Tollys great grandmother isnt a witch but both she & her old house Green Knowe are full of a very special kind of magic. There are other children in the house
- children who were happy there centuries before. Running around Green Knowes moat gardens & mysterious rooms Tolly slowly discovers them their toys & animals & their wonderful stories... This work is a haunting atmospheric classic from Carnegie Medal winner Lucy Boston.
...

Behind the facade of politics & pageantry at the Tudor court there was a family drama. Nothing drove Henry VIII England's wealthiest & most powerful king more than producing a legitimate male heir & so perpetuating his dynasty. To that end he married six wives became the subject of the most notorious divorce case of the sixteenth century & broke with the pope all in an age of international competition & warfare social unrest & growing religious intolerance & discord. Henry fathered four living children each by a different mother. Their interrelationships were often scarred by jealously mutual distrust sibling rivalry even hatred. Possessed of quick wits & strong wills their characters were defined partly by the educations they received & partly by events over which they had no control. Henry Fitzroy Duke of Richmond although recognized as the king's son could never forget his illegitimacy. Edward died while still in his teens desperately plotting to exclude his half-sisters from the throne. Mary's world was shattered by her mother's divorce & her own unhappy marriage. Elizabeth was the most successful but also the luckiest. Even so she lived with the knowledge that her father had ordered her mother's execution was often in fear of her own life & could never marry the one man she truly loved. Henry's children idolized their father even if they differed radically over how to perpetuate his legacy. To tell their stories John Guy returns to the archives drawing on a vast array of contemporary records personal letters & first-hand accounts. ...

Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's manuscripts & presented for the first time as a fully continuous & standalone story this illustrated paperback of the epic tale of The Children of Hurin will reunite fans of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings with Elves dragons Dwarves & Orcs & the rich landscape & characters unique to Tolkien. It is a legendary time long before The Lord of the Rings & Morgoth the first Dark Lord dwells in the vast fortress of Angband in the North; & within the shadow of the fear of Angband & the war waged by Morgoth against the Elves the fates of Turin & his sister Nienor will be tragically entwined. Their brief & passionate lives are dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bears them as the children of Hurin the man who dared to defy him to his face. Against them Morgoth sends his most formidable servant Glaurung a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire in an attempt to fulfil the curse of Morgoth & destroy the children of Hurin. Begun by J.R.R. Tolkien at the end of the First World War The Children of Hurin became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final & finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed after long study of the manuscripts a coherent narrative without any editorial invention. ...

This de luxe collector's edition features the first edition text & eight full-colour plates with an exclusive colour frontispiece illustration. The book is quarterbound with a special gold motif stamped on the front board & is presented in a matching slipcase. There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings & the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked but which were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World. In that remote time Morgoth the first Dark Lord dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband the Hells of Iron in the North; & the tragedy of Turin & his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband & the war waged by Morgoth against the lands & secret cities of the Elves. Their brief & passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Hurin the man who had dared to defy & to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant Glaurung a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest & flight of forest hiding-places & pursuit of resistance with lessening hope the Dark Lord & the Dragon enter in direly articulate form. Sardonic & mocking Glaurung manipulated the fates of Turin & Nienor by lies of diabolic cunning & guile & the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled. The earliest versions of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War & the years that followed; but long afterwards when The Lord of the Rings was finished he wrote it anew & greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive & character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final & finished form. In this book Christopher Tolkien has constructed after long study of the manuscripts a coherent narrative without any editorial invention. ...

' The Children of Lovers are Orphans'. Proverb. Bestselling novelist author of Lord of the Flies" William Golding was a famously acute observer of children. What was it like to be his daughter? In this frank & engaging family memoir Judy Golding recalls growing up with a brilliant loving sometimes difficult parent. The years of her childhood & adolescence saw her father change from an impecunious schoolteacher to a famous novelist. Once adult she came to understand some of the internal conflicts which led to his writing. The Golding family life both ordinary & extraordinary always kept its characteristic warmth humour complexity anger & love danger & insecurity. This is a book about family & parents about lovers & their children & about our impact on one another
- for good or ill."
...

