In 1936 the abdication of King Edward VIII in order to marry Wallis Simpson dramatically divided public opinion. One of the King's high-profile supporters was Winston Churchill, who had tears in his eyes when he visited Edward as he prepared to leave his flamboyant Windsor residence Fort Belvedere for the last time. A friend of the Duke remarked that "there was nothing in him which understood the intellectual or spiritual sides of life", and several people, including Wallis, described him as never having progressed beyond boyhood. Wallis confided to a friend, "Can you imagine a more terrible fate than to have to live up publicly to the legend of a love you don't feel?" This fascinating book tells the story of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, as they now became, in the years following the abdication. Edward initially stayed with the Rothschilds, running up huge bills which no-one knew who was supposed to pay for. The Rothschilds' patience disappeared when Edward started to play the bagpipes at 3 am. Following marriage to Wallis, the couple travelled round Europe staying with friends, some of whom were Fascists. Wallis's lawyer worked for Hitler's top officials and the couple's Nazi sympathies were viewed with alarm. The couple were not to be invited to any embassy. In August 1939 the Duke telegraphed Hitler asking him not to go to war, to which Hitler replied that the "correct channel" must be found. When war broke out, Mountbatten took his destroyer across the channel to collect the couple. The Duke was reluctantly despatched to be governor of the Bahamas. En route they stayed in Portugal, where their security was ordered to shoot them if they fell into German hands during visits to the casino. In the Bahamas the couple lived a rackety lifestyle which included an unsolved murder in their entourage, and after the war they followed a monotonously swinging lifestyle in Paris. Archive photos, 410 pages.

We follow beautiful, penniless young mother Ilia as she leaves southern Italy in 1945 to travel alone to London. Her husband, an English colonel, is still away in the war in the East as she begins to learn how to be Mrs Esmond Warner, an Englishwoman. With diamond rings on her fingers and bespoke brogues on her feet, Ilia steps fearlessly into the world of cricket and riding to hounds. But, without prospect of work in a bleak, war-ravaged England, Esmond remembers the glorious ease of Cairo during his series of leave from the desert campaign and he decides to move there to start a bookshop, a branch of W. H. Smith's. But growing resistance to foreign interests, especially British, erupts in the 1952 uprising, and the Cairo Fire burns much of downtown, including the English bookshop. From letters and journals read only after the couple's death, from photographs found coiled in a film cylinder, from gifts and love tokens and mementos, the author pieces together the discoveries her parents made. It is a luminous memoir of a fraught union with unrequited hopes, richly intertwined with myth, the river Lethe feeling as real as the Nile. Vivid recollections of Cairo swirl with ever-present dreams of a city where Warner's parents, friends and associates are still restlessly wandering. 'An entrancing weave of memoir, history, autobiography and fiction, this is one of Marina Warner's most beautiful works.' 416pp, illus. and photos, paperback.

Real-life stories of heartbreak and hope, direct from the very frontline of the NHS. London born Lysa left school to join a travelling circus, working in Europe for four years as an acrobat and ring-mistress. In a slight change of direction, she qualified first as a nurse and then as a paramedic and finally an emergency care practitioner, spending over 20 years saving lives in the UK. Today she is happiest in the mountains of Tuscany but still works shifts in a London Urgent Care Centre. A teenage boy lies on the pavement, bleeding from a stab wound. A distraught mum watches in mute shock as her daughter suffers a terrifying fatal asthma attack. A young girl is gang-raped and her stricken boyfriend takes an overdose. A disturbed young man flings himself in front of a speeding train at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve. Few people can imagine living in a world where such situations are part of everyday life. Yet for veteran paramedic Lysa Walder these and thousands of other emergency call outs are part of a day's work - scenes of tragedy, heroism, loss and horror, but also stories of triumph and humour. Working for over 20 years in the London Ambulance Service, the world's biggest and busiest free service for much of that time, she reveals what it's really like to work face-to-face with death and destiny every day. 282 page paperback.

