The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story Of Murder, Madness, Glamour, And Greed by Sara Gay Forden

Paperback: The House of Gucci (2001, 2021 movie tie-in) is the sensational true story of murder, madness, glamour, and greed that shook the Gucci dynasty.

On 27 March 1995, Maurizio Gucci, heir to the fabulous fashion dynasty, was slain by an unknown gunman as he approached his Milan office. 

In 1998, his ex-wife Patrizia Reggiani Martinelli - nicknamed "The Black Widow" by the press - was sentenced to 29 years in prison, for arranging his murder.

Did Patrizia murder her ex-husband because his spending was wildly out of control? 

Did she do it because her glamorous ex was preparing to marry his mistress, Paola Franchi? 

Or is there a possibility she did not do it at all?

The Gucci story is one of glitz, glamour, intrigue, the rise, near fall and subsequent resurgence of a fashion dynasty. Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and widely acclaimed, The House of Gucci will captivate readers with its page-turning account of high fashion, high finance, and heart-rending personal tragedy.

The House of Gucci is now a major motion picture from director Ridley Scott, starring Lady Gaga and Adam Driver.

About the author: Sara Gay Forden covered the Italian fashion industry from Milan for more than fifteen years, chronicling the explosion of labels including Gucci, Armani, Versace, Prada and Ferragamo from family ateliers into mega brands. She is now based in Washington, DC with Bloomberg News, leading a team that covers lobbying and the challenges faced by big technology companies such as Amazon, Facebook and Google.

My Choice: The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates by Dr Julie Ponesse

Paperback/E-Book: In the fall of 2021, Dr Julie Ponesse saw her academic career of 20 years fall apart after she refused a Canadian university's COVID vaccine mandate. 

My Choice: The Ethical Case Against COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates (2021) is her account of the battle and its aftermath, written with passion and intelligence. Dr Ponesse's story travels beyond the personal and examines the ethical and philosophical dimensions of our pandemic response.

If there is anyone out there who feels alone in the struggle to preserve personal choice and freedom, this book offers some very human advice on how to move forward and makes it clear that your voice deserves to be heard.

About the author: Julie Ponesse has a PhD in Philosophy (Western, 2008) with areas of specialization in ethics and ancient philosophy. She has a Masters in Bioethics from the Joint Centre for Bioethics at the University of Toronto and a Diploma in Ethics from the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University. She has published in the areas of ancient philosophy, ethical theory, and applied ethics, and has taught at universities in Canada and the US for 20 years.

Socks Or Books?

A Man Who Lies

Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 by Richard Overy

Hardback: Blood and Ruins: The Great Imperial War, 1931-1945 (2021) is a bold new approach to the Second World War from one of Britain's foremost military historians

Richard Overy sets out in Blood and Ruins to recast the way in which we view the Second World War and its origins and aftermath. He argues that this was the 'great imperial war', a violent end to almost a century of global imperial expansion which reached its peak in the ambitions of Italy, Germany and Japan in the 1930s and early 1940s, before descending into the largest and costliest war in human history and the end, after 1945, of all territorial empires.

How war on a huge scale was fought, supplied, paid for, supported by mass mobilization and morally justified forms the heart of this new account. 

Above all, Overy explains the bitter cost for those involved in fighting, and the exceptional level of crime and atrocity that marked these imperial projects, the war and its aftermath. This war was as deadly for civilians as it was for the military, a war to the death over the future of the global order.

Blood and Ruins is a masterpiece from of one of the most renowned historians of the Second World War, which will compel us to view the war in novel and unfamiliar ways. Thought-provoking, original and challenging, Blood and Ruins sets out to understand the war anew.

About the author:  Richard Overy is Professor in History at the University of Exeter. He is the author of books on the Second World War, the European dictatorships and the history of air power. His latest titles include The Dictators: Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia (2004) and The Morbid Age: Britain Between the Wars (2009). He is a fellow of the British Academy and winner of the Wolfson History Prize in 2005.

Devil-Land: England Under Siege, 1588-1688 by Clare Jackson

Hardback: Devil-Land: England Under Siege 1588-1688 (2021) is a ground-breaking portrait of the most turbulent century in English history.

Among foreign observers, seventeenth-century England was known as 'Devil-Land': a diabolical country of fallen angels, torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. 

Clare Jackson's dazzling, original account of English history's most turbulent and radical era tells the story of a nation in a state of near continual crisis.

