The marvellous land of Oz is knotted with social unrest: The Emerald City is mounting an invasion of Munchkinland Glinda is under house arrest & the Cowardly Lion is on the run from the law. & look who's knocking at the door. It's none other than Dorothy. Yes that Dorothy. Amid all this chaos Elphaba's granddaughter the tiny green baby born at the close of Son of a Witch has come of age. Now Rain will take up her broom in an Oz wracked by war. Out of Oz is a magical journey rife with revelations & reversals reprisals & surprises
- the hallmarks of the brilliant & unique imagination of Gregory Maguire.
...

For Robert Jacklin
- packed off without warning to boarding school in Zimbabwe
- everything is terrifyingly new. Branded an

...

Normal. I liked the sound of that. Sure as the daughter of two secret agents I didn't really know what normal meant but that didn't matter. Normal was my new mission. Cammie wakes up in an Alpine convent having lost her memory of the whole summer. She & her friends must travel to the other side of the world trying to piece together the clues that Cammie left behind. But there are people hunting Cammie
- people who will stop at nothing to protect their secrets.. .
...

This story is not a story at all. It all happened. On New Year's Day Becky Morley begins to write her diary. By March her world has changed for ever. Foot-&-mouth disease breaks out on a pig farm hundreds of miles from the Morleys' Devon home but soon the nightmare is a few fields away. Local sheep are infected & every animal is destroyed. Will the Morleys' flock be next? Will their pedigree dairy herd the sows with their piglets & Little Josh Becky's h&-reared lamb survive? Or will they be slaughtered too? The waiting & hoping is the most agonizing experience of Becky's life.. . ...

Out of the ashes what kind of country do we want to build?" David Lammy MP predicted the riots of 2011 a year before they took place. Following the violence he spoke passionately for his constituents. Now in " Out of the Ashes" he analyses the causes of the disturbances & their implications for the future. He draws on his experience of growing up in Tottenham
- the area he now represents & the place where the riots began. He explores the human stories behind the headlines. Above all he seeks to explain why the breakdown of law & order was so swift & so widespread & offers a way forward for Britain that is both practical & inspirational. All author proceeds from the sale of this book will be donated to charitable causes."
...

Life for Linda Caine should hold no fears. As a contented wife & mother she should have everything to live for. Yet a blackness has started to leak into her thoughts. Images flash through her head leaving her stunned & breathless. On the face of it there is no rational explanation for the way she feels. Linda believes there is something malign inside her. But in the back of her mind a voice tells her over & over again that everything will be OK. When it finally gets too much she can always simply die. How shall I die if that time comes? I need to know these things. They have to be planned. It must look like an accident. She will deliberately drive off the road on her way home from her weekly shopping trip. After all who commits suicide with a load of groceries in their car? The raw & powerful journey Linda takes with her psychotherapist Robin Royston to discover what lies at the heart of her deptression will leave you shocked. The secrets in her African childhood & adolescence are buried so deep that to reveal them may destroy her completely. Together Linda & Robin race to unravel the clues before it is too late. OUT OF THE DARK is Linda Caines remarkable & uplifting story from the agonies of mental breakdown to the painful piecing together of the past that was vital for her survival. Both her courage & Robins persistence during the process show the power of the human spirit at its most indomitable & inspiring. ...

It was the case that shocked the nation. On the evening of 20 April 2011 Tina Nashs life changed forever. After suffering months of beatings & domestic abuse at the hands of boyfriend Shane Jenkin she was subjected to a barbaric & prolonged attack during which Jenkin beat her unconscious & gouged out both her eyes. When he was jailed in May 2012 people struggled to comprehend the scale of the violence endured by this mother of two at her home in Cornwall. In Out of the Darkness Tina tells her full story
- of what life with a violent partner is really like & how she survived 12 hours of sustained & unimaginable violence in her own home. Learning to adjust to life without her sight Tina speaks bravely about how her children have given her the courage to keep going & how
- step by careful step
- she is learning to live again. With statistics on domestic violence rising Tinas incredible memoir of survival makes for essential reading.


...

I saw my teacher in the queue at the supermarket last Christmas. Miss Baxter. I was surprised to see her. Shed been dead for six months In Out of The Depths Cathy Mac Phail introduces her latest character Tyler Lawless who has an unusual & sometimes scary gift. She is able to see dead people. & sometimes they speak to her asking for her help. When Tyler moves to a new school she is hoping to make a fresh start. But that isnt easy when a boy who is supposed to be dead appears in your classroom & statues in the school seem to come alive & point towards the place where the dead boy Ben Kincaid was murdered. Will Tyler be able to assist Ben with his pleas for help or will she be dismissed as an attention-seeking teller of tall tales? A thrilling & spooky tale from the acclaimed Cathy Mac Phail. ...

Jon Ronson's subjects have included people who believe that goats can be killed by the power of a really hard stare & people who believe that the world is ruled by twelve-foot lizard-men. In Out of the Ordinary a collection of his journalism from the Guardian he turns his attention to irrational beliefs much closer to home investigating the ways in which we sometimes manage to convince ourselves that all manner of lunacy makes perfect sense -- mainstream domestic ordinary insanity. Whether he finds himself promising his son that he will be at his side for ever dressed in a Santa costume or trying to understand why hundreds of apparently normal people would suddenly start speaking in tongues in a Scout hut in Kidderminster he demonstrates repeatedly how we all succumb to deeply irrational beliefs that grow to inform our everyday existence. Out of the Ordinary is Jon Ronson at his inimitable best: hilarious thought-provoking & with an unerring eye for human frailty -- not least his own. Praise for The Men Who Stare at Goats: ' Not only a narcotic road trip through the wackier reaches of Bush's war effort but also an unmissable account of some of the insanity that has lately been done in our names' Observer Praise for Them: Adventures with Extremists: 'A funny & compulsively readable picaresque adventure through a paranoid shadow world' Louis Theroux Guardian ...

Since Susannah Cates' husband was sent to prison three years ago life has been a constant struggle to provide for herself & their teenage daughter. Nothing ever seems to go right & the most she hopes for now is that nothing more will go wrong. Worried by her mother's unhappiness thirteen-year-old Neve decides to take matters into her own hands. & when Susannah's closest friend Patsy discovers what Neve is up to she immediately lends her support. As their plans start to unfold they have no way of knowing what kind of fates they are stirring all they can see is Susannah's excitement because at last a way seems to be opening up for her to escape her bad luck. However the spectre of horror is all the time pacing behind the scenes & never in all Susannah's worst nightmares could she have imagined her happiness causing so much pain to someone she loves... ...