The course of true love never did run smooth...A magical retelling of Hermia Helen Demetrius & Lysander's classic story
- & of
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The Wordsworth Classics' Shakespeare Series with Romeo & Juliet Henry V & The Merchant of Venice as its inaugural volumes presents a newly-edited sequence of William Shakespeare's works. The textual editing takes account of recent scholarship while giving the material a careful reappraisal. Its lyricism comedy (both broad & subtle) & magical transformations have long made A Midsummer Night's Dream one of the most popular of Shakespeare's works. The supernatural & the mundane the illusory & the substantial are all shimmeringly blended. Love is treated as tragic poignant absurd & farcical. ' Lord what fools these mortals be!' jeers Robin Goodfellow; but the joke may be on him & on his master Oberon when Bottom the weaver his head transformed into that of an ass is embraced by the voluptuously amorous Titania. Recent stage-productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream have emphasised the enchanting spectacular ambiguous & erotically joyous aspects of this magical drama which culminates in a multiple celebration of marriage. ...

This new edition of A Midsummer Night's Dream is part of the established Cambridge School Shakespeare series & has been substantially updated with new & revised activities throughout. Remaining faithful to the series' active approach it treats the play as a script to be acted explored & enjoyed. As well as the complete script of A Midsummer Night's Dream you will find a variety of classroom-tested activities an eight-page colour section & an enlarged selection of notes including information on characters performance history & language. ...

It's the hotly anticipated sequel to the winner of the Roald Dahl Funny Prize WITHERING TIGHTS
- laugh your tights off as Tallulah
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In less than one day the might of the Imperial Japanese Navy was destroyed & four of her great aircraft carriers sank burning into the dark depths of the Pacific. Utilizing the latest research & detailed combat maps this book tells the dramatic story of the Japanese assault on Midway Island & the American ambush that changed the face of the Pacific war. With sections on commanders opposing forces & a blow-by-blow account of the action this volume gives a complete understanding of the strategy the tactics & the human drama that made up the Midway campaign & its place as the turning point in the Pacific war. ...

At midnight the dogs cats & rats rule Venice. The Ponte di Ghetto Nuovo the bridge that leads to the ghetto trembles under the weight of sacks of rotting vegetables rancid fat & vermin. Seeping refuse on the streets renders the pavement slick & the walking treacherous. It was on such a night that the men came for Hannah. Hannah Levi is famed throughout Venice for her skills as a midwife but as a Jew the law forbids her from attending a Christian woman. However when the Conte appears at her door in the dead of night Hannahs compassion is sorely tested. & with the handsome reward he is offering she could ransom back her husband currently imprisoned on the island of Malta. But if she fails in her endeavours to save mother & child will she be able to save herself let alone her husband? ...

Agnes Light trained as a nurse in the 1960s & went on to become a midwife
- helping to bring new lives into the world for over
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A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. The new novel from Orange Prize listed author Patricia Ferguson is a deeply moving tale about two sisters & the young black orphan who changes their lives
- for anyone who loves Call the Midwife or Andrea Levy. violet Dimond" the " Holy Terror" has delivered many of the town children
- & often their children
- in her capacity as handywoman. But violet's calling is dying out as with medicine's advances the good old ways are no longer good enough. Grace violet's adopted daughter is a symbol of change herself. In the place where she has grown up & everyone knows her she is accepted though most of the locals never before saw a girl with skin that colour. For violet & Grace the coming war will bring more upheaval into their lives: can they endure it or will they like so many be swept aside by history's tide? A moving tale of prejudice struggle love tragedy bravery & the changing lives of women in the twentieth century " The Midwife's Daughter" grips the reader all the way to its heartstopping conclusion. Praise for Patricia Ferguson: " Strong affecting vividly depicted... It is a pure pleasure to read". (Lionel Shriver " Telegraph" (on Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson)). " One of the most brilliant novelists around...funny gripping wonderfully shrewd". (" Independent"). Patricia Ferguson trained in nursing & midwifery & her first book " Family Myths & Legends" won the Betty Trask David Higham & Somerset Maugham awards. Her most recent books " It So Happens" & " Peripheral Vision" were both longlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in Bristol."


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The Sunday Times bestseller ' Delivering my first baby is a memory that will stay with me forever. Just feeling the warmth of a newborn head in your hands that new life there's honestly nothing like it...I've since brought more than 2 200 babies into the world & I still tingle with excitement every time.' It's the summer of 1968 & St Mary's Maternity Hospital in Manchester is a place from a bygone age. It is filled with starched white hats & full skirts steaming laundries & milk kitchens strict curfews & bellowed commands. It is a time of homebirths swaddling & dangerous anaesthetics. It was this world that Linda Fairley entered as a trainee midwife aged just 19 years old. From the moment Linda delivered her first baby
- racing across rain-splattered Manchester street on her trusty moped in the dead of night
- Linda knew she'd found her vocation. ' The midwife's here!' they always exclaimed joined in their joyful chorus by relieved husbands mothers grandmothers & whoever else had found themselves in close proximity to a woman about to give birth. Under the strict supervision of community midwife Mrs Tattershall Linda's gruellingly long days were spent on overcrowded wards pinning Terry nappies making up bottles & sterilizing bedpans
- & above all helping women in need. Her life was a succession of emergencies successes & tragedies: a never-ending chain of actions which made all the difference between life & death. There was Mrs Petty who gave birth in heartbreaking poverty; Mrs Drew who confided to Linda that the triplets she was carrying were not in fact her husband's; & Muriel Turner whose dangerously premature baby boy survived
- against all the odds. Forty years later Linda's passion for midwifery burns as bright as ever as she is now celebrated as one of Britain's longest-serving midwives still holding the lives of mothers & children in her own two hands. Rich in period detail & told with a good dose of Manchester humour The Midwife's Here! is the extraordinary heartwarming tale of a truly inspiring woman.



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' An investigation consists of a mass of voices the sort you can hear & the sort you can't. You have to listen to the soundless voices Malin. That's where the truth is hidden.' Early one morning in the coldest winter in Swedish memory police detective Malin Fors is called away from the warm flat she shares with her teenage daughter. The naked body of a man has been found hanging from a tree on the deserted frozen plain outside the town of Link?ping. From the outset Malin is confronted with a host of unanswered questions: Who is the dead man? How did he end up in a tree? & where did the strange wounds on his body come from? Malin & her team must search for the truth in a community that seems determined to keep its secrets & follow in the frigid wake of a killer to the darkest corners of the human heart. ...