From Eduardo Galeano one of Latin America's greatest living writers author of the Memory of Fire trilogy comes Children of the Days a new kind of history that shows us how to remember & how to live. This book is shaped like a calendar. Each day brings with it a story: a journey feast or tragedy that really happened on that date from all possible years & all corners of the world. From Abdul Kassem Ismail the tenth-century Persian who never went anywhere without his library
- all seventeen thousand books of it on four hundred camels; to the Brazilian city of Sorocaba which on February 8 1980 responded to the outlawing of public kissing by becoming one huge kissodrome; to July 1 2008 the day the US government decided to remove Nelson Mandela's name from its list of dangerous terrorists Children of the Days takes aim at the pretensions of official history & illuminates moments & heroes that we have all but forgotten. Through this shimmering historical mosaic runs a common thread one that joins humanity's darkest hours to its sweetest victories. Children of the Days is the story of our lives. Eduardo Galeano is the great master of fragments & splinters a prince of the absurdly truthful. Children of the Days his Calendar of Human History is an immensely varied gathering of facts & oddments & truths & stories of every kind. Underlying them all is a passionate & humane concern for the underdog the poor the forgotten. How this can be so funny & at the same time so moving is a great mystery". (Philip Pullman). " Bedtime stories you remember? This is a book of stories for each day of the year addressed to adults. Stories of the historical human venture. Each story half a page. Put it beside your bed & the bed of those you love". (John Berger). " Marries meticulous journalistic detail with lyrical flair... Comprises 365 vignettes that range from the birth of Chekhov (January 29)
- " He wrote as if he were saying nothing. & he said everything"
- to The Saddest Match in History (November 21). But where to start? On QI Alan Davies might pick January 1 the first day of the year. It's where Galeano begins too but only so his inner Stephen Fry can point out that for Mayas Jews Arabs the Chinese & others this day doesn't herald the New Year at all before adding the optimistic kicker that given the transience of time this day is as good as any other "to be bright & joyous as the colours of an outdoor market". Of course like most people I dipped in on my birthday". (Shaun Phillips The Times). " Galeano performs the sort of extraordinary feats of compassion artistry & imagination achieved in fiction by his fellow visionary Latin American writers especially Borges Garcia Marquez & Bolano". (Booklist starred review). " Galeano's prose is nearly lulling in its lyricism". (Neil Gordon New York Times Book Review). " The elegance of Galeano's words
- they're just penetrating so beautiful". (San Francisco Chronicle Danny Glover). " Galeano is a superstar in the Hispanic world... His writing is full of candour empathy humane concern [and] he has a wonderful eye for the quirky.. .he evokes the wonders of a remarkable world that is not so bad after all". (John Paul Rathbone Financial Times). " The telling of such secret histories makes it easy to see why Galeano is one of Latin America's most influential writers.. .he has produced literature that will endure monuments to the imagination". (Toby Green The Independent). Eduardo Galeano is one of Latin America's most distinguished writers. He is the author of the three-volume Memory of Fire; Open Veins of Latin America; Soccer in Sun & Shadow; The Book of Embraces; Walking Words; Upside Down; & Voices in Time. Born in Montevideo in 1940 he lived in exile in Argentina & Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. His work has been translated into twenty-eight languages. He is recipient of many international prizes."



...

Everyone thought when the alarm bell rang that it was just another fire practice. But the first bombs had fallen on Hamburg & Leningrad the headmaster said & a full-scale nuclear attack was imminent. Its a real life nightmare. Sarah & her family have to stay cooped up in a tightly sealed kitchen for days on end dreading the inevitable radioactive fall-out & the subsequent slow torturous death which seems almost preferable to surviving in a grey dead world choked by dust. But then from out of the dust & the ruins & the desolation comes new life a new future & a whole brave new world... ...

Deep in Tehran's Evin Prison Azar gives birth to a baby girl. Corridors away Amir is making a bracelet out of date stones. He hopes that one day his daughter will hold it in her hands. As a camera shutter closes three children are fixed in time. These children cannot remember their mothers' faces. But their mothers will treasure the photos daring to imagine the life that goes on beyond prison walls. Revolution has torn the future from the past. But these children the children of the jacaranda tree will have the chance to grow. They will go into exile they will find love & they will return home to Iran. But they will also have to confront the terrible legacies passed from one generation to the next when the cold boot of history stamps on individual lives. CHILDREN OF THE JACARANDA TREE is a novel about the ghosts of revolution. It is a novel about forging the future when your past is too painful to remember. It is a novel that you will never forget. ...

Mark & Lily have been banished from Agora the ancient city-state where everything is for sale
- memories emotions
- even children.

...

The publisher claims that we are born into a world controlled by unseen forces that have plagued & manipulated humanity for thousands of years. David Icke exposes these forces & their methods of human control & he claims to reveal a fantastic web of global manipulation orchestrated by forces beyond this physical realm. ...