Topher Hope is distraught when Ka, his devoted cat disappears, leaving a word on his computer:
TENOCHT*I*TLa N
Wasn't that

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Topher & his father are trying to get over the death of Topher's mother, an Egyptologist, when they take in a stray cat. This cat bears an uncanny resemblance to a cat ornament given to Topher by his mother & so they name it ' Ka', meaning 'double'. Topher becomes very attached to Ka & is puzzled by her mysterious absences. One day when he is playing a computer game with an Egyptian theme, Ka jumps on the keys & spells out the name Bubastis, which was the centre of cat worship in Ancient Egypt. Could Ka really be leading a double life & what is she trying to tell Topher? ...

Topher Hope is on the move again. When his devoted cat, Ka, leaves a computer message saying she has gone to
CA;;LLev A
he

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Ka, the time-travelling cat, has disappeared, leaving just one clue
- a word on Topher's computer screen:
R*iche mou*nt





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The publication of The Tin Drum in 1959 launched Günter Grass as an author of international repute. Bitter & impassioned, it delivers a scathing dissection of the years from 1925 to 1955 through the eyes of Oskar Matzerath, the dwarf whose manic beating on the toy of his retarded childhood fantastically counterpoints the accumulating horrors of Germany & Poland under the Nazis. ...

On his third birthday Oskar decides to stop growing. Haunted by the deaths of his parents & wielding his tin drum Oskar recounts the events of his extraordinary life; from the long nightmare of the Nazi era to his anarchic adventures is post-war Germany. ...

Just before her fifteenth birthday Jinnie Howlett is offered a position as maid-of-all-work at a farm near the Cumbrian border. She hopes this will be a welcome relief from the workhouse she knows too well.

But when she meets her brutish employers Jinnie realises she has only exchanged one life of drudgery for another. She is grateful when one of the sons befriends her, but it isn

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Robert Crawford's new collection is an exhilarating celebration of the world he lives in: his family, his fellow Scots, his country & his country's languages. Beginning with a group of moving, renewing love poems to his wife, the book builds into a polyphonic hymn to life in all its aspects.

There is a powerful sense of communion & connection in The Tip of My Tongue: while singing the Scottish part of the planet, Crawford also embraces the rhythms of the whole circumference
- from Perth, Scotl&, to Perth, Australia
- catching 'how Kincardineshire's sky's/ Transvaalish, Budapesty, Santa Barbaran, / Zurich on a perfect day'.

These are poems that are convincingly earthed in the land & the language yet unafraid of spiritual, even religious notes; richly lyrical & passionate yet shot through with a humour & a vitality that is utterly engaging. As Liam Mc Ilvanney wrote in the Sunday Herald, 'for intellectual range, emotional depth, & lexical shimmer, Crawford is unsurpassed among recent Scottish poets'.





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