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Skymeadow: Notes from an English Gardener
by Charlie Hart'A love letter to English horticulture written by a passionate gardener. A must-read for anyone who has dreamt of cultivating their own patch of land' Jane Perrone'Skymeadow is a fascinating book . . . Every flower, every passing bud, every change in the season is described with rapture' Jilly CooperWhen Charlie Hart first visited Peverels, a small farmhouse that sits lazily on the lip of a hill running down into the Peb Valley, he was at breaking point, grieving the loss of his father and anxious about the impending death of his mother. He and his wife Sybilla felt that their London life had been steadily growing in noise: the noise of grief, the noise of busyness, the noise that comes from the expectations of others and, for Charlie, the constant clamour of dissatisfaction at work. At Peverels, Charlie found an expanse of untouched meadowland, the perfect setting for an audacious garden. Charlie felt an unquenchable urge to dig, to create something. The days he spent wrestling with the soil in the rose garden were the days in which he mourned the loss of his parents. Gardening has taught him that you can dig for victory, but you can also dig for mental health. As the garden formed around Charlie, he buried his fears and anxieties within it. A garden that is now known as Skymeadow and grows with a lusty, almost biblical vigour.In Skymeadow, Charlie seamlessly weaves together his own memoir with that of his garden. The result is a lyrical and incisive story of mental health at an all-time low, the healing powers of digging and, ultimately, a celebration of nature.
Sky's Story (Thrown Away Children Ser.)
by Louise AllenWhen Sky and her older sister Avril were taken into care, the social workers knew this was a case like no other. Raised by troubled parents who hoarded compulsively, creating horrific conditions no child should live in, the two girls arrived at foster carer Louise's home, neglected, malnourished, and indoctrinated. Louise had to draw on all of her experience as one of Britain's leading foster carers to rehabilitate and change the course of their lives.But with constant attempts to thwart her work, Louise ends up under siege in her own home. Will she succeed or is their fate sealed forever?
Slabbert: Man on a Mission
by Albert GrundlinghFrederik van Zyl Slabbert was a man on a mission, whether as an academic, an opposition politician, a democratic facilitator or a businessman. Perhaps this was a product of his restless, probing intellect, or his early ambition to become a dominee in the Dutch Reformed Church. When he famously led a delegation of leading Afrikaners to Dakar in 1987 to meet the exiled ANC, many saw it as a breakthrough, while others felt he had been taken in. And yet his reputation – for honesty, integrity, wit and courage – still towers above many of his contemporaries. Slabbert was always different.As an academic turned politician, the charismatic Slabbert brought unusual intellectual rigour to Parliament, transforming the upstart Progressive Federal Party into a force that challenged the National Party government. But disillusioned by the paralysis of formal white politics, and by the growing polarisation of South African society, he resigned in 1986 to explore democratic alternatives to the impasse into which the country had been led under apartheid. Largely side-lined during the democratic transition, he continued to pursue a broad range of initiatives aimed at building democracy, empowering black South Africans and transforming the economy.Albert Grundlingh’s penetrating biographical study offers sharp insights into the thinking and motivation of this most unlikely politician. Concise but wide-ranging, Slabbert: Man on a Mission provides new perspectives on a figure who even today remains something of an enigma.
Slave: Snatched off Britain’s streets. The truth from the victim who brought down her traffickers.
by Anna Jason Johnson‘They took me because I would not be missed’This is the shocking true story of how an ordinary young girl was kidnapped off the street as she walked home and turned into a slave – before fighting for her freedom and finding the courage to help the police in one of the UK’s most shocking modern-day slavery trials. Anna was an innocent student when she was kidnapped, beaten and forced into the sex slave industry. Threatened and tormented by her pimps, she was made to sleep with thousands of men. But she would not allow them to break her. On learning that she would be trafficked from Ireland to Dubai, she found the courage to trick her captors and flee. Later, she would also find that same resilience to help the police bring down her abductors in what has now become one of our biggest windows into the worldwide sex trafficking trade. For the first time, the girl at the centre of the storm reveals the heart-breaking truth.
