An empowering lived-experience guide to celebrating and supporting neurodivergence from 24-year-old actor, social media star and disability advocate Chloé Hayden.

Different, Not Less

The Secret Diaries of Taylor Swift's Cats

'Just be yourself, there is no one better' Taylor Swift has been a global superstar for well over a decade. Her pop hits and iconic music videos constantly deliver empowering messages of self-love and resilience. Shaking off personal challenges and clapping back at misogyny since day one, Tay Tay has emerged as the defining voice of her generation. Featuring all her best wisdom on confidence, careers, beauty, relationships, and more, this collection of quotes will motivate Swifties of all ages to live a more creative and confident life.

Taylor Swift Lines To Live By

'You should celebrate who you are now, where you're going, and where you've been' Despite facing media scrutiny, sexist backlash and a battle to take ownership of her own music, Taylor Swift has shown her fans how to rise above the haters. Organised into ten life lessons that have shaped Taylor's eras, this collection of quotes will inspire swifties to be creative, emotional and rebellious. This is Taylor's precious wisdom, and the ultimate celebration of every era of Taylor's life so far.

Taylor Swift Lines To Live

What would Taylor do? Songwriting genius, poised performer, warm-hearted friend-we'd all love to be a bit more like Taylor Swift. This brilliant guide will show you how. Whether it is standing up for yourself and your friends, opening your heart to love, or refusing to let others write your reputation, these life lessons will help you shake off your troubles and become folklore for Swifties everywhere. Containing advice on love, friendship, overcoming fears, being yourself, and finding creative inspiration, Be More Taylor Swift is the perfect gift for Taylor Swift fans.

Be More Taylor Swift

A collection of more than 300 quotes from Taylor Swift, pop culture icon and one of the bestselling musicians of all time. Part of the In Their Own Words series.

Taylor Swift

You know the songs by heart. You've traded the friendship bracelets. You've worn the cowboy boots and the bejewelled bodysuits. Now, get the inside track on this generation's biggest super star - Taylor Swift. An intimate look at the life and music of modern pop's most legendary figure, Taylor Swift, from leading music journalist Rob Sheffield. A cultural phenomenon. A worldwide obsession. An agent of emotional chaos. There's no parallel to Taylor Swift in history: a teenage girl who turns into the world's favorite pop star, songwriter, storyteller, guitar hero, live performer, changing how music is made and heard. An all-time great on the level of The Beatles, Prince, or David Bowie. Heartbreak Is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music is the first book that goes deep on the musical and cultural impact of Taylor Swift. Nobody can tell the story like Rob Sheffield, the bestselling and award-winning author of Dreaming the Beatles, On Bowie, and Love Is a Mix Tape. The legendary Rolling Stone journalist is the writer who has chronicled Taylor for every step of her long career, from her early days to the Eras Tour. Sheffield gets right to the heart of Swift and her music, her lyrics, her fan connection, her raw power. At once one of the most beloved music figures of the past two decades and one of the most criticized, Taylor Swift is known as much for her life beyond her music as she is for her hits-the most public of stars, yet also the weirdest and most mysterious. In the tradition of Sheffield's Dreaming the Beatles, Heartbreak Is the National Anthem will inform and delight a legion of fans who hang on every word from Taylor and every word Rob writes on her.

Heartbreak Is the National Anthem

From a Robert Frost poem on her debut album to the myth of Cassandra on The Tortured Poets Department, Taylor Swift’s lyrics are filled with literary connections. Make sure you're catching them all with this expert guide to the novels, poems, and plays that influence her songwriting. Let a literature professor and a musical theater artist guide you through the Taylor Swift canon—from Shakespeare to the Brontë sisters to Daphne du Maurier! Learn what "New Romantics" has to do with the old Romantics Get to know the Gothic monsters haunting Midnights Spot Taylor's many Great Gatsby references Discover what Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson have in common And find your new favorite tortured poet! Packed with fun facts, entertaining analysis, and literary-themed playlists that fans will love, Taylor Swift by the Book will turn anyone from a Taylor Swift lover into a Taylor Swift scholar. With full-color illustrations highlighting the literary eras of Dr. Swift (yes, she has an honorary PhD), it’s a perfect gift for the Swiftie in your life.

