Search results for ""macmillan""

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 ENGLISH 4-11 PICTURE BOOK AWARDSThis is the Arctic. It sits on the top of the world – a frozen sea in a circle of land.This beautiful book brings together a spellbinding narrative, breathtaking illustrations and fascinating facts about one of our planet’s most precious environments. On a journey to the North Pole and back, and from autumn to spring, the story begins and ends with the extraordinary wood frog, a tiny creature that freezes for the long Arctic winter. On the way we meet polar bears, an Arctic fox, narwhals and many other animals, discovering how each one is perfectly adapted for life on the tundra, in the ocean and on the ice.With lyrical text by Jane Burnard combining with Kendra Binney's evocative illustrations to show readers the awesome beauty of the Arctic, this is a story sure to inspire wonder in the natural world.Explore the world's habitats and the amazing animals that li

Read more less

The Spectacular Science of Vehicles is guaranteed to answer all those tricky science questions that children ask about cars, trains, ships and planes – and that parents often struggle to answerFind out how a Maglev train floats on air, what happens when you break the sound barrier, how modern airports and container ports work and many, many more!The bright, busy artworks will encourage science-hungry children to pore over every detail and truly get to grips with the science that underpins everything around us. Information is delivered on multiple levels, allowing readers to dip in and out at speed, or take a deep dive into their favourite subjects.There's eight Spectacular Science titles to collect! Titles include Space, Buildings, The Human Body, Art, Planet Earth and The Living World.

Read more less

Rob Colson is an author and editor of a wide range of books for children and adults, including many natural history, math, and science titles. He is the author of all titles in the Spectacular Science series.Moreno Chiacchiera is an Italian illustrator who has published dozens of history, math, and science books for children. His bright, busy artworks are full of intriguing details that children love to explore in great depth. He is the illustrator of all titles in the Spectacular Science series.

Read more less

Anita Ganeri has written over three hundred information books for children on subjects including natural history, religion and geography. Her books include the Horrible Geography series, which won the Geographical Association Silver Award.Marie-Ève Tremblay is an award-winning illustrator based in Montreal, Canada. She finds inspiration for her work in her trips abroad, in nature, and encounters in everyday life. She has illustrated numerous children's books as well as for magazines and television. She is the illustrator of I Wonder Why The Sun Rises and I Wonder Why Stars Twinkle.

Read more less

Rod Theodorou is author of more than fifty children's books including I Wonder Why Triceratops Had Horns.Marie-Ève Tremblay is an award-winning illustrator based in Montreal, Canada. She finds inspiration for her work in her trips abroad, in nature and encounters in everyday life. She has illustrated numerous children's books as well as for magazines and television.

Read more less

UPDATED EDITION FEATURING VERSION 2.0 CONTENT!Dreaming of an island getaway? Now you can create the perfect island paradise in Animal Crossing: New Horizons with the Animal Crossing New Horizons Residents' Handbook. Newly updated with version 2.0 content, this essential unofficial guide contains everything you need to prepare for your new island life, including tips on how to:- build and design your dream home- gather resources and recipe cards to craft and customize tools, furniture and other decorative items- populate your island with friendly animal villagers – each with their own, often very funny, personalities- help Blathers fill your island's museum with fossils, critters and art- connect with up to 7 friends and share your personal paradise onlineWhat's more, Animal Crossing New Horizons Residents' Handbook contains plenty of inspirational landscaping and terraforming ideas, insider information and guides to characters, resources and special events. It's the perfect book to help you live your best deserted island life!

Read more less

- Have you ever wondered what your pet is thinking?- Or asked yourself if aliens really exist?- Have you pondered the meaning of life or tried to think about nothing, absolutely nothing at all?These are some of life’s biggest questions, and you are a daring thinker for even thinking about them!So open your mind and prepare to explore some of philosophy’s biggest, boldest ideas – from the ridiculously silly to the strikingly serious. Each question in this book will unlock new ways of thinking and may lead you to some intriguing answers. If you’re daring enough to take on this mind-expanding challenge, then read on!Written by philosopher Dr Stephen Law, easy-to-understand text, mind-teasers, optical illusions and thought experiments make this philosophic journey unforgettably fun!