Slave: The True Story of a Girl's Lost Childhood and Her FIght for Survival
by Damien Lewis Mende NazerMende Nazer's happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers, raped the women and abducted the children. Mende was them. She was taken and sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name and her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave, an 'abid', without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps and her bed was the floor of the locked-up garden shed. She endured this harsh and lonely existence without knowing whether her family was alive or dead, for seven long years. Passed on by her master, like a parcel, to a relative in London, Mende eventually managed to escape to freedom. Slave is a shocking first-person insight into the modern day slave trade. It is also a fascinating memoir of an African childhood and a moving testimony to a young girl's indomitable spirit in the face of adversity.
The Slave Across the Street: The harrowing true story of how a 15-year-old girl became a sex slave
by Theresa FloresIt could happen to you. It happened to the girl next door…When Theresa was 15 she moved to a new school and fell for an older pupil, Daniel. Theresa was thrilled when one afternoon he asked if he could drive her home. But this simple decision would hold her captive as a sex slave for two long years.Daniel was part of a criminal ring that bribed and trafficked Theresa out of her own house, unknown to her parents. Theresa would go to school alongside these boys in the day and be called into service at night. Heart-rending, shocking and totally gripping The Slave Across the Street is the incredible true story of how an ordinary girl was lured into the sinister world of human trafficking – and how she eventually escaped and rebuilt her life.
Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk
by William DusinberreJames Polk was President of the United States from 1845 to 1849, a time when slavery began to dominate American politics. Polk's presidency coincided with the eruption of the territorial slavery issue, which within a few years would lead to the catastrophe of the Civil War. Polk himself owned substantial cotton plantations-- in Tennessee and later in Mississippi-- and some 50 slaves. Unlike many antebellum planters who portrayed their involvement with slavery as a historical burden bestowed onto them by their ancestors, Polk entered the slave business of his own volition, for reasons principally of financial self-interest. Drawing on previously unexplored records, Slavemaster President recreates the world of Polk's plantation and the personal histories of his slaves, in what is arguably the most careful and vivid account to date of how slavery functioned on a single cotton plantation. Life at the Polk estate was brutal and often short. Fewer than one in two slave children lived to the age of fifteen, a child mortality rate even higher than that on the average plantation. A steady stream of slaves temporarily fled the plantation throughout Polk's tenure as absentee slavemaster. Yet Polk was in some respects an enlightened owner, instituting an unusual incentive plan for his slaves and granting extensive privileges to his most favored slave. Startlingly, Dusinberre shows how Polk sought to hide from public knowledge the fact that, while he was president, he was secretly buying as many slaves as his plantation revenues permitted. Shortly before his sudden death from cholera, the president quietly drafted a new will, in which he expressed the hope that his slaves might be freed--but only after he and his wife were both dead. The very next day, he authorized the purchase, in strictest secrecy, of six more very young slaves. By contrast with Senator John C. Calhoun, President Polk has been seen as a moderate Southern Democratic leader. But Dusinberre suggests that the president's political stance toward slavery-- influenced as it was by his deep personal involvement in the plantation system-- may actually have helped precipitate the Civil War that Polk sought to avoid.
Slavemaster President: The Double Career of James Polk
by William DusinberreJames Polk was President of the United States from 1845 to 1849, a time when slavery began to dominate American politics. Polk's presidency coincided with the eruption of the territorial slavery issue, which within a few years would lead to the catastrophe of the Civil War. Polk himself owned substantial cotton plantations-- in Tennessee and later in Mississippi-- and some 50 slaves. Unlike many antebellum planters who portrayed their involvement with slavery as a historical burden bestowed onto them by their ancestors, Polk entered the slave business of his own volition, for reasons principally of financial self-interest. Drawing on previously unexplored records, Slavemaster President recreates the world of Polk's plantation and the personal histories of his slaves, in what is arguably the most careful and vivid account to date of how slavery functioned on a single cotton plantation. Life at the Polk estate was brutal and often short. Fewer than one in two slave children lived to the age of fifteen, a child mortality rate even higher than that on the average plantation. A steady stream of slaves temporarily fled the plantation throughout Polk's tenure as absentee slavemaster. Yet Polk was in some respects an enlightened owner, instituting an unusual incentive plan for his slaves and granting extensive privileges to his most favored slave. Startlingly, Dusinberre shows how Polk sought to hide from public knowledge the fact that, while he was president, he was secretly buying as many slaves as his plantation revenues permitted. Shortly before his sudden death from cholera, the president quietly drafted a new will, in which he expressed the hope that his slaves might be freed--but only after he and his wife were both dead. The very next day, he authorized the purchase, in strictest secrecy, of six more very young slaves. By contrast with Senator John C. Calhoun, President Polk has been seen as a moderate Southern Democratic leader. But Dusinberre suggests that the president's political stance toward slavery-- influenced as it was by his deep personal involvement in the plantation system-- may actually have helped precipitate the Civil War that Polk sought to avoid.
