One wild night midwife Patty Peel is called to attend a birth on the opposite side of Liverpool. She pedals off into the storm & delivers a baby girl in a filthy slum dwelling just as the mother dies. The drunk & violent father tells Patty to get rid of it so she takes the child away meaning to deliver it to the nearest orphanage. But Patty had spent her entire childhood in an institution & cannot bear to hand the baby over. However there are rough waters ahead. Patty has few friends & fears & despises men including her next door neighbour Darky Knight so how can she hope to bring up the child alone? She has no idea how the baby will affect the attitude of those around her nor how her life will change as a result... The Bad Penny is a heartwarming tale of love & courage in hard times from the hugely popular storyteller Katie Flynn. ...

The $600 billion pharmaceutical industry spends more on marketing than it does on research & development. New diseases are invented in order to swell profits. It distorts & suppresses the results of clinical trials if they are unfavourable. Patients pressure groups are covertly sponsored by pill manufacturers. Its offences are countless & the consequences are felt by us all. What we trust to cure us may be ineffectual or actually harmful. Ben Goldacre is Britains finest writer on medical matters today & Bad Pharma is a brilliant & savage attack on an industry rife with corruption. ...

It's rare that a book appears with a fresh perspective on world affairs but renowned economist Ha-Joon Chang has some startlingly original things to say about the future of globalization. In theory he argues the world's wealthiest countries & supra-national institutions like the IMF World Bank & WTO want to see all nations developing into modern industrial societies. In practice though those at the top are 'kicking away the ladder' to wealth that they themselves climbed. Why? Self-interest certainly plays a part. But more often rich & powerful governments & institutions are actually being ' Bad Samaritans': their intentions are worthy but their simplistic free-market ideology & poor understanding of history leads them to inflict policy errors on others. Chang demonstrates this by contrasting the route to success of economically vibrant countries with the very different route now being dictated to the world's poorer nations. In the course of this he shows just how muddled the thinking is in such key areas as trade & foreign investment. He shows that the case for privatisation & against state involvement is far from proven. & he explores the ways in which attitudes to national cultures & political ideologies are obscuring clear thinking & creating bad policy. Finally he argues the case for new strategies for a more prosperous world that may appall the ' Bad Samaritans'. ...

Ben Goldacre's wise & witty bestseller shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize lifts the lid on quack doctors flaky statistics scaremongering journalists & evil pharmaceutical corporations. Since 2003 Dr Ben Goldacre has been exposing dodgy medical data in his popular Guardian column. In this eye-opening book he takes on the MMR hoax & misleading cosmetics ads acupuncture & homeopathy vitamins & mankind's vexed relationship with all manner of 'toxins'. Along the way the self-confessed ' Johnny Ball cum Witchfinder General' performs a successful detox on a Barbie doll sees his dead cat become a certified nutritionist & probes the supposed medical qualifications of ' Dr' Gillian Mc Keith. Full spleen & satire Ben Goldacre takes us on a hilarious invigorating & ultimately alarming journey through the bad science we are fed daily by hacks & quacks. ...

Nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize. We are constantly bombarded with inaccurate contradictory & sometimes misleading information
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Three ambitious rivalrous sisters. & a deadly secret which one of them is determined to keep buried at any cost.. . Deeley is the fake wife of a Hollywood TV hunk who is secretly gay. But Deeley's five-year contract is up & his cut-throat publicist wants Deeley out. So dejected & penniless Deeley wends her way home to London hoping to re-establish links with her two estranged elder sisters.. . Devon is married to the nation's-favourite-rugby-hunk Matt & has her own highly successful TV career as the sexy hostess of her own cookery show. But behind her buxom facade Devon is lonely & frustrated & when a live celebrity cook-off shows her up as a fraud she leaves sweet Matt & runs off to Tuscany to learn a few lessons
- not just in cookery
- from an Italian master. Lastly there's Maxie: a politician's wife Maxie is fiercely ambitious. She's furious when Deeley hard on her luck sells the sisters' childhood story to a tabloid newspaper revealing their impoverished roots & unsavoury parentage. The story undermines Maxie's carefully cultivated image & the fallout threatens to be devastating. But Maxie is only too aware that there is much more Deeley could yet reveal. What murderous secret lies in the sisters' past? & just how far will Maxie go to keep it buried?

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A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch" is a classic " Worst Witch" story by Jill Murphy. "A Bad Spell for the Worst Witch" is the third of Jill Murphy's classic much-loved " The Worst Witch" series the original story of life at a magical boarding school perfect for 5-9 readers. Loveable but accident-prone Mildred Hubble is possibly the worst witch ever to go to Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches.. .A new term spells disaster for Mildred! Mildred is determined to lose her embarrassing reputation as the worst witch the Academy has ever seen
- but things rapidly get out of hand! Jill Murphy started putting books together (literally with a stapler) when she was six. " The Worst Witch" was first published in 1974 & this much-loved classic has been enjoyed by readers for more than 30 years. Jill Murphy also written & illustrated several award-winning picture books for younger children. If you'd like to read more of Mildred's disastrous adventures at Miss Cackle's Academy " The Worst Witch" " The Worst Witch Strikes Again" " The Worst Witch All at Sea" " The Worst Witch Saves the Day" & " The Worst Witch to the Rescue" are also available from Puffin & are perfect for children aged 5-9."
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Seeing gardening as a serious & even outrageous art form has placed Anne Wareham well outside of what usually passes for discussion of gardens. Impatient with received ideas eager to provoke The Bad-Tempered Gardener is the story of her development as a thinking gardener & the creation with her husband Charles Hawes of their acclaimed garden in the Welsh borders the Veddw. From the strange (plant obsessives a bizarre debut as a television presenter) to the everyday (deadheading sharing a garden) with frequent paeans to favourite plants & thoughtful pieces on show gardens & status this is an intelligent pugnacious & engaging book. It also unflinchingly conveys the challenges the hard work triumphs & failures behind the creation & development of a substantial contemporary garden. ...

A young girl at the mercy of her abusive stepfather & the religious community that protects him
- Bad Things in the Night is a
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Party girl Jane is forced to be her prim stepsisters bridesmaid
- with disastrous results. This is a raucous comedy from the author
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