Introducing the marvellous Captain Corcoran
- he is charming to ladies, courteous to true gentlemen, death to pirates & merciless
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Eddie knows her mum would love a Fluffy Squishy Itty Bitty for her birthday. The only problem is that she doesn`t know what a Fluffy Squishy Itty Bitty is, or where to find one! Join Eddie as she tours the whole town, trying to track down the perfect present. ...

”I`ve got you, & you`ve got me
- so we`ll be all right”... One day, adventurous Mouse sets off to find the moon with his Marvellous
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In The Marvels, Selznick crafts another remarkable artistic & bookmaking achievement that weaves together two seemingly unrelated stories-one in words, the other in pictures-with spellbinding synergy. The illustrated story begins in 1766 with Billy Marvel, the lone survivor of a shipwreck, & charts the adventures of his family of actors over five generations. The prose story opens in 1990 & follows Joseph, who has run away from school to an estranged uncle`s puzzling house in London, where he, along with the reader, must piece together many mysteries. Filled with mystery, vibrant characters, surprise twists, & heart-rending beauty, & featuring Selznick`s most arresting art to date, The Marvels is a moving tribute to the power of story. ...

” There is, ” said the marzipan pig, ”such sweetness in me!” From the inimitable team of Russell Hoban & Quentin Blake, the pair behind Captain Najork & The Twenty Elephant Restaurant, comes an enchanting story of a little pig made from marzipan. Fallen behind the sofa, nobody hears the lost marzipan pig`s cries for help. &, after many months, a mouse discovers him & eats him up, having never known such sweetness. But a longing to be loved passes from the marzipan pig to the mouse.. . & so begins a curious chain of events featuring a dancing owl, a glowing taxi meter, a buzzing bee & a pinky-orange hibiscus flower
- all triggered by the little lost marzipan pig. Each encounter more wonderful & more romantic than the last, just how far will the marzipan`s sweetness travel?
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Colette lives with her mother, making beautiful dresses for the rich women of Venice. She`s never known her father, & her mother won`t speak of him
- but Colette`s embroidery moves & dances, & she`s sure that there`s magic in her blood.. . And then Colette discovers the truth: her father is a famous maskmaker & a powerful magician. But when he`s ordered to create a mask that will bend others to its will, the magic becomes too strong for him to resist. Can Colette, with the help of a talking alley cat called Max, save him?
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Moving beyond travelogue, The Masque of Afric” considers the effects of belief (in indigenous animisms, the foreign religions of Christianity & Islam, the cults of leaders & mythical history) upon the progress of African civilization. Beginning in Uganda, at the centre of the continent, Naipaul`s journey takes in Ghana & Nigeria, the Ivory Coast & Gabon, & ends, as the country does, in South Africa. Focusing upon the theme of belief
- though sometimes the political or economical realities are so overwhelming that they have to be taken into account
- Naipaul examines the fragile but enduring quality of the old world of magic.

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Reportage resists easy definition & comes in many forms
- travel essay, narrative history, autobiography
- but at its finest

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In January 1895 Henry James anticipates the opening of his first play, Guy Domville, in London. The production fails, & he returns, chastened & humiliated, to his writing desk. The result is a string of masterpieces, but they are produced at a high personal cost. In The Master Colm Toibin captures the exquisite anguish of a man who circulated in the grand parlours & palazzos of Europe, who was astonishingly vibrant & alive in his art, & yet whose attempts at intimacy inevitably failed him & those he tried to love. It is a powerful account of the hazards of putting the life of the mind before affairs of the heart. ...

Mikhail Bulgakov`s ” The Master & Margarita” is a fiercely satirical fantasy that remained unpublished in its author`s home country for over thirty years. This ” Penguin Classics” edition is translated with an introduction by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky, the acclaimed translators of Tolstoy`s Anna Karenina. In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil
- to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev
- is very much alive. As death & destruction spread through the city like wildfire, condemning Moscow`s cultural elite to prison cells & body bags, only a madman, the ” Master & Margarita”, his beautiful, courageous lover, can hope to end the chaos. Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin`s reign & circulated in samizdat form for decades, when ” The Master & the Margarita” was finally published it became an overnight literary phenomenon, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere. This luminous translation from the complete & unabridged Russian text is accompanied by an introduction by Richard Pevear exploring the extraordinary circumstances of the novel`s composition & publication, & how Bulgakov drew on carnivalesque folk traditions to create his ironic subversion of Soviet propaganda. This edition also contains a list of further reading & a note on the text. After finishing high school, Mikhail Bulgakov (1891-1940) entered the Medical School of Kiev University, graduating in 1916. He wrote about his experiences as a doctor in his early works ” Notes of a Young Country Doctor”. His later works treated the subject of the artist & the tyrant under the guise of historical characters, but ” The Master & Margarita” is generally considered his masterpiece. If you enjoyed ” The Master & Margarita”, you might like Jonathan Swift`s ” Gulliver`s Travels”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ” One of the great novels of the 20th century, a scary, darkly comic allegory”. (” Daily Telegraph”).

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