All is not well in the kingdom of Waldberg.. . The orphan Hans is desperate to escape his master the grave robber Knobbe the Bent. The young countess Angela von Schwanenberg must rescue her parents from the mad archduke. But when fate flings them together they find themselves on a daring quest hurtling through haunted forests racing down mountains in a coffin & sneaking along underground passageways with a travelling circus. & at every turn the archdukes Necromancer is there to thwart their progress. Will Angela save her parents? Will Hans escape his past & find out who he truly is? Or will the evil Necromancer capture them first? ...

When the ancient Italian volcano Mount Vesuvius erupts right before their eyes djinn twins John & Philippa Gaunt know that a br&-new adventure has found them. Soon they learn that volcanoes all over the world are beginning to erupt & are spewing a strange golden lava. It quickly becomes clear that there is a peculiar
- & perhaps evil
- force at work causing these disasters. If the twins cant figure out who is responsible & stop him a environmental catastrophe of epic proportions will devastate the planet. Will John Philippa & their uncle Nimrod be able to use their powers to save the day once again?

...

When she was 15 Harper Connelly was struck by a bolt of lightning which left her with a spiderweb of red over her body headaches & episodes of weakness. Sometimes her right hand shakes. & she can find dead people. Its taken a while but at last Harpers pretty happy with her life: shes making a living using her unique talent to help people & shes got a lover
- her stepbrother Tolliver. That creeps some people out but though they grew up together & got each other through the real bad times
- their parents drug-use the abuse the disappearance of Harpers elder sister Cameron
- theyre not blood relatives. Then Tollivers dad arrives on the scene seeking forgiveness for the sins of their youth & the police get a tip-off that after all these years Camerons been spotted in a mall. With all this going on Harper realises life is getting a little complicated but she doesnt expect those complications to include Tolliver getting shot or watching a cop die taking a bullet for her. Harper can find dead people but now its clear someone wants her dead.. .


...

In the searing heat of Guatemala Dr Temperance Brennan excavates the remains of a two-year-old child from a site that is said to contain the bodies of twenty-three women & children. Shaken by the discovery Tempe tries to harden herself against the horrors that she finds. & then four young girls go missing from Guatemala City... When a skeleton is found in a septic tank at the back of a rundown hotel only someone with Tempes expertise can deduce who the victim was & how they died. But her path is blocked at every turn. It would seem that some people would prefer that Guatemalas disappeared stay buried. & others want the missing girls kept the same way... ...

The award-winning & Number One bestselling Val Mc Dermid crafts an electrifying psychological suspense thriller that mixes history heritage & heinous crimes. A 200 year-old-secret is now a matter of life & death. & it could be worth a fortune. It's summer in the Lake District & heavy rain over the fells has uncovered a bizarrely tattooed body. Could it be linked to the old rumour that Fletcher Christian mutinous First Mate on the Bounty had secretly returned to England? Scholar Jane Gresham wants to find out. She believes that the Lakeland poet William Wordsworth a friend of Christian's may have sheltered the fugitive & turned his tale into an epic poem
- which has since disappeared. But as she follows each lead death is hard on her heels. The centuries-old mystery is putting lives at risk. & it isn't just the truth that is waiting to be discovered but a bounty worth millions.. .
...

Just because Grave Witch Alex Craft can speak to the dead doesnt mean she has to like what they have to say... As a private investigator & consultant for the police Alex has seen a lot of dark magic. But even though shes on good terms with Death himself nothing has prepared her for her latest case. Alex is investigating a high-profile murder when shes attacked by the ghost she is raising
- which should be impossible. Then someone makes a serious attempt on her life thwarted only by Deaths intervention. You know youre having a bad day when Death is saving your life... To solve this case Alex will have to team up with tough homicide detective Falin Andrews. Andrews seems to be hiding something although its certainly not his dislike of Alex. Despite all that Alex is going to need his help to navigate the tangled webs of real-world & paranormal politics & to track down a killer wielding a magic so malevolent it may cost Alex not just her life but also her soul...
...

From the author of Blonde The Falls & We Were the Mulvaneys this new novel takes in the themes of race immigration family & social mobility & is Joyce Carol Oates at her storytelling best. The Gravedigger s Daughter tells the tale of Rebecca Schwart born in the late 1930s to an immigrant family from Nazi Germany just as they are arriving to America. The family settles in a small bleak town in upstate New York where the only job the father can get is as the town gravedigger & caretaker of the cemetery. Soon the towns prejudice & the familys own emotional frailty results in unspeakable tragedy. In the wake of this loss & in an attempt to put her past behind her young Rebecca Schwart moves on across America & through a series of listless marriages in search of somewhere & someone to whom she can belong. ...

The Irish famine that began in 1845 was one of the nineteenth centurys greatest disasters. By its end the islands population of eight million had shrunk by a third through starvation disease & emigration. This is a brilliant compassionate retelling of that awful story for a new generation
- the first account for the general reader for many years & a triumphant example of narrative non-fiction at its best. The immediate cause of the famine was a bacterial infection of the potato crop on which too many the Irish poor depended. What turned a natural disaster into a human disaster was the determination of senior British officials to use relief policy as an instrument of nation
- building in their oldest & most recalcitrant colony. Well-meaning civil servants were eager to modernise Irish agriculture & to improve the Irish moral character which was utterly lacking in the virtues of the new age of triumphant capitalism. The result was a relief programme more concerned with fostering change than of saving lives. This is history that resonates powerfully with our own times.

...

During the last hundred years or so Gravesend has grown from a small community with a population of 22 000 in 1881 to the present Borough of Gravesham with a population of over 90 000. Robert H. Hiscocks book illustrates this development of a small but busy waterside town dependent on the Thames for much of its wealth growing into a vast commercial & residential area with many of its inhabitants commuting to London & elsewhere. This book celebrates the area from the chalk cliffs along the waterside from Botany Marsh & the Creek at Northfleet to the marshes at Denton. It is split into accessible sections devoted to the river the main road including Rochester Road East Milton Road Milton Road King Street New Road Overcliffe London Road The Hill Northfleet High Street & Stonebridge Hill & Old Road Gravesend from the Lion Garage which continues as Dover Road to Northfleet to where it joins the main road at the Leather Bottle. It is a journey that will delight anyone who is familiar with the area. ...

OS Explorer Map is the Ordnance Surveys most detailed map & is recommended for anyone enjoying outdoor activities like walking horse riding & off-road cycling. Providing complete GB coverage the series details essential information such as youth hostels pubs & visitor information as well as rights of way permissive paths & bridleways. ...