Taylor Swift by the Book

Into the Taylor-Verse

Dearest Geraldine

488 Rules for Life is Kitty Flanagan's way of making the world a more pleasant place to live. Applying truth and wit to modern problems. An antidote to stupidity.

Kitty Flanagan's 488 Rules for Life

One of Australia's biggest comic personalities, much-loved host of Spicks and Specks and the hit UK TV show The Last Leg, Adam Hills' charming and witty memoir is a lesson in following your heart, being positive and discovering that what makes you different also makes you unique. Adam Hills was a quiet primary school kid with a prosthetic foot who did all his homework and only spoke when spoken to. His dad sparked in him a love of comedy, and together they'd spend hours watching and listening to the likes of Peter Sellers and Mel Brooks. So when it was Adam's turn to speak, he made sure he was funny. Once he hit high school, comedy was Adam's obsession (along with a deep love for the South Sydney Rabbitohs). While his mates were listening to Iron Maiden and AC/DC, he was listening to Kenny Everett and Billy Connolly. And when a report card came home with a comment praising his sense of humour, he was far prouder of that than his grades (his mum not so much). Adam's shyness and his missing foot never held him back, though wearing thongs was tricky. While other teens snuck off to meet girls and drink cheap booze, Adam snuck off to see a young Jim Carrey perform. After that, a steady diet of Rodney Rude, Vince Sorrenti and Robin Williams led this sheltered, virginal university student from The Shire to his first stand-up open mic night on his 19th birthday. In Best Foot Forward, Adam describes his early years on the Australian comedy scene sharing gigs with Steady Eddy and Jimeoin, how he coped the first time he died on stage, his early-morning apprenticeship in radio, touring the world's comedy festivals, the magic of Spicks and Specks and his hosting gig for the 2008 Paralympics that led to his hit UK TV show The Last Leg. Kermit the Frog, Whoopi Goldberg, Barry Humphries, Billy Connolly - Adam's learned from the best. In this charming and witty memoir Adam Hills shows how hard work, talent and being proudly different can see you find your feet.

Best Foot Forward

The Pogues

'So honest and pure as to count as a true rapture' JOAN DIDION'A poetic masterpiece' JOHNNY DEPP'Our St John of the Cross, a mystic full of compassion' EDMUND WHITE'A roadmap to my life', from the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids: an unforgettable odyssey of a legendary artist, told through the prism of cafés and haunts she has worked in around the worldREVISED EDITION WITH FIVE THOUSAND WORDS OF BONUS MATERIAL AND NEW PHOTOGRAPHS M Train begins in the tiny Greenwich Village café where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. Through prose that shifts fluidly between dreams and reality, past and present, and across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations, we travel to Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico; to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin; to a ramshackle seaside bungalow in New York's Far Rockaway that Smith acquires just before Hurricane Sandy hits; and to the graves of Genet, Plath, Rimbaud and Mishima. Woven throughout are reflections on the writer's craft and on artistic creation. Here, too, are singular memories of Smith's life in Michigan and the irremediable loss of her husband, Fred Sonic Smith. Braiding despair with hope and consolation, illustrated with her signature Polaroids, M Train is a meditation on travel, detective shows, literature and coffee. It is a powerful, deeply moving book by one of the most remarkable artists at work today.

M Train

A prelude to fame, Just Kids recounts the friendship of two young artists--Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - whose passion fueled their lifelong pursuit of art. In 1967, a chance meeting between two young people led to a romance and a lifelong friendship that would carry each to international success never dreamed of. The backdrop is Brooklyn, Chelsea Hotel, Max's Kansas City, Scribner's Bookstore, Coney Island, Warhol's Factory and the whole city resplendent. Among their friends, literary lights, musicians and artists such as Harry Smith, Bobby Neuwirth, Allen Ginsberg, Sandy Daley, Sam Shepherd, William Burroughs, etc. It was a heightened time politically and culturally; the art and music worlds exploding and colliding. In the midst of all this two kids made a pact to always care for one another. Scrappy, romantic, committed to making art, they prodded and provided each other with faith and confidence during the hungry years--the days of cous-cous and lettuce soup. Just Kids begins as a love story and ends as an elegy. Beautifully written, this is a profound portrait of two young artists, often hungry, sated only by art and experience. And an unforgettable portrait of New York, her rich and poor, hustlers and hellions, those who made it and those whose memory lingers near.