The Slave's Narrative
by Charles T. Davis Henry Louis GatesThese autobiographies of Afro-American ex-slaves comprise the largest body of literature produced by slaves in human history. The book consists of three sections: selected reviews of slave narratives, dating from 1750 to 1861; essays examining how such narratives serve as historical material; and essays exploring the narratives as literary artifacts.
Slavish Shore: The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana Jr.
by Jeffrey L. AmestoyIn 1834 Harvard dropout Richard Henry Dana Jr. became a common seaman, and soon his Two Years Before the Mast became a classic. Literary acclaim did not erase the young lawyer’s memory of floggings he witnessed aboard ship or undermine his vow to combat injustice. Jeffrey Amestoy tells the story of Dana’s determination to keep that vow.
Slavish Shore: The Odyssey of Richard Henry Dana Jr.
by Jeffrey L. AmestoyIn 1834 Harvard dropout Richard Henry Dana Jr. became a common seaman, and soon his Two Years Before the Mast became a classic. Literary acclaim did not erase the young lawyer’s memory of floggings he witnessed aboard ship or undermine his vow to combat injustice. Jeffrey Amestoy tells the story of Dana’s determination to keep that vow.
Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France
by Richard MooreGreg LeMond, 'L'Americain': fresh-faced, prodigious newcomer. This is supposed to be his year.Bernard Hinault, 'The Badger': aggressive, headstrong, five-time winner of the Tour. He has pledged his unwavering support to his team mate, LeMond. The team is everything in cycling, so the world watches, stunned, as LeMond and Hinault's explosive rivalry plays out over three high-octane weeks. Slaying the Badger relives the adrenaline and agony as LeMond battles to become the first American to win the Tour, with the Badger relentlessly on the attack. Includes brand new material for the paperback.
Sleep Demons: An Insomniac’s Memoir
by Bill HayesWe often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.” An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.
Sleep Demons: An Insomniac’s Memoir
by Bill HayesWe often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.” An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.
Sleep Demons: An Insomniac’s Memoir
by Bill HayesWe often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.” An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.
Sleep Demons: An Insomniac’s Memoir
by Bill HayesWe often think of sleep as mere stasis, a pause button we press at the end of each day. Yet sleep is full of untold mysteries—eluding us when we seek it too fervently, throwing us into surreal dream worlds when we don’t, sometimes even possessing our bodies so that they walk and talk without our conscious volition. Delving into the mysteries of his own sleep patterns, Bill Hayes marvels, “I have come to see that sleep itself tells a story.” An acclaimed journalist and memoirist—and partner of the late neurologist Oliver Sacks—Hayes has been plagued by insomnia his entire life. The science and mythology of sleep and sleeplessness form the backbone to Hayes’s narrative of his personal battles with sleep and how they colored his waking life, as he threads stories of fugitive sleep through memories of growing up in the closet, coming out to his Irish Catholic family, watching his friends fall ill during the early years of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco, and finding a lover. An erudite blend of science and personal narrative, Sleep Demons offers a poignant introduction to the topics for which Hayes has since become famous, including art, eros, city life, the history of medical science, and queer identity.
