Water is the most every day of substances. It pours from our taps & falls from the sky. We drink it, wash with it, & couldn`t live without it. Yet, on closer examination it is also a very strange substance (it is one of only a very small number of molecules which expand when cooled). Look closer again & water reveals itself as a key to a scientific story on the biggest of canvases. Water is crucial to our survival
- life depends on it
- but it was also fundamental in the origins of life on Earth. The millions of gallons of water which make up our rivers, lakes & oceans, originated in outer space. How it arrived here & how those molecules of water were formed, is a story which takes us back to the beginning of the universe. Indeed, we know more about the depths of space than we do about the furthest reaches of the oceans. Water has also shaped the world we live in. Whether it is by gently carving the Grand Canyon over millennia, or in shaping how civilisations were built; we have settled our cities along rivers & coasts. Scientific studies show how we feel calmer & more relaxed when next to water. We holiday by the seas & lakes. Yet one day soon wars may be fought over access to water. The Water Book will change the way you look at water. After reading it you will be able to hold a glass of water up to the light & see within it a strange molecule that connects you to the origins of life, the birth (and death) of the universe, & to everyone who ever lived.

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Water is the most every day of substances. It pours from our taps & falls from the sky. We drink it, wash with it, & couldn`t live without it. Yet, on closer examination it is also a very strange substance (it is one of only a very small number of molecules which expand when cooled). Look closer again & water reveals itself as a key to a scientific story on the biggest of canvases. ...

Four lives. Four defining moments which will bring them together. Owen Abingdon is haunted by nightmares of the Merfolk. He believes they have stolen his little sister who vanished while he was meant to be minding her on the beach, but he was only a child himself. Is it fair for his mother to blame him? Catherine Hoyle`s perfect Christmas with her cousin from America was blighted when they went skating on thin ice & Rosalyn nearly died. Somehow, instead of being praised for raising the alarm, Catherine gets blamed. Sean Madigan grew up on a farm in Irel&. Learning to swim in the Shannon was his way of escaping the bitter poverty of his childhood, but it also incurred his father`s wrath. He flees to Engl&, but his heart belongs to the Shannon & her pulling power is evernear... Unlike the other three, Naomi Seddon didn`t fear the sea. She`d been orphaned & placed in a children`s home in Sheffield & cruelly abused. The sea offered her a way out & she revelled in its cruel power. The ”water children” meet in London in the searing hot summer of 1976 & Naomi uses her siren`s charm to lure Owen, Catherine & Sean into her tangled web of sexual charm & dangerous passion.A holiday in the Tuscan mountains with a flooded reservoir & its legend of the beautiful Teodora who drowned there brings this emotional drama to a powerful climax. Will the power of family, love & redemption finally help the water children conquer their fears & triumph over their childhood traumas? ...

Selected as a Book of the Year by The Times & The Economist. China`s history is an epic tapestry of courtly philosophies, warring factions & imperial intrigue. Yet, over five thousand years, one ancient element has so dramatically shaped the country`s fate that it remains the key to unlocking China`s story. That element is water. In The Water Kingdom Philip Ball takes us on a grand tour of China`s defining element, from the rice terraces & towering karts of its battle-worn waterways, to the vast engineering projects that have struggled to contain water`s wrath. What surfaces is the secret history of a people & a nation, drawn from its deep reverence for nature`s most dynamic force. ...

A secret history of China
- a fresh new way of thinking about a people, a civilisation, an epic story. The Water Kingdom takes
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In The Waters of Eternal Youth, the twenty-fifth instalment in the bestselling Brunetti series, our Commissario finds himself drawn into a case that may not be a crime at all. Brunetti is investigating a cold case by request of the grand Contessa Lando-Continui, a friend of Brunetti`s mother-in-law. Fifteen years ago the Contessa`s teenage granddaughter, Manuela, was found drowning in a canal. She was rescued from the canal at the last moment, but in many ways it was too late; she suffered severe brain damage & her life was never the same again. Once a passionate horse rider, Manuela, now aged thirty, cannot remember the accident, or her beloved horse, & lives trapped in an eternal youth. The Contessa, unconvinced that this was an accident, implores Brunetti to find the culprit she believes was responsible for ruining Manuela`s life. Out of a mixture of curiosity, pity & a willingness to fulfil the wishes of a loving grandmother, Brunetti reopens the case. But once he starts to investigate, Brunetti finds a murky past & a dark story at its heart. The Waters of Eternal Youth is awash in the rhythms & concerns of contemporary Venetian life, from historical preservation, to housing, to new waves of African migrants, all circling the haunting story of a woman trapped in a perpetual childhood. ...