Read more less

Discover how engineering is part of our daily lives with Everyday STEM Engineering – Civil Engineering.Engineering is all around us, from the roads on which we travel to the latest earthquake-proof buildings. It's even in space! Discover how civil and mechanical engineering helps us interact with society, see how engineering is helping to save the environment, and meet the inspirational engineers whose designs make our lives easier, including Roma Agrawal, Reyhan Jamalova, Sarah Guppy and David Aguilar. A "try this at home" section shows readers how to create a building made out of spaghetti, plus much more.With easy-to-understand text written by STEM expert Jenny Jacoby and lots of colourful artworks, photos and diagrams, readers can best explore where we encounter engineering and why it’s even important at all.The Everyday STEM series makes science relevant to tweens. Instead of telling kids STEM is important and is the key to their future success, these books show readers how we use science, technology, engineering and maths in our everyday lives. While the topics sound high-level and complex, this series makes these concepts age-appropriate and accessible. So, while we can’t promise to teach 9 to 11-year-olds quantum physics, we can explain in the simplest terms the practical applications of STEM.

Read more less

Discover it Yourself: Inside the Body is packed with scientific facts, experiments and activities linked to the human body. It brings a lively, hands-on approach to practical science experiments.Children can find almost everything they need for the experiments around the home, and the materials and instructions are simply, safely and clearly presented. Written by Sally Morgan, this STEM-focused book will show readers how to test their fitness and reflexes, find out how much air they can expel from their lungs, measure their heart rate, and much more.Kids will learn, explore and discover STEM in the world around them with the Discover It Yourself series.

Read more less

Step inside the busy, bustling factory that is the human body and find out about all the different body parts and systems that keep whirring night and day!The Human Body Factory is an action-packed and informative guide to your insides. Each ‘department' is introduced by the busy workers who keep everything running smoothly, from the big boss sending out orders in the brain to waste being sorted and pushed out of the body. The ingenious artworks are packed with funny details, all backed up with Dan Green's fascinating facts and easy-to-understand text describing and explaining the body's processes. There's a fun search-and-find activity on each page, as well as a quiz at the end to see how much you've discovered about the human body.Whether it's busy workers wearing biohazard suits in the large intestine, lab technicians mixing gastric juices in the stomach with a giant whisk, or the lungs depicted as a gym, you'll find plenty to amaze and amuse in this comprehensive, fact-filled guide to the human body.

Read more less

With a foreword by England player Steph Houghton, She Shoots, She Scores! tells the incredible story of the BEST sport in the world, women’s football – from the men who tried to ban it to the superstars of today’s game, including Lucy Bronze, Sam Kerr and Alex Morgan. Young footie fans can find out about . . .- The girl who had to play football in secret but grew up into a goal scoring legend- The thirteen-year-old who shot to international fame but didn’t get a mention in school assembly- The greatest women’s footballer ever, who scored in FIVE World CupsWritten by acclaimed YA novelist Catriona Clarke, the book is packed with facts and stats about the FIFA Women's World Cup and the Olympics, plus pocket profiles of the world's top players – from Marta to Megan Rapinoe – and record-breaking teams, including the US national women's team and Olympique Lyonnais. What's more, discover the key skills you'll need to become a great goalkeeper, a tough-tackling defender or the world's next superstar striker!

Read more less

Myth Busters: Body Bloopers takes readers on a wild ride through the human body in search of the truth! Have you been told carrots improve your eyesight? Or that junk food causes spots? Think again! Conspiracy theories, popular trivia, old wives' tales, common misconceptions and misinterpretations are explored to untruth exactly why they are wrong, and how and why they were adopted as fact in the first place. Thoroughly entertaining with fun typography, fast-paced text written by Clive Gifford, light and fascinating side-stories, and lively, photo-montaged illustrations, this big huge compendium of curriculum-led subjects appeals to today's technological-savvy children. Fully detailing each myth and error, along with its historical or scientific background, each falsehood is debunked, and then a full explanation of its true facts are presented.

Read more less

Take an exciting journey around the world and explore every country on Earth. Beautifully illustrated by award-winning Anthony Lewis, the colourful maps, plus lively and informative text make this an essential atlas for younger readers. Jet off to South America and discover the Amazon rainforest, journey to Scandinavia and visit a mermaid, then wrap up warm as you head south to Antarctica - the coldest place on Earth. Pictograms show where to find animals and places of interest: can you find the sunbathing walrus in Alaska? And the Tasmanian devil in Australia? The passport bookmark means you won't lose your place as you travel the globe.This atlas is the perfect first geography reference book for both home and school.

