Paddington Bear has been delighting adults & children alike with his earnest good intentions & humorous misadventures for over fifty years. To celebrate his enduring popularity, six best-loved classic picture books are brought together in one lavish volume, truly to be treasured. Paddington Bear had travelled all the way from Darkest Peru when the Brown family first met him on Paddington station. Since then their lives have never been quite the same...for ordinary things become quite extraordinary when a bear called Paddington is around. This sumptuous treasury brings together six of the most popular stories: Paddington Paddington at the Zoo Paddington at the Palace Paddington in the Garden Paddington & the Marmalade Maze Paddington the Artist ...

The seventh novel in Bernard Cornwell`s number one bestselling series on the making of England & the fate of his great hero, Uhtred of Bebbanburg. BBC2`s major Autumn 2015 TV show THE LAST KINGDOM is based on the first two books in the series. Uhtred
- sword of the Saxons, bane of the Vikings
- has been declared outcast. Peace in Britain has given Uhtred time to cause trouble
- for himself. Branded a pagan abomination by the church, he sails north. For, despite suspecting that Viking leader Cnut Longsword will attack the Saxons again, Uhtred is heading for Bebbanburg, fearing that if he does not act now he will never reclaim his stolen birthright. Yet Uhtred`s fate is bound to the Saxons. To Aethelflaed, bright lady of Mercia & to a dead king`s dream of Engl&. For great battles must still be fought
- & no man is better at that than Uhtred. Uhtred of Bebbanburg`s mind is as sharp as his sword. A thorn in the side of the priests & nobles who shape his fate, this Saxon raised by Vikings is torn between the life he loves & those he has sworn to serve.



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Tanjore, 1765. Young Maya plays among the towering granite temples of this ancient city in the heart of southern India. Like her mother before her, she is destined to become a devadasi, a dancer for the temple. She is instructed in dance, the mystical arts & lovemaking. It is expected she will be chosen as a courtesan for the prince himself. But as Maya comes of age, India is on the cusp of change & British dominance has risen to new heights. Far from home, the East India Company is acting like a country in its own right & the British troops are more of a rabble than the King`s army. The prince is losing his power & the city is sliding into war. Maya is forced to flee her ancestral home & heads to the bustling port city of Madras, where East & West collide. In this new home, Maya captivates all who watch her dance, including Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young Englishman who has travelled to India to make his fortune. But their love is forbidden & comes at enormous cost. Weaving together the uneasy meeting of two cultures, The Pagoda Tree is a captivating story of love, loss, fate & exile in 18th-century India. ...

Maya plays among the towering granite temples in the ancient city of Tanjore. Like her mother before her, she is destined to become a devadasi, a dancer for the temple, & her family all expect that the prince himself will choose her as a courtesan. On the day of her initiation, a stranger arrives in town. Walter Sutcliffe, a black-frocked English clergyman, strives to offer moral guidance to the British troops stationed in Tanjore. But he is beset by his own demons. As the British tear apart the princely kingdoms of India, Maya flees her ancestral home & heads to the steamy port city of Madras, where silks & satins are traded, poets vie for patrons, & fortunes are lost & found. When the shrieks of parrots fill the skies at dusk, Maya bows to the earth & starts to dance. Thomas Pearce, an ambitious young Englishman, is entranced from the moment he first sees her. But their love is forbidden & the consequences are devastating. Unfolding amid war & famine, The Pagoda Tree takes us deep into the heart of India as the country struggles under brutal occupation. As cultures collide, Walter Sutcliffe unknowingly plays the decisive card in Maya`s destiny. ...

