When former infantry officer Laurence Bartram is called to the small village of Easton Deadall he is struck by the beauty of the place: a crumbling stately home; a centuries-old church; & a recently planted maze a memorial to the men of the village almost all of whom died in one heroic battle in 1916. But it soon becomes clear to Laurence that while rest of the country is alight with hope for the first time since the end of the War as the first Labour government takes power the Wiltshire village is haunted by its tragic past. In 1911 five-year-old Kitty Easton disappeared from her bed & has not been seen since: only her fragile mother believes still she is alive. When a family trip to the Empire Exhibition in London ends in disaster & things take an increasingly sinister turn Laurence struggles to find out what has happened as it seems that the fate of the house the men & of Kitty herself may be part of a much longer darker story of love betrayal
- & violence.
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Susan Hill's classic novel Strange Meeting tells of the power of love amidst atrocities. ' He was afraid to go to sleep. For three weeks he had been afraid of going to sleep.. .' Young officer John Hilliard returns to his battalion in France following a period of sick leave in Engl&. Despite having trouble adjusting to all the new faces the stiff & reserved Hilliard forms a friendship with David Barton an open & cheerful new recruit who has still to be bloodied in battle. As the pair approach the front line to the proximity of death & destruction their strange friendship deepens. But each knows that soon they will be separated...A remarkable feat of imaginative & descriptive writing". (The Times). " The feeling of men under appalling stress at a particular moment in history is communicated with almost uncanny power". (Sunday Times). " Truly Astonishing". (Daily Telegraph). Susan Hill's novels include I'm the King of the Castle & Mrs de Winter a sequel to Du Maurier's Rebecca. She is also well known for her children's books (including Can It Be True? which won the Smarties Prize). She has written non-fiction & autobiography & is a regular broadcaster & reviewer. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells & they live in a Gloucestershire village from which she runs a small publishing company called Long Barn Books." ...

Strange Meetings" provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914-1918 written through a series of actual encounters or near-encounters from Siegfried Sassoons first blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys & bacon at Eddie Marshs breakfasts before the war through famous moments like Sassoons encouragement of Owen when both are in hospital at the same time; on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomas widow & Ivor Gurney in 1932; & the last strange lunch & longish talk of Sassoon & David Jones in 1964 half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets & writers we encounter are Vera Brittain Roland Leighton Robert Graves Isaac Rosenberg Robert Nichols & Edmund Blunden. Ricketts unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships marking their responses to each others work & showing how these affected their own poetry
- one potent strand for example is the profound influence of Brooke both as a model to follow & a burden to reject. The stories become intensely personal & vivid
- we come to know each of the poets their family & intellectual backgrounds & their very different personalities. & while the accounts of individual lives achieve the imaginative vividness of a novel they also give us an entirely fresh sense of Georgian poetry conveying all the excitement & frustration of poetic creation & demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be about became fractured & changed for ever by the terrible experiences of the war."

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Strange Meetings provides a highly original account of the War Poets of 1914-1918 written through a series of actual encounters or near-encounters from Siegfried Sassoons first blushing meeting with Rupert Brooke over kidneys & bacon at Eddie Marshs breakfasts before the war through famous moments like Sassoons encouragement of Owen when both are in hospital at the same time; on to the poignant meeting between Edward Thomass widow & Ivor Gurney in 1932; & the last strange lunch & longish talk of Sassoon & David Jones in 1964 half a century after the great war began. Among the other poets & writers we encounter are Vera Brittain Roland Leighton Robert Graves Isaac Rosenberg Robert Nichols & Edmund Blunden. Rickettss unusual approach allows him to follow their relationships marking their responses to each others work & showing how these affected their own poetry
- one potent strand for example is the profound influence of Brooke both as a model to follow & a burden to reject. The stories become intensely personal & vivid
- we come to know each of the poets their family & intellectual backgrounds & their very different personalities. & while the accounts of individual lives achieve the imaginative vividness of a novel they also give us an entirely fresh sense of Georgian poetry conveying all the excitement & frustration of poetic creation & demonstrating how the whole notion of what poetry should be about became fractured & changed for ever by the terrible experiences of the war.

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For over thirty years John Simpson has travelled the world to report on the most significant events of our time. From being punched in the stomach by Harold Wilson on one of his first days as a reporter to escaping summary execution in Beirut flying into Teheran with the returning Ayatollah Khomeini & narrowly avoiding entrapment by a beautiful Czech secret agent Simpson has had an astonishingly eventful career. In 1989 he witnessed the Tiananmen Square massacre the fall of the Berlin Wall & the collapse of Communism throughout Eastern Europe & only weeks later in South Africa the release of Nelson Mandela. With Simpsons uncanny knack of being in the right place at the right time this autobiography is a ring-side seat at every major event in recent global history. So vivid I could feel my heart beating Jonathan Mirsky Spectator great stories sometimes harrowing sometimes hilarious.
- Daily Telegraph"."
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' It's hard to admit but you're not the son I once knew...' The obliterated battlefields of Spain are a world away from the privileged life of James Montague. Only nurse Catalina Moreno eases the deafening roar of mortar fire-and in a crumbling chapel by candlelight they make their vows. But before the sheets cool from their scorching wedding night Jamie has to leave on a brutally dangerous mission... Two years later believing her husband dead Catalina is shocked to see a man who looks & sounds like her Jamie at Castonbury-but where once there was warmth & charm now unflinching torment lies in the gaze of the man she barely recognises... ...

This is a new edition of the exciting adventure stories set in Sandy Lane Stables perfect for pony lovers. When a stable girl is left in charge of the Sandy Lane Stables all the regular riders promise to help & everyone is confident that life at the stables will run smoothly. But disaster strikes when a mysterious couple arrives supposedly sent to help. Drastic changes are soon afoot & now its up to the children of Sandy Lane to act fast or the Stables may never be the same again. This is just one title in the perfect pony tales adored by horse-lovers everywhere. ...

Ann Rule was a writer working on the biggest story of her life tracking down a brutal mass-murderer. Little did she know that the young man who was her close friend was the savage slayer she was hunting. Ted Bundy was everyone's picture of a natural 'winner'
- handsome charming brilliant in law school successful with women on the verge of a dazzling career. On January 24 1989 Ted Bundy was executed for the murders of three young women; he subsequently confessed to taking the lives of a least thirty-five more young women coast to coast. This is his story
- the story of his magnetic power his unholy compulsion his demonic double life & his string of helpless victims. It was written by a woman who thought she knew Ted Bundy until she began to put all the evidence together & the whole terrifying picture emerged...

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The Stranger I Married
- the classic erotic romance
- by Sylvia Day
- author of the sensational international bestselling


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Epic ambitious & entertaining Stranger in a Strange Land" caused controversy & uproar when it was first published. Still topical & challenging today the story of Valentine Michael Smith the first man from Mars to visit Earth is in the great tradition of stories that endure through the power of the author's imagination that stretches from Gulliver's Travels to 1984." ...