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SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY PRIZETHE SUNDAY TIMES NO.2 BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE BMA PRESIDENT’S AWARD 2017An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons, recalling some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he’s worked on.Grim Reaper sits on the heart surgeon’s shoulder. A slip of the hand and life ebbs away.The balance between life and death is so delicate, and the heart surgeon walks that rope between the two. In the operating room there is no time for doubt. It is flesh, blood, rib-retractors and pumping the vital organ with your bare hand to squeeze the life back into it. An off-day can have dire consequences – this job has a steep learning curve, and the cost is measured in human life. Cardiac surgery is not for the faint of heart.Professor Stephen Westaby took chances and pushed the boundaries of heart surgery. He saved hundreds of lives over the course of a thirty-five year career and now, in his astounding memoir, Westaby details some of his most remarkable and poignant cases – such as the baby who had suffered multiple heart attacks by six months old, a woman who lived the nightmare of locked-in syndrome, and a man whose life was powered by a battery for eight years.A powerful, important and incredibly moving book, Fragile Lives offers an exceptional insight into the exhilarating and sometimes tragic world of heart surgery, and how it feels to hold someone’s life in your hands.

On the same day that his wife gave birth to twins, Anthony Doerr received the Rome Prize, an award that gave him a year-long stipend and studio in Rome…‘Four Seasons in Rome’ charts the repercussions of that day, describing Doerr's varied adventures in one of the most enchanting cities in the world, and the first year of parenthood. He reads Pliny, Dante, and Keats – the chroniclers of Rome who came before him – and visits the piazzas, temples, and ancient cisterns they describe. He attends the vigil of a dying Pope John Paul II and takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. He and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers of the neighbourhood, whose clamour of stories and idiosyncratic child-rearing advice is as compelling as the city itself.This intimate and revelatory book is a celebration of Rome, a wondrous look at new parenthood and a fascinating account of the alchemy of writers.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

Jade's heart-breaking diary of her fight against terminal cancer and her final precious months with her beloved family.In August 2007 Jade Goody received the shattering news that she had cervical cancer. She was only 27 years old. But with her usual strength of character, Jade was determined to beat the disease and carry on with life as normal with her two little boys Bobby and Freddy.Neither the chemotherapy, which left her weak and bald, or the hysterectomy that crushed her dreams of having a little girl, could break Jade's sunny personality or her fierce refusal to be a victim. But in February 2009, Jade received the tragic news that any mother dreads to hear: she was going to be torn from her beloved sons. The cancer had spread and was untreatable.Forever In My Heart is Jade's final 'love letter' to her two little boys. Covering her initial diagnosis while appearing on Celebrity Big Brother in India, their emotional last Christmas as a family, her magical wedding to her partner Jack Tweed and her dying wish to see be christened with her boys, Jade's heart-breaking diary of her final months is set against a backdrop of flashbacks to her difficult early years, her rise to fame in the Big Brother house and those moments of joy and laughter as the nation's darling.It is the powerful story of a young mother's brave fight against a terminal disease, her unique humour, her determination to provide for her sons and her fierce desire to leave a legacy which might prevent other young women being torn from their families in the prime of life.A percentage of profits from the book will be donated to Marie Curie Cancer Care.

In this incredible and moving memoir, a mother tells of her fight for justice to convict her daughter’s murderer for a crime that he thought could never be punished.When her 22-year-old daughter, Julie, went missing in the night, Ann Ming was certain she had been murdered. Liaising with the police, looking after Julie’s beloved three-year-old son, Ann waited desperately for news. Three months later she found her child's decomposing body behind a bath panel.A violent local man, Billy Dunlop, was tried for her murder but a series of blunders allowed him to walk free. Knowing he could not be tried again under the law of Double Jeopardy, he callously bragged about his 'perfect crime'.But Dunlop had not reckoned on Ann Ming…This is the extraordinary story of a fight for justice which she never gave up. A moving account of courage and determination, showing how much a mother's love can achieve.

