A life of fascination, obsession and deep scientific curiosity.William Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck is an eccentric Nottinghamshire aristocrat whose imagination and curiosity know no bounds. This deceptively simple man struggles to come to terms with a world that is teeming with new knowledge, ill-founded opinion and gossip.Why does he hide himself away? What is his fascination with tunnels? Will he ever unearth the secrets hidden in his memory?In a sequence of events t...

From the pen of Mick Jackson, author of The Underground Man and Five Boys, come these ten acclaimed tales. Featuring undertakers, dark forests, resurrected butterflies and a singularly mean-spirited horse, the stories are nevertheless rooted in the realistic and all too recognisable world of retirement, loneliness, and childhood boredom.By turns funny, scary and heartbreaking, they are always illuminating, and further evidence of one of the most or...

Any young child anticipating a move will connect with—and smile at—this fanciful, warmly humorous picture book debut from a literary author and an award-winning illustrator.When a little boy learns that his family will be moving house, he’s curious and excited. What else could that mean but having their house hoisted up by cranes and moved from one location to another? He imagines his wonderful house winding its way through narrow streets, maybe even sailing down t...

Temple Grandin is the most famous person with autism in the world. Whether you know her from the HBO movie Temple Grandin, her decades of work in the meat and cattle industry, or her unmatched contribution to the autism world, surely you know a thing or two about Temple. Well, prepare to meet a whole new side of her! Temple’s close friend and author, Anita Lesko, conducts personal and unique interviews that include chapters such as:Filming of the HBO Movie Templ...

'There is no category of bear whose story makes for more depressing reading, and whose miserable existence heaps more shame on humanity than that which follows...'Taking in these bears in chains, the circus bears of Bristol, the Victorian sewer bears and the spirit bears of the early years, among others, Mick Jackson's strange beast of a book explores some little known chapters in England's past. Mixing folk tale with fantasy, and history with myth, the narrative that unfo...

Published to tie in with Mick Jackson's appointment as the first writer-in-residence at the Science Museum, Junior Science comprises three stories - 'Zero Gravity', 'The Answering Machine', and 'Back to School'. Commissioned by BBC Radio 4, they were originally broadcast in November 2011.Full of wonder, pathos and mystery, the stories are marked by Jackson's unique sensibility, as they explore the way children start to become aware of the world around them.

WINNER OF THE V&A ILLUSTRATION AWARD 2026**SHORTLISTED FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR ILLUSTRATIONThere is a train which has beds in their own small cabins so that you can sleep while the train rolls through the night. I went on one, not long ago…**Just as it’s starting to get dark, a little girl and her family board the sleeper train – they’ll travel all through the night, and reach their destination in the morning. But as the train rocks from ...

Have you ever wondered what's happening in the world while you're asleep in your bed? Bakers, firefighters, postal workers, doctors, nurses, wildlife and more! This is the perfect book for bedtime, opening up a whole world of wonder and imagination for children.Have you ever wondered what's happening in the world while you're asleep in your bed?There's a whole world of activity out there – from bakers preparing bread and cakes for your table and firefighters waiting patient...

One of the most acclaimed novels of recent times, The Underground Man is the fictionalised diary of a deeply eccentric English aristocrat.The duke has just completed a network of tunnels beneath his estate. His health is failing, but his imagination seems to know no bounds. And while he spends more time underground and retreats ever deeper into the darker corners of his house there are some ghosts that demand to be acknowledged and some memories which insist on mak...

'They both stop and stare for a moment. Yuki feels she's spent about half her adult life thinking about snow, but when it starts, even now, it always arresting, bewildering. Each snowflake skating along some invisible plane. Always circuitous, as if looking for the best place to land...'Yukiko tragically lost her mother ten years ago. After visiting her sister in London, she goes on the run, and heads for Haworth, West Yorkshire, the last place her mother visited before he...

The second children’s book from the wonderful illustrator John Broadley, working with Booker-shortlisted novelist Mick Jackson, following their glorious debut While You’re Sleeping.The second children’s book from the wonderful illustrator John Broadley, working with Booker-shortlisted novelist Mick Jackson, following their glorious debut picture book While You’re Sleeping.Mick Jackson’s poetic prose and John Broadley’s detailed and unique ...

Hello and welcome to Ella May, the girl who likes to do things her way. In the first of this brilliant new series all about an imaginative, strong-willed girl character with her own ideas, Ella May tries walking backward, just to see how it feels. In her bedroom she tries reading her books backward, and after dinner she goes backward up to the bathroom and climbs backward into bed. When Ella goes backward up the slide and backward over the castle, Ella’s mum decides to turn around and walk...