Just Kids

'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter in his Seventies, who wouldn't even deign to make a victory speech? In Why Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers that question with magisterial erudition. A world expert on Classical poetry, Thomas was initially ridiculed by his colleagues for teaching a course on Bob Dylan alongside his traditional seminars on Homer, Virgil and Ovid. Dylan's Nobel prize win brought him vindication, and he immediately found himself thrust into the limelight as a leading academic voice in all matters Dylanological. This witty, personal volume is a distillation of Thomas's famous course, and makes a compelling case for moving Dylan out of the rock n' roll Hall of Fame and into the pantheon of Classical poets. The most dazzlingly original and compelling Dylan book in decades, Why Dylan Matters will amaze and astound everyone from the first-time listener to the lifetime fan. You'll never think about Bob Dylan in the same way again.

Why Dylan Matters

Zoro is the pupil of the painter, sculptor, scientist and inventor, Leonardo da Vinci. He works hard in Leonardo's workshop, but he is never allowed inside the secret locked room, where Leonardo spends hours working on a mysterious invention. Then one day a mischievous boy steals the keys.

Leonardo and the Flying Boy

From award-winning musician and composer Warren Ellis comes the unexpected and inspiring story of a piece of chewing gum. Featuring an introduction from Nick Cave. On Thursday 1 July, 1999, Dr Nina Simone gave a rare performance as part of Nick Cave's Meltdown Festival. After the show, in a state of awe, Warren Ellis crept onto the stage, took Dr Simone's piece of chewed gum from the piano, wrapped it in her stage towel and put it in a Tower Records bag. The gum remained with him for twenty years; a sacred totem, his creative muse, growing in significance with every passing year. In 2019, Cave - his collaborator and great friend - asked Warren if there was anything he could contribute to display in his Stranger Than Kindness exhibition. Warren realised the time had come to release the gum. Together they agreed it should be housed in a glass case like a holy relic. Worrying the gum would be damaged or lost, Warren decided to first have it cast in silver and gold, sparking a chain of events that no one could have predicted, one that would take him back to his childhood and his relationship to found objects. Nina Simone's Gum is about how something so small can form beautiful connections between people. It is a story about the meaning we place on things, on experiences, and how they become imbued with spirituality. It is a celebration of artistic process, friendship, understanding and love.

Nina Simone's Gum

Arranged alphabetically by band name for ease of reference, Rock Chronicles offers a fascinating, encyclopedic study of the ever-shifting line-ups, appearances, labels, and sounds of 250 of the best-known and most important rock acts of the past fifty years. Esteemed music author David Roberts offers an insightful review of every group, giving the lowdown on every member - whatever their role in the band, however short-lived their time with them, and however well-known. A photograph of every band member from every line-up supplements the engaging text, and founder and current members are picked out visually for immediate recognition. Innovative, color-coded infographics provide an overview of every aspect of each band's story, so that readers can see at a glance which musicians featured in each formation, which instruments they played, which label the act was with when, the dates their albums were released, and who played on them. For the ten most commercially successful albums total sales figures are given. And for the 50 biggest acts, a stunning display of iconic photographs charts the artists' dramatic changes of appearance, relating each iconic 'look' to the album of the same period. Interspersed throughout the book are six graphic decade features. Each one presents a detailed family tree for that era's greatest acts, revealing which year every band formed, and to which other bands they are related through line-up changes. Plus, at the end of the book, there's a fact-filled, cross-referenced performer directory, listing all the bands each performer played in and when. Comprehensive, information-packed, and compelling to read, Rock Chronicles is the essential reference for everyone who loves rock.

Rock Chronicles

Nearly everyone at some point in their youth has been gripped by desire for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle. This is a collection of funny, true, starting-out anecdotes from eager young bands determined to get out of the basement, and some of those who made it.