Read more less

It's fifty years since the first human set foot on the surface of the Moon! Walking on the Moon celebrates this 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing by helping young space fans what it was like to actually be there.Blended with stunning photographs and captivating artwork, step-by-step details of events leading up to the mission are combined with eyewitness accounts and features on people who helped make the first Moon landing happen. A staggering 400,000 people, many of them working 'behind the scenes' at NASA, helped to achieve this historic milestone.This is the first book in the Imagine You Were There... series, which celebrates events that changed the world and the people who made them happen.

Read more less

Which animal is the biggest on the Earth? Where do the most big beasts live? Which big animal is the most dangerous in Africa? In Focus: Big Beasts has the answers! In Focus is a cool, information series that's perfect for curious kids. These fun books feature modern, magazine-style pages, including top 10 lists, fast facts, and more! With pages packed with vivid photography and fun facts, kids will have fun learning about the world around them!Each In Focus book features a contents page, glossary, and index.

Read more less

Where is the hottest place on the Earth? Which animals love the hot weather? Where would you see a mirage? In Focus: Tropical Lands has the answers! In Focus is a cool, new information series that's perfect for curious kids. These fun books feature modern, magazine-style pages, including top 10 lists, fast facts, quickfire quizzes and more! With pages packed with vivid photography and fun facts, kids will have fun learning about the world around them!Each In Focus book features a contents page, glossary and index, plus front and end gatefold flaps on the cover.

Read more less

This irresistible reading series is sure to fire the imagination of young readers with its exciting range of high-interest topics and its great-looking, easy-to-follow design. Developed with literacy experts, this five-level graded reading series will guide young readers as they build confidence and fluency in their literacy skills and progress towards reading alone. Seals introduces beginner readers to a variety of seals from different habitats, to the largest and the smallest. It includes facts about swimming and diet, and explains how a seal pup starts life, and grows to adulthood.

Read more less

Go here. Do that. Work here. Buy that.Spend each day bored, staring at a screen, wondering if this is really all there is.There is another way.My name is Nightscape. Through years of training, I get to see the city in a way nobody else does. With this book, I want to show you what the world looks like through my eyes and inspire everyone to find their passion. Don’t let anyone tell you what your limits are.

Read more less

Join Jo-Rosie Haffenden and Nando Brown, the animal trainers from ITV’s Teach My Pet To Do That, as they reveal how any dog can learn new tricks.This simple, practical guide will have you and your pooch mastering the basics of trick training in no time and opening up a whole new world of fun for both of you. Whether they’re shy and retiring, or love the limelight, in Teach My Dog to Do That, there’s something for every type. Trick-training is a great way to get to know your dog better, deepen your bond and help keep them keep fit and stimulated. Full of hints, tips and photographs and taking you from the very simplest training fundamentals to show-stopping tricks like “Dog Yoga” and “Tidy Your Toys”, the only limit to where you end up is your imagination.

Read more less

O Romeo, Romeo! Where fur art though Romeo? William Shakespeare has given us so many of the most iconic moments in literary history. From the tortured existential genius of Hamlet's "To be or not to be", or the complex violence of Macbeth's "Is this a dagger I see before me" and the heart-breaking romance of Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene, millions of us have been moved to laughter and tears by his timeless poetry. Now, finally, we're able to experience these moments through the medium of small furry animals.

Read more less

Packed with fun illustrations by Joe Berger, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang Flies Again is the hilarious sequel to Ian Fleming's much loved children's classic, by Frank Cottrell Boyce, the author of the Carnegie Medal-winning Millions.When the Tooting family find a vast abandoned engine and fit it to their camper van, they have no idea of the adventure that lies ahead. The engine used to belong to an extraordinary flying car - and it wants to be back on the road again . . . fast! The Tootings can haul on the steering wheel and pull the handbrake as hard as they like, but their camper van now has a mind of her own. It's not long before they're hurtling along on a turbocharged chase as Chitty tracks down her long-lost bodywork. But there are sinister forces at work too. When it comes to a car as special as Chitty, everybody wants a piece of her . . .

