The story opens with the shipwreck on a Pacific Island of the young friends Ralph Rover & Jack Martin & Peterkin Gray. Despite the pleasurable presence of delicious breadfruit coconuts & succulent oysters the intrepid trio are not alone & they soon witness a battle between rival bands of cannibals led by ' Bloody Bill'. Their lives are placed in serious peril from which only courage & determined pluck can save them. An enormously popular adventure since its publication in 1857 it provoked William Golding to write Lord of the Flies offering an alternative view of how English boys would behave when released from the constraints of civilisation. ...

The definitive guide to the underwater life of the Red Sea region home to the richest & most varied dive sites in the world. Visited by over a quarter of a million divers a year the Red Sea is home to many of the world's most popular dive sites. Covering jellyfish corals nudibranchs starfish sea urchins fishes & turtles Coral Reef Guide Red Sea covers all common species of underwater life of the Red Sea & the Gulf of Aden you are likely to see while diving or snorkelling. Each species is illustrated with a full-colour photograph & the text gives details of range & characteristic behaviour. Different species groups are represented by icons for easy reference & an illustration of the juvenile may also be included. A map of good dive sites appears on the inside front cover while the inside back cover features illustrations of a number of common species for quick & easy identification. ...

Rachel & Kirsty are delighted when Coral the Reef Fairy takes them on a magical underwater journey! However they soon meet Jack Frost's goblins who are damaging a precious coral reef. Can the girls & Coral stop them before the beautiful reef is ruined? ...

Sometimes funny always creepy genuinely moving this marvellous spine-chiller will appeal to readers from nine to ninety."
-
...

There is something strange about Coralines new home. Its not the mist or the cat that always seems to be watching her nor the signs of danger that Miss Spink & Miss Forcible her new neighbours read in the tea leaves. Its the other house
- the one behind the old door in the drawing room. Another mother & father with black-button eyes & papery skin are waiting for Coraline to join them there. & they want her to stay with them. For ever. She knows that if she ventures through that door she may never come back.
...

When a young girl ventures through a hidden door she finds another life with shocking similarities to her own. Coraline has moved to a new house with her parents & she is fascinated by the fact that their house is in fact only half a house! Divided into flats years before there is a brick wall behind a door where once there was a corridor. One day it is a corridor again & the intrepid Coraline wanders down it. & so a nightmare-ish mystery begins that takes Coraline into the arms of counterfeit parents & a life that isnt quite right. Can Coraline get out? Can she find her real parents? Will life ever be the same again? ...

Otis takes babies & money off desperate mothers promising to deliver them to the Coram Foundling Hospital in London. Instead he murders them & buries them by the roadside to the helpless horror of his mentally ill son Mish. When Melissa beloved of Alexander Ashbrook & daughter of his governess becomes pregnant by him her mother arranges for the Otis to take the child telling Melissa it was stillborn. Alexander not knowing Melissa's condition has fled his home for a career in music. But Mish manages to save Melissa's baby Aaron & he grows up with Toby the son of an African slave inseparable friends. Toby is a plaything at the house of rich Mr Gaddarn who is in fact Otis. When Mish sees Aaron & Alexander together & realises the family link he takes Aaron & Toby to Otis who rejects them. A way must be found to rescue them but a great friend must die before the family can be reunited. ...

The National Theatres 2005 Christmas show: an expert dramatisation of this Whitbread Childrens Book Award-winner. A fitting follow-up to His Dark Materials" Jamila Gavins Whitbread Award-winning " Coram Boy" set in the 18th century is a tale of two cities
- Gloucester & London
- & of two boys: Toby saved from an African slave ship & Aaron illegitimate heir to a great estate. Also a tale of fathers & sons: slave-trader Otis & his son Meshak; & landowner Sir William Ashbrook & the son he disinherits. This is the story where the National Theatre has chosen its Christmas show on its biggest stage: last occupied at this time of year by His Dark Materials. Cleverly they have also chosen Helen Edmundson to adapt it who has already fashioned magnificent plays out of " The Mill on the Floss" " Anna Karenina" & " War & Peace". The result
- with a cast of twenty & sumptuous sets & costumes
- is set fair to be another box-office smash."



...

Cal has struggled to cope with his mothers drinking & her psychotic episodes since he was six; cooped up in their dirty council flat he dreams of a new life. So when he leaves to live with his uncle Trevor in Chepstow he is ruthless about breaking with the past despite his mothers despair. But getting off the train at the wrong station he finds himself at the castle of the Fisher King & from then on moves in a nightmare spiral of predetermined descent into a wasteland of desolation & adventure always seeking the way back to the Grail he has betrayed. Catherine Fisher has created a gripping & highly moving novel that moves between myth & a contemporary journey of self-knowledge until one becomes indistinguishable from the other. Drawing in Arthurian themes historical re-enactments & the Four Hallows Cals quest for a return to peace of mind is an elaborate & ambitious Grail novel for our time. This is an important new work from the author of the Book of the Crow"." ...

One of the most influential architects of the 20th century Le Corbusier has shaped the world in which we live
- from his experiments
...