As an unmarried heretic with no heir, Elizabeth I was regarded with horror by Catholic Europe, while her Stuart successors, James I and Charles I, were seen as impecunious and incompetent, unable to manage their three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The traumatic civil wars, regicide and a republican Commonwealth were followed by the floundering, foreign-leaning rule of Charles II and his brother, James II, before William of Orange invaded England with a Dutch army and a new order was imposed.

Devil-Land reveals England as, in many ways, a 'failed state': endemically unstable and rocked by devastating events from the Gunpowder Plot to the Great Fire of London. Catastrophe nevertheless bred creativity, and Jackson makes brilliant use of eyewitness accounts - many penned by stupefied foreigners - to dramatize her great story. 

Starting on the eve of the Spanish Armada's descent in 1588 and concluding with a not-so 'Glorious Revolution' a hundred years later, Devil-Land is a spectacular reinterpretation of England's vexed and enthralling past.

About the author: Dr Clare Jackson is the Senior Tutor of Trinity Hall, Cambridge University. She has presented a number of highly successful programmes on the Stuart dynasty for the BBC and is the author of Charles II in the Penguin Monarchs series.

Devil-Land is a Book of the Year 2021, as chosen by The Times, New Statesman, Telegraph and Times Literary Supplement. 

The Devil's Atlas: An Explorer's Guide to Heavens, Hells And Afterworlds by Edward Brooke-Hitching

Hardback: Edward Brooke-Hitching, author of the international bestseller, The Phantom Atlas, delivers an atlas unlike any other. 

The Devil’s Atlas (2021) is an illustrated guide to the heavens, hells and lands of the dead as imagined throughout history by cultures and religions around the world. Packed with colourful maps, paintings and captivating stories, the reader is taken on a compelling tour of the geography, history and supernatural populations of the afterworlds of cultures around the globe.

Whether it is the thirteen heavens of the Aztecs, the Chinese Taoist netherworld of ‘hungry ghosts’, or the ‘Hell of the Flaming Rooster’ of Japanese Buddhist mythology (in which sinners are tormented by an enormous fire-breathing cockerel), The Devil’s Atlas gathers together a wonderful variety of beliefs and representations of life after death. 

These afterworlds are illustrated with an unprecedented collection of images, ranging from the marvellous ‘infernal cartography’ of the European Renaissance artists attempting to map the structured Hell described by Dante and the decorative Islamic depictions of Paradise to the various efforts to map the Garden of Eden and the spiritual vision paintings of nineteenth-century mediums.

The Devil’s Atlas accompanies beautiful images with a highly readable trove of surprising facts and narratives, from the more inventive torture methods awaiting sinners, to colourful eccentric catalogues of demons, angels and assorted death deities. 

A traveller’s guide to worlds unseen, The Devil’s Atlas is a fascinating study of the boundless capacity of human invention, a visual chronicle of man’s hopes, fears and fantasies of what lies beyond.

About the author: Edward Brooke-Hitching is the author of the critically acclaimed and bestselling books The Phantom Atlas (2016), The Golden Atlas (2018), The Sky Atlas (2019), The Madman's Library (2020) and The Devil's Atlas (2021), all of which have been translated into numerous languages; he is also the author of Fox Tossing, Octopus Wrestling and Other Forgotten Sports (2015). He is a writer for the BBC series QI. 

A fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an incurable cartophile, he lives surrounded by dusty heaps of old maps and books in Berkshire.

Friendship

Writing Is So Hard

In Black And White by Alexandra Wilson

Paperback: Alexandra Wilson was a teenager when her dear family friend Ayo was stabbed on his way home from football.

Ayo’s death changed Alexandra. His death compelled her to enter the legal profession to search for answers. As a junior criminal and family law barrister she finds herself navigating a world and a set of rules designed by a privileged few.

In her debut book In Black and White, Alexandra beautifully re-creates the tense court room scenes, the heart-breaking meetings with teenage clients and the moments of frustration and triumph that make up a young barrister’s life.

Alexandra speaks with raw honesty about her experience as a mixed-race woman from a non-traditional background in a profession that is sorely lacking in diverse representation. A justice system in which a disproportionately large number of black and mixed-race people are charged, convicted and sent to prison.

She shows us how it feels to defend someone who hates the colour of your skin or someone you suspect is guilty, and the heart-breaking youth justice cases she has worked on. We see what it’s like for the teenagers coerced into county line drug deals and the damage that can be caused when we criminalise teenagers.   

Her account of what she has witnessed as a young mixed-race barrister is in equal parts shocking, compelling, confounding and powerful.  

Alexandra’s story is unique in a profession still dominated by a section of society with little first-hand experience of the devastating impact of violent crime.  

In Black and White (2020) is a young barrister’s story of race and class in a broken justice system.

