A gripping ghost story from former Children`s Laureate & author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo. Everyone knows the Big Hill is full of gold, & now the islanders are intent on cutting the top off it & making themselves rich. Jessie & Jake are determined to save the Big Hill but what can they do? A plan is needed, & fast. Could the ghost of Grania O` Malley, the pirate queen, be the answer? A mysterious tale of magic, ghosts & pirates, from a master storyteller. ...

The first time Annie Sweet sees 43 Stanley Road, the house is so perfect she almost feels as though it has chosen her. She longs to move in, but with her husband seeming more distant, & her daughter wrapped up in her friends & new school, Annie is left alone to mull over the past. Soon she becomes consumed by the house & everyone who has lived there before her, especially a young chorus girl called Lily Painter, a rising star of the music hall whose sparkling performances were the talk of the town. As Annie delves further into Lily`s past she begins to unravel a dark episode from Edwardian London, that of two notorious baby farmers, who lured young unmarried mothers with the promise of a better life for their babies. Until Annie solves the mystery at the heart of the scandal, the ghost of Lily Painter will never be able to rest. Based on a real period from London`s rich history, Caitlin Davies skilfully blends fact & fiction to bring to life part of our sinister past. Spanning an entire century, from the journals of an Edwardian police inspector to a doomed wartime love affair, The Ghost of Lily Painter is an engrossing & poignant novel from a hugely talented writer. ...

On September 29th 1938 the fate of a country was sealed at Munich. Hitler, Mussolini, Neville Chamberlain & the President of France, Edouard Daladier negotiated the handover to Germany of the Sudetenlands, & with it came the betrayal of a nation by the great European powers. Chamberlain claimed ` Peace with honour`. Daladier returned to Paris a hero, the man who saved France from another disastrous war with Germany. Yet he knew he had failed. `I had been knocked out of the ring, ` he says in this extraordinary novel, based upon detailed historical research. Scene by scene, hour by hour the reader accompanies Daladier from his departure to Munich to his triumphant but ultimately tragic return to Paris. In Germany we sit with him & the other leaders at the conference table, & as the tensions of the fateful day build up, the political twists & turns & the personal animosities intensify. History made Daladier the Ghost of Munich, the forgotten dupe, the fool cast to oblivion for his role in a thirteen hour blackmail. This is his story. The Ghost of Munich has the sharpness of film, the drama of tragedy & the truth of history. ...

I have come backe to this towne. Thos. Kempe Bottles have been smashed, doors slammed & strange messages scrawled everywhere. & James is being blamed. It`s not fair. Why won`t his parents believe in ghosts? Because the ghost of Thomas Kempe is very real. & he`s got it in for James...”A great year-round read”. (The Independent). ...

The classic ghost story from Penelope Lively, one of the modern greats of British fiction for adults & children alike. James is fed up. His family has moved to a new cottage
- with grounds that are great for excavations, & trees that are perfect for climbing
- & stuff is happening. Stuff that is normally the kind of thing he does. But it`s not him who`s writing strange things on shopping lists & fences. It`s not him who smashes bottles & pours tea in the Vicar`s lap. It`s a ghost
- honestly. Thomas Kempe the 17th century apothecary has returned & he wants James to be his apprentice. No one else believes in ghosts. It`s up to James to get rid of him. Or he`ll have no pocket money or pudding ever again. An iconic ghost story for children, The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is adored by generations of readers.


...

' People will die, ' says the panic-stricken woman outside police headquarters. She has been standing in blazing sunshine for more than an hour, & refuses to speak to anyone besides Commissaire Adamsberg. Her daughter has seen a vision: ghostly horsemen who target the most nefarious characters in Normandy. Since the middle ages there have been stories of murderers, rapists, those with serious crimes on their conscience, meeting a grizzly end following a visitation by the riders. Soon after the young woman's vision a notoriously cruel man disappears, & the local police dismiss the matter as superstition. Although the case is far outside his jurisdiction, Adamsberg agrees to investigate the strange happenings in a village terrorised by wild rumours & ancient feuds. ...

