Rainsongs is a novel about memory, faith & love, ”a compelling story freighted with heartbreak & loss” (Shena Mackay), & a meditation on the fragile, improbable ways that history, landscape & unlikely intimacies can offer quiet redemption. Newly widowed Martha Cassidy has returned to a remote cottage on the west coast of Ireland to a virtually abandoned village. Looking out her window towards the Skelligs, Martha recalls her ten-year-old son, Bruno, before his untimely death twenty years earlier. As the days unfold, she finds herself drawn into a standoff between the entrepreneur Eugene Riorden & a local hill farmer, the elderly Paddy O` Connell. As the crisis between these men escalates & Paddy suspiciously ends up in hospital, Martha develops a relationship with Colm, a talented but much younger musician & poet, roughly the same age that Bruno would have been if he`d lived. As the Celtic Tiger is reeling with change from the rhythms of an older way of life to unprecedented prosperity, Martha is beset with choices that will change her life forever. ...

Rainsough, Kersal & Hilton Park in 1907 in a fascinating series of reproductions of old Ordnance Survey plans in the Alan Godfrey Editions, ideal for anyone interested in the history of their neighbourhood or family. The map covers the Rainsough & Hilton Park areas of Prestwich; further south is part of the Kersal area of Salford. Features include Kersal Hall, Kersal Vale Works, Kersal Moor, Myrtle Grove Bleach Works, Hilton House, Hope Square, part of Prestwich Hills Reservoirs, Rainsough Hill, Prestwich Lodge, Irwell House smallpox hospital. etc. The River Irwell runs through the map & west of it is a largely rural area, including part of Northern Cemetery, Hall Hill, Agecroft Grange, Agecroft Hall & a stretch of the Manchester Bolton & Bury Canal. A selection of trade directory entries is on the reverse, plus street entries for Bury New Road, George Street & Hilton Lane. About the Alan Godfrey Editions of the 25” OS Series: Selected towns in Great Britain & Ireland are covered by maps showing the extent of urban development in the last decades of the 19th & early 20th century. The plans have been taken from the Ordnance Survey mapping & reprinted at about 15 inches to one mile (1:4, 340). On the reverse most maps have historical notes & many also include extracts from contemporary directories. Most maps cover about one mile (1.6kms) north/south, one & a half miles (2.4kms) across; adjoining sheets can be combined to provide wider coverage.FOR MORE INFORMATION & A COMPLETE LIST OF ALL AVAILABLE TITLES PLEASE CLICK ON THE SERIES LINK. ...

Most guidebooks to Ireland are aimed at adults. But many of those adults also bring their children on holiday with them. Here`s the first guidebook written for children. It contains details of the country, its history, culture, legends & places to visit. & as its title implies it also gives lots of ideas for the inevitable rainy day. Activity pages appear throughout the book. Finally there`s a special pocket built into the back cover in which the child can keep tickets, leaflets & other memorabilia of the holiday. All in all, this is a book for children that adults won`t want to be without! ...

In his novel Rainy Season, Augualusa returns to the present again, following a journalist who is trying to find out what happened to the Angolan poetess & historian Lidia de Carmo Ferreira. What at first seems like a fictive biogaphy of Ferreira gradually turns out to be a depiction of the devastating history of a country tormented by 30 years of war. ...

Packed full of wow-inducing facts & trivia, this colourful book offers much more than the average flag book. Find out how Lichtenstein & Haiti discovered they shared the exact same flag & which national flag was designed by a 15-year-old schoolgirl in this comprehensive & entertaining read.. Features 268 flags, including the national flag of every country in the world, an atlas-style chapter for each continent exploring the history of significant flags, & themed sections that introduce the many different types of flags, plus great moments in flag history (flags at the poles & in space for example) & how we communicate using flags. There`s even a design-your-own flag activity & a fabulous flag quiz at the back of the book to help you get creative & test your flag knowledge! ...

