On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher walks down a staircase beneath Sofia`s National Palace of Culture, looking for sex. Among the stalls of a public bathroom he encounters Mitko, a charismatic young hustler. He returns to Mitko again & again over the next few months, & their trysts grow increasingly intimate & unnerving as the enigma of this young man becomes inseparable from that of his homel&, Bulgaria, a country with a difficult past & an uncertain future. Garth Greenwell`s What Belongs to You is a stunning debut about an American expat struggling with his own complicated inheritance while navigating a foreign culture. Lyrical & intense, it tells the story of a man caught between longing & resentment, unable to separate desire from danger, & faced with the impossibility of understanding those he most longs to know. ...

On an unseasonably warm autumn day, an American teacher enters a public bathroom beneath Sofia`s National Palace of Culture. There he meets Mitko, a charismatic young hustler, & pays him for sex. He returns to Mitko again & again over the next few months, their relationship growing increasingly intimate & unnerving. As he struggles to reconcile his longing with the anguish it creates, he`s forced to grapple with his own fraught history: his formative experiences of love, his painful rejection by family & friends, & the difficulty of growing up as a gay man in southern America in the 1990s. Startlingly erotic & immensely powerful, What Belongs to You tells an unforgettable story about the ways our pasts & cultures, our scars & shames can shape who we are & determine how we love. ...

There are many things cats can do which children can`t, such as lap up milk & use their tongues as combs. There are also a number of things that cats can`t do, like sing children to sleep, or get down from trees... Abner Graboff combines the voice of childhood innocence with a wonderful sense of fun in his quirky book about the mysteries of cats & their secret lives, told from the point of view of a young child. Playful & bold illustrations complement the simple text, inspired by a much-loved family feline. ...

The razor-thin line between reality & madness is transgressed in this Faulknerian masterpiece, Antonio Lobo Antunes`s first novel to appear in English in five years. What Can I Do When Everything`s On Fire?, set in the steamy world of Lisbon`s demimonde a nightclub milieu of scorching intensity & kaleidoscopic beauty, a baleful planet populated by drag queens, clowns, & drug addicts is narrated by Paolo, the son of Lisbon`s most legendary transvestite, who searches for his own identity as he recalls the harrowing death of his father, Carlos; the life of Carlos`s lover, Rui, a heroin addict & suicide; as well as the other denizens of this hallucinatory world. Psychologically penetrating, pregnant with literary symbolism, & deeply sympathetic in its depiction of society`s dregs, Lobo Antunes`s novel ventriloquizes the voices of the damned in a poetic masterwork that recalls Joyce`s Ulysses with a dizzying farrago of urban images few readers will forget. ...

What do animals do all day? Find out in this fully illustrated book that features more than 100 animals. Little ones can explore fourteen scenes set in diverse habitats--including the jungle, the desert, & the savanna--then turn the page to find out what each animal is called, & what it gets up to in the wild. This funny companion title to What Do Grown-ups Do All Day? Is the perfect book to introduce little ones to animals big & small, & to explain how they work together in nature. ...

Richard Scarry`s classic title, What Do People Do All Day? is packed with pictures & things to spot on every page, this classic book brings the world of Richard Scarry to a new generation of readers. What do people do all day? Everyone is busy in Busytown
- from train drivers to doctors, from mothers to sailors, in police stations & on fire engines. Follow a colourful collection of busy people working through their busy days. Captain Salty & his crew are getting ready to go on a voyage; Doctor Lion is busy at the hospital; Sergeant Murphy is working very hard to keep things safe & peaceful; & engineers are building new roads. Another busy day in Busytown!
...

Along with the beautiful Eric Carle art work that children know & love, this book features a real magnifying glass equiped with sound buttons to help them look for hidden critters. As children explore page after page they can press the 5 sound buttons to bring the adventure to life. With this interactive book set, your little explorer can get a closer look at click beetles, ladybugs, fireflies, & more! ...

An invigorating book about the debates raging within China. We all know about the fast pace of change in this country. This book brings us the ideas being fought over in the country itself -- from democracy to the idea of a `peaceful rise`. It challenges all of our assumptions about China. We know everything & nothing about China. We know that China is changing so fast that the maps in Shanghai need to be rewritten every two weeks. We know that China has brought 300 million people from agricultural backwardness into modernity in just 30 years (something that took 200 years in Europe). China`s voracious appetite for resources is gobbling up 40% of the world`s cement., 40% of its coal, 30% of its steel, & 12% of its energy. It has become so integrated into the global economy that its prospects have immediate effects on our everyday lives: simultaneously doubling the cost of the London Olympics while halving the cost of our computers; keeping the US economy afloat but sinking the Italian footwear industry. We have an image of China as a dictatorship; a nationalist empire that threatens its neighbours & global peace. But how many people know about the debates raging within China? What do we really know about the kind of society China wants to become? What ideas are motivating its citizens? We can name America`s Neo-Cons & the religious right, but cannot name Chinese writers, thinkers or journalists -- what is the future they dream of for their country, or the world it is shaping? Because China`s rise -- like the fall of Rome or the British Raj -- will echo down generations to come, these are the questions we increasingly need to ask. Mark Leonard asks us to forget everything we thought we knew about China & start again. He introduces us to the thinkers that are shaping China`s wide open future & opens up a hidden world of intellectual debate that is driving a new Chinese revolution & changing the face of the world. ...

A colourful picture book about noise & sound, & a poor little crocodile who is really not looking forward to nursery. The first day of starting school is hard for everyone, even for a crocodile. & on top of this, there are just so many sounds & noises to be heard! How does little Crocodile deal with it all? Follow him as he journeys through the sounds he encounters on his first day at nursery, & tries to make it through to the end of the day, when he will be back with his mum again. ...

A New York Times bestseller Our ancestors crossed deserts, mountains, & oceans without even a whisper of what anyone today might consider modern technology. Those feats of endurance now seem impossible in an age where we take comfort for granted. But what if we could regain some of our lost evolutionary strength by simulating the environmental conditions of our forebears? Humans like to be comfortable. When it`s hot we switch on the air conditioning & when it`s cold we crank up the central heating. Yet thousands of us take part in challenges like Tough Mudder, Total Warrior & Survival of the Fittest, which take us well & truly out of our comfort zones. Scott Carney spent his days sitting at a desk staring at a screen. Approaching his mid-30s, he told himself that it was normal for his stomach to sag & for his legs to ache from under-use. Then he came across a picture of a nearly naked man twenty years his senior sitting on a glacier: Dutch guru Wim Hof, whose remarkable ability to control his body temperature in extreme cold has sparked a whirlwind of scientific study. Carney signed up to Hof`s one-week course, not realising that it would be the start of a four-year journey to unlock his own evolutionary potential. From hyperventilating in a dilapidated Polish farm house, to underwater weight-lifting with celebrities in California, What Doesn`t Kill Us sees Carney interview athletes, trainers & scientists about the astonishing & sometimes dangerous world of body transformation. He takes part in the UK`s original
- & most difficult
- obstacle course: Tough Guy, & completes a record-bending, 28-hour climb to the snowy peak of Mt Kilimanjaro, wearing nothing but a pair of shorts & running shoes. Above all, he learns that getting a little less comfortable might actually be the key to living a healthier, happier life.

...