Published annually in spring, The Yellow Book 2015 lists nearly 4, 000 gardens open for visiting. It is packed with full-colour photographs & informed comment. Fully updated & supported by an online database, The Yellow Book 2015 is now easier to use than ever. Look out for sensory gardens, those offering accommodation & delicious treats, & learn how to create your own patch. Find a garden to visit near you & support the NGS`s vital charity work. ...

In The Yellow Cross, René Weis tells the story a group of heretics in thirteenth century southwest France, the Cathars, & how they became a serious threat to the Catholic church. In several waves of repression, thousands of Cathars were killed. Yet so ardent was their faith that, early in the next century, the Cathars rose one last time. Using the breathtakingly detailed & uniquely extant documentation from this period, & drawing on his intimate knowledge of the last Cathars` tracks & hiding places, many of which survive to this day, René Weis tells the full story of this gripping historical episode. ...

Georges Simenon`s gripping tale of small town suspicion & revenge, book five in the new Inspector Maigret series. There was an exaggerated humility about her. Her cowed eyes, her way of gliding noiselessly about without bumping into things, of quivering nervously at the slight-est word, were the very image of a scullery maid accustomed to hardship. & yet he sensed, beneath that image, glints of pride held firmly in check. She was anaemic. Her flat chest was not formed to rouse desire. Nevertheless, she was strangely appealing, perhaps because she seemed troubled, despondent, sickly. In the windswept seaside town of Concarneau, a local wine merchant is shot. In fact, someone is out to kill all the influential men & the entire town is soon sent into a state of panic. For Maigret, the answers lie with the pale, downtrodden waitress Emma, & a strange yellow dog lurking in the shadows...” Compelling, remorseless, brilliant”. (John Gray). ” One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century... Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories”. (Guardian). ”A supreme writer.. .unforgettable vividness”. (Independent). Georges Simenon was born in Liege, Belgium, in 1903. Best known in Britain as the author of the Maigret books, his prolific output of over 400 novels & short stories have made him a household name in continental Europe. He died in 1989 in Lausanne, Switzerl&, where he had lived for the latter part of his life. Linda Asher is a former fiction editor of the New Yorker & the award winning translator of many works from French including those of Milan Kundera. ...

1939. Nine year old Susie & her sister Gyll live in Watford, & all week look forward to their Saturday shopping expedition to Woolworths with their nanny, to buy something nice for Mummy. But as war breaks out in Europe, the girls are evacuated to Africa. Feeling abandoned & alone, the sisters find their new life miserable & get no sympathy from their guardians, who force them to wear patched-up clothes & be in bed by six o`clock. As time passes & letters from home stop arriving, the sisters dream of escape & of returning to idyllic Engl&. Yet when they finally do arrive home, all the changes that await them make for a very different life than the one they had longed for... Intensely funny & charming, Susan Kennaway writes about growing up during the Second World War with rare honesty & insight. ...

The Yellow Jersey Club contains just twenty-six living members. To become one of this exclusive number requires complete dedication, brutal self-sacrifice & the most extraordinary physical attributes. Yet along with the ability to climb mountains, bomb along time trials & survive all the perils of the road, what really makes a Tour de France champion? Edward Pickering set out on a mission to ask them, & gained some astonishing insights into the minds of cycling`s best ever riders of the past forty years, from giants like Greg Le Mond & Stephen Roche to more unfamiliar names like Bernard Thevenet & Joop Zootemelk. With his trademark sharp analysis & deft style, Pickering explores the myriad factors that combine to produce success. What does it take to accumulate such great mental strength, skill & endurance? What are the differences as well as the key factors in common? What sets these men apart from the rest of the field? The Yellow Jersey Club gives the reader unprecedented access into the secrets of the greats of cycling. ...

