Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Bloomsbury presents Maggie & Me written and read by Damian Barr A unique, tender and witty memoir of surviving the tough streets of small town Scotland during the Margaret Thatcher years ________________________ 'Shocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and...

Bloomsbury presents Scattered, written and read by Aamna Mohdin. **Longlisted for the Bread & Roses Award 2025** ‘Brave, powerful, and deeply necessary ... A vital contribution to the Black British literary canon’ Afua Hirsch ‘Fresh and important’ Guardian ‘An exceptional book’ Sally...

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. What happens when the road home becomes a trap — and the only weapons you have left are your wits, your faith, and the names of the people you love? Students of the Book is the true account of Musa, a young Afghan student whose journey to visit family...

The renowned political speechwriter and New York Times bestselling author of As a Jew rediscovers Judaism, finding timeless wisdom and spiritual connection in its age-old practices and traditions. “Sarah Hurwitz was Michelle Obama’s head speechwriter, and with this book she becomes...

Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the "Saxophone Colossus," he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called "the only jazz recluse" has gone largely untold—until now. Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist.

In a 1970s commuter town, Tracey Thorn's teenage life was forged from what failed to happen. Her diaries were packed with entries about not buying things, not going to the disco, the school coach not arriving. Before she was a best-selling musician and writer, Tracey Thorn was a typical teenager: bored and cynical, despairing of her aspirational parents. Her only comfort came from house parties, Meaningful Conversations and the female pop icons who hinted at a new kind of living.

GOLD WINNER OF 'BEST NARRATOR' AT THE AUDIO PRODUCTION AWARDS. 'This guy has better Punjabi than both of us and he's only half Punjabi.' Only. Half. I stared at those words. The intent behind the comment was in no way malicious, but it hurt. I felt diminished. I felt like I was being robbed of...

Insightful, incisive & enlightening, the first volume of Simon Callow's comprehensive biography of Orson Welles. Now in abridged audio, Callow's vastly entertaining chronicle of Welles's first 26 years seems even finer than it did in 1995. The author's ability to skewer his subject's evasions...

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens: A Life, the major new biography from the highly acclaimed Claire Tomalin, published for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Charles Dickens was a phenomenon: a demonicly hardworking journalist, the father of ten children, a...

The definitive biography of a legendary athlete. The Shrug. The Shot. The Flu Game. Michael Jordan is responsible for sublime moments so ingrained in sports history that they have their own names. When most people think of him, they think of his beautiful shots with the game on the line, his...

*** THE INSTANT TOP TEN BESTSELLER *** HIGHLY COMMENDED FOR THE 2025 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE FOR NATURE WRITING SHORTLISTED FOR THE RICHARD JEFFERIES AWARD Paul Lamb is a hedgelayer. He lives in his wagon and works to the rhythm of the seasons, a way of life that has almost vanished. From the end of...

“Defiance takes my breath away. A nail-biting tale of astonishing courage.” —Jeannette Walls #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Glass Castle “A heartbreaking account of a young woman’s struggle for freedom against the rampaging forces of fanaticism and tyranny...

From the 1920s to 1950, Georgia Tann ran a corrupt baby business at the Tennessee Children's Home Society in Memphis. She offered up more than 5,000 orphans tailored to the wish lists of eager parents - hiding the fact that many weren't orphans at all but stolen sons and daughters of poor families, desperate single mothers and women told in maternity wards that their babies had died. The publication of Lisa Wingate's novel Before We Were Yours brought new awareness of Tann's child trafficking.

Here is one of the great autobiographies of the English language - exuberant, wonderfully contemporary in spirit, by a man twice as large as life who—he said so himself—had no trouble remembering everything that had ever happened to him and a lot of things besides.

New York City, 1929. A sanatorium, a deadly disease, and a dire nurse shortage. So begins the remarkable true story of the Black nurses who helped cure tuberculosis, one of the world's deadliest plagues, told alongside the often strange chronicle of the cure's discovery. Spanning the Great Depression and moving through World War II and beyond, this story follows the intrepid young women, the 'Black Angels', who, for twenty years, risked their lives working under dreadful conditions while caring for the city's poorest.

The Sunday Times bestseller THE STORY OF BRITAIN during the long reign of Queen Elizabeth II. Find out how Britain changed in this entrancing, lively portrait of Britain’s Elizabethan Age by bestselling writer and broadcaster Andrew Marr Britain changed fundamentally during the Queen’s long...

We Only Came to Dream is a memoir, not a novel, of the Counterculture Era (“hippie”). It is often one of high humor, silent introspection, and even danger. It was a time of social upheaval, a redefinition of the role of sex and race, and what it meant to be part of the mainstream…or not. Rediscovery was in the air, a marijuana-filled air, and often included quite a bit of travel.

In the fall of 2025, Clay-Chalkville High School in Alabama chased a championship in the space between memory and change. Friday nights arrived with familiar rituals and quiet pressure. Helmets were buckled. Lights came on. A stadium that held decades of voices stood on borrowed time, even as a new season demanded full attention. Wins accumulated, but so did moments that never appeared on a scoreboard – conversations in parking lots, superstitions repeated without explanation, lessons passed down rather than announced.

Mark Hodkinson grew up among the terrace houses of Rochdale in a house with just one book. His dad kept it on top of a wardrobe with other items of great worth - wedding photographs and Mark's National Cycling Proficiency certificate. If Mark wanted to read it, he was warned not to crease the pages or slam shut the covers. Today, Mark is an author, journalist and publisher. He still lives in Rochdale but is now snugly ensconced (or is that buried?) in a 'book cave' surrounded by 3,500 titles - at the last count.

This is the simplest tale in the world. Two people meet and fall in love. But the route which brought Larissa Salmina and Francis Haskell to a backstreet Venetian restaurant in 1962 was anything but straightforward. Larissa was born in northern Russia, the daughter of a Soviet army officer from...