Sleepers
by Lorenzo CarcaterraAn unforgettable true story of friendship, loyalty and revenge, set against the unmistakable backdrop of New York CityThey were four boys who shared everything - the laughter and bruises of an impoverished upbringing in New York's West Side. Then one of their pranks misfired - a man nearly died and they were sent away to a reformatory school. There they suffered the worst abuse the guards could inflict on them. They were forever scarred by their experiences. Eleven years later two of them became killers for the mob. They met the ringleader of the guards who abused them - and shot him dead in front of several witnesses. No one thought they would see the outside of a prison again - but the four friends banded together once more and in one last, audacious stand brought their own vengeance to the courtroom.Sleepers was adapted into an award-winning film, featuring Hollywood stars Dustin Hoffman, Brad Pitt, Robert de Niro and Kevin Bacon. A moving and shocking coming-of-age story that is a must read for fans of the cult film, Stand by Me.Lorenzo Carcaterra was born in New York where he still lives. He was a reporter on the New York Daily News before he wrote A Safe Place. His second book, Sleepers, became a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic.
Sleeping Around: Secrets of a Sexual Adventuress
by Catherine Townsend'I relish every second of my sexual encounters: the good, the bad, the bizarre. Most of my serious relationships have started out as one-night stands.' Catherine Townsend describes herself as 'part slut, part hopeless romantic'. Her quest is to have her cake and eat it - an intelligent dinner date followed by a passionate one-night stand; to combine sleeping around with finding a soul mate. Sex and the City meets Girl With a One Track Mind in this candid, sexy, funny take on looking for love in unexpected places and how to find Mr Right - or at least Mr Right Now.
The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness
by Suzanne O'Sullivan'In my view the best science writer around – a true descendant of Oliver Sacks.' Sathnam Sanghera, author of The Boy with the TopknotIn Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US Embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night.These disparate cases are some of the most remarkable diagnostic mysteries of the twenty-first century, as both doctors and scientists have struggled to explain them within the boundaries of medical science and – more crucially – to treat them. What unites them is that they are all examples of a particular type of psychosomatic illness: medical disorders that are influenced as much by the idiosyncratic aspects of individual cultures as they are by human biology.Inspired by a poignant encounter with the sleeping refugee children of Sweden, Wellcome Prize-winning neurologist Suzanne O’Sullivan travels the world to visit other communities who have also been subject to outbreaks of so-called ‘mystery’ illnesses.From a derelict post-Soviet mining town in Kazakhstan, to the Mosquito Coast of Nicaragua via an oil town in Texas, to the heart of the Maria Mountains in Colombia, O’Sullivan hears remarkable stories from a fascinating array of people, and attempts to unravel their complex meaning while asking the question: who gets to define what is and what isn’t an illness?Reminiscent of the work of Oliver Sacks, Stephen Grosz and Henry Marsh, The Sleeping Beauties is a moving and unforgettable scientific investigation with a very human face.
Sleeping Letters: A beautiful memoir of grief, loss, healing and faith
by Marie-Elsa R. BraggA unique, intimate and beautiful exploration of grief, loss, healing and faith'This is a beautiful book, a remarkable, cadenced recollection of how grief lives in the body. It is poetry as a kind of dance. You have to read it' EDMUND DE WAALWe sat in the kitchen across the small wooden table from each other. She cried like banks bursting, then silence; like winds blowing through her shoulders, chest bouncing, then long shallow breaths. She ruptured and I watched, still, emotionless. 'You must stop crying.'When Marie-Elsa was just six years old, her mother took her own life. Now, many years later, she returns to that night. Going back to that moment, inhabiting this defining tragedy, allows for an exploration of the grief but also brings healing.Written partly as a series of unsent letters to both her mother and father, Sleeping Letters is a way of connecting to past family, an attempt to reconcile with loss, as well as a radical exploration of Marie-Elsa’s own faith. It is an unforgettable book, with a luminous sense of a daughter’s loss.With a Foreword by Rowan Williams‘Truly remarkable... This book carries its readers to a place where inhibitions and fears about loss and death give way to something more hopeful and, in their own way, real’ Daily Telegraph
Sleeping with a Psychopath
by Carolyn WoodsAn epic true story of love and deception told by the woman whose life was destroyed by a seductive conman, Mark Acklom. The British Dirty John.
