Piers Dudgeon
The Woman of Substance: The Life and Works of Barabra Taylor Bradford

Barbara Taylor Bradford's first novel, A Woman of Substance, is one of the biggest selling novels of all time, and Emma Harte, her powerful heroine, went on to inspire women the world over. Yet Barbara's rise to fame and fortune was not an easy one. She came from humble beginnings in Yorkshire, but her drive, ambition and desire to triumph was to reap huge dividends when she took the Yorkshire Evening Post and then London's Fleet Street by storm. But the imagination works in remarkable ways. For what Piers Dudgeon discovered - to Barbara's shock - is that Emma Harte's rise from Edwardian kitchen maid, single and pregnant, to one of the richest women in the world, bears an uncanny resemblance to Barbara's own family history - about which she was previously unaware.

Franks McCourt
Teacher Man

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning, bestselling author of Angela's Ashes and Tis, comes this wonderfully engaging book about teaching and storytelling, the subjects closest to Frank McCourt's heart. In Teacher Man Frank turns his attention to the subject that he most often talks about in his lectures - teaching: why it's so important, why it's so undervalued. He describes his own coming of age as a teacher, a storyteller and, ultimately, a writer. He is alternately humble and mischievous, down-trodden and rebellious. It takes him almost fifteen years to find his voice in the classroom, but what's clear in Teacher Man is that from the beginning he held his students' attention by telling them memorable stories.

Myron Bolitar never saw it coming. A surprise visit from an ex-girlfriend is unsettling enough. But Emily Downing's news brings him to his knees. Her only son Jeremy is dying and needs a bone-marrow transplant. Then comes the real shock: the boy is Myron's son, conceived the night before Emily's wedding to another man. Stunned by the news, Myron plunges into a desperate search for the missing donor. But finding him means unravelling a dark mystery that involves a broken family, a brutal kidnapping spree, and the FBI. Somewhere in the sordid mess is the donor who disappeared. And as doubts emerge about Jeremy's true paternity, a child vanishes, igniting a chain reaction of heartbreaking truth and chilling revelation.