Synopsis:

In this heartfelt debut memoir, Anna-Marie O’Brien shares a poignant coming-of-age story about sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll and what it took for her to survive in the big city. 

"Anna-Marie is a true-lifer metalhead. She was around at a critical time for the music, and tells a fascinating story of those times. Take a ride with her in this great book!" -- Brian Slagel, founder and CEO, Metal Blade Records.

In 1990, Anna-Marie left her disappointing Midwestern childhood behind and moved to Los Angeles at the age of 18 to pursue her heavy metal dreams on the Sunset Strip. Bands like Mötley Crüe, Megadeth, and Guns N’ Roses were at the height of their popularity, and she landed right in the middle of the heavy-metal music scene. Welcomed by sunshine and possibilities, her California adventure began the very first day she arrived in magical Laurel Canyon. Soon, she was working in the music industry, and then for Metal Blade Records. Working with her favourite bands and witnessing music history was a dream come true. But - things were not all as they seemed. Grunge music had arrived from Seattle, and it was taking over the metal scene. Los Angeles turned into a dark force, forcing her to make tough choices in order to survive.

This is a story of big magic, following your heart, and starting over. Anna-Marie is a real-life librarian, and a lifelong fan of heavy metal and rock music. This is Adventures of a Metalhead Librarian.

Read Anna-Marie's Author Interview now.

Synopsis:

In March 2011 my father Arthur Charles Evans CBE, author of Sojourn in Silesia, reached the end of his long and successful life just short of his 95th birthday. Here in France I was left with copies of his letters written from Stalag VIIIb during his 5 years as a POW. I wanted to do something constructive with his letters and in July that year, as part of my bereavement journey, I began compiling a blog as if written by Arthur.

The blog took about 2 years to complete and was a really helpful bereavement tool for me. Now it is complete, I've decided to publish the blog, along with some photos of Arthur and some additional writing about my thoughts and feelings during blogging. I hope it will become a companion book to Sojourn in Silesia, the book he wrote about his experience back in the 80's, although it is also a stand alone account of his time behind barbed wire.

Synopsis:

This 130 year old Victorian diary, recently discovered in my attic, provides a fascinating daily insight into life on board a passenger carrying wooden clipper during an arduous 90 day sea journey from London to Sydney in 1886-87.

The author, John Ferguson, who was emigrating for health reasons gives a daily account of events and conditions endured during this three month journey.

The book includes details of encounters with fellow passengers, passing ships, and various sea and bird life observed during the voyage. As there no port of call the ship carried various live animals as a food source. Crossing the equatorial line was marked by an elaborate “Old Father Neptune” ceremony. Towards the end of the journey one passenger became manic and attacked the captain.

The book records the ensuing events!

Synopsis:

‘Malcolm is a little unwell’ is the shocking, gripping narrative of Malcolm Brabant’s descent into madness caused by a routine yellow fever vaccination. The book chronicles a Kafkaesque journey through insanity during which Brabant first believes he is the Messiah and later, the Devil. He imagines he is visited by guardian angels, close friends and relatives who died premature deaths, and who set him impossible tasks to prove that he was the Chosen One. At his lowest point, certain he is possessed by Lucifer while in a locked psychiatric ward, Brabant, an award winning veteran BBC foreign correspondent, attempts suicide in order to save the world. His illness causes him to lose his job as the Corporation’s Athens correspondent, and his family comes within a whisker of being homeless. As doctors try to find the right combination of medication to cure his fried brain, Brabant’s wife Trine struggles to restore him to the alpha male husband she married while taking on Sanofi Pasteur, the pharmaceutical manufacturer of the yellow fever jab. Her love and anger are the driving forces as the family struggles to crawl from the abyss and embarks on a David versus Goliath battle to win justice. Malcolm Brabant’s voice and face are recognised around the globe from his 25 years of distinctive reporting for the BBC World Service and BBC World TV. His book will resonate not just in Britain, but in the rest of the world, because it uniquely and articulately describes what it’s like to go mad.

