This is the tale of three women - one witch, one mermaid and one missing - and how Ruby was caught up in between.The Black Country town of Cradle Cross - home to buttonmakers, canal folk, and more than its share of widows - is bounded by canals, grief and superstition. Caught within this web is motherless thirteen-year-old Ruby, who dreams of escaping the soot and smoke of her home-town for the clear air of the sea. When a mysterious stranger named Isa Fly appears on a que...

An important prerequisite for successful conservation is a good understanding of what we seek to conserve. Nowhere is this more the case than in the fight to protect plant biodiversity, which is threatened by human activity in many regions worldwide. This book is written in the belief that tools that enable more people to understand biodiversity can not only aid protection efforts but also contribute to rural livelihoods. Among the most important of those tools is the field guide.P...

In a world of increasing demands for biodiversity information, participatory biodiversity assessment and monitoring is becoming more significant. Whilst other books have focused on methods, or links to conservation or development, this book is written particularly for policy makers and planners. Introductory chapters analyze the challenges of the approach, the global legislation context, and the significance of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Specially commissioned case studies provid...

This book wants you to know that it is not a sleepy book. The only problem is... it feels veeerrry tired. Can it stay awake long enough to show you that it is not a sleepy book?

One twinkling winter’s night, Ruby wakes her sleeping children and escapes for a new life in the countryside. It’s a choice that will change her life beyond all recognition…Arriving at the cosy little rental cottage as the first snow begins to fall, Ruby doesn’t regret leaving her bully of a husband for a moment, but she does feel guilty about uprooting her kids so close to Christmas. She can only wish that one day soon her son will forgive her.It’s not long b...

From Snuff: 'Vimes' prompt arrival got a nod of approval from Sybil, who gingerly handed him a new book to read to Young Sam. Vimes looked at the cover. The title was The World of Poo. When his wife was out of eyeshot he carefully leafed through it. Well, okay, you had to accept that the world had moved on and these days fairy stories were probably not going to be about twinkly little things with wings. As he turned page after page, it dawned on him that whoever had writt...

Eighteen-year-old Irene Angel lives with her parents in a tiny room above the shop where her crippled mother ekes out a living selling pickles and sauces, whilst her charming but feckless father Billy gambles away what little money they do manage to earn. And it is all Irene can do to keep the family together.Billy's addiction soon leads him into trouble. Despite having been brought up by her father to fear and distrust the police, Irene finds herself forced to collaborate with the...

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times bestseller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of 13-year-old Zadie.When the young teenage girl runs away from home and is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be.Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie she is polite and well-behaved, but...

Featuring "a typical Betty Burton heroine . . . Strong, independent," this historical saga chronicles a woman's rise from her impoverished circumstances ( Dorset Echo).A heart-wrenching and powerful coming of age story set in the early twentieth century.Lu Wilmott grows up in the Portsmouth slums of the 1920s. Stricken by diphtheria, she is sent to the Hampshire countryside where she discovers a robust fighting spirit and the first stirrings of att...

An irresistible story of childhood adventure from the international phenomenon, Karl Ove Knausgaard.Childhood is exhilarating and terrifying. For the young Karl Ove, new houses, classes and friends are met with manic excitement and creeping dread. Adults occupy godlike positions of power, benevolent in the case of his doting mother, tyrannical in the case of his cruel father.In the now infamously direct style of the My Struggle cycle, Knausgaard de...

Can the Highland girls prove everyone wrong? Don’t miss this poignant and heartwarming WW2 novel for fans of Rosie Clarke, Dilly Court and Rosie Archer, from the author of A Wartime Secret.Scotland, 1942.The Lumberjills, the newest recruits in the Women’s Timber Corps, arrive in the Scottish Highlands to a hostile reception from doubtful locals. The young women are determined to prove them wrong and serve their country – but they’re...

A novel of fine-tuned beauty, sharp insight and emotional subtlety – about a family in the shadow of WWIIMay, 1940. Brighton. Wartime.On Park Crescent, a sunlit and usually tranquil street, Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news. The enemy is expected to land on the beaches of Brighton any day.It is a year of tension and change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reache...