It was rumoured that Hollywood stars would go to any lengths for the privilege of being photographed by the good-looking, brilliantly talented & ultra-fashionable portrait photographer Leslie Searle. But what was this gifted creature doing in such an English village backwater as Salcott St. Mary? & why
- & how
- did he disappear? If a crime had been committed, was it murder...fraud...or simply some macabre practical joke?

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A little Indian girl goes to market with a pocketful of change & no idea what to buy
- just `something funny, nice or even strange`.
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A much-loved Tara classic children`s title is released in paperback for the first time. In India, a little girl goes to her local market, & her mother gives her a pocketful of change. But the girl has no idea what to buy
- perhaps `something funny, nice or even strange`. But among the rich & colorful wonders of the market, from jolly bangle sellers to massive spice stands, flower shops to mask makers, she finds that the real fun`s not in the buying after all! She loves discovering wonderful, colorful stalls: ” Jangle, Jangle, Jangle, I`m a bangle-holding st&, ” & ” Silly, Silly, Silly, I`m a chili sort of sneeze.” Told in Anushka Ravishankar`s inimitable nonsense verse & illustrated in Emanuele Scanziani`s vibrant paintings, this children`s story is a bold & busy tribute to the vitality of everyday India. Award-winning Italian artist Emanuele Scanziani has created an exuberant Indian market with innovative typography that combines with the nonsense-verse to make a truly sumptuous, vibrant feast.
US Grade Level Equivalent: 2
US Guided Reading Level: L




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Uproariously funny & staggeringly innovative travelogue of one man & his car, from London via St Tropez & Florence to Sicily, starting on a day when modern European civilisation seemed doomed. Having sworn off his drug-taking. Duncan Fallowell sets off on the day it is announced that disaster beckons for Western Europe. Peering eagerly through his sunglasses & with a wickedly accurate ear for the idiosyncrasies of the people he meets, he writes it all down before it is too late: from Banana man in Florence, his encounter with Mick Jagger in Paris to a ghastly revelation by a black lake in Sicily, pressing just about any other cultural & erotic button in between. ...

Every day, President Obama received ten thousand letters from ordinary American citizens. Every night, he read ten of them before going to bed. This is the story of how they shaped his presidency. Together they reveal the diary of a nation. In To Obama, Jeanne Marie Laskas interviews President Obama, the letter-writers themselves & the White House staff in the Office of Presidential Correspondence who were witness to the millions of pleas, rants, thank-yous & apologies that landed in the mailroom during the Obama years. There is Peggy, a patriotic grandmother who thinks the President is trying to lead the country into socialism & recommends that he read the Constitution; Bill, a lifelong Republican whose attitude towards immigration reform was transformed when he met a boy who escaped MS-13 gang leaders in El Salvador; Jordan, a seven-year-old about to be adopted, who wants to thank the President for keeping him safe; James, who on the morning after the 2016 election tells the President to start packing; & Dawn, who writes to say that he made it possible for a very jaded generation to begin to hope & believe in the good. They wrote to Obama out of gratitude & desperation, in their darkest times of need, with anger, fear & respect. To Obama is an intimate look at one man`s relationship with the American people, & at a time when empathy intersected with politics in the White House. ...

Peter Fleming, brother of ” James Bond” author Ian Fleming, was one of the greatest adventurers & travel writers of the 20th century & author of several classic & bestselling books. This is the first paperback edition. It presents an exciting adventure that could never be made today
- it will appeal to all interested in the region. When in 1934 at the age of twenty-seven, Peter Fleming set out for the Far East, his ultimate goal was to return from China to India overland
- a journey he later described in the classic ” News from Tartary”. On his outward journey Fleming travelled through regions which remain some of the most remote & least-visited in Asia & which, soon after his journey, became closed entirely to westerners. From Moscow, through the Caucasus to the Caspian, on to Samarkand & Tashkent, skirting the edge of Outer Mongolia to Vladivostok & winding his way down to Peking, Fleming tells of people encountered, places explored & of ways of life that have since been lost through revolution, war & the passage of time. Along the way he kept a diary that he never intended to publish & that lay forgotten `in the box-room` of his mind for fifteen years.” To Peking” is an unassuming classic of travel literature. Subtle yet sparkling with intelligence & humour, simple yet beautifully told, it illuminates a world that travellers
- armchair or otherwise
- can only dream of today.



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One day in November 1994, Lawrence Levy received a phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs, whom he`d never met, offering him a job running Pixar, a little-known company that had already lost Jobs $50 million. With Pixar`s prospects looking bleak, it was with some trepidation that Levy accepted the position. After a few weeks he discovered that the situation was even worse than he`d imagined. Pixar`s advertising division just about broke even, its graphics software had few customers, its short films didn`t make any money &, on top of all that, Jobs was pushing to take the company public. Everything was riding on the studio`s first feature film, codenamed Toy Story, & even then it would have to be one of the most successful animated features of all time... Full of wisdom on bringing business & creativity together, & recounting the touching story of Levy`s enduring friendship with Jobs, To Pixar & Beyond is a fascinating insider`s account of one of Hollywood`s greatest success stories. ...

` We-have-a-house-in-the-country?`. Lena nodded solemnly. ` Where?`. I almost shouted, briefly rattling the table. ` No, wait, don`t tell me
- it`s Todi in Umbria, right? The old manor house, the one with the lemon groves`! ` Alt-Globnitz`. ` Alt-Globnitz?`. Suddenly I felt cold. ` Alt-Globnitz. It`s a really nice place. You will love it`. In a desperate attempt to save his relationship with girlfriend Lena & take a break from the world of journalism, Germany correspondent Roger Boyes agrees to make a great escape from the easy urban lifestyle of Berlin & decamp to the countryside. Roger has hopes for southern Italy, but Lena has inherited a run-down old schloss in deepest, darkest Brandenburg. Needing a form of income, they decide to set up a B & B with a British theme. Enter unhelpful Harry & his Trinidadian chef cousin, a mad Scot to advise them on re-branding Brandenburg, some suicidal frogs & a posse of mad tourists. It all culminates, naturally, in a cricket match between the Brits & the Germans on an old Russian minefield. Farce meets romance in this follow-up to the successful ”A Year in the Scheisse”.
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One night in 1974, a young Frenchman secretly
- & illegally
- rigged a tightrope between the twin towers of the World Trade

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Reading a story to another person creates a bond between two people. It is often assumed that reading aloud is only for children, but the practice was once a common pleasure for adults too. The time has come to rediscover it. This simple yet powerful action connects us with our friends, helps us centre ourselves in the present & lets us focus gently on what matters. To Read Aloud consists of 75 extracts of an average 1000 words each, from writers ranging from Cicero to Lewis Carroll to Robert Macfarlane (alongside less familiar names). It is arranged under ten thematic chapters: Love, Loss, Lightness, Pleasure, Work, Nature, Change, Chaos, Wonder, & Coda: Delicacies for Discussion. A literary toolbox for well-being, To Read Aloud invites you to to take just ten minutes off, sit down with somebody you care about & share a passage of writing. ...