Synopsis:

The Boys of Ballykelly is a hilarious and bawdy exposé of the life and times on an RAF base. It was 1968 and engine fitter Gordon Blair was returning to the UK from a tour of duty in Penang and Singapore. His new posting was to RAF Ballykelly in Northern Ireland to work on Coastal Command Shackletons that were based there. This was a slightly less exotic location than the Far East and seemingly promised little in the way of excitement. How wrong could he be? He was about to embark on three madcap years with a group of unique characters who viewed life mainly through the bottom of a Guinness glass and played hard to relieve their frustrations in this relatively remote part of the Empire. As well as the shenanigans that took place at the home base, Shackleton detachments were deployed to many parts of the world giving opportunities for the ground crew reprobates to party and explore the seedier side of life in more exotic and accommodating surroundings. Come along with Gordon as he conducts you through the outrageously hilarious sagas and exposes the “real” RAF of the day.

Synopsis:

Train Gone (an expression in American Sign Language meaning “you missed out”) is the memoir of a young-girl-turned-woman in search of personal freedom. Being a Child Of Deaf Adults (CODA), Rebekah grew up not only interpreting the monotony of day-to-day life but also scriptural intimidation via the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Raised under the heavy hand of theocratic order, Rebekah rebels, is disfellowshipped, and subsequently struggles to make good choices in a new-to-her world.

Rebekah is disoriented, abused, damaged.  After nine years—and a slew of reckless, amoral decisions—Rebekah returns to the Kingdom Hall, quickly realizing she’s made a grave mistake. Led by her strong intuition, she leaves the Truth again and is shunned once more. Feeling defeated and alone, Rebekah begins therapy. As pieces of her life come together, a bigger picture is unveiled and somewhere on the train tracks of her childhood, Rebekah discovers truth, acceptance, and autonomy.

Recalling sessions with her therapist, Joel, Rebekah finds herself candid and a bit jocose. This daring memoir explores the after-effects of heavy-handed cult mind control, and what one woman must do to break free.

Train Gone is a unique life story where Rebekah straddles not only the everyday world and that of a doomsday cult, but also both the Deaf and hearing world, being the first ex-Jehovah’s Witness CODA to publish her story.

Synopsis:

Battling mental illness and addiction, Katherine’s parents are ill-equipped to deal with the trials of raising a family. Their unhappy relationship implodes on Katherine’s last day of first grade, and the abuse and neglect characteristic of her childhood worsens as her family descends further into poverty. With her mother deep in the clutches of alcoholism, her father missing, and her two older brothers already in foster care, Katherine steps in to care for her younger sister, despite being a child herself.

When social services later intervenes, Katherine and her sister are placed in foster care in the countryside. Her new home and the stable and caring environment her foster mother provides are a far cry from the life she’s always known, yet Katherine’s struggles continue.  As she approaches adulthood, reeling from her past and battling loneliness, life continues to beat her down with tough choices, staggering betrayals, and various assaults.  For a few years, she’s able to cope by suppressing her memories and turning to self-harm and addiction.  However, when she pawns her most cherished possession, she realizes that she’s following in her biological parents’ footsteps, tumbling in a downward spiral of self-destruction. Is it too late for her to escape her family’s generational inertia?

Katherine’s story is one of crippling weakness and breathtaking strength, debilitating self-doubt and defiant determination, self-destruction and healing…and the discovery of what it actually means to be resilient.

Synopsis:

A journey of eight hundred miles completed…

A journey taking six weeks through the ruins of cities, towns and villages, across battlefield strewn with the unburied remains of German soldiers. A perilous crossing between what has now become the Russian eastern zone; those lands and states that were previously a part of Germany; and the area now controlled by our capitalist administrators, the Americans and the British.

But we are home, Mutti, Hans-Dieter, Ralf, Marlene and me, Elsa. We have returned to our apartment in Neckarstrasse, Dusseldorf. Our block of flats miraculously still standing, when hundreds of others around it are in ruins.

Now we must find our feet among these ruins. Find fuel, food and clothing. The everyday essentials are not there and will not appear again normally for another three years. How will we survive? And has our father survived? A soldier on the Eastern Front who we have not heard from in almost two years.

Return to Neckarstrasse, Elsa’s story continues…

Synopsis:

A humorous autobiography by a whisky reviewer with a youtube channel called 'ralfydotcom', travelling from early childhood memories to an adults apprenticeship with scotch and Scotland. People and places are explored and whisky is sampled, and all for the sake of malt-moments.