I lived the ‘life of Riley’ in London at an early age. It was a preposterously wonderful time of fun, glamour, career excitement and excess. It finally ended. I later got a spot of cancer. Life goes on and I’m still a ridiculously lucky girl from Oz.

In her gripping personal memoir, A Girl From Oz, Australian journalist and filmmaker Lyndall Hobbs reveals tales from the Hollywood highlife. In fact, she has seen and done just about everything: tangled with Cambodian pirates for a scoop, grappled with Hollywood sexism as a feature director, wooed acting royalty, raised two children on her own and survived cancer in the unforgiving American medical system.

In this heartfelt, hilarious and self-deprecating memoir, Lyndall recounts the thrills and spills of her unbelievable, star-studded life story: from charming Australian television audiences and becoming the UK’s youngest television journalist, to making her first Hollywood feature film and rubbing shoulders with London and LA’s A-list.

Lyndall Hobbs is an Australian writer, filmmaker and interior designer. Born in Melbourne in 1952, she wrote regular columns in Go-Set and Newsday at the age of seventeen. She began her television career at GTV Nine News and A Current Affair in Australia, and after moving to London worked as a reporter and presenter for ITN’s First Report and Thames TV’s Today show. Her short films Dead on Time (written by Richard Curtis and starring Rowan Atkinson) and Hobbs’s Choice led to a directing career in the United States, where she shot music videos for artists such as Chaka Khan, as well as Saturday Night Live shorts and a feature film, Back to the Beach, which received two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert. Lyndall has two children, Lola and Nick, and lives in Los Angeles.

Essays by popular children's authors reveal the books that shaped their personal and literary lives, explaining how the stories they loved influenced them creatively, politically, and intellectually.

When L. Frank Baum introduced Dorothy and friends to the American public in 1900, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz became an instant, bestselling hit. Today the whimsical tale remains a cultural phenomenon that continues to spawn wildly popular books, movies, and musicals. Now, editors John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen have brought together leading fantasy writers such as Orson Scott Card and Jane Yolen to create the ultimate anthology for Oz fans.

“Tik-Tok of Oz” is a 1914 novel by Layman Frank Baum. Baum's eighth book set in the Land of Oz and his favourite, it chronicles the quest of the Shaggy Man to rescue his brother and the consequent war with the Nome King. This wonderful tale is highly recommended for lovers of The Wizard of Oz series, and it would make for perfect bedtime reading. Layman Frank Baum (1856 – 1919) was an American author most famous for his contributions to children's literature, most notably “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”. Other works by this author include: “The Marvellous Land of Oz” (1900), “The Woggle-Bug Book” (1905), and “The Patchwork Girls of Oz” (1913). Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new biography of the author.

Explore the wonder of Oz in this collection of books seven through nine in L. Frank Baum’s classic American fairy tale series. The seventh, eighth, and ninth titles of the iconic Oz series, now in one collection! In The Patchwork Girl of Oz, the Munchkins Unc Nunkie and Ojo the Unlucky call on the Crooked Magician, who introduces them to his latest creation: a living girl made out of patchwork quilts and cotton stuffing. But when an accident leaves beloved Unc Nunkie a motionless statue, it is up to Ojo to save him. Can the mighty Wizard of Oz help? In Tik-Tok of Oz, Betsy Bobbin and her loyal mule, Hank, wash up on the shores of an unknown fairyland during a storm. There they meet the clockwork man Tik-Tok and find themselves trapped in a battle with the king of the Nomes. In The Scarecrow of Oz, Cap’n Bill and Trot journey to Oz and, with the help of the Scarecrow, overthrow the cruel King Krewl of Jinxland, who has been busy gathering an army for an invasion of Oz. Will they be able to stop the invasion?

Afterword by Peter Glassman. "Dorothy is called back to Oz by Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, because the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion need help....The great-grandson of L. Frank Baum here adds to the Oz canon with a story that is true to the originals....Oz fans will welcome this new adventure."--Booklist.