Charming tales from the life of a young vet whose clients range from guinea pigs to giraffes 336 pages Integrated b&w line drawings 2x 8pp colour plates Cranston Jonathan ...

A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written Marco Polo&s seminal account of his journeys in the east Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war & met Rustichello of Pisa with whom he collaborated on this book His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad unfamiliar religions customs & societies; the spices & silks of the East; the precious gems exotic vegetation & wild beasts of faraway lands Evoking a remote & long-vanished world with colour & immediacy Marco&s book revolutionized western ideas about the then unknown East & is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time For this edition
- the first completely new English translation of the Travels in over fifty years
- Nigel Cliff has gone back to the original manuscript sources to produce a fresh authoritative new version The volume also contains invaluable editorial materials including an introduction describing the world as it stood on the eve of Polo&s departure & examining the fantastical notions the West had developed of the East

...

A sparkling new translation of one of the greatest travel books ever written Marco Polo's seminal account of his journeys in the east in a collectible clothbound edition Marco Polo was the most famous traveller of his time His voyages began in 1271 with a visit to China after which he served the Kublai Khan on numerous diplomatic missions On his return to the West he was made a prisoner of war & met Rustichello of Pisa with whom he collaborated on this book His account of his travels offers a fascinating glimpse of what he encountered abroad unfamiliar religions customs & societies; the spices & silks of the East; the precious gems exotic vegetation & wild beasts of faraway lands Evoking a remote & long-vanished world with colour & immediacy Marco's book revolutionized western ideas about the then unknown East & is still one of the greatest travel accounts of all time For this edition
- the first completely new English translation of the Travels in over fifty years
- Nigel Cliff has gone back to the original manuscript sources to produce a fresh authoritative new version The volume also contains invaluable editorial materials including an introduction describing the world as it stood on the eve of Polo's departure & examining the fantastical notions the West had developed of the East Marco Polo was born in 1254 joining his father on a journey to China in 1271 He spent the next twenty years travelling in the service of Kublai Khan There is evidence that Marco travelled extensively in the Mongol Empire & it is fairly certain he visited India He wrote his famous Travels whilst a prisoner in Genoa Nigel Cliff was previously a theatre & film critic for The Times & a regular writer for The Economist among other publications & now writes historical nonfiction books His first book The Shakespeare Riots was published in 2007 & shortlisted for the Washington-based National Award for Arts Writing His second book The Last Crusade Vasco da Gama & the Birth of the Modern World appeared in 2011 & was shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize

...

He did not return to Morocco for another twenty-nine years travelling instead through more than forty countries on the modern map covering seventy-five thousand miles & getting as far north as the Volga as far east as China & as far south as Tanzania He wrote of his travels & comes across as a superb ethnographer biographer anecdotal historian & occasional botanist & gastronome With this edition by Mackintosh-Smith Battuta's Travels takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre ...

Ostensibly written by an English knight the Travels purport to relate his experiences in the Holy Land Egypt India & China Mandeville claims to have served in the Great Khan's army & to have travelled in 'the lands beyond'
- countries populated by dog-headed men cannibals Amazons & Pygmies Although Marco Polo's slightly earlier narrative ultimately proved more factually accurate Mandeville's was widely known used by Columbus Leonardo da Vinci & Martin Frobisher & inspiring writers as diverse as Swift Defoe & Coleridge This intriguing blend of fact exaggeration & absurdity offers both fascinating insight into & subtle criticism of fourteenth-century conceptions of the world
...

The second part of The History of The Lord of the Rings an enthralling account of the writing of the Book of the Century which contains many additional scenes &

Includes:: the unpublished Epilogue in its entirety The Treason of Isengard continues the account of the creation of The Lord of the Rings started in the earlier volume The Return of the Shadow It races the great expansion of the tale into new lands & peoples south & east of the Misty Mountains the emerence of Lothlorien of Ents of the Riders of Rohan & of Saruman the White in the fortress of Isengard In brief outlines & pencilled drafts dashed down on scraps of paper are seen the first entry of Galadriel the earliest ideas of the history of Gondor & the original meeting of Aragorn & Eowyn its significance destined to be wholly transformed The book also contains a full account of the original map which was to be the basis of the emerging geography of Middle-earth This series of fascinating books has now been repackaged to complement the distinctive & classic style of the black cover' A-format paperbacks of The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion & Unfinished Tales

...

Percy the Park Keeper surprises his animal friends in this engaging story from highly-regarded best-selling author-illustrator Nick Butterworth

Includes:: a fabulous fold-out poster! Percy the park keeper is planning a treasure hunt All his animal friends are to follow a trail of clues around the park & the first one to reach the end will find the treasure! The animals are so excited they can't wait for the hunt to begin

...

Geronimo Stilton is a bestselling children's series with a dedicated international fan base It follows the adventures of the Geronimo Stilton the famouse journalist searching for the next hot scoop 112 pages 127 Illustrations black & white Stilton Geronimo ...

A boy & his dog set sail in search of treasure braving stormy seas mountains snowy & cold the forest where the monkeys swing the swamp where the bullfrogs sing & other challenging obstacles before finally reaching the end of their quest But wait! Pirate Frank is A GIRL! & she doesn't want to share Back home they go retracing their steps before sailing away to dream of the treasure they've lost ...

A quiet residential street in south London A husband & wife are discovered imprisoned in their own home Badly dehydrated they've been bound & beaten He is close to death But worse is to come their young son is missing When Detective Inspector Jack Caffery is called in to investigate the similarities with events in his own past make it impossible for him to view this new crime dispassionately & as he digs deeper
- as he attempts to hold his own life together in the face of ever more disturbing revelations about both his past & his present
- the real nightmare begins

...