In its pure form carbon can be the soft graphite in a pencil or an immensely hard diamond It is the basic building block of most of the cells in our bodies Carbon attracts & one of the most crucial relationships it forms is with oxygen producing carbon dioxide the gas vital to life on earth This is the story of a chemical element C its myriad properties & its life cycle It is the story of a balance between photosynthesis & cell respiration between building & burning life & death Dag Olav Hessen navigates us through an exploration of the existence of carbon in minerals & rocks wood & rainforests & of carbon's role in processes such as the greenhouse effect & the carbon cycles on both small & large scales He explores the burning issues of climate change how will ecosystems respond to global change? How bad could things get? Will the world's ecosystems recover? & what are our moral obligations? Neither alarmist nor moralistic Hessen takes the reader on a journey from the atom to our planet in informative compelling prose ...

' In this exhilarating metaphysical white-knuckle ride Geen takes us into the other worlds that crouch slink & bark around us It will leave you reeling' Charles Foster author of Being a Beast Kit has been projecting into other species for seven years Longer than anyone else at Shen Corp Longer than any of the scientists thought possible But lately she has the feeling that when she jumps she isn't alone ...

A book with a big brain big laughs & a big big heart
- Frank Cottrell-Boyce An extraordinary novel for anyone who's ever been curious
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The Map & the Clock is a celebration of the most scintillating poems ever composed on our islands Curated by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy & by Gillian Clarke National Poet of Wales this anthology gathers fourteen centuries of extraordinary verse
- beginning with the first writings from the old languages of England & Ireland Scotland & Wales & culminating in some of our most recent poets speaking in our present-day tongues Many of our founding myths & legends are told here
- King Arthur & Gawain Beowulf & Mad Sweeney the Mabinogion
- as are the nursery-tales & songs we still sing today Through these pages we witness the tragedy of European wars & world conflict; we court romance & friendship; we explore nationhood & belonging identity & belief; & we are welcomed to a celebration of the cultural diversity of the poetries of our twenty-first century The Map & the Clock is a stunning & essential treasury of the poems that have moulded our languages examined our worlds & shaped our islands through time


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Artist Jed Martin emerges from a ten-year hiatus with good news It has nothing to do with his broken boiler the approach of another lamentably awkward Christmas dinner with his father or the memory of his doomed love affair with the beautiful Olga It is that for his new exhibition he has secured the involvement of none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq The exhibition brings Jed new levels of global fame But his boiler is still broken his ailing father flirts with oblivion & worst of all he is contacted by an inspector requiring his help in solving an unspeakable atrocious & gruesome crime involving none other than celebrated novelist Michel Houellebecq Shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2013 ...

For fans of The Kite Runner a magical yet very moving story of one young Syrian girl's journey to find her way home LONGLISTED FOR THE WILBUR SMITH ADVENTURE WRITING PRIZE 2019 368 pages Maccani Jennifer Zeynab ...

Three brilliant stories that will captivate young readers by War Horse author & former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo The Marble Crusher Does Mr Manners the headmaster really have a machine that crushes marbles? Albert thinks so Colly's Barn Colly the owl & Screecher the swallow band together to save the barn Conker Nick beats the bully Stevie Rooster & becomes Conker king But can he rescue a mistreated dog while searching for the best conker? Michael Morpurgo demonstrates why he is considered to be the master storyteller in these animal tales that are wonderful for engaging early readers aged seven years & up Michael has written more than one hundred books for children including An Eagle in the Snow Listen to the Moon Private Peaceful & An Elephant in the Garden & won the Whitbread Award the Smarties Award the Circle of Gold Award the Children's Book Award & has been short-listed for the Carnegie Medal four times ...

Please note this is a region 2 DVD & will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play Marc Pease (Jason Schwartzman) & his a cappela group Meridian 8 are about to hit the big time Undeterred by the fact that Meridian 8 by now only consist of 4 members Marc Pease is convinced he can land a record deal He only needs his old music teacher Mr Gribble (Ben Stiller) to help them one last time But even his supportive girlfriend Meg (Anna Kendrick) has her doubts as she knows Marc s dark secret he ruined Mr Gribble s most ambitious production 8 years ago ...

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE 2017 This is travel writing at its best' Katherine Norbury Observer An Observer Book of the Year His father Brian taught Rory Stewart how to walk & walked with him on journeys from Iran to Malaysia Now they have chosen to do their final walk together along the Marches'
- the frontier that divides their two countries Scotland & England Brian a ninety-year-old former colonial official & intelligence officer arrives in Newcastle from Scotland dressed in tartan & carrying a draft of his new book You Know More Chinese Than You Think Rory comes from his home in the Lake District carrying a Punjabi fighting stick which he used when walking across Afghanistan On their six-hundred-mile thirty-day journey
- with Rory on foot & his father ambushing' him by car
- the pair relive Scottish dances reflect on Burmese honey-bears & on the loss of human presence in the British landscape On mountain ridges & in housing estates they uncover a forgotten country crushed between England & Scotland the Middleland They cross upland valleys which once held forgotten peoples & languages
- still preserved in sixth-century lullabies & sixteenth-century ballads The surreal tragedy of Hadrian's Wall forces them to re-evaluate their own experiences in the Iraq & Vietnam wars The wild places of the uplands reveal abandoned monasteries border castles secret military test sites & newly created wetlands They discover unsettling modern lives lodged in an ancient land Their odyssey develops into a history of nationhood an anatomy of the landscape a chronicle of contemporary Britain & an exuberant encounter between a father & a son & as the journey deepens & the end approaches Brian & Rory fight to match step by step modern voices nationalisms & contemporary settlements to the natural beauty of the Marches & a fierce absorption in tradition in their own unconventional lives



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LONGLISTED FOR THE 2017 BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONGinger is in her forties & a recovering alcoholic when she meets & marries Paul When it becomes clear it's too late for her to have a baby of her own she tries to persuade him to consider adoption but he already has a child from a previous marriage & is ten years older than her so doesn't share her longing to be a parent at any cost As a compromise they sign up to an organisation that sends poor inner-city kids to stay with country families for a few weeks in the summer & so one hot July day eleven year old Velveteen Vargas a Dominican girl from one of Brooklyn's toughest neighbourhoods arrives in their lives & Ginger is instantly besotted Bemused by her gentle middle-aged hosts but deeply intuitive in the way of clever children Velvet quickly senses the longing behind Ginger's rapturous attention While Velvet returns her affection she finds the intensity of it bewildering Velvet's own passions are more excited by the stables nearby where she discovers she has a natural talent for riding & a deep affinity with the damaged horses cared for there But when Ginger begins to entertain fantasies of adopting her things start to get complicated for everyone involved This is a heartbreakingly honest & profoundly moving portrait of the nearly unbridgeable gaps between people & the way we long for fairytale endings despite knowing that they don't exist ...