Emmie Dart was nearly forty years old & servant to old Canon James when Walter asked her to marry him. He was the Canon's son, younger than she was, & a gentleman
- even though a rather dilettante drifter who had really done very little with his life. But Walter had a secret in his past that he asked Emmie to share with him
- & she, in turn, told him of her harsh & cruel background that made her feel unworthy to be anyone's wife. In spite of everything the marriage worked. Walter became Station Master at the lazy, sundrenched little country station of Dymock. Emmie set about rearing her three children, all so different. As Walter & Emmie watched their children grow, marry, have children of their own, so three women began to dominate the family
- Dorothy, who was proud, loyal, strong, & frequently extremely angry with the James family into which she had married, Kildie, illegitimate, manipulative, & causing constant strife & drama, & Holly, the third generation, whose loving spirit often held them all together. It was more than fifty years before Walter James's secret was revealed
- a secret that nearly broke the family apart.



...

Filius Poe, a dam engineer, is grieving the loss of his wife & son. Lew Beck, mean & brutish, is out to avenge his life of deprivation. Lena Mc Cardell, who thought she had exactly what she wanted, is fleeing her husb&, hoping for the chance of a fresh start & a brighter future for her son. From various directions & distances, these three lives converge on Boulder City & the Boulder Dam, the most ambitious engineering project of its day & a beacon of hope for an America crippled by the Great Depression. Waterborne is a panorama of human desire & enterprise, a novel about the power of love to engender hope, the forging of friendship & the tragedy of unfulfilled dreams. It marks the arrival of a major new American writer. ...

Roger Deakin set out in 1996 to swim through the British Isles. The result is a uniquely personal view of an island race & a people with a deep affinity for water. From the sea, from rock pools, from rivers & streams, tarns, lakes, lochs, ponds, lidos, swimming pools & spas, from fens, dykes, moats, aqueducts, waterfalls, flooded quarries, even canals, Deakin gains a fascinating perspective on modern Britain. Detained by water bailiffs in Winchester, intercepted in the Fowey estuary by coastguards, mistaken for a suicide on Camber sands, confronting the Corryvreckan whirlpool in the Hebrides, he discovers just how much of an outsider the native swimmer is to his landlocked, fully-dressed fellow citizens. Encompassing cultural history, autobiography, travel writing & natural history, Waterlog is a personal journey, a bold assertion of the native swimmer's right to roam, & an unforgettable celebration of the magic of water. ...

At twenty-nine, fun-loving, good-natured Claire has everything she ever wanted: a husband she adores, a great apartment, a good job. Then, on the day she gives birth to her first baby, James visits her in the recovery room to inform her that he's leaving her. Claire is left with a beautiful newborn daughter, a broken heart, & a body that she can hardly bear to look at in the mirror. So, in the absence of any better offers, Claire decides to go home to her family in Dublin. To her gorgeous man-eating sister Helen, her soap-watching mother, her bewildered father. & there, sheltered by the love of an (albeit quirky) family, she gets better. A lot better. In fact, so much better that when James slithers back into her life, he's in for a bit of a surprise. ...

It's night & the dark is filled with strange sounds as Shane makes his way home. On a fence he finds a stray cat that at first growls & spits at him. But Shane talks & strokes the kitten to calmness, & decides to take the ' Spitfire, Kitten Number One, ' home with him. No gang of boys, or avenue of dense traffic, or fierce dog can stop Shane carrying his new found friend to the place he calls home. Greg Rogers' sensitive use of charcoal & pastel create Shane & his cat in splendid city-at-night time scenes. ...

With superb skill & feeling, Graham greene retraces the experiences & encounters of a long & extraordinary life. His restlessness ...