A fast-paced historical mystery adventure for readers aged 9+ years, with gorgeous Edwardian period detail. Perfect for fans of Chris Riddell`s Goth Girl series, Enid Blyton & Robin Stevens`s Murder Most Unladylike series. When a priceless painting is stolen, our dauntless heroines Sophie & Lil find themselves faced with forgery, trickery & deceit on all sides! Be amazed as the brave duo pit their wits against this perilous puzzle! Marvel at their cunning plan to unmask the villain & prove themselves detectives to be reckoned with
- no matter what dangers lie ahead... It`s their most perilous adventure yet! Praise for The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow: ”A wonderful book, with a glorious heroine & a true spirit of adventure.” (Katherine Rundell, author of Rooftoppers). ”A real page-turner, it has murders, spies & gangs of thieves. Thrilling!” (Indiana, aged 10 years, Love Readingfor Kids reviewer). ” Dastardliness on a big scale is uncovered in this well-plotted, evocative novel.” (Nicolette Jones, The Sunday Times). ” It`s a dashing plot, an atmospheric setting & an extensive & imaginative cast. Katherine Woodfine handles it all with aplomb.” (Julia Eccleshare, Guardian). ” An incredible read full of mystery, wonder & adventure... This is now one of my top ten.” (Celeste, age 13 years, Love Reading 4 Kids reviewer). The Mystery of the Painted Dragon is the third book in the Sinclair Mysteries quartet. The other two books are the bestselling The Mystery of the Clockwork Sparrow & The Mystery of the Jewelled Moth. Katherine Woodfine is a true champion of children`s literature. Until 2015 she was Arts Project Manager for Booktrust, where she project-managed the Children`s Laureateship & YALC, the UK`s first Young Adult Literature Convention, curated by Malorie Blackman. She is part of the founding team at Down the Rabbit Hole, a monthly show for Resonance FM discussing children`s literature. She lives in London.
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Egypt, 1912. Amelia Peabody & her dashing archaeologist husb&, Radcliffe Emerson, are once again in danger as they search for a priceless, stolen bust of legendary Queen Nefertiti... Arriving in Cairo for another thrilling excavation season, Amelia is relaxing in her elegant hotel suite when a man with knife protruding from his back staggers into her chamber & utters a single word -` Murder`
- before collapsing on the floor, dead. It soon becomes apparent that someone has saved Amelia from a would-be assassin-someone who is keeping a careful eye on the intrepid archaeologist. & there can be only one answer: the brilliant master of disguise, Sethos. For Amelia, this excavation season will prove to be unforgettable; one where a brilliant criminal will offer his final challenge... & perhaps be unmasked at last.` Think Miss Marple with early feminist gloss crossed with Indiana Jones` The Guardian
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The paintings from Nebamuns tomb chapel are among the greatest & most famous of the British Museums treasures. Yet much about them remains mysterious, & this book is concerned with the detective work undertaken to help us to understand & see them properly before they are displayed in a new permanent gallery in 2008. For this the paintings are being conserved & remounted in the Museums specialist laboratories, a process that is revealing radical new information about painting techniques in ancient Egypt. This, together with archival work, is helping us to solve the problem of the tomb-chapels location at Thebes, last seen in the 1820s when the paintings were removed. Richard Parkinson discusses each painting fully, with reconstructions & translations of the hieroglyphic texts, a discussion of the other known fragments (now in Berlin & Avignon) & a reconstruction of the whole tomb chapel. Every fragment is fully illustrated in color, doing full justice to an artist who has been described as antiquitys equivalent of Michelangelo. ...

Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with charming, attractive & exciting Charles Townsend. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange & terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages... First published to a storm of protest, ” The Painted Veil” is a classic story of a woman`s spiritual awakening. ...

This work is a wide-ranging study of the visual records of voyages & the artists that made them before the age of the camera. From Patagonia to Peking, the South Seas to the Sahara, western artists have played a vital role in the exposure of unfamiliar lands. From Jacques Le Moyne's paintings of Florida in 1564 to the development of portable cameras in the late-19th century, artists were a habitual feature of explorational, scientific & diplomatic voyages. The works of these travelling artists were at first appreciated more for their scientific value than for artistic merit. By the 18th century, however, painters such as William Hodges began to regard exotic journeys as an alternative to the European Grand Tour. With the 19th-century fashion for Orientalism, adventurous travel & great art were no longer regarded as mutually exclusive. This book looks at the ways in which travelling artists influenced early western attitudes towards distant lands, & examines how far the artists' own vision of these places was distorted, affected by factors as diverse as changing artistic fashions, the demands of colonial propaganda & the frequent need to work from memory. Jacob's text contains many anecdotes relating to the lives of these people. The illustrations form a visual record of the lands visited & include a large number of formerly little-known works. ...

In 1913, an orphan girl boards a steamship bound for Wuhu in South East China. Left in the hands of her soft-hearted but opium-addicted uncle she is delivered to The Hall of Eternal Splendour which, with its painted faces & troubling cries in the night, seems destined to break her spirit. & yet the girl survives & one day hope appears in the unlikely form of a customs inspector, a modest man resistant to the charms of the corrupt world that surrounds him but not to the innocent girl who stands before him. From the crowded rooms of a small-town brothel, heavy with the smoke of opium pipes & the breath of drunken merchants, to the Bohemian hedonism of Paris & the 1930s studios of Shanghai, Jennifer Epstein`s first novel, based on a true story, is an exquisite evocation of a fascinating time & place, with a breathtaking heroine at its heart. ...