BECAUSE SOME CHILDREN ARE DIFFERENT... AND SO ARE THEIR PETS!Bringing home a pet is a thrilling experience that comes with important responsibilities. But Sam is a little different to other children, and Sam’s pet is not the sort you can find in an animal shelter or a pet shop.Join Sam in this hilarious journey of discovery.A perfect picture book for children who need more than fluffy bunnies and sparkling unicorns.

Hannah Lowe taught for a decade in an inner-city London sixth form. At the heart of this book of compassionate and energetic sonnets are ‘The Kids’, her students, the teenagers she nurtured. But the poems go further, meeting her own child self as she comes of age in the riotous 80s and 90s, later bearing witness to her small son learning to negotiate contemporary London. Across these deeply felt poems, Lowe interrogates the acts of teaching and learning with empathy and humour. Social clas...

What is a neighbour? What makes a community? In this themed collection, Hannah Lowe focuses on the urban places she knows and loves, and finds a rich complexity of neighbourliness under the extreme pressure. These poems look urgently into the future, into communities bearing the weight of austerity and gentrification, where global struggles manifest in the local. Nowhere is more at stake than the circle of home the author draws around her infant son, who must learn the fra...

Chan is a mercurial name, representing the travellers and shape-shifters of the poems in this collection. It is one of the many nicknames of Hannah Lowe’s Chinese-Jamaican father, borrowed from the Polish émigré card magician Chan Canasta. It is also a name from China, where her grandfather’s story begins. Alongside these figures, there’s Joe Harriott, the Jamaican alto saxophonist, shaking up 1960s London; a cast of other long-lost family; and a ship full of dreamers sailing from...

Hannah Lowe's first book of poems takes you on a journey round her father, a Chinese-black Jamaican migrant who disappeared at night to play cards or dice in London's old East End to support his family, an unstable and dangerous existence that took its toll on his physical and mental health. 'Chick' was his gambling nickname. A shadowy figure in her childhood, Chick was only half known to her until she entered the night world of the old man as a young woman. The name is the key to poems co...

A delightful short story from Jane Gardam, revisting that Titan of the Hong Kong law courts, Edward Feathers (known to many as Old Filth) in the days after he loses his beloved wife, Betty.

'The Mersey Sound is an attempt to introduce contemporary poetry to the general reader by publishing representative work by each of three modern poets in a single volume, in each case the selection has been made to illustrate the poet's characteristics in style and form'. With this modest brief, The Mersey Sound was conceived and first published in 1967. An anthology which features Roger McGough's work, alongside that of Brian Patten and Adrian Henri (The Liverpool Poets)...

The first-ever joke book from one of the UK's best-loved comedians, Les Dawson's Joke Book is a must for any fan of this perennially popular comedian. Collecting together the highlights of his 26-year career across radio and television, from his early days on Opportunity Knocks to Cissie and Ada. A lover of language, Les was a secret poet and was fond of high culture, often undercutting his own admiration of the art forms for comic effect. The book includes examples of al...

Roger McGough is one of Britain's best loved poets and this collection 'charts [his] passage from youthful exuberance to the wry reflection of his later years. What remains the same throughout the 40 years is the poet's winning wit, accessibility and abiding readability' Independent ----------------------------------'Time has confirmed ... that McGough's talent was much more substantial than many of his long-forgotten detractors suspected. If he was a pop poet it was not in any eph...

Edited by award winning novelist and short story writer Kevin Barry, this volume will once again mix established names with previously unpublished authors, and will seek to offer fresh renditions to the Irish story - new angles, new approaches, new modes of attack.Published in 2011, New Irish Short Stories, edited by Joseph O'Connor, has sold over 10,000 copies to date and featured Kevin Barry's 'Beer Trip to Llandudno' - winner of the 2012 Sunday Times EFG Short ...

These outstanding stories from the 2010 Bristol Short Story Prize will provoke, stimulate, move, amuse, unsettle, and entertain

Life the Lipman way is always unexpected, and the hilarious and witty way in which she recalls her adventures and misadventures has made her a bestselling author and national treasure. Past-it Notes is the ultimate Maureen Lipman collection, drawing on choice material from her six previous books (re-visited and re-worked) laced with a heady dose of extremely funny new autobiographical material.Past-it Notes is packed with beguiling showbiz anecdotes, wonderful stories, eccentric cha...