The story of a young Southeast Asian girl's life with her eccentric blended family in Lesotho, and her search for the truth about her absent father, is a parable for the country's own quest for freedom and maturity.Red Dust, Red Sky is set in southern Africa during the time of official apartheid. A family originally from India lives in exile in the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho, a tiny country entirely surrounded by South Africa itself. The aftermath of the murder of a student activist at the hands of the South African police - betrayal, the struggle for redemption and years of life underground - is the basis for this powerful story. The language is beautiful, the plot riveting, the characters vivid, edgy and humorous, full of life and eccentric energy, sexual and otherwise. The story is told by Kokoanyana, a girl growing up in the small and closed belief system of rural Lesotho. She is obsessed with discovering the story of her lost father, but the many lies her mother tells her to avoid the potentially dangerous truth has sensitized Koko to the many lies and delusions of the adults around her. This is a world of concealed facts, obscure events, and phenomena only explicable in terms of the ancestors, Shiva, and the South African Defence Force. Kokoanyana's persistent pursuit gradually unearths pieces of the puzzle. But as the family's political history reveals itself, the soldiers advance.

The indispensable guide to everything we knew and loved before modern life got in the way. This gorgeous and beautifully illustrated countryside miscellany is the perfect purchase for anyone wanting to go back to their roots and rediscover a lost world... 'Beautiful book' -- ***** Reader review 'A delightful book with some lovely illustrations' -- ***** Reader review 'A heart-warming read, I love this book' -- ***** Reader review 'Magical' -- ***** Reader review 'Lovely book to just DELVE into' -- ***** Reader review 'A little gem!' -- ***** Reader review 'Sheer delight!' -- ***** Reader review **************************************************************************************************** Ever wondered how to predict the weather just by looking at the sky? Or wanted to attract butterflies to your garden? Is there a knack to building the perfect bonfire? And how exactly do you race a ferret? In this world of traffic tailbacks, supermarket shopping and 24-hour internet access, it's easy to feel disconnected from the beauty and rhythms of the natural world. If you have ever gazed in awe at stars in the night's sky, tried to catch a perfect snowflake or longed for the comfort of a roaring log fire, then this is the book for you. From spotting Britain's five kinds of owl to gardening by the phases of the moon, from curing a cold to brewing your own ale, and from navigating by the stars to making sloe gin, Red Sky at Night is packed with instructions and lists, ancient customs and old wives tales, making it an indispensable guide to countryside lore.

In 1983, at the age of thirty, dissident artist Ma Jian finds himself divorced by his wife, separated from his daughter, betrayed by his girlfriend, facing arrest for “Spiritual Pollution,” and severely disillusioned with the confines of life in Beijing. So with little more than a change of clothes and two bars of soap, Ma takes off to immerse himself in the remotest parts of China. His journey would last three years and take him through smog-choked cities and mountain villages, from scenes of barbarity to havens of tranquility. Remarkably written and subtly moving, the result is an insight into the teeming contradictions of China that only a man who was both insider and outsider in his own country could have written.

On Mars, agronomist Wei Lee finds a crashed space ship with a young woman on board. With a kiss she transmits to him nanotech viruses, giving him the ability to fight a ruling clique on the planet.

Here is the sequel to "The Mad Planet" by Murray Leinster. The world, in a far distant future, is peopled with huge insects and titanic fungus growths. Life has been greatly altered, and tiny Man is now in the process of becoming acclimated to the change. We again meet our hero Burl, but this time a far greater danger menaces the human race. The huge insects are still in evidence, but the terror they inspire is as nothing compared to the deadly Red Dust. You will follow this remarkable story with breathless interest.

The classic children’s novel of a teenage girl and her special needs brother is “quite simply, a wonderfully moving story about the power of love” (Times Educational Supplement). Twelve-year-old Anna Peacock is looking forward to the birth of her baby brother. But when Ben is born with a rare condition, it is clear that he will never be like other children. Though Anna loves him immensely, she finds herself unable to tell her friends the truth about Ben’s disability. Over the years of Ben’s tragically short life, Anna’s perspective matures and changes. When the truth does come out, it leads not to the ridicule she once expected, but to sympathy and understanding. Highly commended for the Carnegie Medal, Elizabeth Laird’s Red Sky in the Morning is a heartfelt tale of love, loss, family and friendship. “A wry first-person narrative . . . . Discussion of handicaps, death and bereavement, and religious belief are carefully integrated into the story.” —School Library Journal

'I was set down from the carrier's cart at the age of three; and there with a sense of bewilderment and terror my life in the village began.' 'This trilogy is a sequence of early recollections, beginning with the dazzling lights and sounds of my first footings on earth in a steep Cotswold valley some three miles long. For nineteen years this was the limit of my world, then one midsummer morning I left home and walked to London and down the blazing length of Spain during the innocent days of the early thirties. Never had I felt so fat with time, so free to go where I would. Then such indulgence was suddenly broken by the savage outbreak of the Civil War . . .' - Laurie Lee