Rosie Strange doesn`t believe in ghosts or witches or magic. No, not at all. It`s no surprise therefore when she inherits the ramshackle Essex Witch Museum, her first thought is to take the money & run. Still, the museum exerts a curious pull over Rosie. There`s the eccentric academic who bustles in to demand she help in a hunt for old bones, those of the notorious Ursula Cadence, a witch long since put to death. & there`s curator Sam Stone, a man about whom Rosie can`t decide if he`s tiresomely annoying or extremely captivating. It all adds up to looking like her plans to sell the museum might need to be delayed, just for a while. Finding herself & Sam embroiled in a most peculiar centuries-old mystery, Rosie is quickly expelled from her comfort zone, where to her horror, the secrets of the past come with their own real, & all too present, danger as a strange magic threatens to envelope them all. ...

Spanning many centuries, all continents & the realms of outer space & the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-colour illustrations with quirky statistics & smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world. Brimming with trivia, deadpan humour & idiosyncratic lore, Strange Maps is a fascinating tour of all things weird & wonderful in the world of cartography. ...

' The first thing Senora Prudencia Linero noticed when she reached the port of Naples was that it had the same smell as the port of Riohacha...' Their distant, nostalgic memories of home, their sense of anonymity in a foreign l&, the terrifying pang of vulnerability they feel as they step over the threshold into an alien world... These pilgrims
- the ageing prostitute preparing for death by teaching her dog to weep at her grave, the panicked husband scared for the life of his injured wife, the old man who allows his mind to wander on a long-haul flight from Paris
- experience with all Marquez's humour, warmth & colour, what it is to be a Latin American adrift in Europe or, indeed, any outsider living far from home.

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Strange Places, Questionable People is the first volume of John Simpson`s autobiography. For over thirty years, John Simpson has travelled the world to report on the most significant events of our time. From being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson on one of his first days as a reporter, to escaping summary execution in Beirut, flying into Teheran with the returning Ayatollah Khomeini, & narrowly avoiding entrapment by a beautiful Czech secret agent, Simpson has had an astonishingly eventful career. In 1989 he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre, the fall of the Berlin Wall & the collapse of Communism throughout Eastern Europe &, only weeks later, in South Africa, the release of Nelson Mandela. With Simpson`s uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time, this autobiography is a ring-side seat at every major event in recent global history. ...

The La Fleur restaurant has a slew of unusual phenomena. Bonnet-clad apparitions pass through walls, blood leaks from ceilings & rats besiege the dining room. Experts from the Great Essex Witch Museum are called in to quell these strange sights. But before Rosie Strange & Sam Stone can do their thing events turn darker. For La Fleur`s chef has been strung up & slaughtered like a pig. More oddly, the only witness, the owner`s daughter Mary, swears blind a ghost did it. Rosie & Sam must find out what`s happening before Mary takes the fall. But intuitions & tip-offs lead them stumbling into the dark waters of the past, exposing secrets of a wider conspiracy, as well as secrets all Rosie`s own. With strange chills Rosie & Sam learn that seeing isn`t always believing, while thoughts of truth may be just as illusory. ...

They were coming tonight to tell ghost stories. `A tale to freeze the blood, ` was the only rule. Switzerl&, 1816. On a stormy summer night, Lord Byron & his guests are gathered round the fire. Felix, their serving boy, can`t wait to hear their creepy tales. Yet real life is about to take a chilling turn
- more chilling than any tale. Frantic pounding at the front door reveals a stranger, a girl covered in the most unusual scars. She claims to be looking for her sister, supposedly snatched from England by a woman called Mary Shelley. Someone else has followed her here too, she says. & the girl is terrified. This breathtaking new book from Emma Carroll, the critically-acclaimed author of Frost Hollow Hall, The Girl Who Walked On Air, In Darkling Wood & The Snow Sister, is a deliciously creepy story inspired by the creation of Frankenstein, & is brought to life by a leading talent in children`s literature.
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Long considered a masterpiece of the eerie & fantastic, Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio is a collection of supernatural-themed tales compiled from ancient Chinese folk stories by Songling Pu in the eighteenth century. These tales of ghosts, magic, vampirism, & other things bizarre & fantastic are an excellent Chinese companion to Lafcadio Hearn`s well-known collections of Japanese ghost stories Kwaidan & In Ghostly Japan. Already a true classic of Chinese literature & of supernatural tales in general, this new edition of the Herbert A. Giles translation converts the work to Pinyin for the first time &

Includes:: a new foreword by Victoria Cass that properly introduces the book to both readers of Chinese literature & of hair-raising tales best read with the lights turned low on a quiet night. Some of the stories found in these pages include: The Tiger of Zhaocheng The Magic Sword Miss Lianziang, the Fox-Girl The Quarrelsome Brothers The Princess Lily A Rip Van Winkle The Resuscitated Corpse Taoist Miracles A Chinese Solomon.

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When Daniel Kalder, acclaimed author of Lost Cosmonaut, descended into the sewers of Moscow in pursuit of the mythical lost city of tramps, he didn`t realise that he was embarking on a bizarre, year-long odyssey that would lead him thousands of miles across Russia to the Arctic Circle via the heart of Asia. After exploring the depths of Moscow`s ` Underground Planet`, Kalder chases down demons & exorcists in a post-Orange Revolution Ukraine, meets Vissaron Christ, one-time traffic cop, now messiah to thousands of followers in Siberia, enters the only wooden skyscraper on the planet & encounters a man with a bizarre secret that may explain everything... ...

Tsukiko is in her late 30s & living alone when one night she happens to meet one of her former high school teachers, ` Sensei`, in a bar. He is at least thirty years her senior, retired &, she presumes, a widower. After this initial encounter, the pair continue to meet occasionally to share food & drink sake, & as the seasons pass
- from spring cherry blossom to autumnal mushrooms
- Tsukiko & Sensei come to develop a hesitant intimacy which tilts awkwardly & poignantly into love. Perfectly constructed, funny, & moving, Strange Weather in Tokyo is a tale of modern Japan & old-fashioned romance.

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