Longlisted for the Penderyn Music Book PrizeOver the course of a thirteen-album and multi-award-winning career with Squeeze, it was clear from the very beginning that Chris Difford has few peers when it comes to smart, pithy lyricism. In Some Fantastic Place, he charts his life from his childhood in south London to becoming a member of one of Britain's greatest bands and beyond. Along the way Chris reveals the inspiration and stories behind Squeeze's best-...

'King George Street in Charlton, South London, was my first home. Six prefabs, three pubs, a school, a church and a yard where the electricity board kept cables. Two long rows of terraced house faced each other at one end of the street; and, at the other, big houses with big doors and even bigger windows. There was a phone box next to one of the pubs and when it rang everyone came out to see who it was for. It was a tiny road - at one end of which there was Greenwich Park. It was heave...

I was only sixteen when I bought an electric guitar and joined a band. A year later, I formed an all-girl band called the Marine Girls and played gigs, and signed to an indie label, and started releasing records.Then, for eighteen years, between 1982 and 2000, I was one half of the group Everything But the Girl. In that time, we released nine albums and sold nine million records. We went on countless tours, had hit singles and flop singles, were reviewed and interviewed to within a...

The once-in-a-generation memoir of a rock legend - the No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller.'Electrifying' New York Times'Funny, poignant, brutally honest' Sunday Telegraph'Immensely readable' Sunday Times'Once you begin this, wild, wild horses couldn't drag you away' IndependentAs a member of the Rolling Stones, Keith Richards created the riffs, ...

Read by John Cleese with an introduction by Michael Palin. This is the story of how a tall, shy youth from Weston-super-Mare went on to become a self-confessed legend. En route, John Cleese describes his nerve-racking first public appearance, at St Peter’s Preparatory School at the age of eight and five-sixths; his endlessly peripatetic home life with parents who seemed incapable of staying in any house for longer than six months; his first experiences in the world of work...

‘ridiculously funny and astonishingly candid, Rod Stewart’s memoir is the rock autobiography of the decade’ Daily MailRod Stewart was born the working-class son of a Scottish plumber in North London. Despite some early close shaves with a number of diverse career paths, ranging from gravedigging to professional football, it was music that truly captured his heart – and he never looked back.Rod started out in the early 1960s, playing the clubs on Lo...

'Harris is a master of pace and entertainment' Observer'Could scarcely be more of the moment' The TimesNothing spreads like fear . . .In the secretive inner circle of the ultra-rich, Alex Hoffmann is a legend.He has developed an algorithm for playing the financial markets that generates billions of pounds - and feeds on panic.When one day his system is threatened by a terrifying intruder who breaches the elaborate security of his la...

**Brought to you by Penguin.THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER SOON TO BE A TV SERIES STARRING GEMMA ARTERTON AND RUPERT EVERETT**Make them laugh, and they're yours forever . . .Barbara Parker is Miss Blackpool of 1964, but she doesn't want to be a beauty queen. She wants to make people laugh.So she leaves her hometown behind, takes herself to London, and overnight she becomes the lead in a new BBC comedy, Sophie Straw: charming, gorgeous, destined to win the nati...

The investigative biography of Michael Jackson's final years: "A tale of family, fame, lost childhood, and startling accusations never heard before" (ABC Nightline).When Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, millions of fans around the world were shocked. But the outpouring of emotion that followed his loss was bittersweet. Dogged by scandal for years and undone by financial mismanagement, Jackson had become untouchable in many quarters.Untouchable

A SUNDAY TIMES, ROUGH TRADE, MOJO AND UNCUT BOOK OF THE YEARNew York, 2001. 9/11 plunges the US into a state of war and political volatility-and heralds the rebirth of the city's rock scene. As the old-guard music industry crumbles, a group of iconoclastic bands suddenly become the voice of a generation desperately in need of an anthem.In this fascinating and vibrant oral history, acclaimed journalist Lizzy Goodman charts...

The intimate and long-awaited memoir of guitar legend Carlos Santana.In 1967 at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, a young guitarist played a blistering solo that announced a prodigious talent. Two years later he played a historic set at Woodstock, and the world came to know Carlos Santana by name.THE UNIVERSAL TONE is a tale of musical self-determination and self-discovery. It traces his journey from his teen days playing in Tijuana, and the est...

Non-fans regard Céline Dion as ersatz and plastic, yet to those who love her, no one could be more real, with her impoverished childhood, her (creepy) manager-husband's struggle with cancer, her knack for howling out raw emotion. There's nothing cool about Céline Dion, and nothing clever. That's part of her appeal as an object of love or hatred - with most critics and committed music fans taking pleasure (or at least geeky solace) in their lofty contempt. This book documents Carl Wilson's ...