My mother is still alive & she is going to come for me one day. Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck which left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive but that means still possible. You should never ignore a possible. So when the Welfare Agency writes to her guardian threatening to send Sophie to an orphanage she takes matters into her own hands & flees to Paris to look for her mother starting with the only clue she has
- the address of the cello maker. Evading the French authorities she meets Matteo & his network of rooftoppers
- urchins who live in the sky. Together they scour the city for Sophie's mother before she is caught & sent back to London & most importantly before she loses hope.

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Nora has come home to the Sussex coast where every dawn she runs along the creek path to the sea. In the half-light fragments of cello music crash around in her mind but she casts them out
- its more than a year since she performed in public. There are memories she must banish in order to survive: a charismatic teacher with gold-flecked eyes a mistake she cannot unmake. At home her mother Ada is waiting: a fragile bitter woman who distils for herself a glamorous past as she smokes French cigarettes in her unkempt garden. In the village of Bosham the future is invading. A charming young documentary maker has arrived to shoot a film about King Cnut & his cherished but illegitimate daughter whose body is buried under the flagstones of the local church. As Jonny disturbs the fabric of the village digging up tales of ancient battles & burials the threads lead back to home & Ada & Nora find themselves face to face with the shameful secrets they had so carefully buried. One day Nora finds a half-dead fledgeling in a ditch. She brings him home & over the hot summer months cradles Rook back to life. A mesmerising story of family legacy & turning back the tides Rook beautifully evokes the shifting Sussex sands & the rich seam of history lying just beneath them.
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The body you are wearing used to be mine. So begins the letter Myfanwy Thomas is holding when she awakes in a London park surrounded by bodies all wearing latex gloves. With no recollection of who she is Myfanwy must follow the instructions her former self left behind to discover her identity & track down the agents who want to destroy her. She soon learns that she is a Rook a high-ranking member of a secret organization called the Checquy that battles the many supernatural forces at work in Britain. She also discovers that she possesses a rare & deadly supernatural ability of her own. Filled with characters both fascinating & fantastical The Rook is a richly inventive suspenseful fantasy. An astonishing debut from a brilliant new voice. ...

Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single locked room. They don't have the key. Jack & Ma are prisoners. ' This book will break your heart.. . It is the most vivid radiant & beautiful expression of maternal love I have ever read'
- Irish Times". ' Startlingly original & moving.. . Endearing & as utterly compelling as " The Lovely Bones"'
- " Scotsman". 'I've never read a more heart-burstingly gut wrenchingly compassionate novel.. . As for sweet bright funny Jack I wanted to scoop him up out of the novel & never let him go'
- " Daily Mail". ' This is a truly remarkable novel. It presents an utterly unique way to talk about love all the while giving us a fresh expansive eye on the world in which we live'
- " New York Times Book Review"."



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Jack is five. He lives with his Ma. They live in a single locked room. They dont have the key. Jack & Ma are prisoners. This book will break your heart.. . It is the most vivid radiant & beautiful expression of maternal love I have ever read
- Irish Times". Startlingly original & moving.. . Endearing & as utterly compelling as " The Lovely Bones"
- " Scotsman". Ive never read a more heart-burstingly gut wrenchingly compassionate novel.. . As for sweet bright funny Jack I wanted to scoop him up out of the novel & never let him go
- " Daily Mail". This is a truly remarkable novel. It presents an utterly unique way to talk about love all the while giving us a fresh expansive eye on the world in which we live
- " New York Times Book Review". See Judys Review See Richards Review See Emma Donoghue talk about her book Reading Group Questions Read our exclusive Q&A with Emma Donoghue Write a Review for Room Judys Review This extraordinary book is very hard to sum up. To read it you have to slide into a place that frees you of normal expectation to help yourself understand the most appalling of situations & yet allow for hope love & redemption. Room is told through the eyes of a five year old boy Jack. He & his mother are held captive by a monster a man who kidnapped a nineteen year old girl & held her in a one-room shed locked & sound-proofed. For seven years he has systematically raped her & Jack is a result. So far so horrible & reminiscent of the recent tragedy in Austria where Josef Fritzl repeatedly raped his own daughter after imprisoning her in a cellar fathering many children by her. But Room is not quite like that. It is a story of hope & great love. Jack is adored by his young Ma who tries desperately to bring him up in as normal & loving way possible in their terrifying circumstances. & she succeeds. Jack is a sweet loveable remarkably normal boy. Before their eventual escape she manages to give him an enormous sense of security. Hugely heart-warming is the spirit of Ma: a strong young woman who has somehow transcended her appalling situation & degrading imprisonment to become as warm & protective a mother as any woman in a more stable & conventional environment could hope to be. Richards Review How would any of us react in a moment of mortal danger? In a plane crash? In the heat & smoke of the battlefield? Would we "



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ROOM 13 Somebody was in there. Somebody
- or some thing. There is no room thirteen in the creepy Crow's Nest Hotel where Fliss
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The Angry Young Men movement featuring such stars as Kingsley Amis is perfectly illustrated through the iconic figure of Joe Lampton. The ruthlessly ambitious Joe Lampton rises swiftly from the petty bureaucracy of local government into the unfamiliar world of inherited wealth fast cars & glamorous women. But the price of success is high & betrayal & tragedy strike as Joe pursues his goals. ...

It is Halloween night & the local museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event
- the opening of a coffin containing
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In A Room of Ones Own & Three Guineas Virginia Woolf considers with energy & wit the implications of the historical exclusion of women from education & from economic independence. In A Room of Ones Own (1929) she examines the work of past women writers & looks ahead to a time when womens creativity will not be hampered by poverty or by oppression. In Three Guineas (1938) however Woolf argues that womens historical exclusion offers them the chance to form a political & cultural identity which could challenge the drive towards fascism & war. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features including expert introductions by leading authorities helpful notes to clarify the text up-to-date bibliographies for further study & much more. ...

A Room of Ones Own (1929) has become a classic feminist essay & perhaps Virginia Woolfs best known work; The Voyage Out (1915) is highly significant as her first novel. Both focus on the place of women within the power structures of modern society. The essay lays bare the woman artists struggle for a voice since throughout history she has been denied the social & economic independence assumed by men. Woolfs prescription is clear: if a woman is to find creative expression equal to a mans she must have an independent income & a room of her own. This is both an acute analysis & a spirited rallying cry; it remains surprisingly resonant & relevant in the 21st century. The novel explores these issues more personally through the character of Rachel Vinrace a young woman whose voyage out to South America opens up powerful encounters with her fellow-travellers men & women. As she begins to understand her place in the world she finds the happiness of love but also sees its brute power. Woolf has a sharp eye for the comedy of English manners in a foreign milieu; but the final undertow of the novel is tragic as in some of her finest writing she calls up the essential isolation of the human spirit. ...