About the author: Alexandra Wilson is a barrister specialising in criminal and family law at 5SAH Chambers. In her criminal law practice, she represents a variety of clients charged with serious matters and specialises in young and vulnerable clients. Her family law practice includes private children, public children, domestic abuse and finance cases.

Alexandra Wilson was a teenager when a close family friend was stabbed to death on his way home from football. His death compelled her to enter the legal profession to search for answers and make a difference. She studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at the University of Oxford and and was awarded two prestigious scholarships, enabling her to research the impact of police shootings in the US on young people’s attitudes to the police.

Alexandra studied for a Graduate Diploma in Law (GDL) and her Master of Laws at BPP University in London. She was awarded the first Queen’s scholarship by the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, awarded to students showing exceptional promise in a career at the Bar. She specialises in children and finance law, particularly cases with an international element and has a busy practice in family law, which includes private children, public children, domestic abuse and finance cases.

Alexandra’s criminal practice is in the Magistrates’, Youth and Crown Courts. She has recently secured acquittals for clients charged with domestic assaults and public order offences. She specialises in young and vulnerable clients in her criminal practice and has represented a variety of clients in criminal cases charged with serious matters.

Alexandra is the founder of Black Women In Law, an organisation with over 500 members. She also co-founded One Case At A Time, an organisation set up to assist disenfranchised minorities in the legal process.

Alexandra grew up on the border of East London and Essex. She is the eldest of four children with a White British mother and Black British father. Her paternal grandparents were born in Jamaica and came to England as part of the Windrush generation.

Alexandra’s best-selling debut book In Black and White, tells the story of her early legal career, recreating tense courtroom scenes, heart-breaking meetings with teenage clients and moments of frustration and triumph that make up a young barrister’s life.

Her Twitter and Instagram are under the handle: @essexbarrister

Prison Journal, Volume 2: The State Court Rejects the Appeal by Cardinal George Pell

Paperback: Innocent! 

That final verdict came after George Cardinal Pell endured a gruelling four years of accusations, investigations, trials, public humiliations, and more than a year of imprisonment after being convicted by an Australian court of a crime he did not commit.

Led off to jail in handcuffs, following his sentencing on 13 March 2019, the 78-year-old Australian prelate began what was meant to be six years in jail for "historical sexual assault offenses". Cardinal Pell endured more than thirteen months in solitary confinement, before the Australian High Court voted 7-0 to overturn his original convictions. His victory over injustice was not just personal, but one for the entire Catholic Church.

Bearing no ill will toward his accusers, judges, prison workers, journalists, and those harbouring and expressing hatred for him, the cardinal used his time in prison as a kind of "extended retreat". He eloquently filled notebook pages with is spiritual insights, prison experiences, and personal reflections on current events both inside and outside the Church, as well as moving prayers.

In this second (2021) of three volumes, spanning a period from 14 July 2019 to 30 November 2019, Cardinal Pell receives the terrible news that his first appeal is rejected. With the same grace, wisdom, and calm perseverance we see on display in Volume 1 (2020), he continues his quest for justice by appealing to the Australian High Court. 

Glimmers of hope emerge as more legal experts, including non-Catholics, join the chorus of those demanding that this miscarriage of justice be reversed.

About the author: George Cardinal Pell, formerly Archbishop of Sydney (2001–2014) and of Melbourne (1996­–2001), Australia, was appointed in 2014 by Pope Francis as Prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy at the Vatican. He also served on Pope Francis' Council of Cardinals. Cardinal Pell received a Licentiate of Sacred Theology from the Urbanianum University in Rome, and his DPhil in Theology from the University of Oxford. His previous books include Test Everything and Issues of Faith and Morals.

One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Paperback: "On one long winter workday in camp, as I was lugging a handbarrow together with another man, I asked myself how one might portray the totality of our camp existence. In essence, it should suffice to give a thorough description of a single day, providing minute details and focusing on the most ordinary kind of worker; that would reflect the entirety of our experience. It wouldn’t even be necessary to give examples of any particular horrors. It shouldn’t be an extraordinary day at all, but rather a completely unremarkable one, the kind of day that will add up to years. That was my conception, and it lay dormant in my mind for nine years." - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

From 1950 to 1953, Solzhenitsyn was imprisoned in the forced-labor camp of Ekibastuz in Kazakhstan. Prisoners here were stripped of their names and were addressed by the identifying number inscribed on patches sewn to their caps, chest, back, and knee. The writer was assigned to a masonry brigade, then to a foundry, and this is the camp described in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (1963).

