Luna & her polar bear friend (Bear) discover a beautiful gold flower growing in the snow.

But when the flower fades,

...

It has finally happened! The war is over & Europe rejoices. May 1945 – VE Day After battling against the odds, the three friends are uncertain of their futures. Maisie Miles must wait on tenterhooks for Japan to surrender & for poor Sid to return home. Will they still be sweethearts & have a future together? But tragedy strikes when Maisie's lodger Carole dies leaving 2-year-old Paula orphaned, Maisie is determined to keep the child she has grown to love as her own. Meanwhile Bridget O’ Neill’s husband has been patiently waiting her arrival in America but Bridget’s been struggling to leave her family & friends behind. Will she stay or will she go? Phyllis Fairbrother receives the devastating news that husband Mick has relapsed & suffering a life changing diagnosis. Their dreams of a new life in Australia lie in tatters, or so she thinks. With a new dawn, there are high hopes & boundless dreams. Can the Tobacco Girls unite once more to overcome life’s troubles & find... ...

In A Football Man, Giles tells the story of a dream pursued & realised beyond his wildest imaginings, from his humble beginnings in Ormond Square in 1940s Dublin, counting down the minutes to his next game of football, to that unforgettable moment when the original football man ...

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; &, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. 215, 000 women in the UK belong to the WI. Their membership crosses class & has recently begun to recruit huge numbers of young women (eg Shoreditch Sisters (check))/ It was founded in 1915, not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country, including suffragettes, academics & social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood, changing women's lives & their world in the process. Certainly its members made jam & sang ' Jerusalem', but they did, & do, much more besides. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are
- & always were
- a force to be reckoned with. This book has 294 pages & is 15.9 x 2.7 x 24.1 cm

...

Everyone knows three things about the Women's Institute: that they spent the war making jam; the sensational Calendar Girls were WI; &, more recently, that slow-handclapping of Tony Blair. But there's so much more to this remarkable Movement. Over 200, 000 women in the UK belong to the WI & their membership is growing. They cross class & religion, include all ages -from students & metropolitan young professionals, such as the Shoreditch Sisters, to rural centenarians -with passions that range from supporting the 1920s Bastardy Bill (in response to a wartime legacy of illegitimate babies) to the current SOS for Honey Bees campaign. It was founded in 1915, not by worthy ladies in tweeds but by the feistiest women in the country, including suffragettes, academics & social crusaders who discovered the heady power of sisterhood, changing women's lives & their world in the process. Certainly its members boiled jam & sang ' Jerusalem ', but they also made history. This fascinating book reveals for the first time how they are
- & always were
- a force to be reckoned with.

...

Winner of the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger 2012 for Best Thriller of the Year. Selected by the Sunday Times & the Guardian as Best Thriller. Perfect for fans of John le Carre, a gripping & suspenseful spy thriller from 'the master of the modern spy thriller' (Mail on Sunday) Six weeks before she is due to become the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene disappears without a trace. Disgraced ex-agent Thomas Kell is brought in from the cold with orders to find her
- quickly & quietly. The mission offers Kell a way back into the secret world, the only life he's ever known. Tracking her through France & North Africa, Kell embarks on a dangerous voyage, shadowed by foreign intelligence services. This far from home soil, the rules of the game are entirely different
- & the consequences worse than anyone imagines...

...

Paddy Ashdown’s autobiography was hailed as one of the most readable & exciting political life stories ever written of all – precisely because it was so very much more.

This is the autobiography of an old-fashioned Man of Action, an adventurer, to be compared more readily to Fitzroy Maclean than David Steel. Ashdown’s years as MP for Yeovil & leader of the Liberal Democrats pale alongside his time as a Royal Marine Commando, in the Special Boat squadron, as a spy, on military service in Northern Ireland & Indonesia, & then subsequently – perhaps his finest & most heroic role, as the UN’s High representative in war-torn Bosnia.

As one reviewer remarked: “ This must be the first political memoir to offer advice on the best way to execute a jungle ambush & on how to treat an open wound using red ants.”

Ashdown’s appeal – which explains this books’s hardback bestseller status – is that he transcends party political allegiances, & is seen as a genuinely honest & decent man unafraid to take on the hardest challenges.





...

Born in Blackburn in 1907, Alfred Wainwright left school at the age of 13. A holiday at the age of 23 kindled a life-long love affair with the Lake District. Following a move to Kendal in 1941 he began to devote every spare moment he had to researching & compiling the original seven Pictorial Guides. He described these as his 'love letters' to the Lakeland Fells & at the end of the first, The Eastern Fells, he wrote about what the mountains had come to mean to him: I suppose it might be said, to add impressiveness to the whole thing, that this book has been twenty years in the making, for it is so long, & more, since I first came from a smoky mill-town (forgive me, Blackburn!) & beheld, from Orrest Head, a scene of great beauty, a fascinating paradise, Lakeland's mountains & trees & water. That was the first time I had looked upon beauty, or imagined it, even. Afterwards I went often, whenever I could, & always my eyes were lifted to the hills. I was to find then, & it has been so ever since, a spiritual & physical satisfaction in climbing mountains ...

When Natalie Moore is killed in a freak accident in France, her mother, Jessica knows instinctively there is more to it. However, Natalie's father, Charlie is so paralysed by the horror of losing his daughter, that he refuses even to discuss his wife's suspicions. This book presents a story of love, resistance, loyalty & betrayal. ...

Gina & Sally Makepiece have inherited a stall in the French House an antiques centre nestled in the heart of the English countryside.

...