The Ghost Road is the final instalment in Pat Barker`s Regeneration trilogy. Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize. 1918, the closing months of the war. Army psychiatrist William Rivers is increasingly concerned for the men who have been in his care
- particularly Billy Prior, who is about to return to combat in France with young poet Wilfred Owen. As Rivers tries to make sense of what, if anything, he has done to help these injured men, Prior & Owen await the final battles in a war that has decimated a generation... The Ghost Road is the Booker Prize-winning account of the devastating final months of the First World War. ” An extraordinary tour de force. I`m convinced that the trilogy will win recognition as one of the few real masterpieces of late twentieth-century British fiction”. (Jonathan Coe). ” Powerful, deeply moving”. (Barry Unsworth, Sunday Times). ” Harrowing, original, unforgettable”. (Independent). ”A triumph”. (Sunday Times). Pat Barker was born in 1943. Her books include the highly acclaimed Regeneration trilogy, comprising Regeneration, which has been filmed, The Eye in the Door, which won the Guardian Fiction Prize, & The Ghost Road, which won the Booker Prize. The trilogy featured the Observer`s 2012 list of the ten best historical novels. She is also the author of the more recent novels Another World, Border Crossing, Double Vision, Life Class, & Toby`s Room. She lives in Durham.
...

Ever since first visiting Ireland twenty years ago, John Mc Carthy has felt a strong affinity with its people & the landscape, but despite his roots has never considered himself remotely Irish. He now returns to a much-changed country & discovers his heritage is still alive & thriving. With sections on politics, religion, literature, language & music, Mc Carthy presents an unsentimentalised account of the people & places he encounters, while tackling some of the ghosts in his own life. ...

Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the fusion of architecture, history & national identity in present-day Berlin. This volume asks such questions as: how will a reunified Germany confront a diverse & authoritarian past rendered tangible by the Berlin Wall, the Reichstag, Hitler`s bunker
- even the Brandenburg Gate? How can the rich culture of the past, the artistic & intellectual heritage of Berlin`s avant garde be rescued from the Cold War blight of Potsdamer Platz? & can the Neue Wache, Berlin`s monumental rememberance of the horrors of tyranny & war, become the structural centre-piece & symbollic guardian of this once & future capital? Ladd surveys the urban landscape & deconstructs the public debates & political controversies emerging from Berlin`s past & concludes that the ghosts of Berlin may never, indeed, should never, fade away.
...

In a remarkable & indefatigable archaeological quest Juliet Barnes, who has lived in Kenya all her life & whose grandparents knew some of the Happy Valley characters, has set out to explore Happy Valley to find the former homes & haunts of this extraordinary & transient set of people. Happy Valley was the name given to the Wanjohi Valley in the Kenya Highlands, where a small community of affluent, hedonistic white expatriates settled between the wars. While Kenya`s early colonial days have been immortalised by farming pioneers like Lord Delamere & Karen Blixen, & the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham, Happy Valley became infamous under the influence of troubled socialite, Lady Idina Sackville, whose life was told in Frances Osborne`s bestselling The Bolter. The era culminated with the notorious murder of the Earl of Erroll in 1941, the investigation of which laid bare the Happy Valley set`s decadence & irresponsibility, chronicled in another bestseller, James Fox`s White Mischief. But what is left now? With the help of a remarkable African guide & further assisted by the memories of elderly former settlers, she finds the remains of grand residences tucked away beneath the mountains & speaks to local elders who share first-hand memories of these bygone times. Nowadays these old homes, she discovers, have become tumbledown dwellings for many African families, school buildings, or their ruins have almost disappeared without trace
- a revelation of the state of modern Africa that makes the gilded era of the Happy Valley set even more fantastic. A book to set alongside such singular evocations of Africa`s strange colonial history as The Africa House, The Ghosts of Happy Valley is a mesmerising blend of travel narrative, social history & personal quest.
...