Read more less

Stephen Maxwell has just retired from a lifetime spent teaching history at his alma mater. As he writes the official history of Blake's, a minor public school steeped in military tradition, he also reveals how, forty years ago, a secret conflict dating from the Second World War re-enacted itself among staff and pupils, when fascism once more made its presence felt in the school and the city, with violent and nightmarish results.

Read more less

Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Making of Zombie Wars; The Book of My Lives, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times bestseller; and three books of short stories, including Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Genius' grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

Read more less

Final Solution is an intelligent and thought-provoking short history of the Holocaust, by historian David Cesarani.Not only does David Cesarani draw together and engage with the latest scholarly research, making extensive use of previously untapped resources such as diaries and letters from within the ghettos and camps (many of them in Polish or Yiddish and therefore previously largely inaccessible to Anglo-American scholars) but by adopting a rigorously Judeocentric approach the whole narrative of the march to genocide and its aftermath, the book presents a subtly different timeline which casts afresh the horror of the period and engenders a significant re-evaluation of the how and why. Eschewing some of the more fevered theses about the guilt of the perpetrators (and indeed recasting how wide that net should be spread), David Cesarani's measured and skilful negotiation of a crowded field is, as a result, all the more devastating.

Read more less

During forty years of travel, V. S. Naipaul has created a wide-ranging body of work, an exceptional and sustained meditation on our world. Now his finest pieces of reflection and reportage – many of which have been unavailable for some time – are collected in one volume. With an abiding faith in modernity balanced by a sense of wonder about the past, Naipaul has explored an astonishing variety of societies and peoples through the prism of his experience. Whether writing about Indian mutinies and despair, Mobutu’s mad reign in Zaire, or the New York mayoral elections, he demonstrates time and again that no one has a shrewder intuition of the ways in which the world works. Infused with a deeply felt humanism, The Writer and the World attests powerfully not only to Naipaul’s status as the great English prose stylist of our time but also to his keen, often prophetic, understanding. ‘All [of these essays] are worth reading (and rereading), both for the contemporary and historical information and insight they artfully impart and for what they tell us about a uniquely complex writer’ Spectator

Read more less

Miguel Street, V. S. Naipaul’s first written work of fiction, is set in a derelict corner of Port of Spain, Trinidad, during World War Two and is narrated by an unnamed, precociously observant neighbourhood boy. We are introduced to a galaxy of characters, from Popo the carpenter, who neglects his livelihood to build ‘the wild thing without a name’, to Man-man, who goes from running for public office to staging his own crucifixion, and the dreaded Big-Foot, the bully with glass tear ducts. As well as the lovely Mrs Hereira, in thrall to her monstrous husband. V. S. Naipaul writes with prescient wisdom and crackling wit about the lives and legends that make up Miguel Street: a living theatre, a world in microcosm, a cacophony of sights, sounds and smells – all seen through the eyes of a fatherless boy. The language, the idioms and the observations are priceless and timeless and Miguel Street overflows with life on every page. This is an astonishing novel about hope, despair, poverty and laughter; and an enchanting and exuberant tribute to V. S. Naipaul’s childhood home.

Read more less

A remarkable companion piece to The Writer and the World, Naipaul’s previous volume of highly acclaimed essays, Literary Occasions is a stirring contribution to the fading art of the critic, and a revelation of a life in letters.In these eleven extended pieces V. S. Naipaul charts more than half a century of personal enquiry into the mysteries of the written word and of fiction in particular. Here are his boyhood experiences of reading books and his first youthful efforts at writing them; the evolution of his ideas about the extent to which individual cultures shape identities and influence literary forms; observations on Conrad, his literary forebear; the moving preface he wrote to the only book his father ever published; and his reflections on his career, ending with his celebrated Nobel lecture, ‘Two Worlds’. ‘He is an exceptionally good and perceptive critic – a few passages on Dickens are worth whole books by others – and when he addresses the art of fiction he not only writes beautifully (as always) but with complete humility’ New Statesman