Sex, Drugs and Mum in the Front Row

"Follows Maddie's [a coonhound's] adventures at play and at rest as she accompanies her owner, Theron, from Utah to Illinois to Mexico and everywhere in between. Whether riding in a car cross-country, staying in a cheap motel, or visiting family a little closer to home, Maddie finds a way to settle in for a nap in any set of circumstances. This collection of more than 150 photographs highlights Maddie's snuggly, cuddly side, as she curls up in unexpected places, belly flops onto sofas all over the country, and nestles herself into the lap of her much-loved owner."--Back cover.

Maddie Lounging On Things

‘Sybil’ is the fascinating, incredibly moving true story of a woman with sixteen personalities – two of whom were men – and her struggle, against overwhelming odds, for health and happiness.‘Astonishing book … it forces you to look at yourself and the people around you in a new way’ Doris Lessing.

Sybil

'My first serious blackout marked the line between sanity and insanity. Though I would have moments of lucidity over the coming days and weeks, I would never again be the same person . . . ' Susannah Cahalan was a happy, clever, healthy twenty-four-year old. Then one day she woke up in hospital, with no memory of how she had got there. Within weeks, she would be transformed into someone unrecognizable, descending into a state of acute psychosis. This is Susannah's story of her terrifying descent into madness and the desperate hunt for a diagnosis, as, after dozens of tests and scans, baffled doctors concluded she should be confined in a psychiatric ward. It is also the story of how one brilliant man, Syria-born Dr Najar, finally proved - using a simple pen and paper - that Susannah's psychotic behaviour was caused by a rare autoimmune disease attacking her brain. Cahalan takes readers inside this newly-discovered disease through the progress of her own harrowing journey, asking what happens when your identity is suddenly destroyed, and how you get it back. 'With eagle-eye precision and brutal honesty, Susannah Cahalan turns her journalistic gaze on herself as she bravely looks back on one of the most harrowing and unimaginable experience one could ever face: the loss of minds, body and self . . . a mesmerizing story.' Mira Bartók, New York Times bestselling author of The Memory Palace

Brain on Fire

Based on five years of interviews, this book looks at the forces that compelled Chapman to kill John Lennon. Chapman dissects his own life, describing childhood fantasies and the youthful idealism that decayed into satanic ritual and a murder that shocked the world.

Let Me Take You Down

Take a close-up look at Clara Barton, who bravely nursed soldiers during the Civil War. Interviews with experts and lively writing deliver the accurate reporting you expect from Time For Kids®. Historical and contemporary photographs capture the life of this caring woman and show how her legacy—the American Red Cross—assists people today.

Time For Kids: Clara Barton

You've seen him wearing speedos, kissing babies, driving a mining truck and campaigning on Big Brother. But who is the real Tony Abbott? In the grand tradition of Bushisms and The Wit of Whitlam, here are the sayings of Australia's Prime Minister, unvarnished and rich in revelation - the very best and worst of Abbott, the irrepressible mad monk. Tony speaks - on family: 'If you want to know who to vote for, I'm the guy with the not bad looking daughters.' Adversaries: 'Does this guy ever shut up?' Honesty: There will always be some issues that are contentious, but the best way to deal with them is openly, candidly and behind closed doors.' Female colleagues: 'They're young, feisty, I think I can probably say have a bit of sex appeal and they're just very connected with the local area.' Poverty: 'we just can't stop people from being homeless if that's their choice' Climate change: 'absolute crap' Christian teaching: 'Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone's place to come to Australia.' And that's just a taste . . .

Tony Speaks!

Hillbilly Elegy

This beautifully illustrated collection tells the aw e-inspiring stories of 50 w omen w ho have pushed the boundaries of human excellence and endeavour. Standing out for their achievements in sport, science, the arts, politics, and history, these women have made huge contributions to today's society. Featuring incredible women from the past and present such as Beyonce, Sheryl Sandberg, Mary Anning, Emmeline Pankhurst and Malala. The Anthology of Amazing Women is a wonderful read for anyone wanting to read up on the incredible women who have lived and changed our lives.

Biography Books