Headline Books

The first memoir by Deacon Blue singer and music icon Ricky Ross.

In 1986, Ricky Ross started a full-time career in music, which has lasted for over 35 years. His earlier working life was spent in youth work and teaching in his home city of Dundee, and his adopted home of Glasgow. It was in these two cities where he spent his formative years learning how to write and play songs.

Having always written about the people and places who've made an impact on his life, it's no surprise that this is how he has approached Walking Back Home, his first-ever memoir, which takes the listener on a journey from Ricky's childhood to the roller coaster of leading his band Deacon Blue to top of the charts and the band's eventual break-up and his solo career.

"I started to write about the years I spent putting the band together, on the first time we ever played in America, and about some of the musical characters I've met along the way. I gave some thought to growing up in suburban Dundee in a family with no record player and no sense that someone like me could, one day, make a record. That's one part of the story. However, I still want to talk about the smell of Born to Run when I first got it home and how I saw the Buzzcocks looking at a Cliff Richard album sleeve in a Dundee Record Shop window. I still want to tell the stories of my grandparents and parents and the woman whose voice was so vulnerable when she got up to sing at our church.

For all these years I've told stories. Sometimes these days I also tell them on the radio. I've met some amazing people and their stories need told, too. The first time Deacon Blue ever played Wembley Arena I started to introduce a song only to hear, 'Get on with it' shouted from Row Z. We proceeded with the song, but I often thought I'd quite like to finish that story."

Chloe is beautiful and fiercely bright, but her thirst for booze and attention is insatiable.

Sara resents being tied down to anything, but part of her craves stability.

Elliot is secretly grieving the death of his famous lover and feels like he's invisible.

The lives and problems of psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber's clients vary, but all are united by a common question: what do I really want?

In What We Want, Charlotte Fox Weber takes us on a journey through 12 universal wants and desires, bringing us behind the closed doors of her practice. It is at once a fly-on-the-wall look at what binds us all, an expression of the profound importance of understanding and articulating our desires, and a practical toolkit for living well.

From the award-winning author of My Name Is Leon, The Trick to Time and Supporting Cast comes a childhood memoir set to become a classic: stinging, warm-hearted and true.

Kit de Waal grew up in a household of opposites and extremes. Her haphazard mother rarely cooked, forbade Christmas and birthdays, worked as a cleaner, nurse and childminder sometimes all at once and believed the world would end in 1975. Meanwhile, her father stuffed barrels full of goodies for his relatives in the Caribbean, cooked elaborate meals on a whim and splurged money they didn't have on cars, suits and shoes fit for a prince. Both of her parents were waiting for paradise. It never came.

Caught between three worlds—Irish, Caribbean and British in 1960s Birmingham—Kit and her brothers and sisters knew all the words to the best songs, caught sticklebacks in jam jars and braved hunger and hellfire until they could all escape.

Without Warning and Only Sometimes is a story of an extraordinary childhood and how a girl who grew up in house where the Bible was the only book on offer went on to discover a love of reading that inspires her to this day.

Tom Phillips (Humans; Truth) and Jonn Elledge (The Compendium of Not Quite Everything) team up to debunk the greatest conspiracy theories humans have ever espoused—to teach us how not to fall for them.

From the Satanic Panic to the anti-vaxx movement, it's always been human nature to believe we're being lied to by the powers that be (and sometimes, to be fair, we absolutely are).

But while it can be fun to indulge in a bit of Deep State banter on the family Whatsapp group, recent times have shown us that some of these theories have taken on a life of their own—and in our dogged quest for the truth, it appears we might actually be doing it some damage.

In Conspiracy, Tom Phillips and Jonn Elledge take us on a fascinating, insightful and often hilarious journey through conspiracy theories old and new, to try and answer an important question: how can we learn to log off the QAnon message boards, and start trusting hard evidence again?

In one new volume, an irresistible collection of stories from two previous works, Smile and Changing Babies, with additional stories, previously unpublished in audio.

From swimming on Hampstead Heath to illicit trysts in hayfields, or counting stock in corner shops and stifling parenting classes to pedicures in Florence, this collection of short stories includes some previously unpublished in audio, and covers the gamut of human nature—our foibles, our loves, our desires, hopes, ambitions and failures.

Rich in observation and speckled with a delicious dark humour, Fool for Love confirms Deborah Moggach's place as one of our finest observers of human life.

Memories of love, loss and cabaret through the London AIDS crisis, by It's a Sin's Jill Nalder.

When Jill Nalder arrived at drama school in London in the early 1980s, she was ready for her life to begin. With her band of best friends—of which many were talented young gay men with big dreams of their own—she grabbed London by the horns: partying with drag queens at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, hosting cabarets at her glamorous flat, flitting across town to any jobs could get.

