From the bestselling author of THE GIRL OF INK & STARS comes a gorgeous wintry folk tale for young & old alike
- perfect for fans
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Hillwalking is Ireland`s most widely practised leisure activity today. Rock climbing has developed to a level of technical excellence with crags in almost every county & numerous indoor climbing walls. Irish mountaineers have completed a winter ascent of the Eiger`s North Face, scaled the highest Himalayan peaks & other previously unclimbed giants, & explored hitherto unknown valleys. Paddy O` Leary recounts the history of hillwalking & mountaineering in Irel&, & shows that the early climbing scene was a reflection of, & not escape from, wider social issues: from the early activists
- some were involved in gun running, others died at Gallipoli
- to the turn of the millennium, when mountaineering in Ireland was no longer the preserve of the middle class. This history recounts the adventures, dangers, successes & failures which make this multifaceted activity such a fascinating one, & mirrors the spirit of all who love these places.

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From the acclaimed author of FALL ON YOUR KNEES
- an international bestseller
- comes a mesmerizing new novel ” The sun came

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When Skanda`s father Toby dies, estranged from Skanda`s mother & from the India he once loved, it falls to Skanda to return his body to his birthplace. This is a journey that takes him halfway around the world & deep within three generations of his family, whose fractures, frailties & toxic legacies he has always sought to elude. Both an intimate portrait of a marriage & its aftershocks, & a panoramic vision of India`s half-century
- in which a rapacious new energy supplants an ineffectual elite
- The Way Things Were is an epic novel about the pressures of history upon the present moment. It is also a meditation on the stories we tell & the stories we forget; their tenderness & violence in forging bonds & in breaking them apart. Set in modern Delhi & at flashpoints from the past four decades, fusing private & political, classical & contemporary to thrilling effect, this book confirms Aatish Taseer as one of the most arresting voices of his generation.

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This is a book about Palestine today. It is neither apologetic nor romanticized, but a powerful & brilliantly realized scream of a book, scorching & tender, from a journalist whose anger & empathy burn through every word. Over the past three years, Ben Ehrenreich has shared the laughter, fury & sorrow of people in cities & villages across the West Bank, young & old people, men & women. He has witnessed the extremes to which they are pushed, the daily deprivation & oppression that they face, the strategies they construct to survive it
- stoicism, resignation, rebellion, humour, & a stubborn, defiant joy. In The Way to the Spring, he describes the cruel mechanics of the Israeli occupation & the endless absurdities & tragedies it engenders: the complex & humiliating machinery of the checkpoints, walls, courts & prisons; the steady, strangling loss of lands that have been passed down for generations; the constant ebb & flow of deadly violence. Blending political & historical context with the personal stories of the people Ehrenreich meets, The Way to the Spring is a testimony, a provocation & a vital document. Written with grace & power, it breathes fresh life & urgency to a place & a conflict that too easily disappears in the shouting. This is a necessary book, an unflinching act of witnessing.
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In her bedroom wall, Sylvie spots a door.. .and beyond that door she finds a passage.. .and beyond the passage she discovers.. .the ZOO! Where Sylvie finds LOTS of animals, looking at her! So she decides to bring a few small ones, like a little bear, into her bedroom at night time, just for a cuddle. & then she takes the penguins back for a splashy bath. Once, she even brings back the monkeys but, really, they were too messy. No matter what Sylvie does though, she always makes sure to close the door in her bedroom wall. Until, one day, she forgets... ...

As a child in Florida, Caroline Alexander learnt Coleridge's masterpiece of a poem, Kubla Khan. Coleridge recalled that it was composed in an opium sleep as he was reading about Kubla Khan. He awoke & wrote fifty-five lines of the poem before being interrupted. Scholars have ever since discussed the contemporary works that had influenced Coleridge. In The Way to Xanadu, a literary travel book, Caroline Alexander recounts her quest across three continents to discover the sources of Coleridge's inspiration. ...

We have lost the ability to deal with death. Most of our friends & beloved relations will die in a busy hospital in the care of strangers, doctors & nurses they have known at best for a couple of weeks. They may not even know they are dying, victims of the kindly lie that there is still hope. They are unlikely to see even their family doctor in their final hours, robbed of their dignity & fed through a tube after a long series of excessive & hopeless medical interventions. This is the starting point of Seamus O` Mahoney`s thoughtful, moving & unforgettable book on the western way of death. Dying has never been more public, with celebrities writing detailed memoirs of their illness, but in private we have done our best to banish all thought of dying & made a good death increasingly difficult to achieve. ...

The wolf stalks the wilderness & our own imaginations. Uncover its mysteries in this beautifully written non-fiction picture book. Majestic & fierce, proud & strong, the wolf has always been a source of fascination
- & fear. It remains one of the most misunderstood of all creatures, frequently cast as our mortal enemy. The truth is that wolves & humans are more closely connected than we dare to admit. With beautifully lyrical language, Smriti Prasadam-Halls explores the lightning speed, echoing howl & family life of these mysterious animals, revealing astonishing facts & overturning misconceptions as she does so. Wildlife illustrator Jonathan Woodward brings the creatures to life with breathtaking papercut collage artwork. This is non-fiction storytelling at its very finest. The Ways of the Wolf has been endorsed by the UK Wolf Conservation Trust.
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Drifting through its cast of vivid, earthy characters in a series of impressionistic vignettes, ” The Wayward Bus”, published in ” Penguin Modern Classics”, is John Steinbeck`s Californian Canterbury Tales. ” The Wayward Bus” travels through the backroads of the lush California countryside, transporting the lost & the lonely to new destinations. Juan Chicoy is at the wheel, a man of the l&, hot-blooded & uninhibited. His passengers include Ernest, a travelling salesman out for fun, seventeen-year-old Kit, also known as Pimples, & Camille the stripper who dances at stag nights & takes the star-struck young Norma under her wing. This powerful & unsentimental novel becomes a story of crisis & passion, love & longing, as the travellers reveal their secrets & journey away from their pasts & towards, possibly, the promise of the future. ” The Wayward Bus”, with its profound insight into human desires & failings, remains one of Steinbeck`s most powerful novels. John Steinbeck (1902-68), winner of the Pulitzer Prize & the Nobel Prize for literature, is remembered as one of the greatest & best-loved American writers of the twentieth century. During the Second World War Steinbeck served as a war correspondent, with his collected dispatches published as ” Once There Was a War” (1958); in 1945 he was awarded the Norwegian Cross of Freedom for his novel ” The Moon is Down” (1942), a portrayal of Resistance efforts in northern Europe. His best-known works include the epics ” The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) & ” East of Eden” (1952), & his tragic novella ” Of Mice & Men” (1937). John Steinbeck`s complete works are published in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. If you enjoyed ” The Wayward Bus”, you might like Jack Kerouac`s ” On the Road”, also available in ” Penguin Modern Classics”. ` Sustained brilliance, complete credibility & vividness”. (” Saturday Review”). ” One of Steinbeck`s best books”. (” Newsweek”). ...