With women falling at his feet, Luke happily entertains his long list of regular clients, whilst his reputation leads him into some new and exotic encounters – including a steamy threesome onboard a luxurious yacht and an evening with an older lady with a fetish for S&M.Things reach breaking point when Luke’s new flatmates unwittingly uncover his secret profession, and worse, reveal it to a potential girlfriend, forcing Luke to take a long hard look at his life.Can he relinquish the glamour and wealth of escorting for the chance of a more stable lifestyle? Or does Luke enjoy his job more than he cares to admit – even to himself?

In the summer of 1942, Gyles Mackrell, together with twenty elephants, and a team of mahouts (elephant riders) performed heroic rescue-missions in the hellish jungles of Japanese-occupied Burma.At the age of 53, Mackrell – a decorated First World War pilot, then overseeing tea plantations for a company called Steel Brothers – went into the ‘green hell’ of the Chaukan Pass on the border of North Burma and Assam. Here, in what became a three-phase mission, he rescued Indian army soldiers, together with British civilians and their Indian servants, from the pursuing Japanese, directing his elephants through jungle passes and over raging rivers, through territory previously unseen by any white man and infested with sand flies, horse-flies, mosquitoes and innumerable leeches. Those he saved were all on the point of death from starvation or fever: the whole of that summer was spent in a fight against time.The most astonishing aspect of Gyles Mackrell’s heroics is that they have yet to be fully dramatised. Now in Andrew Martin’s hands they are given the shape of a suspenseful adventure, a wartime rescue whose facts are the stuff of Commando Comic-fiction. But he has also made a classic in the kingdom of animal fiction, with a starring species as awesome as literature’s most powerful horse, as exotic as its most elusive whale, as loveable as its most faithful dog. And finally Martin has pointed a portrait of war and of jungle-survival from an historically under-nourished point of view; a picture of fading British imperial virtues at their most dignified and robust. This book’s appeal will embrace together for the first time those happy disciples of adventure, history and the elephant.

Part 3 of 3Finding Stevie is a dark and poignant true story that highlights the dangers lurking on online.When Stevie’s social worker tells Cathy, an experienced foster carer, that Stevie, 14, is gender fluid she isn’t sure what that term means and looks it up.Stevie, together with his younger brother and sister, have been brought up by their grandparents as their mother is in prison. But the grandparents can no longer cope with Stevie’s behaviour so they place him in care.Stevie is exploring his gender identity, and like many young people he spends time online. Cathy warns him about the dangers of talking to strangers online and advises him how to stay safe. When his younger siblings tell their grandmother that they have a secret they can’t tell, Cathy is worried. However, nothing could have prepared her for the truth when Stevie finally breaks down and confesses what he’s done.

Part 2 of 3Finding Stevie is a dark and poignant true story that highlights the dangers lurking on online.When Stevie’s social worker tells Cathy, an experienced foster carer, that Stevie, 14, is gender fluid she isn’t sure what that term means and looks it up.Stevie, together with his younger brother and sister, have been brought up by their grandparents as their mother is in prison. But the grandparents can no longer cope with Stevie’s behaviour so they place him in care.Stevie is exploring his gender identity, and like many young people he spends time online. Cathy warns him about the dangers of talking to strangers online and advises him how to stay safe. When his younger siblings tell their grandmother that they have a secret they can’t tell, Cathy is worried. However, nothing could have prepared her for the truth when Stevie finally breaks down and confesses what he’s done.

Part 1 of 3Finding Stevie is a dark and poignant true story that highlights the dangers lurking on online.When Stevie’s social worker tells Cathy, an experienced foster carer, that Stevie, 14, is gender fluid she isn’t sure what that term means and looks it up.Stevie, together with his younger brother and sister, have been brought up by their grandparents as their mother is in prison. But the grandparents can no longer cope with Stevie’s behaviour so they place him in care.Stevie is exploring his gender identity, and like many young people he spends time online. Cathy warns him about the dangers of talking to strangers online and advises him how to stay safe. When his younger siblings tell their grandmother that they have a secret they can’t tell, Cathy is worried. However, nothing could have prepared her for the truth when Stevie finally breaks down and confesses what he’s done.

