Showing results by publisher "W. F. Howes Ltd" in Biographies & Memoirs

An elite competitive figure skater growing up, Keri Blakinger poured herself into the sport, even competing at nationals. But when her skating partnership ended abruptly, her world shattered. With all the intensity she saved for the ice, she dove into self-destruction. From her first taste of heroin, the next nine years would be a blur—living on the streets, digging for a vein, selling drugs and sex, plunging off a bridge when it all became too much, all while trying to hold herself together enough to finish her degree at Cornell.

Today we face a greater range of potential disasters than ever before - and Laurence Shorter is feeling anxious. Every time he turns on the radio or opens a newspaper he finds another reason to be tearful. It's time to make a change. The Optimist charts Laurence's quest for inner happiness. Can Desmond Tutu bring a smile to Laurence's face? Will he ride out the tide of pessimism with California's famous Surfing Rabbi?

The twelve sheep have come into his life at just the right moment. After years of hard work, John felt a deep tiredness creeping up on him, a sadness that he couldn't shrug off. Having always sought spiritual guidance, he comes to realize that, in addition to the soothing words of literature and philosophy, perhaps the way ahead involves this simple flock of sheep. In the hard work of livestock rearing, in the long nights in the shed helping the sheep to lamb, he can reflect on what life truly means.

A unique investigation of the most important cases of the twentieth century, this exploration of the world's most glamorous and dangerous job - including information newly released under the Freedom of Information Act - will keep you enthralled until the last page. Neil Root's insightful book focuses on the personalities of many enigmatic figures, discusses their motivations and influences, and asks whether they were heroes, traitors or just scapegoats.

In this enthralling book Jim Fraser gives a unique insight into forensic science and examines in detail some of the UK's most high-profile murder investigations in recent decades, including the deaths of Rachel Nickell, Damilola Taylor and Gareth Williams, the GCHQ code breaker. Drawing on his personal experience as a forensic scientist and cold-case reviewer, Fraser reveals how each of these cases unfolded as a human, investigative and scientific puzzle and how some were solved and why others remain unsolved or controversial even today.

When the New Yorker writer Rebecca Mead relocated to her birth city, London, with her family in the summer of 2018, she was both fleeing the political situation in America and seeking to expose her son to a wider world. With a keen sense of what she'd given up as she left New York, her home of thirty years, she tried to knit herself into the fabric of a changed London. The move raised poignant questions about place: What does it mean to leave the place you have adopted as home and country? And what is the value and cost of uprooting yourself?

In this memoir of his life, David Lodge looks back over his childhood and youth, including his undergraduate years at University College London. After National Service and two years’ postgraduate research, married at last and soon a father, he struggles to make a start as both novelist and academic. Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to Be Born gives a fascinating picture of the evolution of a writer who has become a classic in his own lifetime.

Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on US-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers.

In 2016, English midwife Indie joined the staff at Attat Hospital in south-western Ethiopia, where Atsede led the midwifery services. It was a meeting that would change their lives. Their close professional relationship, and deep personal friendship, led to them opening a birth centre serving the Gurage women and families of Cheha Woreda, bringing compassionate midwifery care into the heart of traditional communities.

Twelve Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup: born a free black man in New York State, and sold into slavery after being tricked in 1841. Unable to convince anyone he is not a slave, Solomon spent 12 years in bondage, before finally being set free. Northup’s memoir, recounting details of the slave markets and the harsh life on plantations, was used in the struggle to abolish slavery in the United States.

In 1952, in a peaceful corner of Provence, a farmer's son stumbled upon a terrible scene. Three bodies. They were all British. So begins one of the most notorious murder cases in French history. Sir Jack Drummond was a senior advisor to the British government, a household name who was respected and admired. His fame made the case a cause celebre in France and resulted in the swift conviction of a local farmer, but questions about Drummond's life and death remain unanswered.

Turf-roofed and wooden-built, offering fresh clean air, peace, isolation and the promise of a day's wood-chopping, hiking or snow-clearing amid landscapes of great beauty, the hytte - or wooden cabin home - is a crucial part of the national identity of every Norwegian. In 2016, Robert Ferguson and his wife bought a piece of land high up in the Hardangervidda, the plateau that dominates south-central Norway, and on it they built such a hytte. For Ferguson, the hytte represented the realisation of a dream that first brought him to Norway from England more than 30 years ago.

An entrepreneur is someone who has a great, innovative idea that identifies the need for the creation of a new business, taking on the financial risk in the hope of profit and driving that business forward in a measured way. This book draws on the stories, experiences and words of iconic business figures from around the globe and across the years - from Andrew Carnegie and Oprah Winfrey to Steve Jobs and Sunil Mittal.

A food critic chronicles four years spent travelling with René Redzepi, the renowned chef of Noma, in search of the most tantalising flavors the world has to offer. Hungry is a book about not only the hunger for food but for risk, for reinvention, for creative breakthroughs and for connection. Feeling stuck in his work and home life, writer Jeff Gordinier happened into a fateful meeting with Danish chef René Redzepi, whose restaurant, Noma, has been called the best in the world.

Most people think that Monopoly was invented by an unemployed Pennsylvanian who sold his game to Parker Brothers during the Great Depression in 1935 and lived happily - and richly - ever after. That story, however, is not exactly true. The Monopolists reveals the unknown story of how Monopoly came into existence, the reinvention of its history by Parker Brothers, the lost female originator of the game, and one man's lifelong obsession to tell the true story about the game's questionable origins.

Andrew Motion has been close to the centers of British poetry for over fifty years. Sleeping on Islands is his clear-sighted and open-hearted account of this remarkable career. It takes us from scenes of a teenage home-life colored by tragedy and silence—where writing was as much a refuge as an assertion—to the excruciations of early public appearances, to the decade he spent as Poet Laureate, promoting and ensuring the central place of poetry in a nation's character.

Father of Lions is the story of Mosul Zoo. It survived under the stern hand of Abu Laith, the zookeeper, a man with an interesting past and a lifelong animal lover. His real name was Imad, but for as long as he could remember everyone had called him by his nickname, Abu Laith - 'Father of Lions'. And the lions and bears survived not only two years of Isis occupation, but starvation and bombardment by liberating forces.

Luck plays an important part in the careers of writers. In this book, David Lodge explores how his work was inspired and affected by unpredictable events in his life. In 1976, Lodge was pursuing a ‘twin-track career’ as novelist and academic. As a literary critic, he made serious contributions to the subject before carnivalising it in his comic-satiric novel Small World. The balancing act between his two professions was increasingly difficult to maintain, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his best-selling novel Nice Work.

On 12 October 2010 the world's attention was fixed on a remote Chilean mine. Final preparations were underway for a daring rescue to end the longest underground entrapment in human history. Learn how 33 trapped men and the rescuers dedicated to saving them created a miracle in the desert. What those men experienced in the claustrophobic dark of the mine, and how their families kept faith, makes this an unforgettable story.

Death. Sex. Money. Tricky subjects we’re taught to avoid in polite conversation. But if they’re so unpleasant, why do so many people tune in regularly to hear Anna Sale asking perfect strangers about them? What if, rather than declaring them off-limits, we could all benefit from discussing them more? In Let’s Talk About Hard Things, Sale - the host of cult podcast Death, Sex & Money, which tackles life’s hard questions - takes her quest for more honest communication into her own life.