Search results for ""Author Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp""

Why were bridges invented? What did the first bridges look like? How do they stay up and why are there so many different designs? From architecture to engineering (and other STEM subjects!), scale new heights on an enchanting journey with the school children in this book to discover answers to these questions along with other fascinating facts about bridges and how they work. Written and illustrated by Kate Greenaway Medal nominee and STEAM Children’s Book prize winner, Roman Belyaev.

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Bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben, invites you to reconnect with natureAs soon as we step out of the door, nature surrounds. Thousands of small and large processes are taking place, details that are long often fascinating and beautiful. But we've long forgotten how to recognise them.Peter Wohlleben, bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees, invites us to become an expert, to take a closer look and interpret the signs that clouds, wind, plants and animals convey. Chaffinches become weather prophets, bees are live thermometers, courgettes tell us the time.The Weather Detective combines scientific research with charming anecdotes to explain the extraordinary cycles of life, death and regeneration that are evolving on our doorstep, bringing us closer to nature than ever before. A walk in the park will never be the same again.

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Nazis, spies, romance, and murder collide in prewar eastern Europe in a mesmerizing historical novel by the award-winning author of Oliva’s Garden. It’s 1936. The seaside-resort village of Split on the Adriatic coast bustles. The tourist spots are booming, passenger steamers dot the harbor, and Jewish émigrés have found tenuous refuge from persecution. But as war in Europe looms, Split is also a nest of spies, fascists, and smugglers—and now, a locale suspiciously scouted by a German Reich film crew. Then one summer morning it becomes the scene of a murder investigation when a corpse is found entangled in fishing nets in the port. With so many suspects from all walks of life and with a myriad of motives at a time when tensions are boiling over, crime superintendent Mario Bulat has only rumors to follow. Political archrivals will take advantage of the crime. Local lovers will become embroiled in it. And a propagandist filmmaker will find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. War is coming, and for some in Split, it’s already here.

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Can you tell which plants are safe to eat?Which trees are best to shelter under a storm?How do you tell a deciduous and coniferous tree apart?In his charming new book, bestselling author of The Hidden Life of Trees Peter Wohlleben takes you on a journey of discovery. From learning what creatures lurk beneath tree roots to finding your way around the woods without a compass, this is a captivating guide to navigating the wonders of the wild.

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A novel that offers a timely and important viewpoint on the immigration experience about the need for resistance to blind assimilation in a host country. In 1968, in search of a better world, a young person flees her country and ends up in Switzerland, the land of hard cheese. There she’s told not to talk nonsense, or not to “talk cheese,” as they say in the local dialect. Home is where you can grumble, but here you have to be grateful. Her new environs seem unwieldy, aloof, and she rebels against this host country that insists on her following its rules, that won’t let her be herself. But as an interpreter, she meets many others who have ended up here—petty criminals, depressives, hustlers, refugees, victims of exploitation, and others who have gone out of their way to assimilate, people who share a hope that they can make something new of their lives. Gradually she learns to experience the richness of exile and foreignness, to build bridges between cultures. A brilliantly written novel about the search for identity between assimilation and resistance, Irena Brežná’s The Thankless Foreigner is a significant addition to the important literature of immigrant experience.

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1930s Leningrad. As a mood of fear cloaks the city, Investigator Vasily Zaitsev is called on to investigate a series of bizarre and seemingly motiveless murders. In each case, the victim is curiously dressed and posed in extravagantly arranged settings. At the same time, one by one precious old master paintings are going missing from the Hermitage collection. As Zaitsev sets about his investigations, he meets with suspicion at practically every turn, and potential witnesses are reluctant to provide information. Soon Zaitsev himself comes under suspicion from the Soviet secret police. The embittered detective must battle increasingly complex political machinations in his dogged quest to uncover the truth.

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In this compelling memoir of growing up different, Ijoma Mangold, today one of Germany's best literary critics, remembers his youth in 1970s Heidelberg and the new Federal Republic, and momentous visits in early adulthood to the USA and Nigeria. His own story is inextricably linked with that of his mother, a German from the eastern province of Silesia, forced to escape as a refugee in the expulsions from 1944, and to start afresh in utter poverty in West Germany. His Nigerian father came to Germany to train in pediatric surgery but returned before Ijoma was old enough to remember him. His reappearance on the scene forces a crash collision with an unknown culture, one he grew up suspicious of, and a new complex family history to come to terms with. Mangold explores many existential questions in this lively narrative; How does a boy cope with an absent father? What was it like to grow up 'bi-racial' in the Federal Republic? Was he an opportunist, a master adaptor who had over-assimilated? What is the relationship between race and class? And what is more unusual in Germany: having dark skin or a passion for Thomas Mann and Richard Wagner? Ijoma shares his story with its dramatic twists and turns, not forgetting the surprises he uncovers about himself along the way.

