The seedy and beguiling Gerald Hamilton was the man who Isherwood modelled Mr. Norris on in Mr. Norris Changes Trains.

For the first time, Norris gives readers not only his favorite "facts about himself, but also the stories behind the facts and the code by which he lives his life.

The Legend of Chuck Norris Lives On After the deadly duo of The Truth About Chuck Norris and Chuck Norris vs. Mr. T roundhouse-kicked bestseller lists, Ian Spector returns to complete the thrillogy that has become just as unstoppable, herculean, and legendary as Chuck Norris himself. Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped reveals 400 all-new facts about the roughest, toughest, and buffest man to ever stalk the face of the Earth. This third testament about the master of macho manliness uncovers such unknown facts as: * Jesus follows Chuck Norris on Twitter. * The reason we haven't found Osama Bin Laden is because Chuck Norris found him first. * When Chuck Norris tells time, time obeys. * A solar eclipse is the sun's attempt to hide from Chuck Norris. * Someone once put Chuck Norris on hold. That's where the term choke-hold comes from. * A man once broke every bone in his body to avoid Chuck Norris doing it for him. Brimming with brawn and full of fortitude, Chuck Norris Cannot Be Stopped contains everything you ever wanted to know about Chuck Norris but were too terrified to ask.

The deeply moving second novel from the author of the award-winning FIVE RIVERS MET ON A WOODED PLAIN. 'Courageous...memorable...moving' - Guardian 'One of our most exciting young writers' - The Times 'Life-affirming, beautiful and achingly poignant' - Donal Ryan 'Isn’t the life of any person made up out of the telling of two tales, after all? The whole world makes more sense if you remember that everyone has two lives, their real lives and their dreams, both stories only a tape’s breadth apart from each other, impossibly divided, indivisibly close.' Every year, Robert's family comes together at a rambling old house to celebrate his birthday. Aunts, uncles, distant cousins - it has been a milestone in their lives for decades. But this year Robert doesn't want to be reminded of what has happened since they last met - and nor, for quite different reasons, does his granddaughter Kate. Neither of them is sure they can face the party. But for both Robert and Kate, it may become the most important gathering of all. As lyrical and true to life as Norris's critically acclaimed debut Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain, which won a Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize and Debut of the Year at the British Book Awards, this is a compelling, emotional story of family, human frailty, and the marks that love leaves on us.

Born in Chicago in 1870, Frank Norris led a life of adventure and art. He moved to San Francisco at fifteen, spent two years in Paris painting, and returned to San Francisco to become an internationally famous author. He died at age thirty-two from a ruptured appendix. During his short life, he wrote an inspired series of novels about the United States coming of age. The Octopus was a prescient warning about the threat of monopolies, and The Pit exposed the intrigues and dirty dealings at the Chicago grain exchange. Extensively reprinted, Norris's works have also found their way into popular consciousness through film (Erich von Stroheim's Greed), and even an opera based on his portrait of the huge, dumb, and murderous dentist, McTeague.Interest in this dynamic writer was wide and sustained, but Frank Norris and his family did biographers no favours. Norris burned most of his correspondence, the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire devoured more, and his brother and widow dispersed his surviving papers as gifts. As a result, it was thought impossible to assemble enough material to surpass the single existing biography, published in 1932. Authors Joseph R. McElrath Jr. and Jesse S. Crisler, acknowledged as the leading experts on Norris, have spent have spent over thirty years overcoming these obstacles, devotedly amassing the material necessary to at last fashion a truly full-scale portrait of the artist. Anyone familiar with the breezier existing accounts of the man and hungering for the real story will agree that Frank Norris, A Life was worth the wait.

"Beyond the wonderful insights ... there is a portrait of the world in the eye of the storm between two world wars. It is a novel of awakening -- awakening to sex, yes ... but also an awakening to the presence of evil in the world and to the possibilities of love and friendship." -- The Bloomsbury Review

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, Kansas City Star. A profoundly moving and deeply personal memoir by the co-host of National Public Radio’s flagship program All Things Considered. While exploring the hidden conversation on race unfolding throughout America in the wake of President Obama’s election, Michele Norris discovered that there were painful secrets within her own family that had been willfully withheld. These revelations—from her father’s shooting by a Birmingham police officer to her maternal grandmother’s job as an itinerant Aunt Jemima in the Midwest—inspired a bracing journey into her family’s past, from her childhood home in Minneapolis to her ancestral roots in the Deep South. The result is a rich and extraordinary family memoir—filled with stories that elegantly explore the power of silence and secrets—that boldly examines racial legacy and what it means to be an American.

Henry Norris Russell lived in two universes: that of his Presbyterian forebears and that of his science. Sharp-witted and animated by nervous energy, he became one of the most powerful voices in twentieth-century American astronomy, wielding that influence in calculated ways to redefine an entire science. He, more than any American of his generation, worked to turn an observation-centered discipline into a theory-driven pursuit centered on physics. Today, professional and amateur astronomers alike know Russell for the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, the playing field for much of stellar astrophysics, as well as for his work on the evolution of stars and the origin of the solar system. But of far greater importance than his own research, which was truly remarkable in its own right, is Russell's stamp on the field as a whole. Functioning as a "headquarters scientist"--some called him General--Russell was an astronomer without a telescope. Yet he marshaled the data of the Hales and the Pickerings of the world, injected theory into mainstream astronomy, and brought atomic physics to its very core, often sparking controversy along the way. His students at Princeton went on to populate the most prestigious astronomical institutions in the United States, bringing with them Russell's beliefs that astronomy is really astrophysics and that researchers should be theoretically as well as empirically minded. This first-ever book-length biography of the "Dean of American Astronomers" interweaves personal and scientific history to illuminate how Russell's privileged Presbyterian family background, his education at Princeton and Cambridge, and his personal inclinations and attachments both served and were at odds with his campaign to modernize astronomy. This book will be of interest not only to astronomers and historians (particularly those interested in the emergence of astrophysics), but to anyone interested in the process of disciplinary change.