This title comes from one of Americas finest living writers Pete Dexter US National Book Award-winning author of Paris Trout". This is a riotous & dazzling comic story of resilience & love for fans of John Irving & Jonathan Franzen. Warren Spooner is born in rural Georgia on the first Sunday of December 1956 after a prolonged & unhappy labour in a makeshift delivery room. His troubled birth is swiftly followed by his fathers untimely death
- & young Spooner is left to get on with growing up without even a memory of his daddys face. Spooner makes it into minor league baseball but an injury to his throwing arm relegates him to the sidelines & dashes his hopes of making it to the big-time. But the young man is nothing if not resilient standing up to tragedy & adversity in his own dark (often extremely dark) ways. Through it all his step-father
- Calmer Ottoson
- stands by determinedly trying to save his step-son yet utterly powerless to do so. From Spooners troubled childhood to his troubled adolescence & violent & troubled adulthood Pete Dexter tells an entirely gripping story of one mans inexhaustible patience tested to the limits as he struggles to rescue a step-son he will never underst&."


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From the award-winning author of Goodnight Mister Tom" comes the classic "A Spoonful of Jam" packaged with a beautiful fresh new cover. The war is over but Elsie is still fighting her own battles. She's bullied because she's the only scholarship pupil at the grammar school & she has an awkward relationship with her father as he struggles to assume a normal life after fighting in the war. But when she begins working at the local theatre Elsie discovers she can escape..."A Spoonful of Jam" is the second of The Hollis Family books following " Cuckoo in the Nest"." ...

They say you can never truly love a child that is not your own but that goes against every instinct that runs through me. For I have loved children born to other women all my life & every child that I have ever cared for Ive adored with all my heart. Many I would have laid down my life for in fact on some memorable occasions when I fled to air raid shelters clutching my charges to my chest I very nearly did. In 62 years of being a nanny I have lost count of the number of children Ive cared for but it must be approaching 100. Which means I am inordinately proud to say that despite never having actually given birth I have 100 children. How many women can say that? Brenda is 91 years old & spent 62 years working as a Norland Nanny. Just like a real-life Mary Poppins Brenda devoted her life to giving children the best possible start in life. Brenda began training at the Norland Institute in 1939 at the age of 18 shortly before war was declared. It was a time of great upheaval & uncertainty particularly for children. Even as a nervous young trainee Brenda was determined to give the children in her care a wonderful childhood regardless of the horrors that were unravelling on the continent & when the blitz began on their doorsteps. Brenda worked poverty-stricken evacuees from the East End London as well as in the nurseries of smart Kensington homes. She frequently put her life at risk dashing to air raid shelters with her charges clutched to her chest. This is a story from a time when nothing was taken for granted & life itself was in peril on a near-daily basis. But the war was also a time when people pulled together like never before or since & it called upon Brenda to make sacrifices shed never imagined having to make... Warm funny & incredibly moving Brendas memoir brings to life the colourful world of wartime Engl&. ...

' They say you can never truly love a child that is not your own but that goes against every instinct that runs through me. For I have loved children born to other women all my life & every child that I have ever cared for I've adored with all my heart. Many I would have laid down my life for in fact on some memorable occasions when I fled to air raid shelters clutching my charges to my chest I very nearly did. In 62 years of being a nanny I have lost count of the number of children I've cared for but it must be approaching 100. Which means I am inordinately proud to say that despite never having actually given birth I have 100 children. How many women can say that?' Brenda is 91 years old & spent 62 years working as a Norland Nanny. Just like a real-life Mary Poppins Brenda devoted her life to giving children the best possible start in life. Brenda began training at the Norland Institute in 1939 at the age of 18 shortly before war was declared. It was a time of great upheaval & uncertainty particularly for children. Even as a nervous young trainee Brenda was determined to give the children in her care a wonderful childhood regardless of the horrors that were unravelling on the continent & when the blitz began on their doorsteps. Brenda worked poverty-stricken evacuees from the East End London as well as in the nurseries of smart Kensington homes. She frequently put her life at risk dashing to air raid shelters with her charges clutched to her chest. This is a story from a time when nothing was taken for granted & life itself was in peril on a near-daily basis. But the war was also a time when people pulled together like never before or since & it called upon Brenda to make sacrifices she'd never imagined having to make... Warm funny & incredibly moving Brenda's memoir brings to life the colourful world of wartime Engl&. ...

