One moment a man sits on a suburban hill gazing curiously at the stars. The next he is whirling through the firmament & perhaps the most remarkable of all science fiction journeys has begun. Even Stapledons other great work LAST & FIRST MEN pales in ambition next to STAR MAKER which presents nothing less than an entire imagined history of life in the universe encompassing billions of years. ...

In 1896 in a pilgrim church in the Alps an abandoned baby girl is found by a cook & a housemaid. They take her home & Annika grows up in the servants' quarters of a house belonging to three eccentric Viennese professors. She is happy there but dreams of the day when her real mother will come to find her. & sure enough one day a glamorous stranger arrives at the door. After years of guilt & searching Annika's mother has come to claim her daughter who is in fact a Prussian aristocrat & whose true home is a great castle. But at crumbling spooky Spittal Annika discovers that all is not as it seems in the lives of her new-found family. Eva Ibbotson's hugely entertaining story is a timeless classic for readers young & old. ...

Richard the Second is losing his hold on the crown & Henry of Bolingbroke previously exiled by the king returns to England to claim it. Richard is deposed & dies mysteriously murdered some say on the orders of Bolingbroke now King Henry the Fourth. But Henry finds the crown harder to hold onto than it was to win. He is beset by enemies hampered by disease & concerned about the rebellious behaviour of his son. Dominating the court & with his eye on the crown is Harry of Monmouth whose reckless conduct in low-class taverns with his crony Sir John Oldcastle causes scandal. When the king dies Harry became King Henry the Fifth & the change is dramatic for both him & Oldcastle. The licentious youth becomes a great king & Oldcastle the rake turns into a religious reformer. Oldcastle dies a martyr & Harry becomes the conquering hero of Agincourt. The Star of Lancaster is in the ascendant. Harry has brought France to her knees & married her princess. It seems that the long war was at an end. But a greater enemy than the French awaits Harry... ...

Shy Mia loves the idea of entering a school talent contest for singer/songwriters but just isn't confident enough until her friends persuade her to give it a go. She's thrilled to make it through the auditions but when she realizes that another entrant might be cheating will she be brave enough to tell the judges what's going on? Filled with secrets hopes dreams & above all the power of friendship School Friends" is addictive reading for girls." ...

In the bitter winter of 1847 from an Ireland torn by injustice & natural disaster the Star of the Sea sets sail for New York. On board are hundreds of fleeing refugees. Among them are a maidservant with a devastating secret bankrupt Lord Merridith & his family an aspiring novelist a maker of revolutionary ballads all braving the Atlantic in search of a new home. Each is connected more deeply than they can possibly know. But a camouflaged killer is stalking the decks hungry for the vengeance that will bring absolution. The twenty-six day journey will see many lives end others begin afresh. In a spellbinding story of tragedy & mercy love & healing the further the ship sails towards the Promised Land the more her passengers seem moored to a past which will never let them go. ...

Special features of this book are: sun-signs in depth numerology for everyone of you a terrific piece blending Chinese & Western astrology something about the history lore & use of gems & an article on gifts for all the 12 signs. Here in short is God's plenty. Daruwalla is a strong devotee of Lord Ganesha (the elephant-headed God who is known to remove obstacles & sorrows.) Amongst his predictions the noteworthy ones were the release of Nelson Mandela & the fall of Margaret Thatcher which appeared in the magazine Eve's Weekly" January 20 1990. Widely travelled Bejan Daruwalla was invited by three Radio Stations & WBN's channel 10 Columbus Ohio for his talks. He was also interviewed in the American Dailies during his stay there. Another distinction he was invited by the prestigious Edgar Cayce Foundation Virginia Beach for a series of lectures & needless to mention that the Indian newspapers & T.V. stations in Washington did him proud
- & the Indians certainly know their astrologers! A unique honour for Bejan Daruwalla where America is his home away from home. The star astrologer is already on another book."
...

This is a fun & funky series charting the hopes dreams & schemes of the lively loveable Lucy
- wannabe fashion designer & Stand
...

' This is crime writing of the very highest order! Kate Brannigan has turned into the most interesting sleuthess around' The Times Bodyguarding had never made it to Manchester PI Kate Brannigan's wish list. But somebody's got to pay the bills at Brannigan & Co & if the only earner on offer is playing nursemaid to a paranoid soap star the fast-talking computer-loving white collar crime expert has to swallow her pride & slip into something more glam than her Thai boxing kit. Then offstage dramas threaten to overshadow the fictional storylines till the unscripted murder of the self-styled ' Seer to the Stars' stops the show leaving Kate with more questions than answers. & you just can't get the help these days. Her process server keeps getting arrested; her tame hacker has found virtual love; her best friend is besotted with baby; & the normally reliable Dennis has had the temerity to get himself arrested for murder as a result of his latest dodgy business venture. Nobody told her there'd be days like these! ...

A funny super-girly story with a vampire bite to it. It's the premiere of The Groves the Hollywood film Olivia had a small part in -as a goth. Jackson her Hollywood heartthrob boyfriend wanted to walk down the red carpet with her but a fashion disaster puts paid to that. & then a top Hollywood producer mistakes Ivy in her goth gear for Olivia.. . Meanwhile the twins' biological dad seems to be all of a flutter near Lillian second director on the film. & Charlotte Brown is inexplicably hanging around with Jessica Phelps vampire super actress. Plus everyone seems to be copying Olivia's premiere fashion style. Suddenly Olivia & Jessica are in competition for the lead in a new vampire romance movie opposite Jackson. & Jessica plays mean.. . Sink your teeth into Olivia & Ivy's eighth fright-time adventure. ...

Molly Sullivan said that the new baby was a little star. She was no trouble at all & she was always smiling
- so she became known
...