A hundred years ago, a character made his first appearance in the world of literature who was to enter the bloodstream of 20th-century popular culture: the evil genius called Dr Fu Manchu, described at the beginning of the first story in which he appeared as the yellow peril incarnate in one man. Why did the idea that the Chinese were a threat to Western civilization develop at precisely the time when that country was in chaos, divided against itself, victim of successive famines & utterly incapable of being a peril to anyone even if it had wanted to be? Here, Sir Christopher Frayling assembles an astonishing diversity of evidence to show how deeply ingrained Chinaphobia became in the West so acutely relevant again in the new era of Chinese superpower. Along the way he talks to Edward Said, to the last Governor of Hong Kong, to Sax Rohmers widow, to movie stars & a host of others; he journeys through the opium dens of the 19th century with Charles Dickens; takes us to the heart of popular culture in the music hall, pulp literature & the mass-market press; & shows how film amplifies our assumptions, demonstrating throughout how we neglect the history of popular culture at our own peril if we want to understand our deepest desires & fears. ...

In a soft comfy nest in a safe warm place there snoozed a great big orange thing called the Yes. He was snug, but the Yes had a Where to go to. So he left his nest & went trundling out. But the Where was an endless place of Nos. They teemed & seethed. They picked & nipped, & snipped & snicked. The Yes yessed in all his goodness & bigness & yesness. But was he strong enough to overcome them? ...

In a soft comfy nest in a safe warm place there snoozed a great big orange thing called the Yes. He was snug, but the Yes had a Where to go to. So he left his nest & went trundling out. But the Where was an endless place of Nos. They teemed & seethed. They picked & nipped, & snipped & snicked. The Yes yessed in all his goodness & bigness & yesness. But was he strong enough to overcome them? ” Kitamura is one of the world`s most original & stylish children`s illustrators.” (Sunday Times). ...

Almost, but not quite human, the yeti & its counterparts from wild regions of the world, still exert a powerful atavistic influence on us. Is the yeti just a phantasm of our imagination, or is it a real creature? A survivor from our own savage ancestry? This is the mystery that Bryan Sykes set out to unlock. Three hair samples from the remote Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan are the cause of the investigation. The hair samples were from the miogi, the Bhutanese yeti, that legendary creature of the high snows that has haunted the imagination of travellers for centuries. Professor Sykes was asked to identify the hairs using DNA analysis. The miogi hairs did not surrender their secrets easily, but eventually two were identified as known species of bear. The third remained a mystery. Ten years later two scientific developments caused the migoi to enter Professor Sykes` thoughts again. The first, a purely technical improvement, meant that it was now possible to get a very good DNA signal from a single hair. The second development came from the surprising conclusion of an article published in 2010. This paper contained the details of the DNA sequence from another human species, Homo neanderthalensis, the Neanderthals, widely thought to be extinct. One of the many theories to account for the yeti legend is that there were small groups of Neanderthals that had managed to survive until recent times, or maybe even until the present day. If so, would it be possible to detect recent interbreeding between our own species & Neanderthals in the genomes of indigenous people living in remote regions. Locations where the yeti legends are strongest & the sightings most numerous? Professor Sykes set a goal to locate & analyse as many hair samples as possible, with links the yeti. In doing so Professor Sykes found himself entering a strange world of mystery & sensationalism, fraud & obsession & even the supernatural. Protected by the ruthless vigour of genetic analysis he was able to listen to the stories of the yeti without having to form an opinion. The only opinion that mattered was the DNA. Two years on the project is almost complete, & there have been some surprising & significant discoveries. The yeti remains an enigma. There is something out there. But what? ...

From the author of Darkmans comes this laugh-out-loud Man Booker-longlisted novel set in a distant foreign land: Luton, 2006. Nicola Barker's The Yips depicts a pre-Twitter world where the English Defence League doesn't exist & Tiger Woods' flawless reputation remains just that. Yet there's trouble brewing at Luton's unremarkable Thistle Hotel. A gradually-unfolding drama envelopes a female priest with a troublesome fringe, a male serial cancer patient, the long-suffering family of a local fascist, a liberal Muslim sex therapist & a barmaid who likes to poke her nose in where it's not wanted. Central to goings-on is Stuart Ransom, a charismatic golfer with his own crisis to contend with. Touted as the grittiest state-of-the-nation tale since Martin Amis's Money, The Yips may be the most revealing comic novel set in a large British town, & almost certainly in Luton. Buy your copy today! ...