Showing results by publisher "HarperCollins Publishers Limited" in Biographies & Memoirs

In 1610 Henry Stuart was a celebrity throughout Europe, at a momentous period for European history and culture. Eldest son of James VI and the epitome of heroic Renaissance princely virtue, his life was set against a period about as rich as any. The King James Bible, religious tension throughout Europe, the Gunpowder plot, Jacobean theatre and the dark tragedies pouring from Shakespeare's quill, innovation in learning and science, exploration and trade and the bloody traumas of the Thirty Years' War were his backdrop.

Ex-US Navy turned investigator Thomas J. Cooper is tortured by the past. A deadly fight with Somali pirates and a tragic accident at sea have left him struggling with PTSD and an addiction to prescription drugs. When he and his colleague Maddie return to the Democratic Republic of Congo to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a plane, what they find is far more sinister and dangerous....

It's 1983, and best friends Vicky and Lucy swear that they will always be there for each other, that they'll never let anyone come between them. But fast-forward four years, and life on the Canterbury Estate has gotten very messy. Lucy has fallen for local policeman's son Jimmy. And Vicky is madly in love with Paddy, the local bad boy. The boys are bitter enemies and determined to keep the two girls apart. But then Vicky is accused of murder, and even her drug-dealer boyfriend wants her mouth shut - permanently.

Marc is a promising young footballer of 15, growing up in Scotland. A few hundred miles away in England, Martin is a fun-loving 16-year-old. Both are enjoying their summers when they are suddenly struck down by debilitating illnesses. Within days, the boys are close to death. Although their paths have never crossed, their fortunes are about to be bound in the most extraordinary, intimate way. One of them will die, and in doing so he will save the other's life.

Shocking, funny and unflinchingly honest, Emergency Admissions gives us a fascinating glimpse into the extraordinary world of ambulance driving from the man behind the wheel.

Kit Wharton has been an ambulance driver for a dozen years. This book is his report from the frontline of that work: 999 calls that hurtle him to critical moments in other peoples' lives. Nothing in this job is normal; every job is different. From the bizarre to the terrifying and tragic, Wharton takes his audience through his strange work.

In 2012 Kyo Maclear met a musician with a passion for birds. Curious about what had prompted a young urban artist to suddenly embrace nature, she decided to follow him for a year to find out. Observing two artists through seasonal shifts and migrations, Birds Art Life Death celebrates the particular madness of chasing after birds in a big city and explores what happens when the principles of birdwatching are applied to other aspects of art and life.

A fresh, witty, accessible life of Queen Victoria. Not since Lytton Strachey has the irony, contradictions and influence of this Queen been treated with such flourish or biographical insight. Reigning over a lifetime, Queen Victoria embodied the spirit of the contradictory era to which she lent her name.

After a lifetime spent living firmly in English, Lauren Collins finds herself adrift in French-speaking Geneva. Having fallen in love with Olivier, a Frenchman, Lauren wakes up one day to the realisation that she is living in a community where she cannot speak the language and that she is married to a man whose name she doesn't dare speak in public, for fear of mispronunciation. A New Yorker journalist skilled at making a living through her writing, Lauren is suddenly no longer able to communicate with the local shop owners, let alone her in-laws.

I had a hunch we'd be champions! The most unlikely story in the history of sport, told by our greatest football writer. On 25th March 2015, when King Richard III, recently rescued from a municipal car park, was reburied in Leicester Cathedral, his beloved football team had just lost 4-3 to Tottenham Hotspur and were bottom of the Premier League, relegation certainties. With King Richard finally at rest, everything changed for Leicester City.

A family's story of human tenacity, faith and a race for survival in the face of unspeakable horror and cruelty perpetrated by the Nazi regime against the Jewish people. Growing up in the safety of England, far away from his family's past, Jonathan Wittenberg had never asked too many questions about his ancestors, although his father had told him Hitler had murdered millions of people and turned thousands of them into bars of soap, including several of Jonathon's relatives.

From African goats to blue wildebeest and potty pigs to dippy donkeys, Jo Hardy, now a qualified vet, is about to take on the world - one animal at a time. Jo is determined to go where vets are desperately needed. Heading out first to the townships of South Africa, then to Uganda. Dealing with life-and-death decisions and much-loved family pets here and abroad, including a giant French rabbit, a labradoodle that stops breathing under anaesthetic and an angry cat that won't get out of its box, Jo has to trust her training as never before.

A compelling and hard-hitting memoir which follows one woman's search, 20 years after the attack, for answers about her rapist. Joanna Connors was 30 years old when she was raped at knifepoint by a stranger. After this horrifying trauma, she became afraid of everything - flying, driving, travelling in a car while someone else drove. She had children but hovered over them constantly, terrified about what might happen to them as well.

Cal Flyn was very proud when she discovered that her ancestor, Angus McMillan, had been a pioneer of colonial Australia. However, when she dug deeper, she began to question her pride. McMillan had not only cut tracks through the bush but played a dark role in Australia's bloody history. Angus McMillan had left the stark, windswept landscape of the Highlands in the 1830s, blighted by the Clearances, for the alien harshness of the Australian frontier and had since been mythologised as a great explorer.

On a hot, still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca Aitkenhead's life changed forever. Her four-year-old boy was paddling peacefully at the water's edge when a wave pulled him out to sea. Her partner, Tony, swam out and saved their son's life - then drowned before her eyes.

Dog Soldiers tells the story of two brave young dog soldiers (army bomb dog handlers) killed in action in Afghanistan with their dogs by their sides, through the inspirational words of their mothers. Lance Corporal Kenneth Rowe and Lance Corporal Liam Tasker were both dog lovers from boyhood and went on to do the job they had always wanted to do.

A biography of Gaius Valerius Catullus, Rome's first great poet, a dandy who fell in love with another man's wife and made it known to the world through his timeless verse. Famed for his lyrical, subversive voice, Catullus was Rome's first and foremost poet. Amid the death of the Roman Republic, his life, as told through his poetry, was beset with love, loss, political conflict and, above all, a desire for escape.

A dramatic and terrifying memoir of a 'catfish' scenario - when a woman meets a man online but nothing is what it seems. Twenty-five-year-old Megan Henley put her five-year-old daughter to bed one evening and switched on her laptop. A Facebook 'riend request seemed to be genuine. There were a few common friends and very similar interests, so Megan accepted. With that one simple act, she changed her life forever.

The funny, touching and entertaining story of how Jo Hardy, the star of BBC2's Young Vets, gets to grips with animals big and small, friendly and not at all happy, on the road to becoming a fully qualified vet. "Stand well clear. Keep your eyes on them. Oh, and make sure you have insurance." Not the most comforting words of wisdom but probably the most useful for a trainee vet, Jo would say.

Rejected by her mother and excluded by her school, Flip is a little girl desperate to be loved. ‘Am I ugly, Mummy?' are the first words that little Phillipa says to Mike and Casey as she stomps into their lives on a hot August afternoon. She has a Barbie doll in one hand and a pink vanity case in the other, and the bemused Watsons can only stare in amazement at this tiny eight-year-old girl who is being guided into the room by her social worker.

The warm, funny memoir of Gregor Fisher, the much loved Scottish actor best known for Rab C. Nesbitt, told as he uncovers his dramatic family history. Growing up in the Glasgow suburbs, Gregor was 14 when he asked where he was christened and was told that he was adopted. But it wasn't quite that simple. And so began an unfolding of truths, half truths and polite cover-ups from his various families.