In May 1959, when Solzhenitsyn was living in Ryazan, he finally sat down to write Щ-854 (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich). He wrote it and put it away. He risked offering it for publication only some two years later, after Khrushchev’s vociferous attack on Stalin’s “cult of personality” at the Twenty-second Party Congress. 

He sent the manuscript, still titled Щ-854, to the Moscow journal Novy Mir in the fall of 1961. The editor of the journal’s prose section, Anna Berzer, was quick to grasp the significance of the unusual submission, and passed it on to Novy Mir’s editor-in-chief, Aleksandr Tvardovsky, with the remark that it was about “a prison camp though the eyes of a peasant, a very national kind of work.” 

This brutal, shattering glimpse of the fate of millions of Russians under Stalin shook Russia and shocked the world when it first appeared. Discover the importance of a piece of bread or an extra bowl of soup, the incredible luxury of a book, the ingenious possibilities of a nail, a piece of string or a single match in a world where survival is all. Here safety, warmth and food are the first objectives. Reading it, you enter a world of incarceration, brutality, hard manual labour and freezing cold - and participate in the struggle of men to survive both the terrible rigours of nature and the inhumanity of the system that defines their conditions of life.

Bringing into harsh focus the daily struggle for existence in a Soviet gulag, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is first published in the Soviet Union in 1963 and its first translation published by Victor Gollancz Ltd in 1962. Subsequently, it was published in Penguin Books in 1963 and reprinted in Penguin Classics in 2000. It is translated from the Russian by Ralph Parker in Penguin Modern Classics.

If you enjoyed One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, you might also like Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, available in Penguin Classics.

About the author: Though twice-decorated for his service at the front during the Second World War, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was arrested in 1945 for making derogatory remarks about Stalin, and sent to a series of brutal Soviet labour camps in the Arctic Circle, where he remained for eight years. Released after Stalin's death, he worked as a teacher, publishing his novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich with the approval of Nikita Khrushchev in 1962, to huge success. His 1967 novel Cancer Ward, as well as his magnum opus The Gulag Archipelago, were not as well-received by Soviet authorities, and not long after being awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1970, Solzhenitsyn was deported from the USSR. In 1994, after twenty years in exile, Solzhenitsyn made his long-awaited return to Russia.

Of his works, Penguin also publish August 1914 and November 1916, both being the first and second volumes of The Red Wheel. 

Couples, Awaken Your Love! by Robert Cardinal Sarah

Paperback: With the luminous insight that we have come to expect from his writings, Robert Cardinal Sarah helps spouses rediscover the deep source of their love - God Himself - and the means for letting love between them grow.

Couples, Awaken Your Love! (2021) presents the essentials of a retreat that the cardinal preached to married couples in Lourdes, France. It is meant for all couples, including those who are struggling. There is a path to renewal for everyone, and couples in every situation can find again the preciousness of the love that binds them, no matter how hidden it may be.

We are all, without exception, called to joy, and Christ alone can give it to us. 

He works through his Church, through the sacraments, and through his saints - especially Mary, the Mother of God, who heals couples.

Couples, Awaken Your Love! is translated from the French (Couples, réveillez votre amour!, 2020) by Michael J Miller.

About the author: Robert Cardinal Sarah (1945- ) was born in Guinea, West Africa. Made an Archbishop by Pope John Paul II and a Cardinal by Pope Benedict XVI, he was named the Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments by Pope Francis in 2014. He is the author of God or Nothing (2015), La force du silence (2016), The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise (2017), The Day is Now Far Spent (2019), From the Depths of Our Hearts: Priesthood, Celibacy and the Crisis of the Catholic Church (2020) and Pour l’éternité: Méditations sur la figure du prêtre (2021).

On The Shortness Of Life by Seneca

Paperback: On The Shortness of Life (2018) is the timeless advice on the art of living well, published by Benediction Classics. 

The writings of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca offer powerful insights into stoicism, morality and the importance of reason, and continue to provide profound guidance to many through their eloquence, lucidity and wisdom.

Throughout history, some books have changed the world. 

They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. 

They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. 

They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. 

They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. 

About the author: Lucius Annaeus Seneca, statesman, philosopher, advocate and man of letters, was born in Spain around 4BC. He rose to prominence at Rome, pursuing a double career in the courts and political life, until Claudius sent him into exile on the island of Corsica for eight years. Recalled in AD49, he was appointed tutor to the boy who was to become, in AD54, the emperor Nero. 

Seneca acted for eight years as Nero's unofficial chief minister until Nero too turned against him and he retired from public life to devote himself to philosophy and writing. In AD65, following the discovery of a plot against the emperor, he and many others were compelled by Nero to commit suicide.