Read more less

The Mystic Masseur, V. S. Naipaul’s first published novel, is the story of the rise and rise of Ganesh, from failed primary school teacher and struggling masseur to author, revered mystic and MBE – a journey equally memorable for its hilarity as its bewildering success. An unforgettable cast of characters witness this meteoric ascent: Ganesh’s father-in-law, Ramlogan, whose shop gave the impression that ‘every morning someone went over everything in it – scales, Ramlogan, and all – with a greased rag’; his aunt, the Great Belcher, with her troubling wind; his wife Leela, and her fondness for putting a punctuation mark after every word. Soon, Ganesh’s small hut is filled with books (1,500, as his wife will attest), and his trousers and shirt disappear to be replaced by more suitable attire for a proper mystic. As ‘The Woman Who Couldn’t Eat’ and ‘Lover Boy’, the man who fell in love with his bicycle, line up to be cured, it looks like the mystic masseur is surely destined for greatness. In one of the author’s finest comic creations we see the immense sensitivity, humour and endlessly inventive imagination that have become the hallmarks of V. S. Naipaul’s genius.

Read more less

Now a major film called The Unholy starring The Walking Dead's Jeffrey Dean Morgan.In James Herbert's horror novel Shrine, innocence and evil have become one . . .A little girl called Alice. A deaf-mute. A vision. A lady in shimmering white who says she is the immaculate conception. And Alice can suddenly hear and speak, and she can perform miracles. Soon the site of the visitation, beneath an ancient oak tree, has become a shrine, a holy place for thousands of pilgrims. But Alice is no longer the guileless child overwhelmed by her new saintliness. She has become the agent of something corrupt, a vile force that is centuries old.

Read more less

'This life-stuffed novel is Aleksandar Hemon’s masterpiece' - David Mitchell, author of Cloud AtlasThe World and All That It Holds is the epic, cross-continental tale of a love so strong it conquers the Great War, revolution, and even death itself.As the Archduke Franz Ferdinand arrives in Sarajevo one June day in 1914, Rafael Pinto is busy crushing herbs and grinding tablets behind the counter at the pharmacy he inherited from his father. It’s not quite the life he had expected during his poetry-filled student days in libertine Vienna, but it’s nothing a dash of laudanum, a summer stroll and idle fantasies can’t put in perspective.And then the world explodes. In the trenches in Galicia, fantasies fall flat. Heroism gets a man killed quickly. War devours all that they have known, and the only thing Pinto has to live for are the attentions of Osman, a fellow soldier, a man of action to complement Pinto’s introspective, poetic soul; a charismatic storyteller and Pinto’s protector and lover.Together, Pinto and Osman will escape the trenches and find themselves entangled with spies and Bolsheviks. As they travel over mountains and across deserts, from one world to another, all the way to Shanghai, it is Pinto’s love for Osman that will truly survive.

Read more less

Earth has become a Utopia, guided by a strange unseen people from outer space whose staggering powers have eradicated war, cruelty, poverty and racial inequality. When the 'Overlords' finally reveal themselves, their horrific form makes little impression. Then comes the sign that the Overlords have been waiting for. A child begins to dream strangely - and develops remarkable powers. Soon this happens to every child - and the truth of the Overlords' mission is finally revealed to the human race. . .A classic of the science fiction genre, Childhood's End is an intelligent, beautifully written exploration of what it means to be human from the inimitable Arthur C. Clarke. Now adapted as a three-part miniseries on Sky.

Read more less

A Swedish crime writer as thrilling as Mankell, a detective as compelling as Wallander . . . Van Veeteren faces a chilling case in Håkan Nesser's Hour of the Wolf, the seventh book to feature Chief Inspector Van Veeteren. In the dead of night, in the pouring rain, a drunk driver smashes his car into a young man. He abandons the body at the side of the road, but the incident will set in motion a chain of events which will change his life forever. Soon Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, now retired from the Maardam police force, will face his greatest trial yet as someone close to him is, inexplicably, murdered. Van Veeteren's former colleagues, desperate for answers, struggle to decipher the clues to this appalling crime. But when another body is discovered, it gradually becomes clear that this killer is acting on their own terrifying logic . . .Hour of the Wolf is followed by book eight in the series, The Weeping Girl.

