I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou ( pb)
£8.99
In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother's lover.'I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it's like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again' Maya Angelou
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Friends Like These, Meg Rosoff ( hardback June 2022)
£12.99
An irresistible account of female friendship ... Nobody describes the strength, pain and comedy of being young as elegantly and eloquently as Meg Rosoff' - Amanda Craig.
June, 1982. When eighteen-year-old Beth arrives in Manhattan for a prestigious journalism internship, everything feels brand new - and not always in a good way. A cockroach-infested sublet and a disaffected roommate are the least of her worries, and she soon finds herself caught up with her fellow interns - preppy Oliver, ruthless Dan and ridiculously cool, beautiful, wild Edie.
Soon, Beth and Edie are best friends - the sort of heady, all-consuming best-friendship that's impossible to resist. But with the mercury rising and deceit mounting up, betrayal lies just around the corner. Who needs enemies ...
when you have friends like these? From bestselling, award-winning author Meg Rosoff comes a gritty, intoxicating novel about a summer of unforgettable firsts: of independence, lies, love and the inevitable loss of innocence.
Aftermath, Herald Jähner( paperback)
£10.99
Aftermath : Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich
Germany, 1945: a country in ruins.Cities have been reduced to rubble and more than half of the population are where they do not belong or do not want to be. How can a functioning society ever emerge from this chaos? In bombed-out Berlin, Ruth Andreas-Friedrich, journalist and member of the Nazi resistance, warms herself by a makeshift stove and records in her diary how a frenzy of expectation and industriousness grips the city. The Americans send Hans Habe, an Austro-Hungarian Jewish journalist and US army soldier, to the frontline of psychological warfare - tasked with establishing a newspaper empire capable of remoulding the minds of the Germans.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt returns to the country she fled to find a population gripped by a manic loquaciousness, but faces a deafening wall of silence at the mention of the Holocaust. Aftermath is a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. 1945 to 1955 was a raw, wild decade poised between two eras that proved decisive for Germany's future - and one starkly different to how most of us imagine it today.
Featuring black and white photographs and posters from post-war Germany - some beautiful, some revelatory, some shocking - Aftermath evokes an immersive portrait of a society corrupted, demoralised and freed - all at the same time.
Fake History : Ten Great Lies and How They Shaped the World Otto English, ( paperback April 2022)
£9.99
An alternative history of the world that exposes some of the biggest lies ever told and how they've been used over time. Lincoln did not believe all men were created equal.The Aztecs were not slaughtered by the Spanish Conquistadors. And Churchill was not the man that people love to remember. In this fascinating new book, journalist and author Otto English takes ten great lies from history and shows how our present continues to be manipulated by the fabrications of the past.
He looks at how so much of what we take to be historical fact is, in fact, fiction. From the myths of WW2 to the adventures of Columbus, and from the self-serving legends of 'great men' to the origins of curry - fake history is everywhere and used ever more to impact our modern world. Setting out to redress the balance, English tears apart the lies propagated by politicians and think tanks, the grand narratives spun by populists and the media, the stories on your friend's Facebook feed and the tales you were told in childhood.
And, in doing so, reclaims the truth from those who have perverted it. Fake History exposes everything you weren't told in school and why you weren't taught it.
MagicBorn, Peter Bunzl ( paperback, May 2022)
£7.99
First in a new trilogy from Peter Bunzl ( Cogheart, Moonlocket)
The Curse is changed. You'll never know. The truth is lost.
The lie will grow. The year is 1726 and the Royal Sorcerer of England is on the hunt for those who are Magicborn. When Tempest is captured, she is taken to Kensington Palace alongside a boy like her, Thomas.
Trapped, Tempest and Thomas find their magic flickering to life and, with it, long-buried memories. For they are the lost prince and princess of Fairyland, bound by a deadly curse. But now the fairies are coming to get them, and with the truth revealed...can they both survive? The first in a sumptuous and enthralling new historical-fantasy adventure series from the bestselling author of The Cogheart Adventures.
