When novelist Owen Quine goes missing, his wife calls in private detective Cormoran Strike. At first, she just thinks he has gone off by himself for a few days
- as he has done before
- & she wants Strike to find him & bring him home. But as Strike investigates, it becomes clear that there is more to Quine`s disappearance than his wife realises. The novelist has just completed a manuscript featuring poisonous pen-portraits of almost everyone he knows. If the novel were published it would ruin lives
- so there are a lot of people who might want to silence him. & when Quine is found brutally murdered in bizarre circumstances, it becomes a race against time to understand the motivation of a ruthless killer, a killer unlike any he has encountered before.. .A compulsively readable crime novel with twists at every turn, The Silkworm is the second in the highly acclaimed series featuring Cormoran Strike & his determined young assistant Robin Ellacott.


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This laugh-out-loud book is bursting with lists, facts, jokes & funny true stories all about silly people, silly animals, silly inventions, silly names & much more. Discover The Great Stink, the man who ate a bike, a girl really called Lorna Mower & a sofa that can do 87mph. Find out about famous pranks, crazy festivals, nutty cats, gross foods, epic sports fails, ludicrously silly words & really rubbish predictions. There are even lots of great silly things to do. Unmissable! ...

Do you know what `park your jam on the frog` means? Fancy some ognib? What rhymes with `circus`?.. .plus many more amazing things you never knew about words. Have hours of fun wixing up your murds with this hilarious book, packed full of rhymes, puns, games, jokes, gibberish & more. ...

This powerful novel from the award-winning author of Richard & Judy pick ` Eve Green` is a tale of love & the lore of the sea. The islanders of Parla are still mourning the loss of one of their own. Four years since that loss, & a man
- un-named, unclothed
- is washed onto their shores. Some say he is a mythical man from the sea
- potent, kind & beautiful; others suspect him. For the bereft Maggie, this stranger brings love back to the isle. But as the days pass he changes every one of them
- & the time comes for his story to be told... Tender, lyrical & redemptive, ` The Silver Dark Sea` is the dazzling new novel from the author of ` Eve Green` (winner of Whitbred First Novel award). It is a story about what life can give & take from us, when we least expect it
- & how love, in all its forms, is the greatest gift of all.




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The Pyramid Texts were carved onto the walls of burial chambers in royal pyramids 4, 000 years ago. They have intrigued scholars, mystics & historians ever since they were discovered in 1881. They have usually been misconstrued as a garbled collection of primitive myths & incantations, relegating their radiant fusion of philosophy, scientific inquiry, & religion to obscurity. Translations of the texts often reduce them to gibberish. Yet these writings are in fact among the world`s oldest poetry, cosmological speculations & reflections on nature. Susan Brind Morrow has recast The Pyramid Texts as a coherent work of art, arguing that they should be recognized as a formative event in the evolution of human thought. The result is a work of beautiful & intelligent literature, alongside a persuasive argument for The Pyramid Texts` central importance to the history of language. ...

This book presents a selection of 40 recipes adapted from ” The Silver Spoon” by a specially commissioned expert on children`s food. The recipes have been chosen for their simple instructions, fresh & healthy ingredients & delicious flavour, & are guaranteed to appeal to the fussiest of children. Each recipe is presented with a short introduction about the origins of the dish, fascinating facts about the ingredients & the Italian culinary culture. There is also information on seasons, ingredients & basic cooking techniques to foster a lifetime love of good food. A specialist in the field of children`s food & nutrition has selected the recipes to ensure they are well balanced, safe & perfect for children to use. The book is fully illustrated throughout, using specially commissioned illustrations to add a lively & charming feel & finished photographs of the finished dish. ” The Silver Spoon for Children” makes cooking fun, clear & accessible for children aged 10 & up. ...

100 recipes that can be cooked in under 30 minutes from the world`s most trusted & bestselling Italian cookbook. This is the latest title in Phaidon`s bestselling Silver Spoon series presenting over 100 recipes all of which can be made in 30 minutes or less. The recipes have been collected from the bestselling book on authentic Italian cooking, The Silver Spoon which has sold over 1 million copies. Each recipe has been thoroughly tested & is aimed at home cooks of all experience levels. Cooks of all levels can master such classics as spaghetti alle vongole, risotto Milanese, fritto misto & tiramisu. Its flexi-bound format packages its iconic recipes into a practical, easy to use package that will become a staple of any kitchen.

Features:
- Simple, fast recipes from the bestselling Italian cookbook of all time
- Over 100 recipes from the world`s most popular cuisine
- Every recipe can be made in 30 minutes or less & is suitable for cooks of all levels
- Each recipe has been thoroughly tested & is accompanied by a beautiful photograph
- This is the cookbook to make the daily family meal easy & delicious in less than half an hour






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` The scene of this little book is on a high mountain. Its naked peak stands nearly four thousand five hundred feet above the sea; its sides are fringed with forest; &, the soil, where it is bare, glows warm with cinnabar`. In 1880, Robert Louis Stevenson was living in San Francisco, recovering from a bout of bronchitis that plagued him all his life. Broke, his career floundering, he nevertheless fell in love with & married Fanny Vandegrift Osbourne, a divorcee, in May of that year. Escaping the San Francisco fogs, the newly married couple travelled to the Napa Valley & the Mayacamas Mountains. Deep in the mountains, in an old mining town called Silverado, they spent their unconventional honeymoon in an abandoned millhouse that clung to the shoulder of Mount Saint Helena. For two months, they squatted amidst the detritus of the mines in `a sylvan solitude` where bears roamed & fierce winds blew down into the valley. Stevenson was free of sickness, inspired to write & utterly content. Taken from the diaries he kept during the time ” The Silverado Squatters” is punctuated with colourful portrayals of the quirky & eccentric people who inhabited Silverado & with fascinating descriptions of the daily trials of living simply in the wild. Sparkling with rich & vivid descriptions of the landscape that so captivated Stevenson, this is above all a remarkably personal & revealing memoir by this most loved writer. ...

The year is 1792 & it`s winter in Berkeley Square. As the city sleeps, the night-watchman keeps a cautious eye over the streets & another eye in the back doors of the great & the good. Then one fateful night he comes across the body of Pierre Renard, the eponymous silversmith, lying dead, his throat cut & his valuables missing. It could be common theft, committed by one of the many villains who stalk the square, but as news of the murder spreads, it soon becomes clear that Renard had more than a few enemies, all with their own secrets to hide. At the centre of this web is Mary, the silversmith`s wife. Ostensibly theirs was an excellent pairing, but behind closed doors their relationship was a dark & at times sadistic one & when we meet her, Mary is withdrawn & weak, haunted by her past & near-mad with guilt. Will she attain the redemption she seeks & what, exactly, does she need redemption for…? Rich, intricate & beautifully told, this is a story of murder, love & buried secrets. ...

The story of the man who strung the telegraph across Australia, & the woman who gave her name to Alice Springs. In 1855 an impoverished young scientist from Greenwich told his guardian that he was off to chance his luck in Australia
- as Government Astronomer & Superintendent of Telegraphs for the small colony of South Australia. With him went his young wife Alice
- after whom Alice Springs would be named. For Charles Todd was following a dream
- the near impossible task of stringing a telegraph wire across one of the last uncrossed colonial wilderness, & finally connecting Australia with Britain. In 1997, their great-great-granddaughter Alice followed in their footsteps. Her plan was to track the telegraph & her ancestors, from Adelaide over the thousands of miles of desert, outback, swamp & mountain that Charles Todd had crossed in the 1860s with his 400 men.


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