Biography and Autobigraphy

'A mind-blowing and emotionally honest tale of survival against all odds.' Bernardine Evaristo 'A breathtaking memoir...I was so moved by this book.' Oprah 'It is startlingly honest and, at times, a jaw-dropping read, charting her rise from poverty and abuse to becoming the first African-American to win the triple crown of an Oscar, Emmy and Tony for acting.' BBC News THE DEEPLY PERSONAL, BRUTALLY HONEST ACCOUNT OF VIOLA'S INSPIRING LIFE In my book, you will meet a little girl named Viola who ran from her past until she made a life changing decision to stop running forever. This is my story, from a crumbling apartment in Central Falls, Rhode Island, to the stage in New York City, and beyond. This is the path I took to finding my purpose and my strength, but also to finding my voice in a world that didn't always see me. As I wrote Finding Me, my eyes were open to the truth of how our stories are often not given close examination. They are bogarted, reinvented to fit into a crazy, competitive, judgmental world. So I wrote this for anyone who is searching for a way to understand and overcome a complicated past, let go of shame, and find acceptance. For anyone who needs reminding that a life worth living can only be born from radical honesty and the courage to shed facades and be...you. Finding Me is a deep reflection on my past and a promise for my future. My hope is that my story will inspire you to light up your own life with creative expression and rediscover who you were before the world put a label on you.

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It was one of the most searing images of the twentieth century: two young boys, two princes, walking behind their mother's coffin as the world watched in sorrow-and horror. As Princess Diana was laid to rest, billions wondered what Prince William and Prince Harry must be thinking and feeling-and how their lives would play out from that point on. For Harry, this is that story at last. Before losing his mother, twelve-year-old Prince Harry was known as the carefree one, the happy-go-lucky Spare to the more serious Heir. Grief changed everything. He struggled at school, struggled with anger, with loneliness-and, because he blamed the press for his mother's death, he struggled to accept life in the spotlight. At twenty-one, he joined the British Army. The discipline gave him structure, and two combat tours made him a hero at home. But he soon felt more lost than ever, suffering from post-traumatic stress and prone to crippling panic attacks. Above all, he couldn't find true love. Then he met Meghan. The world was swept away by the couple's cinematic romance and rejoiced in their fairy-tale wedding. But from the beginning, Harry and Meghan were preyed upon by the press, subjected to waves of abuse, racism, and lies. Watching his wife suffer, their safety and mental health at risk, Harry saw no other way to prevent the tragedy of history repeating itself but to flee his mother country. Over the centuries, leaving the Royal Family was an act few had dared. The last to try, in fact, had been his mother. . . .For the first time, Prince Harry tells his own story, chronicling his journey with raw, unflinching honesty. A landmark publication, Spare is full of insight, revelation, self-examination, and hard-won wisdom about the eternal power of love over grief.

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In 2018, Alastair McAlpine, a palliative paediatrician in Cape Town, decided to share some inspiring thoughts from the children in his care. He posted: ‘I asked some of my terminal paediatric palliative care patients what they had enjoyed in life, and what gave it meaning. Kids can be so wise, y’know. Here are some of the responses.’ Their simple yet profound answers went viral, found their way into homes across the world and touched the hearts of millions. Yet it was never McAlpine’s plan to find himself in this position. Challenged from all sides by crippling addiction, a brutal internship and a deadly HIV pandemic, McAlpine’s journey was very nearly derailed. Prescription: Ice Cream is his engaging memoir about the highs and lows of working as a medical doctor in South Africa and how, with a little help from metal music and ice cream, he was able to struggle on, find meaning in the chaos and inspire others.

