combustible ro...

Anthony Bourdain

The classic bestseller from the star of Parts Unknown and No Reservations: 25th Anniversary edition, with a new introduction by Irvine Welsh. BEFORE THERE WAS THE BEAR, THERE WAS BOURDAIN. 'Elizabeth David written by Quentin Tarantino' A.A. Gill 'Fantastic: as lip-smackingly seductive as a bowl of fat chips and pungent aioli' Daily Telegraph After twenty-five years of sex, d...

Colombe Schneck

'This is valuable writing. It has immense vitality. You will encounter a female narrator whose direct and bright-eyed stare at the world, and her self, is without shame or faux modesty. At the same time, it is also a deep study of existence, at various ages and stages in life.' -- Deborah Levy 'Swimming is a dreamy, bruised, and carnal book that pretty much no American would w...

Rupaul / Rupaul

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing to date--a brutally honest and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance and self-acceptance. A profound introspection of his life, relationships, and identity, The House of Hidden Meanings...

Andrew Wilson

Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon. Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, Andrew Wilson's biography of Marilyn Monroe presents the actress in a startling new light. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about Hollywood, believing that acting would be her one-way ticket to happiness. Her dream was ...

Michael. Steinberger

'An excellent look at what Palantir does, as well as a fascinating insight into the mind of its eccentric chief executive' Telegraph Palantir Technologies is the most interesting company in the world - and the most controversial. Palantir builds data integration software: its technology ingests vast quantities of information and quickly identifies patterns, trends and connec...

Izumi Suzuki

The first novel from Izumi Suzuki to be published in English: a candid, intimate exploration of passion, music and transgressionHope I'm in for a good time, I thought. Even if it's just for tonight.Set in the underground bar and club scene of 1970s Tokyo, Set My Heart On Fire tells the story of Izumi in her turbulent twenties. Through a series of disarmingly frank vignettes, au...

Al Pacino

To the wider world, Al Pacino exploded onto the scene like a supernova. He landed his first leading role, in The Panic in Needle Park, in 1971, and by 1975, he had starred in four movies?The Godfather and The Godfather Part II, Serpico, and Dog Day Afternoon?that were not just successes but landmarks in the history of film. Those performances became legendary and changed his li...

Michael Palin

"A new millennium, and a new chapter for Michael Palin unfolds. With a Hemingway travel project testing his confidence, doubts creeping in about his abilities as a writer, the death of his great friend George Harrison and the last of his children leaving home, the dawn of the twenty-first century sees Michael at his most reflective yet. Over the next ten years, we watch through...

Safiya Sinclair

Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Preaching fire and brimstone, her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the immoral, corrupting influence of the Western world just beyond their gate...

Laura Cumming

**WINNER OF THE SALTIRE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2024** **WINNER OF THE WRITERS' PRIZE 2024 NON-FICTION** **SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2024** A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean. 'Brilliant' Edmund de Waal * 'Captivating' Nina Stibbe * 'Extraordinary' India ...

Jonny Steinberg

'Gripping and profoundly moving' DAMON GALGUT 'Deft and operatic' OBSERVER A TIMES BEST BIOGRAPHY OF 2023 From one of South Africa's foremost nonfiction writers, a deeply researched, shattering new account of Nelson Mandela's relationship with Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Drawing on never-before-seen material, Steinberg reveals the fractures and stubborn bonds at the heart...

Alice Maddicott

What do we mean by atmosphere? Some travellers are driven by the need to scale a natural wonder, to see a city's sights or a place of history. Others, like Alice Maddicott, travel in search of a particular scene, feeling or atmosphere, often inspired by music, literature and art. Taking us deep into our emotional and creative responses to place, this extraordinary book explore...

Matthew Mcconaughey

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - Discover the life-changing memoir that has inspired millions of readers through the Academy Award(R)-winning actor's unflinching honesty, unconventional wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction."The No. 1 celebrity memoir of the past 10 years."--USA Today "McConaughey's book invites us to grapple with the les...

Suzie Edge

'A brilliant, funny and thought-provoking book' - Jonn Elledge 'Compelling, provocative, and utterly brilliant' - Dr Estelle Paranque THIS PAPERBACK FEATURES ADDITIONAL MATERIAL ON HER MAJESTY QUEEN ELIZABETH II How the monarchs of England and Scotland met their deaths has been a wonderful mixture of violence, infections, overindulgence and occasional regicide. In Mortal Mona...