It is 1982 and twins Beth and Mike aged 14 and brother Jake 121/2 are itching to start their 15 visits to Victorian times, following their exciting and dangerous visits to both the 'Puritan' and 'Georgian' eras. The gift of time travel left to them by Great Uncle Seddie. Their great uncles and great aunt visited same eras when young back in early 1900s. They have now, Sooty, a small black dog unexpectedly brought back from the Georgian period adventures and have hidden him from their parents. The Victorian's steam engines and new road surfaces, makes travel easier as they see the troubles that befall the poor, with hiring fairs and the down trodden pottery workers. The trio take pity on a sweep's boy they saw being abused by his cruel master while at the 'Grand Fair' with its attractions. The youngsters come to the aid of a mother whose babies are being sold by a baby minder. They continue searching as to what happened to their Great Uncle James who they meet and left back in Georgian times.

Time travel adventure. A three part saga. This book covers the first two periods of the visits back in time made by 12 year old twins, Mike and Beth and younger brother Jake.There are 15 exciting, worrying and dangerous visits to the each of eras of Cromwell, the Georgians and finally Victorians spread over a 3 year period. We go with them as they mingle with the villagers, seeing how their local village changes over the centuries. How will they cope with the challenges of the periods, firstly ruthless roundheads hunting royalists and even witches and later, highwaymen and smugglers? The trio soon realise what pitiful lives some children younger than themselves were forced to live when visiting the tin mine. All the while we see how they grow up into young teenagers in the 1980s. Their adventures are exciting, some sad and others surprising as we walk with them through history. These stories are suitable for all the family from 8 to 80 years old

PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • Drawing on a wealth of research, this "fascinating" book (The New York Times Book Review) charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children. Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor "wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas's carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism. Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as "A Visit from St. Nicholas” and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present.