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‘This book kept me alive.’ Love and Fury is the compelling and intimate account of the life, loves and furies of Margie Orford. In this brave memoir, the renowned South African crime writer divulges some of the harrowing experiences that have shaped her life and influenced her writing. Through sexual assault, divorce, depression and personal loss, Orford illuminates the trauma she has navigated. Tender and courageous chapters vividly recall memories of what she has been through as a woman, mother, wife, feminist and ambitious writer. Love and Fury shows why trauma in our past can have such an enduring and debilitating effect on women’s lives. It also unpacks the healing power of love, creativity, courage and self-reflection, ultimately offering a profound message of hope and joy for any woman who has ever questioned themselves, their trauma and who they are in the world. This book is every woman’s love and fury.

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From the author of Steve Jobs and other bestselling biographies, this is the astonishingly intimate story of Elon Musk, the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist. His father’s impact on his psyche would linger. He developed into a tough yet vulnerable man-child, prone to abrupt Jekyll-and-Hyde mood swings, with an exceedingly high tolerance for risk, a craving for drama, an epic sense of mission, and a maniacal intensity that was callous and at times destructive. At the beginning of 2022—after a year marked by SpaceX launching thirty-one rockets into orbit, Tesla selling a million cars, and him becoming the richest man on earth—Musk spoke ruefully about his compulsion to stir up dramas. “I need to shift my mindset away from being in crisis mode, which it has been for about fourteen years now, or arguably most of my life,” he said. It was a wistful comment, not a New Year’s resolution. Even as he said it, he was secretly buying up shares of Twitter, the world’s ultimate playground. Over the years, whenever he was in a dark place, his mind went back to being bullied on the playground. Now he had the chance to own the playground. For two years, Isaacson shadowed Musk, attended his meetings, walked his factories with him, and spent hours interviewing him, his family, friends, coworkers, and adversaries. The result is the revealing inside story, filled with amazing tales of triumphs and turmoil, that addresses the question: are the demons that drive Musk also what it takes to drive innovation and progress?  

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'There's never been a more honest or raw memoir ... and it may just save lives' Daily Mail 'Funny, fascinating, compelling ... also a wonderful read for fans of Friends' The Times, The beloved star of Friends takes us behind the scenes of the hit sitcom and his struggles with addiction in this candid, funny, and revelatory memoir that delivers a powerful message of hope and persistence.'Hi, my name is Matthew, although you may know me by another name. My friends call me Matty. And I should be dead.'So begins the riveting story of acclaimed actor Matthew Perry, taking us along on his journey from childhood ambition to fame to addiction and recovery in the aftermath of a life-threatening health scare. Before the frequent hospital visits and stints in rehab, there was five-year-old Matthew, who travelled from Montreal to Los Angeles, shuffling between his separated parents; fourteen-year-old Matthew, who was a nationally ranked tennis star in Canada; twenty-four-year-old Matthew, who nabbed a coveted role as a lead cast member on the talked-about pilot then called Friends Like Us. . . and so much more.In an extraordinary story that only he could tell - and in the heartfelt, hilarious, and warmly familiar way only he could tell it - Matthew Perry lays bare the fractured family that raised him (and also left him to his own devices), the desire for recognition that drove him to fame, and the void inside him that could not be filled even by his greatest dreams coming true. But he also details the peace he's found in sobriety and how he feels about the ubiquity of Friends, sharing stories about his castmates and other stars he met along the way. Frank, self-aware, and with his trademark humour, Perry vividly depicts his lifelong battle with addiction and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all.Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is an unforgettable memoir that is both intimate and eye-opening - as well as a hand extended to anyone struggling with sobriety. Unflinchingly honest, moving, and uproariously funny, this is the book fans have been waiting for.'An unflinching and often harrowing must-read for 90s pop culture fans' Guardian'Written with Chandler's trademark sarcasm and self-deprecation' Telegraph'A hopeful read ... I started to think of [it] not as a celebrity memoir about addiction, but as an addiction memoir written by a man who understands his own history through the prism of showbiz' Independent