Touring Paris & provincial France in a handsome borrowed car Philip Dean Yale dropout has an affair with a young French woman named Anne-Marie. Their liaison is imagined with candour & sensitivity by an unnamed narrator whose fantasies become compellingly & hauntingly real. A Sport & A Pastime has been hailed as a watershed in American fiction of the 1960s: remarkable for its eroticism its luminous prose & its ability to blur the boundaries of reality & dreamlife daytime & nightime soul & flesh. 'A tour de force in erotic realism a romantic cliffhanger an opaline vision of Americans in France' New York Times ' Salter is the contemporary writer most admired & envied by other writers.. .he can when he wants break your heart with a sentence' Washington Post ...

This is the rock climbing instructional book. Until now instructional books for climbers have taken a largely negative approach concentrating on how to reduce the inherent risks of the sport & mentioning only in passing the equally important skills required to get to the top. This book represents a watershed in the genre coming from a coaching perspective. Sport Climbing+" is packed with inspirational photos humorous illustrations & two lifetimes worth of learning how to succeed at the toughest of all sports. The book takes a practical approach focussing on the improvements that climbers can make immediately without embarking on lengthy training programs. Written in a highly accessible jargon-free style this book is as beneficial to the novice indoor climber wanting to get on rock as it is to the experienced climber wanting to move onto the next level." ...

Show jumping gymnastics surfing tennis & swimming
- these are just a few of the sports featured in this exciting sticker book.
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Each postcard
- which on the flip side

Includes:: information on The brilliant photograph
- can be peeled



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Containing 10 bestselling books by a variety of authors this bundle is perfect for any fan of Sporting Biographies books. This Bundle will make an excellent gift or be a wonderful addition to any bookshelf. Book Bundles
- What You Will Receive Although we cannot guarentee the exact books you will receive you can be assured you will be getting great value for your money as each Sporting Biographies Bundle will have an approximate RRP of £70 saving you around £55 (78%) Photography: Please note: Images are for illustrative purposes only. Each bundle is individual therefore we cannot guarentee the exact titles you will receive. Cover illustrations may vary from those shown."
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Ed Hawkins grew up around gambling. Instead of going to school he followed his father a horseracing journalist around the courses of the UK. The frantic betting ring was his maths class & the press box thick with the fug of cigarette smoke & expletives his English lesson. While dad filed copy late on in to the night from some obscure racing outpost the young Hawkins trawled the empty bookmaker pitches searching for the errant fiver. From an early age he learnt that bookies never gave anything away. So when he found himself out of work after taking a misguided gamble on his career he took another: by deciding to wager his way around the globe. Initially gambling his way across Australia meeting triumph & disaster
- selling possessions when cash got tight in Melbourne after a disastrous night in one of the largest casinos in the world
- with witty self-deprecation Hawkins returns home relatively unscathed. However the life of the Ordinary Joe soon has him twitching for the road again. Setting himself three challenges to see if he can get that life-changing win the fun never runs out
- unlike the funds. He embarrasses himself playing poker with Hollywoods finest at the World Series in Las Vegas challenges world champion Phil Taylor to a game of darts wastes dollars on rooster fighting with Britney Spears babysitter in Louisiana & fleeces pensioners on planes. Hawkins tries anything to stay afloat culminating in a trip to a Glasgow bingo hall to try to land the odds that stare back at him in the mirror after being diagnosed with a rare illness.


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