'Mattress Falls Off Truck Into Kidderminster Road'... 'Man Stole Tortoise To Pay For Booze'... 'Aquatic Centre Roof Sag Explained'... Every week Britain's local newspapers bring their investigative skills to stories of vital historical importance. While global conflicts rage, the local paper looks closer to home to the events that really matter. These can be as diverse as animal news ('Smug Swans Attack Dalmatian'), human peril ('Man Found Nailed To Bench'), domestic crisis ('Oven Removed From Home'), or disaster avoided ('No Flood Warnings for North Somerset'). Whitstable Mum in Custard Shortage is the first book to collect and celebrate these triumphs of British journalism - from surreal billboard headlines to the full text of the classic articles. If you like QI and The News Quiz, you'll love this book. And the next time there's a seismic global news event, just remember: somewhere a local reporter is crafting 500 words on the 'Youth Found In Phone Box With Fork', while their fellow hack is collecting 'Tributes As Popular Lichfield Cat Dies'...

H is for Hummus by Joel Rickett and Spencer Wilson - a perfectly middle-class ABC A is for Apple, B is for Bear, C is for Cat... Z is for zzzzzz. Traditional ABC books just don't reflect the busy lives of today's toddlers. Far more useful to learn that A is for Allergy, B is for Babyccino, and C is for Controlled Crying. All the pain and joy of modern parenting is packed into this delightfully silly, beautifully illustrated ABC. From Active Birthing through to Zumba, H is for Hummus is a refreshingly honest read for fans of Go the F**k to Sleep and The Middle Class ABC, as well as sleep-deprived parents everywhere. Joel Rickett is a publisher and a (very) occasional writer. His previous books include How To Avoid Huge Ships and Whitstable Mum in Custard Shortage. He lives in North London (of course), where he's a thoroughly modern parent to two gorgeous, demanding girls. Spencer Wilson is an illustrator and co-founder of the design and animation company Peepshow Collective. He has been working to commission since 1998 in a world of coffee cups and ordered chaos; his work follows this theme with the creation of sketchy ideas and twisted thoughts. He lives in the modern parenting paradise that is Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, with his wife and two girls who never cease to inspire him. www.spencerwilson.co.uk

Indexes the Times, Sunday times and magazine, Times literary supplement, Times educational supplement, Times educational supplement Scotland, and the Times higher education supplement.

Impossible to read at one sitting, but utterly unputdownable, Schott's Original Miscellany is a unique collection of fabulous trivia. What other book boasts an index that includes shoelace lengths, sign language, and the seven deadly sins; dueling and dwarves; the hair color of Miss America and the Hampton Court maze? Where else can you find, packed onto one page, the names of golf strokes, a history of the Hat Tax, cricketing dismissals, nouns of assemblage, an unofficial motto of the US Postal Service, and the flag of Guadeloupe? Where else but Schott's Original Miscellany will you stumble across John Lennon's cat, the supplier of bagpipes to the Queen, the labors of Hercules, and the brutal methods of murder encountered by Miss Marple? A book like no other, Schott's Original Miscellany is entertaining, informative, unpredictable, and utterly addictive.

"Every weekend, across the nation's rolling countryside, watch out for the Mamils: middle-aged men in lycra" - BBC News "Mamils make Oxford English Dictionary debut" - Telegraph "Oh the shame of being married to a MAMIL" - Daily Mail There is a new breed emerging. They hunt in packs, dressed in unforgiving lycra. Their natural habitat is the local espresso bar, where they obsess about power-to-weight ratios and worship the latest high-tech road bikes. Desperate to shave a few milligrams for speed, they will spend thousands on anything made out of carbon – conveniently forgetting about their own waistlines. At night they dream they are Bradley Wiggins or Alberto Contador. They are the Mamils. And they are taking over the world. The Modern MAMIL - A Cyclist's A-Z takes a humorous look at cycling and the middle-aged man in lycra.

British culture is strewn with names that strike a chord the world over such as Shakespeare, Churchill, Dickens, Pinter, Lennon and McCartney. This book examines the people, history and movements that have shaped Britain as it now is, providing key information in easily digested chunks.

This book analyses the social and cultural status of high streets in the age of recession and austerity. High streets are shown to have long been regarded as the heart of many communities, but have declined to a state where boarded-up and vacant retail units are a familiar sight in many British cities. The book argues that the policies deemed necessary to revive the fortunes of high streets are often thinly-veiled attacks on the tastes and cultures of the working class. Policy-makers often promote boutiques, art galleries and upmarket cafés at the expense of some of the outlets frequented by less affluent populations, including betting shops, fast food takeaways, discount stores and bargain booze outlets. Highlighting the social and cultural roles that so-called 'dying' high streets continue to play in the lives of working class and disadvantaged populations, this book provides a powerful argument against retail gentrification, and a timely analysis of class conflict in austerity Britain. It will be of great interest to scholars of geography, social policy and cultural studies.