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Russia in 1938 is a place of great terror. Joseph Stalin is in charge. His Secret Police are everywhere, searching for anyone who might be his enemy. People have no idea who they can trust.Seven-year-old Shura doesn't know about any of this. He's happy in his little home in Leningrad going to school in the mornings, playing with his best friend in the afternoon, fighting with his big sister, spending time with his Mama, Papa and baby brother Bobka.Until one day everything changes. Mama and Papa and Bobka disappear without a trace. The whispers of their neighbours are that Mama and Papa were spies, enemies of Stalin and so they have now been taken by something mysterious called The Raven. Desperate to reunite his family, Shura decides to hunt down The Raven, finding help in the most unexpected places but facing more danger than he has ever known . . .

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THE SUNDAY TIMES HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR'A beautiful and thoughtful exploration of the role of the horse in creating our world' James Rebanks'Scintillating, exhilarating ... you have never read a book like it ... a new way of considering history' ObserverThe relationship between horses and humans is an ancient, profound and complex one. For millennia horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. How we travelled, farmed and fought was dictated by the needs of this extraordinary animal. And then, suddenly, in the 20th century the links were broken and the millions of horses that shared our existence almost vanished, eking out a marginal existence on race-tracks and pony clubs.Farewell to the Horse is an engaging, brilliantly written and moving discussion of what horses once meant to us. Cities, farmland, entire industries were once shaped as much by the needs of horses as humans. The intervention of horses was fundamental in countless historical events. They were sculpted, painted, cherished, admired; they were thrashed, abused and exposed to terrible danger. From the Roman Empire to the Napoleonic Empire every world-conqueror needed to be shown on a horse. Tolstoy once reckoned that he had cumulatively spent some nine years of his life on horseback.Ulrich Raulff's book, a bestseller in Germany, is a superb monument to the endlessly various creature who has so often shared and shaped our fate.

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Praise for Punishment of A Hunter: 'The most successful retro-detective since Akunin' Literratura 'Gritty and gripping' Will Ryan 'It will pull you in and leave you breathless' Chris Lloyd 'Yulia Yokovleva's thrilling debut was a bestseller in her native Russia. It's not difficult to see why' The Times, Best New Crime Fiction ________________ On the eve of Stalin's deadly great purge, a rider and his horse mysteriously collapse in the middle of a race in Leningrad. Weary detective Zaitsev, still reeling from his last brush with the Party, is dispatched to the soviet state cavalry school near Ukraine to investigate. There he witnesses the horror of the man-made Holodomor Famine as he struggles to penetrate the murky, secretive world of the school. Why has this murder attracted so much attention from Soviet officials? Zaitsev needs to answer this question and solve the case before the increasingly paranoid authorities turn their attention to him...

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Mrs Owl had a knack for finding the perfect book for every customer, before they even realised what it was they were looking for. What do you do when your best friend moves away? Clara takes comfort in her favourite place: Mrs Owl’s bookshop. Surrounded by books that spring to life, a rhyming cat and mounds of cinnamon buns, Clara never feels alone. But someone is determined to close the bookshop down. Now it’s up to Clara and her new friends to save it.

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'ONE OF THE FIRST POLITICAL CLASSICS OF THE 21st CENTURY'- Observer'EXTRAORDINARILY POWERFUL, POIGNANT AND AFFECTING. I WAS GREATLY MOVED' Michael PalinFOREWORD BY CHRISTINA LAMBJournalist Samar Yazbek was forced into exile by Assad's regime. When the uprising in Syria turned to bloodshed, she was determined to take action and secretly returned several times. The Crossing is her rare, powerful and courageous testament to what she found inside the borders of her homeland.From the first peaceful protests for democracy to the arrival of ISIS, she bears witness to those struggling to survive, to the humanity that can flower amidst annihilation, and why so many are now desperate to flee.

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‘Who says that daughters cannot be heroic?’ Once upon a time, history was written by men, for men and about men. Women were deemed less important, their letters destroyed, their stories ignored. Not any more. This is the story of women who went to war, women who stopped war and women who stayed at home. The rulers. The fighters. The activists. The writers. This is the story of Wu Zetian, who as ‘Chinese Emperor’ helped to spread Buddhism in China. This is the story of Genghis Khan’s powerful daughters, who ruled his empire for him. This is the story of Christine de Pizan, one of the earliest feminist writers. This is the story of Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president before she could even vote for one. This is the story of the world – with the women put back in.

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