But soon rumours were spreading from America about a frightening illness being dubbed the 'gay flu', and Jill and her friends—spirited Juan Pablo, Jae with his beautiful voice, upbeat Dursley and many others—found that their formerly carefree existence now under threat.

In this moving memoir, It's a Sin's Jill Nalder tells the true story of her life during the AIDS crisis, and that of friends and colleagues, doctors and nurses, activists and fundraisers. She recounts juggling a busy West End career while campaigning for AIDS awareness and research, educating herself and caring for the sick. Most of all, she shines a light on those who were stigmatised and shamed, and remembers those brave and beautiful boys who were lost too soon.

Paul Doherty's twenty-third medieval mystery featuring Sir Hugh Corbett is a gripping and gruesome tale of murder and mayhem sure to appeal to fans of C. J. Sansom and Bernard Cornwell.

Spring, 1312. Edward II of England is absorbed with his favourite, Peter Gaveston, while his young wife, Isabella, is about to give birth. Isabella's father, the ruthless Philip of France, dreams of a grandson wearing the Crown of the Confessor and starts to meddle—even if that means murder....

Amaury de Craon, Philip's Master of Secrets, is despatched to carry out his deadly deeds and Edward II summons Sir Hugh Corbett, Keeper of the Secret Seal, to intercept. Both master spies lodge at the Benedictine abbey of St Michael's in the forest of Ashdown. Supposedly a house of prayer, the abbey holds sinister secrets and treasures which include the world's most exquisite diamond, The Glory of Heaven. However, shortly after their arrival, the diamond is stolen and its guardian murdered. Other macabre incidents follow, Satan is seen walking through God's Acre and a nearby tavern is burnt to the ground and no one escapes. Corbett, assisted by his henchmen, prepares to navigate this hazardous maze of murder....

Read by: George Greenland, George Weightman, Helen Keeley, Joe Eyre, Nicolette Chin, Samara MacLaren and Sid Sagar.

There's a darkness inside all of us, and The Bay has a way of bringing it out. Everyone here has their secrets, but we don't go looking for them. Because sometimes it's better not to know.

The waves are to die for at The Bay. It's a paradise they would kill to keep. The Beach meets Point Break in the thriller of the summer by Allie Reynolds.

Kenna arrives in Sydney to surprise her best friend, shocked to hear she's going to marry a guy she's only just met. But Mikki and her fiancé, Jack, are about to head away on a trip, so Kenna finds herself tagging along for the ride.

Sorrow Bay is beautiful, wild and dangerous. A remote surfing spot with waves to die for, cut off from the rest of the world. Here Kenna meets the mysterious group of people who will do anything to keep their paradise a secret. Sky, Ryan, Clemente and Victor have come to ride the waves and disappear from life. How will they feel about Kenna turning up unannounced?

As Kenna gets drawn into their world, she sees the extremes they are prepared to go to for the next thrill. And everyone seems to be hiding something. What has her best friend got involved in and how can she get her away? But one thing is rapidly becoming clear about The Bay: nobody ever leaves.

War brings them together. Liberation will tear them apart.

A powerful portrait of war. a heartbreaking story of love. The extraordinary new novel from the author of While Paris Slept.

Paris 1944. Elise Chevalier knows what it is to love...and to hate. Her fiancé, a young French soldier, was killed by the German army at the Maginot Line. Living amongst the enemy Elise must keep her rage buried deep within.

Sebastian Kleinhaus no longer recognises himself. After four years spent fighting a war he doesn't believe in, wearing a uniform he despises, he longs for a way out. For something, someone, to be his salvation.

Brittany 1963. Reaching for the suitcase under her mother's bed, eighteen-year-old Josephine Chevalier uncovers a secret that shakes her to the core. Determined to find the truth, she travels to Paris where she discovers the story of a dangerous love that grew as a city fought for its freedom. Of the last stolen hours before the first light of liberation. And of a betrayal so deep that it would irrevocably change the course of two young lives life for ever.

The latest unflinching and heart-racing thriller from S. J. Butler, the author of Between the Lines. Perfect for fans of M. W. Craven and Robert Bryndza.

When a dead body is discovered in a house near the university, Detective Chief Inspector Jack Hogan and his team are left baffled by the viciousness of the assault. And with very little to go on, the questions quickly mount up.

But, when another victim turns up with the same distinguishing mark etched on their skin—one that links the victims to an anarchist group—it becomes clear that a depraved and calculating serial killer is at large.

With the murderer always one step ahead, time is of the essence and DCI Hogan must act fast before another life is taken.