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Whitey Basson, remarkable business leader, is often hailed as a 'genius' by his peers. Basson became a legend when, in the most famous takeover deal in SA, he bought OK Bazaars for the nominal sum of a single Rand. In this authorised biography, the award-winning financial journalist Niel Joubert pieces together the complex, fascinating story of how Basson grew Shoprite from eight small stores valued at R1 million into the largest retailer in Africa, and the 35th largest retailer in the world. Based on years of research, including many hours spent with Basson, Joubert traces his life in colourful detail, from a Porterville farm, to Pep Stores, to where he sets out to apply the 'Pep formula' to the unforgiving world of food. Starting from a small office filled with boxes, Basson built Shprite via growth and acquisitions, swallowing Grand Bazaars, Checkers, and others before the famous OK Bazaars deal, and finally reaching his lifelong target of eclipsing Pick n Pay.

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Portchie is een van Suid-Afrika se suksesvolste kunstenaars, maar wie is die man wat agter die skilderye skuil? En hoe en wanneer het Jan Hendrik Viljoen van die klein dorpie Tweeling in die Vrystaat aangemeld om die wêreldbekende kunstenaar Portchie te word? Hierdie memoir kombineer Portchie se inspirerende verhaal met foto’s, 60 skilderye, 12 beelde en selfs sy gunstelingresepte. Portchie se verhaal is een van hoop, van liefde en deernis, en van treffende eenvoud.

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From the Academy Award®-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom, and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction. I've been in this life for fifty years, been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me. Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights. 'So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops. Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears. It's a love letter. To life. It's also a guide to catching more greenlights-and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too. Good luck.

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An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir; 17 million copies sold worldwide THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER - AND THE BOOK WE'LL BE GIFTING TO EVERY FAMILY MEMBER AND FRIEND THIS CHRISTMAS! Now in paperback featuring a new introduction by Michelle Obama, a letter from the author to her younger self, and a book club guide with 20 discussion questions and a 5-question Q&A, the intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her -- from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it -- in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations -- and whose story inspires us to do the same. MICHELLE OBAMA'S NEXT BOOK, THE LIGHT WE CARRY, IS OUT NOW

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**THE MILLION COPY BESTSELLER** 'Rattling. Heartbreaking. Beautiful.' Atul Gawande, bestselling author of Being Mortal What makes life worth living in the face of death? At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade's training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a patient struggling to live. When Breath Becomes Air chronicles Kalanithi's transformation from a medical student asking what makes a virtuous and meaningful life into a neurosurgeon working in the core of human identity - the brain - and finally into a patient and a new father. Paul Kalanithi died while working on this profoundly moving book, yet his words live on as a guide to us all. When Breath Becomes Air is a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient, from a gifted writer who became both. 'A vital book about dying. Awe-inspiring and exquisite. Obligatory reading for the living' Nigella Lawson

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'This is a riveting book, with as much to say about the transformation of modern life in the information age as about its supernaturally gifted and driven subject' - Telegraph Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years - as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues - this is the acclaimed, internationally bestselling biography of the ultimate icon of inventiveness. Walter Isaacson tells the story of the rollercoaster life and searingly intense personality of creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies,music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written, nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

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THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLERA BETWEEN THE COVERS PICKSelected as a book of the year by AMAZON, THE TIMES, SUNDAY TIMES, GUARDIAN, NEW YORK TIMES, ECONOMIST, NEW STATESMAN, VOGUE, IRISH TIMES, IRISH EXAMINER and RED MAGAZINE'One of the best books I have ever read . . . unbelievably moving' Elizabeth Day 'An extraordinary story, beautifully told' Louise O'Neill 'A memoir to stand alongside the classics . . . compelling and joyous' Sunday Times Tara Westover grew up preparing for the end of the world. She was never put in school, never taken to the doctor. She did not even have a birth certificate until she was nine years old.At sixteen, to escape her father's radicalism and a violent older brother, Tara left home. What followed was a struggle for self-invention, a journey that gets to the heart of what an education is and what it offers: the perspective to see one's life through new eyes, and the will to change it.'It will make your heart soar' Guardian 'Jaw-dropping and inspiring, everyone should read this book' Stylist 'Absolutely superb . . . so gripping I could hardly breathe' Sophie Hannah

