The artists journal is a great place to start a library of personal marks doodles & ideas. The reader is introduced to basics such as choosing a journal & then immediately guided into techniques such as colour mixing drawing & a variety of surface designs. The reader is encouraged to experiment & play in the journal to try out new directions for creating works of art. The art journal becomes the starting point for bigger projects. In addition to step-by-step techniques for working in a variety of media each chapter features one or more jumping-off points to show the reader how to move out of the journal & onto an actual project. In the final chapter Melanie steps out three journal spreads to show how many techniques learned previously are layered & worked together. By using the art journal in this way the reader learns confidence in developing their ideas into tangible works of art. ...

Ted Simon is the author of the classic travel book JUPITERS TRAVELS. It documents his four-year journey round the world by motorbike travelling through Europe Africa South & North America & Asia. A number one bestseller in the late 1970s it is still regarded as one of the greatest motorcycle books
- indeed one of the greatest travel books
- ever written. In 2001 at the age of 69 Ted Simon decided to retrace his journey & DREAMING OF JUPITER is the result. It took him two & a half years
- during which time he revisited all the countries he had travelled through in the 1970s. He found much had changed & he reflects upon the increased poverty political upheavals environmental issues & indeed the changes in himself. But ultimately DREAMING OF JUPITER is a hugely inspiring read with a positive message at its heart
- that even at the age of 70 you can still set off on an adventure & be surprised & excited by what life throws at you along the way.



...

Five years ago the talented Cambridge poet Lydia Brooks apparently committed suicide. Now Victoria Mc Clellan is writing a biography about the renowned Lydia. However as she digs deeply into the background of the deceased poet Vic begins to question whether Lydia actually killed herself or was murdered. She turns to her estranged former spouse Scotland Yard Superintendent Duncan Kincaid for help. ...

In second century AD Claudia leaves Rome for the far northern province of Britain where her new husband Publius is commander of a frontier garrison. But for their love she is isolated in a strange l&. In the late twentieth century Miranda Tattersall
- the iconic model Rags
- becomes the third wife of her great love Lord Frederick Stratton so beginning a love affair with the Strattons great house Ladycross near Northumbrias great Wall. When her husband dies Rags must decide between honouring the past & embracing the future. Roberta Govan long divorced after a brief & disastrous marriage finally buys a place her own away from all past attachments & associations. Or so she thinks. Claudia Rags Bobby: their stories are linked by a wild & beautiful place; the events that brought them to it & the powerful loves that made it home.

...

Its AD 3580 & the Intersolar Commonwealth has spread throughout the galaxy. Its citizens are privileged & protected by a powerful navy. Yet at the centre of this galaxy is the Void a sealed universe created by aliens billions of years ago. & the Void is far from inert. Its expansion has gradually been consuming nearby star systems -- now its trying to make contact. The Void chooses Inigo as its conduit & he channels dreams of a simpler life within its bounds. Disaffected humanity hungers for this vision adopting him as their prophet. But Inigo disappears & his followers instigate a pilgrimage to take them into the Void itself. An act that could trigger its expansion & thereby damage our galaxy beyond repair. Meanwhile within the Void a junior constable called Edeard begins his journey to greatness. He takes on his corrupt city giving his people hope. He also becomes the focus of Inigos dream -- & thereby humanitys greatest hero. Mind-expanding ideas deft plotting & a convincing depiction of political intrigue Guardian ...

Journalist David K. Randall never gave sleep much thought. That is until he began sleepwalking & a midnight crash into a wall sent him on an investigation into the strange science of sleep. In Dreamland Randall explores the research investigating those dark hours that make up nearly a third of our lives. Taking readers from military battlefields to childrens bedrooms Dreamland shows that sleep isnt as simple as it seems. Among other questions he looks at whether women sleep differently to men & if you happen to kill someone while you are sleepwalking whether it counts as murder. This book is a tour of the often odd sometimes disturbing & always fascinating things that go on in the peculiar world of sleep. ...

You never think it could happen to you. You never think that one day youll stand in a graveyard rain tapping on a sea of black umbrellas watching your parents being lowered into the earth never to come back. Its happening to me. They said it was an accident. Only I know the truth. My parents were hunters like their parents & grandparents before them hundreds of years back scores of ancestors behind me fulfilling the same call. I must follow in their footsteps. I am the only one left to keep the promise. I can never give up the fight this fight that has been handed down to me thrust upon my unwilling shoulders. Id rather be buried with my parents my brave fierce father & mother who lived & died by the Midnight motto: Dont Let Them Roam. Ever since her thirteenth birthday seventeen-year-old Sarah Midnights dreams have been plagued by demons
- but unlike most peoples nightmares Sarahs come true. Her dreams guide her parents hunt as Sarah remains in bed terrified but safe sheltered from the true horrors of the Midnight legacy. But all this is about to change. After the murder of her parents she is cruelly thrust into a secret world of unimaginable danger as she is forced to take up their mission. Alone & unprepared for the fight that lies before her Sarah must learn how to use the powers shes inherited & decide whom to trust before its too late...
...

In the debut novel DREAMS & SHADOWS screenwriter & noted film critic C. Robert Cargill takes us beyond the veil through the lives of Ewan & Colby young men whose spirits have been enmeshed with the otherworld from a young age. This brilliantly crafted narrative
- part Neil Gaiman part Guillermo Del Torro part William Burroughs
- follows the boys from their star-crossed adolescences to their haunted adulthoods. Cargill's tour-de-force takes us inside the Limestone Kingdom a parallel universe where whisky-swilling genies & foul-mouthed wizards argue over the state of the metaphysical realm. Having left the spirit world & returned to the human world Ewan & Colby discover that the creatures from this previous life have not forgotten them & that fate can never be sidestepped. With sensitivity & hopeful examination Cargill illuminates a supernatural culture that all too eerily resembles our own. Set in a richly imagined & constructed world complete with its own richly detailed history & mythology DREAMS & SHADOWS is a deeply engaging story about two extraordinary boys becoming men.

...

The son of a black African father & a white American mother Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama determined to learn the truth of his father's life & reconcile his divided inheritance. Written at the age of thirty-three Dreams from my Father is an unforgettable read. it illuminates not only Obama's journey but also our universal desire to understand our history & what makes us the people we are. ...

One of the masters of weird fiction' H. P. Lovecraft expanded the vast boundaries of the horror genre with his vividly imagined stories of exotic & fantastical otherworlds nightmarish dreamscapes or the supernatural terrors lurking beneath the surface of small-town America. The shadow of New England's witch-hunting past hangs over many of the tales as in The Shunned House' & The Dreams in the Witch House' in which malevolent spectres return to haunt the region. Others such as From Beyond' & The Shadow Out of Time' depict the catastrophic results when cosmic channels of time & space are opened while stories such as Polaris' & The Doom that Came to Sarnath' portray the downfall of mythical civilizations. ...