Sleeping with the Ancestors: How I Followed the Footprints of Slavery
by Joseph McGill Jr. Herb FrazierIn this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in former slave dwellings that still stand across the country—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America. Joseph McGill Jr., a historic preservationist and Civil War reenactor, founded the Slave Dwelling Project in 2010 based on an idea that was sparked and first developed in 1999. Since founding the project, McGill has been touring the country, spending the night in former slave dwellings—throughout the South, but also the North and the West, where people are often surprised to learn that such structures exist. Events and gatherings are arranged around these overnight stays, and it provides a unique way to understand the often otherwise obscured and distorted history of slavery. The project has inspired difficult conversations about race in communities from South Carolina to Alabama to Texas to Minnesota to New York, and all over the United States.Sleeping with the Ancestors focuses on all of the key sites McGill has visited in his ongoing project and digs deeper into the actual history of each location, using McGill&’s own experience and conversations with the community to enhance those original stories. Altogether, McGill and coauthor Herb Frazier give readers an important unexpected emersion into the history of slavery, and especially the obscured and ignored aspects of that history.
Sleeping With the Enemy: Coco Chanel, Nazi Agent
by Hal VaughanCoco Chanel, high priestess of couture, created the look of the chic modern woman: her simple and elegant designs freed women from their corsets and inspired them to crop their hair. By the 1920s, Chanel employed more than two thousand people in her workrooms, and had amassed a personal fortune. But at the start of the Second World War, Chanel closed down her couture house and went to live quietly at the Ritz, moving to Switzerland after the war. For more than half a century, Chanel's life from 1941 to 1954 has been shrouded in rumour. Neither Chanel nor her biographers have told the full story, until now.In this explosive narrative Hal Vaughan pieces together Chanel's hidden years, from the Nazi occupation of Paris to the aftermath of the Liberation. He uncovers the truth of Chanel's anti-Semitism and long-whispered collaboration with Hitler's officials. In particular, Chanel's long relationship with 'Spatz', Baron von Dincklage, previously described as a tennis-playing playboy and German diplomat, and finally exposed here as a Nazi master spy and agent who ran an intelligence ring in the Mediterranean and reported directly to Joseph Goebbels.Sleeping with the Enemy tells in detail how Chanel became a German intelligence operative, Abwehr agent F-7124; how she was enlisted in spy missions, and why she evaded arrest in France after the war. It reveals the role played by Winston Churchill in her escape from retribution; and how, after a nine-year exile in Switzerland with Dincklage, and despite French investigations into her espionage activities, Coco was able to return to Paris and triumphantly reinvent herself - and rebuild the House of Chanel.As Hal Vaughan shows, far from being a heroine of France, Chanel was in fact one of its most surprising traitors.
Sleepless: Discovering the Power of the Night Self
by Annabel Abbs'Sleepless has changed how I feel about sleep . . . I was captivated' The Times, Book of the Week'This book will inspire you to get up, light a candle, and experience your own Night Self' Financial TimesTHE NIGHT SELF IS: CREATIVE. CURIOUS. VULNERABLE. ENCHANTED. COURAGEOUS.In the winter of 2020, Annabel Abbs experienced a series of bereavements. As she grieved, she kept busy by day, but at night sleep eluded her. And yet her sleeplessness led to a profound and unexpected discovery: her Night Self. As the night transformed into a place of creativity and liberation, Annabel found she wasn't alone. From the radical fifteenth-century philosopher Laura Cereta and subversive artist Louise Bourgeois, to Virginia Woolf and the activist Peace Pilgrim, women have long found sanctuary, inspiration and courage in darkness.Drawing on the latest science, which shows we are more imaginative, open-minded and reflective at night, Annabel set out to discover the potential of her Night Self. Sleepless follows her journey, from midnight hikes to starlit swims, from Singapore, the brightest city on Earth, to the darkest corner of the Arctic Circle, and finally to that most elusive of places - sleep.A moving, revelatory voyage into the dark, Sleepless invites us to feel less anxious about our sleep, and to embrace the possibilities of the night.