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My fight against the sex trade and human trafficking to rescue God’s daughters. Emma van der Walt is a pastor, mother and wife, and woman of God. She is also the fearless founder of the nonprofit organisation, Brave to Love. They tackle the dark world of sex trade and human trafficking head on to rescue young women from the clutches of evil. These girls are then lovingly cared for and guided as they embark on their new beginnings. Emma and her team work side by side with local and international law enforcement agencies. Together they combat human trafficking and slavery to uncover the corruption and immense suffering that goes on behind closed doors. This is her story and the shocking tales of the lucky ones who survive to escape the hell of human trafficking.

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After the runaway success of his Afrikaans memoir, Hoerkind, the contrarian journalist and writer Herman Lategan translated and updated his eventful life story, with no holds barred. Herman was conceived illegitimately one warm February night in 1964 in a boarding house in Cape Town. From an early age, he felt disposable, passed from one pair of unstable adult hands to the next, even ending up in an orphanage for a while. At thirteen he was caught in the web of a cunning paedophile, a well-known Afrikaans newspaperman. Shortly after his eighteenth birthday, when his abuser finished with him, Herman was unceremoniously dumped at the door of his alcoholic father. Conscription into the army and a dishonourable discharge followed. During his teenage years, Herman befriended Afrikaans poets like Sheila Cussons, Ina Rousseau, Barend J. Toerien and Casper Schmidt, and later, in New York, he followed Andy Warhol in the street and partied with a ‘smorgasbord of social butterflies’. Back in South Africa, Herman established himself as a journalist, but struggled with alcohol and drug addiction, and was homeless for a while. For many an employer, he became the nightmare they feared most. Son of a Whore is a gripping account of loss, hardship and overcoming both; it will make you laugh and, at times, break your heart. You will despair at the cruelty of a world in which the marginalised are forsaken but stand in awe at the extent of goodness surrounding us, because, ultimately, people depend on each other.

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There are moments in life that are pure, and which seem to hang in the air, unhitched from the everyday world as we know it. Suspended for a few seconds, they float in their own space and time with their own hidden prospects. For want of a better term, we call these moments “magical” and when we remember them they are cloaked in a halo of special meaning.’ For 14-year-old Johnny Clegg, hearing Zulu street music as plucked on the strings of a guitar by Charlie Mzila one evening outside a corner café in Bellevue, Johannesburg, was one such ‘magical’ moment. The success story of Juluka and later Savuka, and the cross-cultural celebration of music, language, story, dance and song that stirred the hearts of millions across the world, is well documented. Their music was the soundtrack to many South Africans’ lives during the turbulent 70s and 80s as the country moved from legislated oppression to democratic freedom. It crossed borders, boundaries and generations, resonating around the world and back again. Less known is the story of how it all began and developed. Scatterling of Africa is that origin story, as Johnny Clegg wrote it and wanted it told. It is the story of how the son of an unconventional mother, grandson of Jewish immigrants, came to realise that identity can be a choice, and home is a place you leave and return to as surely as the seasons change.

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Nominated for the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Named a Best Book of the Year by The Root, Chosen by Emma Straub as a Best New Celebrity Memoir “A book of essays as raw and honest as anyone has ever produced.” — Lena Dunham, Lenny Letter In the spirit of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman. One month before the release of the highly anticipated film The Birth of a Nation, actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union—a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic ’90s movies—instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real." In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

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Poland, 1944 The train slowed and halted with a squeal of the brakes. It felt like we waited in the carriage for an eternity, but eventually, the heavy doors opened, directly into the chaos outside. Sara Leibovits, a 16-year-old Jewish girl, was a passenger on the train, together with her family. Within minutes, their horrific fate was sealed.The little family spent their final minutes together on the platform at Auschwitz before they were ordered in all directions and each left to their own fate. Sara’s mother and baby brothers were sent to their deaths. Her father was made a Sonderkommando, one of the men forced to remove the bodies from the gas chambers, and was later executed. This is the powerful true story of Sara Leibovits and the incredible pain and hardships she went through during her time in the Death Camp. Yet despite the horrors she faced she always tried to maintain her families’ values ​​of courage, faith and kindness to others. Her story is intertwined with that of her daughter, Eti, seventy years later, who embodies the voice of the second generation and completes the Holocaust survivors' tale.

