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. ...

Still in his mid thirties Michael Buble has a fan base as varied as the music he sings
- a hip mix of standards cleverly chosen
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42 atheist celebrities comedians scientists & writers give their funny & serious tips for enjoying the Christmas season. When the Atheist Bus Campaign was first launched over GBP150 000 was raised in four days
- enough to place the advert Theres probably no God. Now stop worrying & enjoy your life on 800 UK buses in January 2009. Now dozens of atheist writers comedians & scientists are joining together to raise money for a very different cause. The Atheists Guide to Christmas is a funny thoughtful handbook all about enjoying Christmas from 42 of the worlds most entertaining atheists. It features everything from an atheist Christmas miracle to a guide to the best Christmas pop hits & contributors include Richard Dawkins Charlie Brooker Derren Brown Ben Goldacre Jenny Colgan David Baddiel Simon Singh AC Grayling Brian Cox & Richard Herring. The full book advance & all royalties will go to the UK HIV charity Terrence Higgins Trust.
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The powerful & innovative King Athelstan reigned only briefly (924-939) yet his achievements during those eventful twelve years changed the course of English history. He won spectacular military victories (most notably at Brunanburh) forged unprecedented political connections across Europe & succeeded in creating the first unified kingdom of the English. To claim for him the title of first English monarch" is no exaggeration. In this nuanced portrait of Athelstan Sarah Foot offers the first full account of the king ever written. She traces his life through the various spheres in which he lived & worked beginning with the intimate context of his family then extending outward to his unusual multi-ethnic royal court the Church & his kingdom the wars he conducted & finally his death & legacy. Foot describes a sophisticated man who was not only a great military leader but also a worthy king. He governed brilliantly developed creative ways to project his image as a ruler & devised strategic marriage treaties & gift exchanges to cement alliances with the leading royal & ducal houses of Europe. Athelstans legacy seen in the new light of this masterful biography is inextricably connected to the very forging of England & early English identity." ...

Athena has always been above average. She's never quite fit in at Triton Junior High but who would've guessed that Athena is actually a goddess? Principal Zeus's daughter to be exact. When she's summoned to Mount Olympus Academy Athena thinks she might actually fit in for the first time in her life. But in some ways school on Mount Olympus is not that different from down on Earth & Athena is going to have to deal with the baddest mean girl in history -- Medusa! Authors Joan Holub & Suzanne Williams put a modern spin on classic myths with the Goddess Girls series. Follow the ins & outs of divine social life at Mount Olympus Academy where the most privileged godboys & goddessgirls in the Greek pantheon hone their mythical skills. ...

This book is an account of a disaster at sea the sinking by a German submarine of the passenger liner Athenia sailing from Liverpool to Montreal loaded with Americans Canadians & Europeans attempting to cross the Atlantic before the outbreak of war. Although 112 people were lost of whom 30 were the first Americans killed in the war 1 306 were rescued. Housewives children college students scientists actresses & Jewish refugees were among the victims & even young John F. Kennedy was called on to give assistance. The drama tragedy & triumph of their experiences are a central part of the story. But of course the book is also about war & politics. Indeed this is actually where the Second World War began. Here Germany having already invaded Poland in what was expected to be a limited war first struck the western Allies Britain & France. This was the first blow fired without warning just hours after war was declared. For Britain the sinking of the Athenia was seen as both a violation of international law & a return to the kind of total war Germany had waged in the Great War. The sinking of the Athenia immediately pushed Britain to adopt convoys to protect shipping & it served from the first to shape British public opinion toward the war. In Canada the sinking of the ship & particularly the death of the innocent ten year old Margaret Hayworth became emotional issues around which much of the nation could rally in support of the decision of Parliament to go to war. In the United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt was too wary to make the sinking of the Athenia the counterpart of the sinking of the Lusitania in the First World War. However the Athenia exposed Germany in the public mind as a serious threat to Americans & provided the opportunity for President Roosevelt to open direct communication with Winston Churchill. The Athenia helped to change public opinion in the United States sufficiently to amend the existing Neutrality Laws to allow the country to sell munitions & supplies to Britain & France
- a supportive first step to meeting the Nazi threat directly. So the sinking of the Athenia is a tale full of meaning & passion that deserves to be known.
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Probably written by a student of Aristotle The Athenian Constitution is both a history & an analysis of Athens political machinery between the seventh & fourth centuries BC which stands as a model of democracy at a time when city-states lived under differing kinds of government. The writer recounts the major reforms of Solon the rule of the tyrant Pisistratus & his sons the emergence of the democracy in which power was shared by all free male citizens & the leadership of Pericles & the demagogues who followed him. He goes on to examine the citys administration in his own time
- the council the officials & the judicial system. For its information on Athens development & how the democracy worked The Athenian Constitution is an invaluable source of knowledge about the Athenian city-state.
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