Its summer & time to head to Crabby Spit for a camping holiday. Dont forget to write! says Grandma. & sure enough the postcards come thick & fast detailing all the timeless pleasures of playing on the beach paddling & surfing finding treasures dancing to the glow of a bonfire. But look out for the mischievous family dog who makes it his business to collect all the belongings of an absent-minded artist. Full of Roland Harveys beautifully observed characters this is a humorous & hugely enjoyable picture book. ...

Summer 1931 in seedy Bayswater & James Ross is on his uppers. An aspiring writer whose stories nobody will buy (Its the slump) with a landlady harassing him for unpaid rent & occasional sleepless nights spent in the waiting room at Kings Cross Station he is reduced to selling carpet-cleaning lotion door-to-door. His prospects brighten when he meets the glamorous Suzi (the red hair & the tight jumper werent a false card: she really was a looker & no mistake) but their relationship turns out to be a source of increasing bafflement. Who is her boss the mysterious Mr Rasmussen
- whose face bears a startling resemblance to one of the portraits in Police News"
- & why is he so interested in the abandoned premises above the Cornhill jewellers shop? Worse mysterious Mr Haversham from West End Central is starting to take an interest in his affairs. With a brief to keep an eye on Schmiegelow James finds himself staying incognito at a grand Society weekend at a country house in Sussex where the truth
- about Suzi & her devious employer
- comes as an unexpected shock. Set against a backdrop of the 1931 financial crisis & the abandonment of the Gold Standard acted out in shabby bed-sitters & Lyons tea-shops " At the Chime of a City Clock" is an authentic slice of Thirties comedy-noir. Praise for " Kept: A Victorian Mystery": Very entertaining & well done with a sharp appreciation for the details The Times An ingenious tale of madness murder & deception
- " The Guardian". A stylish page-turner.. .all done with humour & cunning
- " Sunday Telegraph"."





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Growing up in a mining family Caths husband Doug promised his father he wouldnt follow in his dangerous footsteps. But after struggling with terrible poverty in 1970s Scotland Doug decided a pit job would provide his wife & young family much needed security despite extraordinary risks to life & limb. Every day Cath kissed her husband goodbye not knowing if shed see him again as he went to work at the coalface. & while her husband toiled deep below the mother-of-five put her cooking & cleaning skills to use in the colliery canteen. In good times & bad the miners wives pulled together as much as their men underground. Then Thatcher swept to power & suddenly loyalties were tested & a fight for survival of a different kind ensued. One for their very existence. ...

An impossible choice
- Jorge Salcedo was trapped. For years he had climbed the ladder inside the Cali drug cartel the worlds most
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Topsy & Tim are always finding fun adventures in the real world & this story is reassuring for young children having first experiences of their own. In Topsy & Tim At the Farm" the children meet all kinds of interesting animals. They help collect eggs from the chickens & find some little ducklings learning how to swim. They are a little bit frightened when they get chased by some large geese but Farmer Stewart soon finds them a nice job to do helping to feed a calf." ...

CAPTIVE OF THE CLAN To regain control of his fractured clan Robert Matheson must take Lilidh Mac Lerie hostage as a bargaining tool. But Lilidh is no ordinary captive. She's the woman he once loved
- & rejected! Rob's touch is etched permanently into her memory & unaware that he was forced to repudiate their love Lilidh has never forgotten the man who broke her heart all those years ago. Now looking into the eyes of her captor she no longer recognises this fearsome leader. She should be afraid
- there's no telling what he will do. But something about him both excites & unnerves her in equal measure...

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Lucy has been forced to run away from home as she fears for her safety from her drunken father. She is taken on as a maid at the house of Dr Dee court magician upon whom Elizabeth I relies heavily even down to advising the date of her coronation. The household is strange & sinister & Lucy has a nose for intrigue.. . And she has more than enough to satisfy her: Lucy stumbles across a plot to assassinate the queen & has to find means to warn her.. . ...

For many years Andrew Greig saw the poet Norman Mac Caig as a father figure. Months before his death Mac Caigs enigmatic final request to Greig was that he fish for him at the Loch of the Green Corrie; the location even the real name of his destination was more mysterious still. His search took in days of outdoor living meetings & fishing with friends in the remote hill lochs of far North-West Scotl&. It led finally to the waters of the Green Corrie which would come to reflect Greigs own life his thoughts on poetry geology & land ownership in the Highlands & the ambiguous roles of whisky love & male friendship. At the Loch of the Green Corrie is a richly atmospheric narrative a celebration of losing & recovering oneself in a unique landscape the consideration of a particular culture & a homage to a remarkable poet & his world. ...

' You be going to live in the city Hannah?' Farmer Price asked pushing his battered hat up over his forehead. ' Wouldn' t think you'd want to go there Times like this I would have thought your sister would try & keep you away.' Hannah is oblivious to Farmer Price's dark words excited as she is about her first ever trip to London to help her sister in her shop ' The Sugared Plum' making sweetmeats for the gentry. Hannah does not however get the reception she expected from her sister Sarah. Instead of giving Hannah a hearty welcome Sarah is horrified that Hannah did not get her message to stay away
- the Plague is taking hold of London. Based on much research Mary Hooper tellingly conveys how the atmosphere in London changes from a disbelief that the plague is anything serious to the full-blown horror of the death carts & being locked up
- in effect to die
- if your house is suspected of infection. A brilliant new departure from this best-selling author. Mary Hooper is another writer to watch" The Independent"


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What happens in an old farmhouse when the farmers have left? Perhaps only a poet-historian-storyteller can say. These traditional work centres were established centuries ago sometimes in the village street often far away in their own fields. But the pattern of the toil was the same. This quietly vanished a few years ago. Ronald Blythe describes the going of it in his celebrated Akenfield. Some years before this his friend John Nash had rescued an already abandoned farmhouse in the Stour Valley from total dereliction. It was called Bottengoms. Nobody knows why. John Nash called himself an Artist-Plantsman. Behind both artist & writer there existed many generations of farmers & shepherds. Old houses will always have their say. For Ronald Blythe at Bottengoms Farm it was in the form of a meditation on past & present. He found that the ancient place asked more questions than it gave answers & was challenging & was energetic rather than spent. It must have been part of a prehistoric settlement in a stony valley & also a farm seen by the young John Constable whose uncles ground its corn. For they were Bottengoms neighbours & were known to the artist as the Wormingford folk. Ronald Blythe himself knows what the old farm is talking about. Its great days & routine days its seasonal labour & play its faith & despair. Its land was both poor & rich in snatches flint fields & mossy pastures vast trees & weeds & high skies. Once Queen Elizabeth arrived to hunt below where the Stone Age people lay in their circular graves. Inside Bottengoms there are telling handprints & footprints everywhere & this is their tale. It is a tale told by a true countryman who has looked & listened all his life. & mostly in his native place. ...