Set on the English coast against the vivid backdrop of the sea, The Waves introduces six characters who are grappling with the death of a beloved friend, Percival. The characters are almost imperceptibly revealed through the kaleidoscopic accumulation of their reflections on themselves & each other. Regarded by many as Virginia Woolf`s masterpiece, The Waves was partially written in order to exorcise her private ghosts as the central, yet absent, character of Percival represents her brother Thoby, who died in 1906. It is a poetic dreamscape, visual, experimental & thrilling. With introductions by Jeanette Winterson & Gillian Beer. ...

A formally innovative work of modernist fiction, Virginia Woolf`s ” The Waves” is edited with an introduction by Kate Flint in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. More than any of Virginia Woolf`s other novels, ” The Waves” conveys the full complexity & richness of human experience. Tracing the lives of a group of friends, ” The Waves” follows their development from childhood to youth & middle age. While social events, individual achievements & disappointments form its narrative, the novel is most remarkable for the rich poetic language that expresses the inner life of its characters: their aspirations, their triumphs & regrets, their awareness of unity & isolation. Separately & together, they query the relationship of past to present, & the meaning of life itself. Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) is regarded as a major 20th century author & essayist, a key figure in literary history as a feminist & modernist, & the centre of ” The Bloomsbury Group”. This informal collective of artists & writers, which included ” Lytton Strachey” & ” Roger Fry”, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. Between 1925 & 1931 Virginia Woolf produced what are now regarded as her finest masterpieces, from ” Mrs Dalloway” (1925) to the poetic & highly experimental novel ” The Waves” (1931). She also maintained an astonishing output of literary criticism, short fiction, journalism & biography, including the playfully subversive ” Orlando” (1928) & ”A Room of One`s Own” (1929) a passionate feminist essay. If you enjoyed ” The Waves”, you might like Woolf`s ” Mrs Dalloway”, also available in ” Penguin Classics”. ”A book of great beauty & a prose poem of genius.” (” Stephen Spender”). ” Full of sensuous touches...the sounds of her words can be velvet on the page.” (Maggie Gee, ” Daily Telegraph”). ...

The Waves is an astonishingly beautiful & poetic novel. It begins with six children playing in a garden by the sea & follows their lives as they grow up & experience friendship, love & grief at the death of their beloved friend Percival. Regarded by many as her greatest work, The Waves is also seen as Virginia Woolf`s response to the loss of her brother Thoby, who died when he was twenty-six. ...

One bright February afternoon on a beach in Cornwall, Gavin Pretor-Pinney took a break from cloudspotting & started watching the waves rolling into shore. Mesmerised, he wondered where they had come from, & decided to find out. He soon realised that waves don`t just appear on the ocean, they are everywhere around us, & our lives depend on them. From the rippling beats of our hearts, to the movement of food through our digestive tracts & of signals across our brains, waves are the transport systems of our bodies. Everything we see & hear reaches us via light & sound waves, & our information age is reliant on the microwaves & infrared waves used by the telephone & internet infrastructure. From shockwaves unleashed by explosions to torsional waves that cause suspension bridges to collapse, from sonar waves that allow submarines to `see` with sound to Mexican waves that sweep through stadium crowds...there were waves, it seemed, wherever Gavin looked. But what, he wondered, could they all have in common with ones we splash around in on holiday? By the time he made the ultimate surfer`s pilgrimage to Hawaii, Gavin had become a world-class wavewatcher, although he was still rubbish at surfing. &, while this fascinating, funny book may not teach you how to ride the waves, it will show you how to tune into the shapes, colours & forms of life`s many undulations. ...