Plays Five: Arcadia"" The Real Thing"" Night & Day; "" Indian Ink; "" Hapgood " This fifth collection of Tom Stoppards plays brings together five classic plays by one of the most celebrated dramatists writing in the English language. " Arcadia "received the Evening Standard the Oliver & the Critics Awards & " The Real Thing "won a Tony Award." ...

Tom Thumb's musical maths
- the book which put the fun into the numeracy hour
- is relaunching with a fresh new cover. This

...

The Trueheart house is busy & bustling-because today is a special day. Toms older brothers are getting married & preparing to live happily ever after. But then an unexpected wedding guest arrives. Someone who has decided that there will be no more Happy Endings. Toms brothers & their brides are whisked off to the Land of Dark Stories as prisoners of their old enemy Brother Ormestone. & Tom himself is put under a terrible enchantment... It is up to Tom to try to save the others & to bring back Happy Endings. But how can he defeat the storybook monsters now that he is only the size of a thumb? ...

Tom Waits may just be what the Daily Telegraph calls him: the greatest entertainer on Planet Earth. He is also a shape-shifter who over a span of almost four decades has restlessly transformed his song-writing & persona not to suit the times but his own whims. Along with Bob Dylan he stands as one of American musics last great mysteries. Hundreds of journalists have sought to crack the Waits code but few have come close to piercing the myths that shroud him. Tom Waits on Tom Waits is a selection of over fifty of his most intriguing interviews the majority of which have never been collected in book form before. In each Waits shares something truly unique delivering prose as crafted poetic potent & haunting as his best lyrics. Taken together they present a de facto autobiography of a notoriously guarded artist. ...

Tom Weir as a popular television personality climaxed a long life as explorer naturalist & photographer. His dedication took him from impoverished Glasgow to the ends of the earth & this selection some never before published touches on all his many enthusiasms a book to appeal to all who hold dear the memory of a notable Scotsman. Wiith the full cooperation of Tom's widow Rhona Weir Hamish Brown has gathered a selection of his writings & presents them chronologically with an illuminating foreword. Together they form a sort of autobiography the life of a man writing as he goes. This book will be one of the most eagerly anticipated titles to be published in Scotland in 2013. ...

This is a BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Philippa Pearce's enchanting children's tale starring Una Stubbs & Crawford Logan. These audio editions especially dramatised for BBC Radio are of timeless stories that have enchanted generations of readers both young & old. The wonder & excitement of these much-loved tales live on in these acclaimed full-cast dramatisations complete with evocative music & sound effects. When his brother catches measles Tom is sent away for the summer to stay with his uncle & aunt
- & is thoroughly fed up about it. What a boring summer it's going to be. But then lying in bed one night he hears the old grandfather clock in the hall strike the very strange hour of thirteen o'clock. What can it mean? As Tom creeps downstairs & opens the door he finds out...a magical garden a new playmate & the adventure of a lifetime.
...

But it's true' Tom shouted. ' It was a real lion I know it was'. No-one believes Tom when he says he has seen a lion
- padding
...

London 1850. Fog in the air & filth in the streets from the rat-infested graveyard of Tom-All-Alones to the elegant chambers in Lincolns Inn Fields where the formidable lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn has powerful clients to protect & a deadly secret to hide. Only that secret is now under threat from a shadowy & unseen adversary
- an adversary who must be tracked down at all costs before its too late. Who better for such a task than young Charles Maddox? Unfairly dismissed from the police force Charles is struggling to establish himself as a private detective. Only business is slow & his one case a dead end so when Tulkinghorn offers a handsome price for an apparently simple job Charles is unable to resist. But as he soon discovers nothing here is what it seems. An assignment that starts with anonymous letters leads soon to a brutal murder as the investigation lures Charles ever deeper into the terrible darkness Tulkinghorn will stop at nothing to conceal. Inspired by Charles Dickens masterpiece Bleak House" " Tom-All-Alones" is a new & gripping Victorian murder mystery which immerses the reader in a grim London underworld that Dickens could only hint at
- a world in which girls as young as ten work the night as prostitutes unwanted babies are ruthlessly disposed of & those who threaten the rank & reputations of great men are eliminated at once & without remorse."

...

The story of Tom-All-Alone's" takes place in the 'space between' two masterpieces of mid-Victorian fiction: " Bleak House" & " The Woman in White"
- overlapping with them & re-imagining them for a contemporary reader with a modern understanding of the grimmer realities of Victorian society. Charles Maddox dismissed from the police force is working as a private detective & can only hope to follow in his uncle's formidable footsteps as an eminent thief-taker. On a cold & bright Autumn morning a policeman calls on Charles at his lodgings with information that may be related to a case he is working on. He goes to a ruined cemetery to find a shallow grave containing the remains of four babies has been discovered. After examining them he concludes they are not related to his investigation which is to find a young girl abandoned in a workhouse 16 years before when her mother died. But all is not as it first appears. As he's drawn into another case at the behest of the eminent but feared lawyer Edward Tulkinghorn London's sinister underbelly begins to emerge. From the first gruesome murder Charles has a race against time to establish the root of all evil. " Tom's-All-Alone" is ' Dickens but darker'
- without the comedy without the caricature & a style all its own. The novel explores a dark underside of Victorian life that Dickens & Collins hinted at
- a world in which young women are sexually abused unwanted babies summarily disposed of & those that discover the grim secrets of great men brutally eliminated."


...

Legend tells of the Clan of the Scorpion four mighty meerkats who are armed to the teeth with ninja-knowhow. They are sworn to protect the world from their longtime nemesis the Ringmaster... When Chucks brother Lob calls from Egypt to request the Clans help the meekats leap into action. Lob tells them that a local band of robbers known as the Thieves of Cairo are planning to infiltrate the mysterious Tomb of Doom & steal its contents including an Egyptian mask rumoured to give its wearer the power to read minds. The meerkats smell a rat... Could the Ringmaster be behind this cunning scheme? ...