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After matriculating from a top private Jewish school in Joburg, Nikki Munitz finds herself in the clutches of heroin addiction. She's sent to Noupoort, a rehab centre in the remote Northern Cape, run by a pastor who brandishes a tattoo of Satan. In this hellhole, she meets Jake, the handsome son of a wealthy Afrikaans family. Lured by the illusion of her ‘happy-ever-after’, she marries him - but the façade of her new family soon crumbles. Money is in short supply, so Nikki gets a job at a law firm and starts syphoning money from trust accounts. By the time her R2,5 million fraud is discovered, she has been clean and sober for five years. A grueling court battle follows, and she is found guilty on 37 counts of fraud. Fraud is a powerful memoir about the unmasking of the self. It's the tale of a young Jewish mother who is forced to examine a life of lies and deceit from behind bars, until an unexpected encounter in the grimy prison gives Nikki her wings to fly free.

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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. – and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.   He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became its only modern-day founding father – as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr. In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.  

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Thami Nkadimeng, also known as The Message Architect, works with presidents, executives, corporate leaders and organisations worldwide to make positive change in the world. But before she could follow her calling, Thami had to overcome her own self-doubt. In Finding Purpose, she takes us along in her quest to discover her life’s aim. Join her as she reflects on her journey, and discover the profound beauty in raw, unvarnished experience for yourself as you uncover your own purpose.

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The Woman in Me is a brave and astonishingly moving story about freedom, fame, motherhood, survival, faith, and hope. In June 2021, the whole world was listening as Britney Spears spoke in open court. The impact of sharing her voice—her truth—was undeniable, and it changed the course of her life and the lives of countless others. The Woman in Me reveals for the first time her incredible journey—and the strength at the core of one of the greatest performers in pop music history.   Written with remarkable candor and humor, Spears’s groundbreaking book illuminates the enduring power of music and love—and the importance of a woman telling her own story, on her own terms, at last. 

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Award-winning actor, director, producer, and activist Kerry Washington shares the deeply moving journey of her life so far, and the bravely intimate story of discovering her truth. While on a drive in Los Angeles, on a seemingly average afternoon, Kerry Washington received a text message that would send her on a life-changing journey of self-discovery. In an instant, her very identity was torn apart, with everything she thought she knew about herself thrown into question. In Thicker Than Water, Washington gives readers an intimate view into both her public and private worlds - as an artist, an advocate, an entrepreneur, a mother, a daughter, a wife, a Black woman. Chronicling her upbringing and life's journey thus far, she reveals how she faced a series of challenges and setbacks, effectively hid childhood traumas, met extraordinary mentors, managed to grow her career and crossed the threshold into stardom and political advocacy, ultimately discovering her truest self and with it a deeper sense of belonging.Throughout this profoundly moving and beautifully written memoir, Washington attempts to answer the questions so many have struggled with: Who am I? What is my truest and most authentic self? How do I find a deeper sense of connection and belonging? With grace and honesty, Washington inspires readers to search for - and find - themselves.

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A gripping, painfully honest, and ultimately inspirational memoir from global superstar and creator of the Red Table Talk series Jada Pinkett Smith. In a media driven landscape that crafts narratives for our celebrities, Smith recounts her story in an intimate conversation with readers. Along the way, she explores her path to accepting her power as a woman, and her discovery that a strong sense of self is every woman’s right and saving grace. An impactful and rare memoir that engages and educates, Worthy is a courageous love song to self, to family, to life, and to the world. From an unconventional upbringing in Baltimore, to an unconventional marriage to one of the most famous men in the world, adhering to the status quo has never been a familiar road for Jada Pinkett Smith. In Worthy, Smith strips herself of all the labels and stories crafted by others, and reclaims her narrative with radical self-love. Worthy teaches us who Jada is, and how to embrace our most authentic loveable souls.

