In this lavish companion to the BBC series Earth: The Power of the Planet, renowned science writers Iain Stewart & John Lynch ...

Earth & Ashes is a story of such spareness & power it leaves the reader reeling. Set during the Russian occupation of Afghanistan, it is a fable about war, family, home & tradition. An old man & his grandson sit in a deserted landscape of dusty roads & looming mountains. What are they waiting for? As we watch them we learn their story-Rahimi has managed to condense centuries of Afghan history into his short tale of three very different generations. At the same time, he has created a story that is universal in its power. ...

Native Americans had a close affinity with the earth & an understanding of the natural forces which shaped their environment.



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The Gwynns, a pleasant American couple, have lived outside York for the past fourteen years. Nesta, their only child, was born there & attends the local school. They seem ordinary enough & comfortable in their leafy suburb. But they have an astonishing secret unknown even to Nesta. One evening when she sees her father diminish & disappear into a stone lily pad in the garden pond, Nesta has to be told what she really is. Her parents are visitors from the planet Ormingat, sent to Earth to investigate life there. Now they have been ordered to return home. Nesta can`t take it all in, refuses to accept that she is not earthborn & finally runs away with the help of her best school mate, Amy. ...

For thirty-five year old Charlotte Emory, leaving her husband seems to offer the only way out from the mundaneness of every day life's earthly possessions & emotional complications. In the bank, she withdraws enough money to escape a life & a marriage gone sour. But Charlotte is about to escape in a way she never expected, as a young bank robber takes her hostage, & they head south for Florida in a stoelen car. ...

In recent decades there has been a dramatic transformation around the Pacific Rim. Japan has become an economic superpower, & the People's Republic of China is close behind, flooding the world market with computers, automobiles, & electronic components. No longer 'the Far East'
- that exotic, mysterious land at the distant fringe of Western consciousness
- East Asia today commands the attention of the entire world. In East Asia, Arthur Cotterell condenses into a compact, highly readable book an immense amount of historical knowledge, placing this amazing economic development in its proper perspective
- an Asian one. Cotterell ranges from the dawn of Chinese civilization to Japan's emergence as the first East Asian nation to develop an industrial economy. & he brings his history up to the present, examining America's setbacks in the Korean & Vietnam Wars, Japan's rise as an economic superpower, & the recent histories of countries such as reunited Vietnam, Indonesia & Singapore. Cotterell goes on to suggest that Japan will eventually be overtaken by its neighbours, concluding that relations between the Chinese & the Japanese will ultimately determine the future of East Asia, although over the coming decades the key Pacific partners remain China & the United States. With spectacular historical perspective, Arthur Cotterell performs an invaluable service to all those who wish to have deeper understanding of our newest, & most competitive, trading partners.


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Those of us living in towns & cities might think that the pleasures of growing our own food, watching the seasons pass with the changing produce & getting our hands stuck in to the soil are beyond our reach. But a growing number of urban dwellers are realising that there are ways of connecting with the l&, & enjoying the sheer pleasure of watching something grow. Jojo Tulloh takes us to her inner-city allotment & guides us through a year of cooking, inspired by the food that has sprung from her surprisingly fertile patch of East London waste-ground.

Making good, fresh, seasonally-inspired meals doesn

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