One day in November 2012, a fisherman called Salvador Alvarenga made a fateful decision to ignore bad weather warnings and head out to sea regardless in his 25 ft fibreglass boat. He had no idea that he'd be stuck at sea for the next 438 days - and that he'd have to eat his own beard and fingernails to survive.
One Saturday in November 1943, a single woman in her early 30s sat down behind the blackout screens of her little cottage near Slough and took stock of her situation.
There is something bold and beguiling about this book - it is also a little (good Latin word) pugnacious. The author's idea is simple - tracking down the previous owners of his second-hand books.
You could call this a shaggy dog story, but on second thoughts, it's more of a shaggy penguin story. Back in the mid-Seventies, Tom Michell was young, free, single and keen to see the world.
Viewers of his TV shows know what a passionate presenter of his subject - art history - Simon Schama is. Like the Ancient Mariner, he button-holes your eye on his inward voyage of imagination.
LITERARY FICTION
The Georgenhof is an old, impressive manor house that has seen better days.
CRIME
Two of Michael Connelly's great characters combine in this stunning story.
DEBUT FICTION
Poet John Milton was buried in St Giles Cripplegate in 1674.
CHICK LIT
I enjoyed this engaging exploration of what happens when bad timing intervenes in a good relationship.
FANTASY
One of the most compelling things about the fantasy genre is the sense it gives of other realities.
CHILDREN'S FICTION
Boyne returns to Nazi Germany in this affecting morality tale.
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The body of Elvis Presley was lying on view in an open coffin at his home, Graceland, in Memphis, Tennessee, in August 1977, when a man in his mid-50s stepped forward. With long, wavy hair and a beard, and looking like a general from the American Civil War, he bent over, tapped Elvis gently on the cheek and told him he loved him. He had reason to. He was Sam Phillips, the record producer who, 24 years earlier, had discovered the singer, and in so doing had not only ignited Elvis's extraordinary life, but his own, too - while justifying the title of this book along the way.
Art Nouveau was born in reaction to a lack of creativity in the decorative arts during the latter half of the 19th century. Characterised by its floral motifs, dark outlines and solid colours.
Occasionally, a book comes along that needs remarkably little explanation. Fascinating Footnotes From History is, quite literally, a collection of fascinating footnotes from history.
For more than 40 years, Greenfield has produced quite breath-taking photographs of dancers in mid-flight.
This book examines how the British language affects the British character - and examines just how good we are at whinging (clue: very). Brian Viner calls it lively and thought-provoking.
Few dared challenge Hitler during his lifetime - but, once he had killed himself in the Berlin bunker, a successor stepped up to steer the country out of catastrophe.
Can we quite believe what happened to Top Gear? When I was growing up, this was a motoring show, about cars, hidden in plain sight on BBC2. Angela Rippon and William Woollard presented it.
.John le Carré has done uncommonly well with the actors who have appeared in adaptations of his novels. Alec Guinness, Denholm Elliott, Gary Oldman and Arthur Lowe all played bespectacled brainbox George Smiley. Richard Burton brought his haunted, booze-sodden melancholy to the role of Leamas in The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. And the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman gave his final lead performance in A Most Wanted Man.
Sometimes a person can be so famous and iconic it hardly matters that we would be hard-pressed to enumerate or describe many of their actual superlative accomplishments.
Stuart Maconie begins and ends his book about the north at play in a pub. This might seem to pander to prejudiced, southern notions that the northerner is a boozy pleb.
Why retire? I'm sure Sir Alex Ferguson has been asking himself this question every moment of every day these past two years, since he left the manager's vast desk at Manchester United.
The parachute regiment had been given their orders. Conditions on the afternoon of April 3, 1943, were ideal for the next jump. A dog was about to parachute from the plane.
Although the Brontes have been written about more than any other literary family, it still comes as a shock to be reminded of just how weird they were.
Jane Bown was a photographer for the Observer newspaper for 60 years and she is best remembered for her relaxed, informal black-and-white portraits.
All this week, Labour MP Simon Danczuk is laying bare how the Establishment, the Liberal Party, the police and even MI5 covered up the industrial-scale child abuse of 29-stone Rochdale MP Cyril Smith. Today, how his victims were ignored and betrayed when they tried to expose their suffering.
In the finale of her unique inside story, Vicky Pryce, the wife of disgraced ex-minister Chris Huhne, describes life at open prison East Sutton Park.
In the second extract from her autobiography, published exclusively in the Mail today, Mary Berry describes the sudden death of the son she doted on, pictured left.
In his compelling new biography, Gary Morecambe talks about his father's relationship with Ernie Wise and how he continued to make them laugh even up until the end.
The star was accused of being a communist after allegedly telling banquet guests 'the Russian purges' were a 'wonderful thing'.
Jerry and Lucian had never quite bonded. While sitting for him she gave him cashmere jerseys, which he loathed. But worse, she had a habit of being late.
In an extract from his explosive memoirs, Power Trip, Damian McBride reveals how the former Chancellor survived by the skin of his teeth after credit crunch bungle.
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