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Join us on another unforgettable adventure through the extraordinary life and strong opinions of Miriam Margolyes.'My new book is called OH MIRIAM! - something that has been said to me a lot over the years, often in tones of strong disapproval. It contains lots more revelations and stories and discoveries and I can't wait to share it with you all!'From being escorted off the Today programme (for saying what we were all thinking) to declaring her love to Vanessa Redgrave; from Tales of the Unexpected to Graham Norton's sofa, she is our most loved and most outspoken national treasure. Oh Miriam! takes you inside both her head and her heart. Buckle up for the most irrepressible, hilarious and moving read of 2023

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While riding his motorbike through Mali, on his way home from London to Johannesburg, Steve McGown was taken captive in Timbuktu by Al Qaeda. Life as he knew it, changed in that instant. Driven deep into the desert with two other prisoners, Steve, who had just qualified for his British passport before leaving on his trip home, was now a valuable pawn in Al Qaeda’s geo-political operations. With nothing to bargain with and everything to lose, for the next six years Steve became reluctantly engaged in what he refers to as, “the greatest chess game of my life.” Thousands of kilometres away in Johannesburg, the shock of his kidnapping hit his wife Cath and the rest of the McGown family. Working every option they could find, from established diplomatic protocols to the murky back channels of the kidnap game, they set to work on trying to free Steve. As the months turned into years, Steve had to adapt or depression and despair would overwhelm him. With no control over his future and no end to his open-air incarceration in sight, he knew that he would have to go to extraordinary lengths to survive both his prison and his prisoners. His sole focus was to make it back home to his wife and family, so to raise his status among Al Qaeda, improve his quality of life in the desert sands and to give himself some form of structure and hope, Steve converted to Islam and accepted a new name, Lot. Teaching himself French and Arabic, as the years passed and the prisoners and their captors moved from camp to camp to evade the Malian and French forces, Steve took it upon himself to get to know and understand Al Qaeda. To this day he holds the unenviable record of Al Qaeda’s longest held prisoner and while the captive-captor dynamic was always there, by virtue of the long years he spent with them Steve got to see what no Westerner has ever seen before. He lived in their world and came to understand where they came from and what led them to jihad. He saw boys grow in to men, he watched as mujahedeen stuck up their hands for suicide missions and a ticket to heaven and saw the organisations success strategies and weaknesses, their victories and their losses. Six Years With Al Qaeda is not just an incredible story of mental strength, physical endurance and the resilience of the human spirit, but also a unique, nuanced perspective on one of the world’s most feared terrorist organisations. Not only did Steve McGown survive his ordeal, but in many respects he came out of the desert both a changed man and a stronger, more positive human.

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When Maye Musk decided to make grey hair glam, she became an international cover model in her sixties - a far cry from the single mother living in a small Durban apartment trying to make ends meet to provide for her three kids. Things have not always been easy or glamorous for the mother of South African-born entrepreneur Elon Musk. She is a survivor of domestic abuse at the hands of her first husband; she struggled emotionally and financially as a single mom; battled weight issues; and she had to restart her life and her practice as a dietician in numerous new cities over and again. In all these accounts, Maye's indomitable spirit is apparent. She overcame her hardships with a no-nonsense attitude to become a global success at what she calls the 'prime of her life'. She also shares hard-earned wisdom and frank, practical advice on career (the harder you work, the luckier you get), family (let those you love go their own way), health (there is no magic pill), adventure (make room for discovery, but always be ready for anything), and more. Although you can't control everything, you can live a happier, healthier and fun-filled life at any age. All you have to do is make a plan.

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