Malalai Joya is the youngest & most famous female MP in Afghanistan, whose bravery & vision have won her an international following. She made world headlines with her very first speech, in which she courageously denounced the presence of warlords in the new Afghan government. She has spoken out for justice ever since, & for the rights of women in the country she loves. ” Raising My Voice” shares her extraordinary story. Born during the Russian invasion & spending her youth in refugee camps, Malalai Joya describes how she first became a political activist. When she returned to Afghanistan, the country was under the grip of the Taliban & she ran a secret school for girls. A popular MP with her constituents, she received global support when she was suspended from parliament in 2007 because of her forthright views. Malalai Joya`s work has brought her awards & death threats in equal measure. She lives in constant danger. In this gripping account, she reveals the truth about life in a country embroiled in war
- especially for the women
- & speaks candidly about the future of Afghanistan, a future that has implications for us all.

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THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER. ” Everybody wanted the railway close, oh yes please, but not so close that they could hear it or smell it.” People love to hate the trains. They`re essential
- but everyone wishes there were more of them, & that they were faster, & most of all, that they would just run on time. But whenever something new is planned for the railway, there will always be someone with objections. The noise, the pollution, the money, the landscape... Those people really hate the trains
- &, sometimes, they`ll go to extremes to stop locomotion in its tracks...” British fiction`s most brilliant satire on contemporary life.” (Telegraph). ” The most serious of comedies, the most relevant & real of fantasies...at once hilariously cynical & idealistically practical.” (Independent).

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It`s all change for Moist von Lipwig, swindler, conman, & (naturally) head of the Royal Bank & Post Office. A steaming, clanging new invention, driven by Dick Simnel, the man with t`flat cap & t`sliding rule, is drawing astonished crowds
- including a few particularly keen young men armed with notepads & very sensible rainwear
- & suddenly it`s a matter of national importance that the trains run on time. Moist does not enjoy hard work. His.. .vital input at the bank & post office consists mainly of words, which are not that heavy. Or greasy. & it certainly doesn`t involve rickety bridges, runaway cheeses or a fat controller with knuckledusters. What he does enjoy is being alive, which may not be a perk of running the new railway. Because, of course, some people have Objections, & they`ll go to extremes to stop locomotion in its tracks.

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It`s June of 1965 when Wrecker enters the world. The war is raging in Vietnam, San Francisco is tripping towards flower power, & Lisa Fay
- a young innocent from a family farm down south
- is knocked nearly sideways by life as a single mother in a city she could barely manage to navigate on her own. Three years later, she`s alone again. Kids aren`t allowed in prison. & Wrecker, scared silent, furious, & hell-bent on breaking every last thing that crosses his path, is shipped off to live with distant relatives in the wilds of Humboldt County. Raising Wrecker is the story of this nearly-broken boy whose presence turns a motley group of isolated eccentrics into a real family. Real enough to make mistakes. Real enough to stick together in spite of everything ready to tear them apart. There`s no guidebook to mothering for Melody, who thought the best thing in life was eighty acres of old growth along the Mattole River & nobody telling her what to do
- until this boy came along. For Melody, Len, Willow, Ruth, Meg & Johnnie Appleseed, life will never again be the same once Wrecker signs on. And for Lisa Fay, there`s one thought keeping her alive through fifteen years of hard time: one day, she`ll find her son & bring him home.


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Born a princess of the Royal Household of Balmer, Jaya Singh is torn between the traditions of her upbringing & the ideals of the Mahatma, as India draws inexorably towards the bloody struggle for independence from the British Raj. To fulfil her role as the guardian of the people, Jaya must first win her own freedom
- then lead her kingdom through treacherous changes of history to the moment when palace & country will triumph over destiny. Grounded in details of ancient royal tradition & Hindu ritual, Jaya`s story counterpoints a vanished way of life against the complex political realities involved in the passing of the Raj & the birth of the modern nations of India & Pakistan.
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