Read more less

Written in hypnotic prose, Don DeLillo's Point Omega is both a metaphysical meditation and a deeply unsettling mystery, from which one thing emerges: loss, fierce and incomprehensible.Richard Elster, a retired secret war adviser, has retreated to a forlorn house in a desert, 'somewhere south of nowhere'. But his planned isolation is interrupted when he is joined by a young filmmaker intent on documenting his experience in a one-take film. The two men sit on the deck, drinking and talking. Weeks go by. And then Elster's daughter Jessie visits. When a devastating event follows, all the men's talk, the accumulated meaning of conversation and isolation, is thrown into question.Reading the fiction of Don DeLillo is an utterly original experience: powerful, prescient, perceptive. Writing in a prose that is both majestic and muscular, his unerringly accurate vision penetrates deep into the soul of America and consistently leaves readers with a fresh perspective on the world. Since the publication of his first novel, in 1971, he has been acknowledged across the world as one of the greatest writers of his generation.

Read more less

A Death in Summer is the fourth entry in the Quirke Mysteries, an enthralling literary crime series set in 1950s Dublin from John Banville, writing as Benjamin Black. Now major TV series: Quirke, starring Gabriel Byrne and Michael Gambon.When newspaper magnate Richard Jewell is found dead at his country estate, clutching a shotgun in his lifeless hands, few see his demise as cause for sorrow. But, before long,– Doctor Quirke and Inspector Hackett realize that – rather than the suspected suicide – ‘Diamond Dick’ has been murdered.Suspicion soon falls on one of Jewell’s biggest rivals. But Quirke has his eyes elsewhere. With his assistant Sinclair, he gets to know Jewell's beautiful, enigmatic wife Françoise d’Aubigny and his fragile sister Dannie, as well as those who work for the family. And, gradually, it becomes clear that, in this household, everything is not as it seems . . .A Death in Summer is the fourth Quirke Mystery. Continue the atmospheric, beguiling series with Vengeance.

Read more less

Telling the story of the week following a fateful train journey, One Moment, One Morning by Sarah Rayner is a stunning novel about love and loss, about family and – above all – friendship. A stark reminder that, sometimes, one moment is all it takes . . .The Brighton to London line. The 07:44 train. Carriages packed with commuters. Then, abruptly, everything changes: a man has a heart attack, and can't be resuscitated; the train is stopped, an ambulance called. For at least three passengers on the 07:44 on that particular morning, life will never be the same again. Lou witnesses the man's final moments. Lou and Anna share a cab when they realize the train is going nowhere fast. Anna is Karen's best friend. And Karen? Karen's husband is the man who dies . . .

Read more less

When Kenneth Earl realises his memory is failing, he advertises for someone to help him catalogue his vast collection of music, and so create a record of his life. Maggie, the final candidate, is his last hope. But he doesn't guess, when he gives her the job, that the archive will be as much about her past as his -- because this isn't the first time that Maggie has been to Earl House, and it's no coincidence that she applied for the post . . . ‘Slowly, and in Azzopardi’s melodic, lyrical prose the secrets of Maggie’s childhood are revealed, full of loss and longing, unfaithful loves and bad choices’ Marie Claire ‘Not just a good read, but a fireworks display of true talent. A Fred and Ginger extravaganza – and an unforgettable dance’ The Scotsman ‘Azzopardi is an accomplished writer, beautifully weaving the past into the present until her words literally sing off the page’ Stylist magazine Book of the Week

Read more less

In Hide Now, Glyn Maxwell shows how the times have begun to warp time itself: in the poet’s vision, the past rears up again with its angry ghosts, the present is racked by its martial and climatic nightmares, and the future has already come and gone. All the stories of the earth seem menaced by just one – to which nations cover their eyes and ears, and from which the grown-ups run and hide. Scheherazade, Robespierre, Dick Cheney and the Reverend Jim Jones all have their place here, though the book’s presiding genius is the lonely figure of Cassandra, cursed with knowing the fate of a world that finds her screamingly funny. Glyn Maxwell has established an international reputation as one of the most intelligent and stylishly original English poets since Auden, and he has never written with greater urgency or power. ‘[Maxwell’s] astonishing technical facility can make syllables, vowels and consonants do absolutely anything. His energetic voice riffs through evasively ordinary speech taking on love, politics, comedy and bizarre narratives in brilliantly elaborate syntax and forms’ Independent

Read more less

Children love telling jokes to their friends and family, and these jokes are easy to read and easy to remember. Perfect for beginner readers who delight in fun wordplay. What's grey and wobbly? A jellyphant. What do you get if you cross a sheep with a kangaroo? A woolly jumper.