Mentored to stardom by Walt Disney himself, Hayley reveals the truth of her own coming-of-age story in her own words, a story of incredible twists of fate and fortune, but also mismanagement, bankruptcy, family crisis and dislocation. What happens when a girl grows up in a world where everyone wants her to remain a child? Hayley's teenage decade in Hollywood produced some of the greatest family movies, classics like Pollyanna, The Parent Trap and In Search of the Castaways, and in Britain the acclaimed Whistle Down the Wind. Overnight, Hayley became a household name at the tender age of 12. Her memoir touches on growing up in a family of performers and she evokes a lost empire of mid-20th century Hollywood in her warm-hearted peek-behind-the-curtain at filmmaking in the 1960s. Mills won a BAFTA Award for her performance in the British crime drama Tiger Bay and her seven-picture deal with Walt Disney made her an international star and included her dual role as the twins Sharon and Susan in The Parent Trap. She was just 14 when she made Pollyanna and continued to make films and TV and drama among them as Caroline in Wild At Heart on ITV. Never a dull passage, 394pp in paperback, 16 pages of colour and black and white photos including hanging on to the mast of the Swiss Family Robinson shipwreck in Tobago, 1959.

Posthumously discovered in Highsmith's linen cupboard and edited down from 56 thick spiral notebooks by her devoted editor, this one-volume over 1,000 page assemblage of her diaries and notebooks traces the mesmerising double life of one of the 20th century's most conflicted and fascinating novelists. The famously secretive Highsmith refused to authorise a biography during her lifetime but left behind these 8,000 pages of diaries which reveal at last the inscrutable figure behind the pen. They show her unwavering literary ambitions, coming often at huge personal sacrifice, as she reflects on good and evil, loneliness and intimacy, sexuality and sacrifice, love and murder. We feel her euphoria writing 'The Price of Salt' (later adapted into the film Carol) one of the first mainstream novels to depict two women in love, and we watch her in Positano, gleefully conjuring Mr Ripley, the psychopathic and anti-hero that would cement her reputation. She describes her tumultuous romantic relationships alongside her sometimes dizzying social life involving Jane Bowles, Peggy Guggenheim, Carson McCullers, Arthur Koestler and W. H. Auden. In her skewering of McCarthy-era America, her prickly disparagement of contemporary art, and ever-percolating prejudices, we see Highsmith revealing the roots of her psychological angst and acuity. Written in her inimitable and dazzling prose and offering all the pleasure of her novels, these are one of the most compulsively readable literary diaries to be published in generations - unfiltered and an unforgettable picture of this enigmatic trailblazing author. They comprise one of the most observant and ecstatic accounts by one of the finest writers in the English language who died in 1995. 1000 page paperback, 15 x 23cm.

Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, but now the band's notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. His often amusing memories will be loved by all Doors fans. It is a series of vignettes which takes us back to where it all happened - the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar, the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust, his parents' living room where his first writing songs with Jim Morrison took place, and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. There are stories of the albums, flashpoints, the group's rise to fame, singles, drug and alcohol use all painting a picture of the 1960's counterculture. At the same time it is a moving reflection on what it means to find oneself as a musician, from the iconic and definitive first album on Elektra, we are reminded of the swirling technical wizardry on keyboards of Ray Manzarek and the solid drumming of John Densmore. Sadly of course Jim Morrison entered the 27 club but here his bandmate sets the record straight after wild acclaims and misunderstandings. Along the way he also managed to write 'Light My Fire', an anthem for the band. A great read from this underrated guitar player who writes with the same easy going style. 422 page paperback, many photos.

Mrs Overall: 'I sometimes think being widowed is God's way of telling you to come off the Pill.' And from page 86 in the middle of a frantically funny dialogue 'Got into drugs, marijuana, then cocaine, then Shake 'n' Vac. Then I became a monk, but we had words over my safari jacket.' Slip into your northern accent to read aloud the comic words of our much loved lost talent, Victoria Wood. First published as a stand-alone collection in 1996, Chunky collects sketches from Victoria Wood's award-winning TV shows together with previously unaired monologues and scenes. As well as the complete Acorn Antiques scripts, this omnibus edition includes her Up to You, Porky (the title of which was based on her former agent's dismissive quip), Balmy and Mens Sana in Thingummy Doodah. This revised edition collects the very best of her sketches, shows and more, and is newly introduced by Celia Imrie, star of so many of Victoria Wood's shows, with additions and annotations from Wood's official biographer Jasper Rees. Babs (on telephone): 'Acorn Antiques, can I help you? Gainsborough's Blue Boy? Yes, I think we have it in mauve, I'll just check...' Acute skewering of the absurdities of real life from corner shops to candlewick bedspreads, supermarket checkouts to suburban lust. From a Kitty monologue: 'My name's Kitty. I've had a boob off and I can't stomach whelks so that's me for you'. Plus the waspish continuity announcer Susie, Marjory and Joan and other unforgettable characters. 447pp with cast lists.