The Author's experience with people and animals gave her a deeper insight and inspiration in writing; this has given rise to many of her characters in The Adventures of Drongie the Smidget. This fantastic tale, embellished with original colorful drawings, tells the stories of an imaginary being who meets numerous friends on his way, where loyalty, friendship and courage unite everyone in search of a common purpose: the perennial struggle between good and evil. Will our Drongie succeed in his intent to bring good to the world? A story set in nature, where everything is balanced, where every creature responds to a precise supernatural and magical design. Glendyr Stavrou spent her childhood years in the mountain kingdom of Lesotho spending every free moment on the backs of her beloved horses, exploring the countryside around Maseru. Boarding school at ten years old, was a hardship she never quite fitted into and yearned for the holidays. She and her husband Leandros lived for many years in the midlands of Kwazulu Natal, where they spent hours on horseback in the Pine forests which fed her lively imagination, always dancing new pictures and stories into her head. She started writing poems as a teenager and progressed to songwriting, choosing a career in music as a classical guitar performer and teacher. Glendyr and Leandros have two grown up sons, four grandchildren and one great grandchild. They have recently begun a new adventure and relocated to the quiet coastal village of Pennington KZN where her writing desk looks out to the not too far distant ocean view.

The third hilarious adventure featuring Joe, Laurie and Theo, and, of course, their dog Clinky Monkey. Ages 8+.

Set sail for the stars in this official Dungeons & Dragons novel set in the worlds of Spelljammer: Adventures in Space! In the colossal void of Shatterspace, besieged by bloodthirsty marauders and brimming with monstrous aberrations, the only constant is power: The deft will escape the slow. The clever will outwit the naïve. The strong will take from the weak. Axia wishes she could be grateful to have spent her life—or what little she remembers of it—on an asteroid so far from anything of interest that even the greediest spacers see fit to pass it by. Her days may not be as exciting as the swashbuckling stories of her favorite books or as dramatic as the pasts she’s imagined for herself, but they’re as safe as Shatterspace can manage. So why does something inside her long for the stars every time she sees a spacefaring spelljammer vessel? When Axia survives a sudden assassination attempt, she is cornered by Kori and Nia, a pair of pirates who offer her two options: flee with them to Wildspace, where they can keep her hidden among their crew, or die. It’s an easy choice with death at her doorstep. But even in the vastness of the Astral Sea, Axia quickly realizes that her new friends haven’t been entirely honest about their motivations. It turns out, Axia is the spitting image of Blacktongue, the long-disappeared captain of one of the deadliest pirate crews in Shatterspace. And Kori and Nia have a plan to claim the mysterious treasure that the pirate queen vanished while pursuing. To survive, Axia will have to fill Blacktongue’s bloodstained boots and embark on a more perilous and thrilling adventure than any she’s dared to dream.

The world, in Iain Crichton Smith's vision is a field full of folk; and one Scottish village is its microcosm. Here, the Minister wrestles with his loss of faith, and his cancer, concealing them even from his wife, but she had divined them. Mrs Berry cultivates her garden assiduously, and when Jehovah's Witnesses come quoting their texts, she tells them that the hill at the end of the village can be climbed by many paths. Old Annie has no doubts about her path: she has no use for Christianity ('Protestants and Catholics, nothing but guns and fighting') and finds her answer in the East. On more mundane levels, Morag Bheag worries about her son serving in Northern Ireland, and Chrissie Murray shocks the village by leaving her husband and making for Glasgow - taking only a radio with her, that's what shocks most. Murdo Macfarlane vehemently urges his puritanical views - about, for instance, the use of the church hall for a young people's dance - and David Collins nurses his hatred of Germans, but cannot insult them when they come as tourists. In short, it's a village much like any other, with its prejudices and certainties and kindliness and heartbreak: the whole and the small part. As the Minister sees in his visionary moment at the annual sports, when the petty disputes over the wheel-barrow race and the tragic news of young Bheag's death come together in his realisation that it's all a part of 'this supremely imperfect and perfect earth.' Crichton Smith's novels never carry any superfluous weight: they're as spare as sprinters. He writes with a poet's concentration, and never more precisely, or more movingly, than here, in what amounts to a gentle, compassionate meditation on life and death, with a warm, affirmative conclusion.

It is the end of the Dark Ages. Macans (a.k.a. Gnomes) live peacefully and mind their own business. While most of the men are out on patrol, Trolls kidnap Brodo’s wife Ada and his sons, Morel and Rada. Led by Toki, a small group of Macans track the kidnappers through the forest to a cave at the foot of a mountain range. The ensuing battle, together with an earlier similar attack, marks the beginning of a war of attrition. Trolls are five times bigger than Macans but they are rather stupid and somewhat cowardly. Intelligence, bravery, ingenuity, poisoned arrows and a little bit of magic gives the Macans a small advantage. Trolls usually operate in pairs or small groups but a crackpot king has organised them more and formed a small army. This seriously undermines the Macans’ superiority. Read this action-packed drama to see how things turn out...

29 and unmarried, gasp! - can you think of anything worse? In 1920s rural Canada, Valancy Stirling is considered "past it" and with a controlling, nagging mother and petty gossips for relatives she feels trapped in the life she has ended up in and when she is diagnosed with a terminal heart condition and given a year to live, it seems she will die without ever experiencing happiness. And so, she rebels. She leaves her family home slamming the door as she does and moves in with her old friend Cissy and starts working as a housekeeper. The independence is intoxicating - as is a growing friendship with local man, Barney Snaith. It looks as though Valancy will have love to warm her heart in her final months. But secrets on both sides threaten to ruin things. The intoxicating story of love and loss is perfect for fans of Elizabeth Gaskell and Jodie Picoult. Lucy Maud (L.M.) Montgomery was a Canadian author best known for a series of children's books beginning with 'Anne of Green Gables'. The books were a huge hit in her lifetime and were recently made in the Netflix series 'Anne with an E'. Montgomery published 20 novels, 530 short stories, 500 poems and 30 essays in her lifetime. Most were set in Canada's smallest province, Prince Edward Island.

"A brother is as easily forgotten as an umbrella."--James Joyce, "Ulysses" 1918 Audrey Death--feminist, socialist and munitions worker at Woolwich Arsenal--falls ill with encephalitis lethargica as the epidemic rages across Europe, killing a third of its victims and condemning a further third to living death. 1971 Under the curious eyes of psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner, assumed mental patient Audrey Death lies supine in bed above a spring grotto that she has made every one of the forty-nine years she has resided in Friern Mental Hospital. 2010 Now retired, Dr. Busner travels waywardly across North London in search of the truth about that tumultuous summer when he awoke the post-encephalitic patients under his care using a new and powerful drug. Weaving together a dense tapestry of consciousness and lived life across an entire century, in his latest and most ambitious novel, Will Self takes up the challenge of Modernism and reveals how it--and it alone--can unravel new and unsettling truths about our world and how it came to be.