Read more less

The Trouble with Poetry is the new collection from probably the most popular poet in the entire planet, and finds everyone's favourite contemporary Pre-Socratic in as funny and wise (and sometimes joyfully silly) form as ever. Billy Collins's tone is inimitable. Drawled and knowing, yet without a hint of world-weariness or cynicism, he fearlessly addresses the reader as friend and intimate -- and comrade, inviting them to square up to the various collective crises of the bald ape in the 21st century. Collins remains the only poet who can write about the next-to-nothing of our lives, the little boredoms, habits and frustrations of our daily and domestic existence, revealing their true importance and meaning -- and demonstrating that the same historical and cosmic forces bear upon them as upon the great events of the age. 'Billy Collins is one of my favourite poets in the world' Carol Ann Duffy 'I'd follow this man's mind anywhere' Michael Donaghy 'Billy Collins's poems describe all the worlds that are and were and some others besides' John Updike

Read more less

This is the story of Fabergé's Imperial Easter eggs – of their maker, of the tsars who commissioned them, of the middlemen who sold them and of the collectors who fell in love with them. It's a story of meticulous craftsmanship and unimaginable wealth, of lucky escapes and mysterious disappearances, and ultimately of greed, tragedy and devotion. Moreover, it is a story that mirrors the history of twentieth-century Russia – a satisfying arc that sees eggs made for the tsars, sold by Stalin, bought by Americans and now, finally, returned to post-communist Russia. There is also an intriguing element of mystery surrounding the masterpieces. Of the fifty 'Tsar Imperial' eggs known to have been made, eight are currently unaccounted for, providing endless scope for speculation and forgeries. This is the first book to tell the complete history of the eggs, encompassing the love and opulence in which they were conceived, the war and revolution that scattered them, and the collectors who preserved them.

Read more less

The Alldens live in a ramshackle house in suburban Bath. Don and Emily have four children: confident Liz, satirical Clive, shy Lotte, and Benjamin, the late arrival. Together they take the usual knocks, go to work, go abroad, go to university, go to pieces. Don and Emily stick it out, their strong marriage tested by experience and frustrated by love for Clive, the ardent boxing fan at odds with himself, their special child. But then ordinary is special, too, as the Alldens will discover thirty years later when Emily falls ill and her children come home to say goodbye. Their unforgettable story is an intimate record of survival that is clear-eyed, funny and deeply moving.

Read more less

'A beautiful, compelling memoir . . . This, Raban's final work, is a gorgeous achievement' – Ian McEwanOn 11 June 2011, three days short of his sixty-ninth birthday, Jonathan Raban suffered a stroke which left him unable to use the right side of his body. Learning to use a wheelchair in a rehab facility outside Seattle and resisting the ministrations of the nurses overseeing his recovery, Raban began to reflect upon the measure of his own life in the face of his own mortality. Together with the chronicle of his recovery is the extraordinary story of his parents’ marriage, the early years of which were conducted by letter while his father fought in the Second World War.Jonathan Raban engages profoundly and candidly with some of the biggest questions at the heart of what it means to be alive, laying bare the human capacity to withstand trauma, as well as the warmth, strength, and humour that persist despite it. Father and Son, the fina

Read more less

Billy Collins is one of the world’s most popular poets. While his poems often begin in the everyday and domestic, fans know that they might end anywhere – and that they will lift their heads from the book to a world startlingly different from the one they had left moments before. Billy Collins’ previous collection, Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes, was an extraordinary success, introducing thousands of readers to his exhilarating poetry for the first time. By turns wildly funny and intensely moving, Nine Horses has won Billy Collins even more admirers.

Read more less

An extraordinary yet little-known scientific advance occurred in the opening years of the nineteenth century when a young amateur meteorologist, Luke Howard, gave the clouds the names by which they are known to this day. By creating a language to define structures that had, up to then, been considered random and unknowable, Howard revolutionized the science of meteorology and earned the admiration of his leading contemporaries in art, literature and science. Richard Hamblyn charts Howard’s life from obscurity to international fame, and back to obscurity once more. He recreates the period’s intoxicating atmosphere of scientific discovery, and shows how this provided inspiration for figures such as Goethe, Shelley and Constable. Offering rich insights into the nature of celebrity, the close relationship between the sciences and the arts, and the excitement generated by new ideas, The Invention of Clouds is an enthralling work of social and scientific history.

Read more less