Jung Chang's Wild Swans was an extraordinary bestseller throughout the world, selling more than 10 million copies & reaching ...

Jung Chang's Wild Swans was an extraordinary bestseller throughout the world, selling more than 10 million copies & reaching ...

When war devastates their country, a boy & his parents are forced to flee to another country far east, where they must live in a small room shared with another couple. Food is scarce. But one day, when father goes to the bazaar to buy bread, he comes home with a map instead. The boy & his mother are furious, they are so hungry! But the map floods their cheerless room with colour. The boy becomes fascinated by it & is transported far away without ever leaving the room. Father was right to buy it, after all. ...

Miss Elizabeth Mapp reigns supreme over the village of Tilling...until the advent of Mrs Emmeline Lucas, or ' Lucia' to her friends. No one could compete, surely, with Lucia's formidable armoury: her duchesses, her Italian, her financial speculations, her celebrated recipe for Lobster à la Riseholme. But Mapp will not relinquish her supremacy in local society so easily, & battle is joined between these two indomitable queens & their rather fickle allies. ...

Roy Strang is engaged is a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird, the marabou stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous emigration to Aftrica, & his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse & redemption. ...

Roy Strang is engaged is a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird, the marabou stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous emigration to Aftrica, & his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse & redemption. ...