Railway termini wrote E.M. Forster are our gates to the glorious & the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure & sunshine... Now in this new collection of great journeys from the pages of the Daily & Sunday Telegraph Michael Kerr follows up his bestselling anthology Last Call for the Dining Car with another feast for the armchair rail traveller. The train sliding out of the station can take you back into the past
- in the company of John Betjeman on the Great Western
- or into an ominous future now that China has a line across the permafrost to Tibet. The sunshine may be the late-afternoon glow on a freight train between LA & Seattle or the sea light bathing the Cornish coast alongside the branch line to St Ives. The adventure may even be dodging death on the train itself as Dervla Murphy does on the antiquated rolling stock of Cuba. Sometimes too the train tracks peoples lives on a journey into their deepest secrets. Nicholas Shakespeare travelling around France pieces together the story of what happened to his aunt who was stranded there on the brink of war in 1937. Pamela Petro rattling down the Pacific coast of the US confronts the demons that have been haunting her since a train crash a quarter of a century ago. From Sandi Toksvigs commuter train to Alexander Mc Call Smiths night train; from the Indian Pacific to the Maharajas Express; Sunrise on the Southbound Sleeper is a first-class ticket to ride all the best trains in the world.

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In the exciting second Warriors story arc the wild cats of the forest have lived in peace & harmony for many moons--but new prophecies from their warrior ancestors speak of a mysterious destiny & grave danger for the clans. The final title in this thrilling feline fantasy adventure. Soon after the cats reached their new home by the lake Thunder Clan's medicine cat Leafpool received an ominous warning from Star Clan: Before there is peace blood will spill blood & the lake will run red. As the Clan slowly recovers from a devastating badger attack Leafpool can't help but wonder! do her prophetic dreams mean there are even worse dangers still in store for the warrior cats? At the same time shadows of the past continue to haunt the forest as some old friends struggle to find their place others appear to be lost forever & an old enemy finds a new way to resurface in a quest for dark revenge. A sinister path is unfolding & the time is coming for certain warriors to make the choices that will determine their destiny.. .and the destiny of all the Clans. ...

This is Douglas Reemans 30th naval thriller. It is the year 1941. To the residents & defence forces of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong the war in Europe remains remote. Even the massive build-up of Japanese forces on the Chinese border cannot dent their carefree optimism. Yet one man suspects the truth. Lieutenant-Commander Esmond Brooke captain of HMS Serpent & a veteran of the cruel Atlantic sees all too clearly the folly & incompetence of Hong Kongs colonial administration. To Brooke attack by Japan seems inevitable. But in war there will always be some who attempt the impossible even in the face of death. This is the story of one ship & her company who refuse to accept the anguish of defeat & surrender to a merciless enemy... ...

In the sprawling flatlands of Florida 28-year-old Miles is photographing the last lingering traces of families who have abandoned their houses due to debt or foreclosure. Miles is haunted by guilt for having inadvertently caused the death of his step-brother a situation that caused him to flee his father & step-mother in New York 7 years ago. What keeps him in Florida is his relationship with a teenage high-school girl Pilar but when her family threatens to expose their relationship Miles decides to protect Pilar by going back to Brooklyn where he settles in a squat to prepare himself to face the inevitable confrontation with his father that he has been avoiding for years. Pulsing with the energy of Auster's previous novel Invisible" " Sunset Park" is as mythic as it is contemporary as in love with baseball as it is with literature. It is above all a story about love & forgiveness
- not only among men & women but also between fathers & sons."
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Faced with a choice between her harsh farming life & the seductive but distant world of books & learning Chris Guthrie eventually decides to remain in her rural community bound by her intense love of the l&. However the intervention of the First World War leaves her choice in tatters. Chris is now a widowed single mother: her farm & the land it occupies is altered beyond recognition
- trees torn down people displaced. But although the novel describes a way of life which is in decline it also presents a strong image of hope. Chris adapts to her new world displaying an intuitive strength which like the land which she loves endures despite everything. Sunset Song" is a testament to Scotlands agricultural past to the world of crofters & tradition which was destroyed in the First World War. It is a powerful description of life in the first few decades of the century through the evocation of change & the lyrical intensity of its prose. Renowned expert Ian Campbell has produced the first new scholarly text for fifteen years & has the blessing of the Lewis Grassic Gibbon estate."
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There are places in the world where darkness rules where its unwise to walk. But the lake had been quiet for years... She never heard them coming. Of course you dont when theyre vampires. They took her clothes & sneakers. They dressed her in a long red gown. & they shackled her to the wall of an abandoned mansion
- within easy reach of her fellow prisoner. She knows he is a vampire. She knows that shes to be his dinner & that when he is finished with her she will be dead. Yet when dawn breaks she is still alive. & now he needs her to help him survive the day...
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Daisy Kildare lives with her family in a cottage perched on the Connemara coast. The Kildares are poor but happy. But when their croft is wrested from them Daisy's Aunt Jane who is housekeeper to Dr & Mrs Venables offers to take Daisy back to Liverpool so that the child can be a companion to her employers' orphaned niece Cynthia. Daisy is a tomboy young for her age self-willed & hot-tempered. In Ireland she was seldom in school but often in trouble. Now however she tells herself that she must conform. She begins to work hard in school & though she & Cynthia don't get along she meets Jake the chauffeur's son & life in Liverpool becomes easier to bear. When Jake goes to university Daisy means to follow suit but war intervenes & instead she starts work at a munitions factory & falls in love for the very first time. ...

Love & happiness
- hatred & despair... Life seems to alternate between periods of stunning happiness for pretty seventeen-year-old
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Liverpool 1926. Patsy Doyle is settling into her role as live-in maid in the Tanner household but her new job is not going smoothly. Caught between the warring Tanner spouses Patsy becomes an unwilling confidante & a keeper of more secrets than she'd care to acknowledge. Joy Kirk is busy planning her wedding. When her first love was killed in the war she vowed she'd never fall in love again. Now a little older & wiser Joy realises that there could be some benefits to being a wife & having spent many years working as Robbie Bennett's cook & housekeeper she finally accepts his proposal of marriage. But is she letting herself in for more than she bargained for? ...

Molly Bennett & Nellie Mc Donough have been best mates for over twenty years with never a cross word between them. When times were bad & money scarce they kept their families together with love & laughter. & they were always there to help anyone in trouble. So when they hear about a mother who hasn't seen her son for years the two friends know they have a job to do... ...