"Waris's story is one of remarkable courage. From the deserts of Somalia to the world of high fashion, she battles against oppression and emerges a real champion. She is the most beautiful inspiration to anyone." —Elton JohnWaris Dirie ran away from her oppressive life in the African desert when she was barely in her teens, illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl. She traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu—...

Fashion model, UN ambassador and courageous spirit, Waris Dirie was born into a family of tribal desert nomads in Somalia. She told her story - enduring female circumcision at five years old; running away through the desert; being discovered by Terence Donovan and becoming a top fashion model - in her book, the worldwide bestseller, DESERT FLOWER. In DESERT DAWN she wrote about becoming a UN Special Ambassador against FGM (female genital mutilation) and returning to her family in Somalia. ...

Waris Dirie, the Somalia nomad who became a supermodel, and an anti-FGM activist, first came to the world's attention with the publication of her autobiography, Desert Flower. The book was subsequently made into a film and little Safa Nour, from one of the slums of Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, was chosen to play the young Waris.The book and the film record many extraordinary things - from facing down a tiger, to being discovered by a famous photographer in London - but ...

Mende Nazer's happy childhood was cruelly cut short at the age of twelve when the Mujahidin rode into her village in the remote Nuba mountains of Sudan. They hacked down terrified villagers, raped the women and abducted the children. Mende was them. She was taken and sold to an Arab woman in Khartoum. She was stripped of her name and her freedom. For seven long years she was kept as a domestic slave, an 'abid', without any pay or a single day off. Her food was the leftover scraps and her b...

During the days of Nazi terror in Europe, many Jewish children were taken from their families and hidden. Régine Miller was one such child, who left her mother, father, and brother when she was 10 years old. Utterly alone as she is shunted from place to place, told to tell no one she is Jewish, she hears that her mother and brother have been taken by the SS, the German secret police. Only her desperate hope that her father will return sustains her. At war’s end she must learn to live with ...

LOOKING FOR MADELEINE is the must-read account that the online haters tried to silence. Its award-winning authors, Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan, are featured in the NETFLIX series 'The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann'**.**"EXPLOSIVE" Sun "COMPELLING" Daily TelegraphThe book:· Identifies the blunders made during the police search for Madeleine· Draws on confidential polic...

This book tells the incredible story of one woman's adventure into the heart of the rainforest.As a young child, Sarah Woods imagined going on epic voyages to exotic, illusory lands filled with bizarre creatures, intoxicating rhythms, vibrant colours and other-worldly forests. As soon as she was old enough she packed a bag and set off to see the world for real, leaving friends and family behind to fulfil her childhood dreams.To journey solo through Central ...

When no one cares, who will pick up the pieces of abused children’s lives?At eleven o' clock one night in 1997, four hungry, damaged young children arrive on foster carers Trisha and Mike Merry's doorstep. Two social workers dropped them off with nothing but the ragged clothes they were wearing and no information. The children were covered in bruises, two had black eyes, one had a broken arm and they were all scratching themselves.Starved, seriously neglect...

The Sunday Times bestsellerThe moving and inspiring account of heartbreak and courage, and the life-affirming relationship between a father and son.Ben Brooks-Dutton's wife - the great love of his life - was knocked down and killed by a car as he walked beside her, pushing their two-year-old son in his buggy. Life changed forever. Suddenly Ben was a widower deep in shock, left to raise their bewildered child alone.In the af...

A heart-warming story of a woman who devoted her life to helping others. This is the memoir of Joan, who started nursing in the 1940s and whose experiences took her into the Yorkshire mining pits and through the tumult of the 1984-85 miners’ strike.Joan Hart always knew what she wanted to do with her life. Born in South Yorkshire in 1932, she started her nursing training when she was 16, the youngest age girls could do so at the time. She continued working after she married and her...

Chanrithy Him felt compelled to tell of surviving life under the Khmer Rouge in a way "worthy of the suffering which I endured as a child."In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the "killing fields." In a mesmerizing story, Him vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and te...

A short story - Love blooms in 1930s Bahrain..."His deep voice was soft as the waters in the bay on a summer night and his words were the most magical I had ever heard. They sent a thrill racing through my body like a hundred tiny Arab horses galloping down my spine.I closed my eyes with an effort to shut out his face, then opened them again, the tension of his loving words made me want to touch his lips and trace the soft bow of his mouth…"* * *1930s Bahrai...