Factory mine & mill Industry toil & grime Its manufacturing roots mean we still see the North of England as a hardworking place But more than possibly anywhere else the North has always known how to get dressed up take itself out on the town & have a good time After all working & playing hard is its specialty & Stuart Maconie is in search of what exactly this entails what it tells us about the North today Following tip offs & rumour Stuart takes trip to forgotten corners & locals' haunts From the tapas bars of Halifax to the caravan parks of Berwick Upon Tweed from a Westhoughton bowling green to Manchester's curry mile via dog tracks & art galleries dance floors & high fells Stuart compares the new & old North with some surprising results The Pie at Night could be seen as a companion to the bestselling Pies & Prejudice but it is not a sequel After all this is a new decade & the North is changing faster than ever This is a revealing & digressive journey & a State of the North address delivered from barstool terrace dress circle & hillside ...

A beautiful edition of this classic retelling by master storyteller Michael Morpurgo with glorious illustrations by Emma Chichester Clark In the town of Hamelin the rich & greedy live like kings & queens while the poor & sick scavenge rubbish tips for scraps A lame orphan boy tells the classic tale of how a plague of rats takes over the town & how a fantastic piper offers to rid Hamelin of its rats for a single gold coin then lures away the town's children when the greedy mayor breaks his word Masterfully weaving contemporary social & environmental themes into a gripping tale & celebrating it with breath-taking illustrations former British Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo & illustrator Emma Chichester Clark team up to create a compelling new take on this timeless story ...

From the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time' Superbly gripping' Sunday Times' Terrifically compelling' Guardian'A brilliant collection' Daily Mail An expedition to Mars goes terribly wrong A seaside pier collapses A thirty-stone man is confined to his living room One woman is abandoned on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean Another woman is saved from drowning Two boys discover a gun in a shoebox A group of explorers find a cave of unimaginable size deep in the Amazon jungle A man shoots a stranger in the chest on Christmas Eve ' The real redemption in these superbly gripping stories comes from their canny human detail & the vivid unsettling clarity they bring to our lives' Sunday Times ...

' He writes with the craft of Julian Barnes or even Truman Capote' The Times A Spectator Book of the Year An expedition to Mars goes terribly wrong A seaside pier collapses A thirty-stone man is confined to his living room One woman is abandoned on a tiny island in the middle of the ocean Another woman is saved from drowning Two boys discover a gun in a shoebox A group of explorers find a cave of unimaginable size deep in the Amazon jungle A man shoots a stranger in the chest on Christmas Eve In this first collection of stories by the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time Mark Haddon demonstrates two things first that he is a master of the short form (several of the stories have been longlisted for prizes) second that his imagination is even darker than we had thought ...

Pigs don't swim or so it's said A classic much-loved picture book following the exploits of a hot & bothered pig In this Kate Greenaway Commended picture book favourite Owl Babies author Martin Waddell tells the story of Neligan's pig
- who's feeling very hot & bothered! It's one of the most sizzling days of the summer & the pig sits by the pond watching the ducks & geese playing on the cool water The pig gets warmer & warmer the ducks & the geese get louder & louder Neligan's pig knows that pigs don't swim
- but she just has to take a dive! & she's not the only one on the farm who's sweltering A riotous read-aloud to be shared over & over again

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1 Romantic Type 2 I Found Out 3 Don&t Know How To Say Goodbye 4 Caught In Your Trap 5 I Can&t Control Myself 6 I&m Not Sorry 7 You Know I Love You 8 Stop Or Go 9 You Better Not Look My Way 10 Take Her Back 11 Wait for Me 12 I&m Always Right ...

A hilarious picture book featuring the Pigeon by the author of Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! & Time to Pee! In this hilarious interactive read in Mo Willems' award-winning Pigeon series the Pigeon discovers a delicious hot dog & he can hardly wait to shove the entire thing in his beak But then a hungry clever little duckling enters the scene & wants a bite Will he manage to outsmart the Pigeon & get his share of the hot dog? Oh yes ...

The pigeon is BACK! & he STINKS! No really he actually smells very bad Smell? What smell? I don't smell YOU smell In this hilarious interactive read in Mo Willems' award-winning Pigeon series the Pigeon needs a bath! Except well the Pigeon's really not so sure about that Besides he took a bath last month! Maybe It looks like it's going to take some serious convincing to get the Pigeon to take the plunge! ...

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER' Out of the secret world I once knew I have tried to make a theatre for the larger worlds we inhabit First comes the imagining then the search for reality Then back to the imagining & to the desk where I'm sitting now' From his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer that took him from war-torn Cambodia to Beirut on the cusp of the 1982 Israeli invasion to Russia before & after the collapse of the Berlin Wall John le Carre has always written from the heart of modern times In this his first memoir le Carre is as funny as he is incisive
- reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels Whether he's writing about the parrot at a Beirut hotel that could perfectly mimic machine gun fire or visiting Rwanda's museums of the unburied dead in the aftermath of the genocide or celebrating New Year's Eve with Yasser Arafat or interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison in the Negev or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley or describing the female aid worker who inspired the main character in his The Constant Gardener le Carre endows each happening with vividness & humour now making us laugh out loud now inviting us to think anew about events & people we believed we understood Best of all le Carre gives us a glimpse of a writer's journey over more than six decades & his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life & heart to his fictional characters' No other writer has charted
- pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers
- the public & secret histories of his times' Guardian' John le Carre is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen' Financial Times' When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carre they were a journey into the wider world These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind' Aung San Suu Kyi


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More hilarious antics from Mo Willems' single-minded pigeon! Would YOU let the Pigeon have a puppy? He's wanted one for ever (at least since last Tuesday) But the Pigeon is in for a shock
- having his very own puppy is not quite as wonderful as he thought it would be!
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