Heartwarming, inspirational and genuinely touching, Finding Harmony is the remarkable true story of an extraordinary dog that rescued a woman from the depths of depression and transformed a family for ever.A keen mountaineer, Sally Hyder was in her prime and loving life. She shared her passion for climbing with her partner Andrew and it was a dream come true when Andrew proposed at Everest Base Camp. For them, climbing mountains made anything seem possible and represented their attitude to life.But a year after Sally and Andrew were married Sally was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. She was only 28 and was training to be a Macmillan nurse – she wanted to care for the terminally ill. But Sally was determined the disease wouldn't slow her down: she went back to work looking after others and, despite warnings that her condition could deteriorate in pregnancy, went on to have three beautiful children.But it was when her youngest child Melissa was diagnosed with severe autism that Sally began to spiral into depression. Sally felt guilty about the pressures faced by her elder daughter Clara in her role as carer. Sally worried that she was missing out on the freedom of childhood.She needed help. Unsure who to turn to, she happened upon Canine Partners and an extraordinary dog called Harmony. They formed an instant bond; Harmony can perform over 100 chores – from putting groceries into the trolley to handing over Sally's purse at the till. Harmony is an unending source of comfort: she intuitively knows when Sally is in pain and calms Melissa when she suffers panic attacks.Harmony has given Sally the ability to start living once more, and become a mother again in her own way. She has shown Sally that the sky's the limit and, with a taste for independence that she hadn't felt since her mountaineering days, Sally set her sights on the peaks of Ben Nevis once more.In August 2010 Sally planned to climb the hardest of the Munro Mountains. Sadly her first attempt was thwarted after her motorised wheelchair short-circuited. But Sally is a fighter and reached the summit in June 2011 with her husband by her side. And Harmony too, of course.

Inspired by her uncle, Lisa Samson has communed with trees since her childhood. Tragically, a disease from mainland Europe now poses a very serious threat to the ash tree’s survival. Epitaph for the Ash explores how barren our landscape could become without the ash’s familiar branches protruding from limestone scars and chalky cliff faces.The trees’ grave prognosis takes on a personal resonance when, in the course of writing this book, Lisa is diagnosed with a brain tumour. While she receives treatment, and learns to walk and talk again, Lisa finds solace once more in the natural world. She continues to research her beloved forests, which once sheltered a wealth of flora and fauna, seeking out the possibilities that modern science might provide for their survival.Taking us from the lowlands of Norfolk to northernmost reaches of the British Isles, Lisa's book is a celebration of the deep cultural and historical significance of the ash. As Lisa contemplates her own mortality, and the trees’ likely fate emerges, Epitaph for the Ash offers up a rallying cry to treasure these remarkable woodlands while we still can, before it is too late.

What pushed Blunt, Burgess, Cairncross, Maclean and Philby into Soviet hands?With access to recently released papers and other neglected documents, this sharp analysis of the intelligence world examines how and why these men and others betrayed their country and what this cost Britain and its allies.Enemies Within is a new history of the influence of Moscow on Britain told through the stories of those who chose to spy for the Soviet Union. It also challenges entrenched assumptions about abused trust, corruption and Establishment cover-ups that began with the Cambridge Five and the disappearance of Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean on the night boat to Saint-Malo in 1951.In a book that is as intellectually thrilling as it is entertaining and illuminating, Richard Davenport-Hines traces the bonds between individuals, networks and organisations over generations to offer a study of character, both individual and institutional. At its core lie the operative traits of boarding schools, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the Intelligence Division, Foreign Office, MI5, MI6 and Moscow Centre.Davenport-Hines tells many stories of espionage, counter-espionage and treachery. With its vast scope, ambition and scholarship, Enemies Within charts how the undermining of authority, the rejection of expertise and the suspicion of educational advantages began, and how these have transformed the social and political temper of modern Britain.