Who can say what the night might bring? Mummy tucking you up with Teddy & a cup of Ovaltine? Fireworks & frivolity? A party? Music? Dancing? Or you could be reading in bed, between clean linen sheets before falling into deep & restful sleep & sweet dreams. & who knows; the night might bring romance, or love, or sex, if you play your cards right. Or you might be working; millions of people work at night. If nobody worked at night, Britain would cease to function. Or the night might be cold, haunted, inhuman & wild. When you look up into the night sky, you see that you are nothing. An insignificant mote of dust. Or the night could be all too human. Hen parties in skimpy dresses & fairy wings being slammed into the back of a police van; girls working on street corners in the part of town where the lights don't come on; businessmen going to lap-dancing clubs to forget what waits at home. Or you could die. Most people do die at night. Or you could just lie awake & wait for the dawn. Set over the course of an intoxicated night in a house up a mountain in West Cork, Ian Marchant offers a darkly funny account of what people get up to at night, explores his own experience of a life of night times, & shows us how we all have something of the night about us. ...

Winner of the inaugural Booker Prize in 1969. It is 1956 & Townrow is in Port Said
- of these two facts he`s reasonably certain.
...

The bestselling author of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel & Tulip Fever is back with a warm, witty & wise novel about the unexpected twists that later life can bring...` Nobody in the world knows our secret.. .that I`ve ruined Bev`s life, & she`s ruined mine.` Petra`s love life is a bit of a car-crash, even in her sixties. But then she falls for Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The catch? Jeremy is her best friend`s husb&. & just as Petra is beginning to relax guiltily into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, & to Bev, her best friend who she`s been betraying so spectacularly. It turns out that no matter where you are in the world, everyone has something to hide. Can Bev
- can anyone
- be trusted?

...

` Nobody in the world knows our secret...that I`ve ruined Bev`s life, & she`s ruined mine.` Petra`s romantic life has always been a car-crash, & even in her sixties she`s still capable of getting it disastrously wrong. But then she falls in love with Jeremy, an old chum, visiting from abroad. The fatal catch? Jeremy is her best friend`s husb&. But just as Petra is beginning to relax into her happy ever after, she finds herself catapulted to West Africa, & to Bev, her best friend who she`s been betraying so spectacularly. Meanwhile, on opposite sides of the world, two other women are also struggling with the weight of betrayal: Texan Lorrie is about embark on the biggest deception of her life, & in China Li-Jing is trying to understand exactly what it is her husband does on his West African business trips... It turns out that no matter where you are in the world, everyone has something to hide. Can Bev
- can anyone
- be trusted?

...

Jamal Khan, a psychoanalyst in his fifties living in London, is haunted by memories of his teens: his first love, Ajita; the exhilaration of sex, drugs & politics; & a brutal act of violence which changed his life for ever. As he & his best friend Henry attempt to make the sometimes painful, sometimes comic transition to their divorced middle age, balancing the conflicts of desire & dignity, Jamal`s teenage traumas make a shocking return into his present life. ...

Emma Dodd`s four popular picture books are now available in a chunky boardbook format. Illustrated in her appealing iconic style. In Sometimes
- a mother elephant assures her child that no matter what he does & who he is, she loves him unconditionally.
...

Somewhere Else is a thousand miles away & right next-door. It`s where fly-fishing takes you: a place & state of mind. In fourteen beautifully crafted stories Charles Rangeley-Wilson takes us around the world, from Arctic Quebec to upland Croatia, from the Scottish islands to the Northern Territories, always journeying into the heart of the landscape to meet ordinary, extraordinary people. Somewhere Else is a book about escaping from what you think you know, to find out how things really are. ...

In Somewhere Over The Rainbow foreign correspondent Gavin Bell returns to the country whose last days of apartheid he reported on, to learn what became of the ` Rainbow Nation` & discover a country full of haunting beauty & surprises, but one at odds with itself. Near the southern tip of Africa, there is a mountain that does a conjuring trick with the biggest tablecloth on earth. In a sacred forest near the Limpopo river, there is a bird that flies on wings of thunder, flashing lightning from its eyes & bearing rain in its beak. In between, there is a hauntingly beautiful land & millions of confused people. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu dubbed his native South Africa the ` Rainbow Nation`, he conjured a vision of ethnic diversity & harmony in a country with eleven official languages, two national anthems, & a parliament that shuttled between two cities. As a foreign correspondent reporting on the last days of apartheid, Gavin Bell thought it was a brave image & wondered how long it would endure. A few years later, he returned to find out what had happened to Tutu`s rainbow. In his travels he found a country at odds with itself, swinging between hope & despair, buoyed by a sense of freedom & haunted by a fear of violent crime. Somewhere Over The Rainbow is not only a fine travel book by an award-winning writer, it is a compelling portrait of a country in search of an identity. The leopard stories are good too. ...

Diana Athill made her reputation as a writer with the candour of her memoirs, now aged ninety, & freed from any inhibitions that even she may once have had, she reflects frankly on the losses & occasionally the gains that old age brings, & on the wisdom & fortitude required to face death. This is a lively narrative of events, lovers & friendships: the people & experiences that have taught her to regret very little, to resist despondency & to question the beliefs & customs of her own generation. ...

This remarkable novel, winner of the Commonwealth Writers` Prize, tells the story of three women, each of them far from where they came, all of whom are still searching for somewhere that can be called home. Maysa returns to the house that was her grandparents` when she was a child, in a village high on the slopes of Mount Lebanon. Aida, who has long since left the country of her birth, returns in search of the Palestinian refugee who was a second father to her when she was a child. & Salwa, now an old woman, recalls her life from her hospital bed, surrounded by her family but still, in some sense, far from home. ...