If Only They Could Talk


James Herriot - 1970
    From the author whose books inspired the BBC series "All Creatures Great and Small", this first volume of unforgettable memoirs chronicles James Herriot's first years as a country vet, with the signature storytelling magic that has made him a favourite the world over. Here is a book for all those who find laughter and joy in animals, and who know and understand the magic of wild places and beautiful countryside.

Diana


R.F. Delderfield - 1960
    As a young girl Diana is irrepressible, untameable and, to the orphaned John, endlessly fascinating. Only daughter of a wealthy businessman, she is drawn both to a rigorous outdoor life in the west country with her horses and the glittering London society that will be her destiny. They spend a magical unconventional childhood together but Diana's ambition, her passion for life that makes her so desirable, pulls her away from all that makes her happy. The fierce friendship that grew inevitably to love, develops as inevitably to conflict and a betrayal that will mark them both - until the trials of war offers them redemption.

Selected Stories


E.M. Forster - 2001
    Forster also wrote remarkable short stories. He referred to his stories as ‘fantasies’ and his attraction to myth and magic is apparent in many of them. Like his novels, the stories – whether they are set in Italy, Greece, India, and other places Forster visited, or in England itself – contrast the freedom of paganism with the restraints of English civilization, the personal, sensual delights of the body with the impersonal, inhibiting rules imposed by society. Rich in irony and alive with sharp observations on the surprises life holds, the stories often feature violent events, discomforting coincidences, and other disruptive happenings that throw the characters’ perceptions and beliefs off balance. This volume includes all twelve stories published during Forster’s lifetime.

The Tea Dress Shop at Christmas


De-ann Black - 2012
    Findlay sets out to build a new life for herself in Glasgow, and opens a tea dress shop in the city centre.Is Gordan the man for Findlay, or perhaps McGarra? And will Christmas in Glasgow be everything she's wished for?

The Neptune File: A Story of Astronomical Rivalry and the Pioneers of Planet Hunting


Tom Standage - 2000
    Now in paperback, The Neptune File is the first account of the dramatic events surrounding the discovery of the solar system's eighth planet, and the story of two men who were able to see on paper what astronomers looking through telescopes for 200 years did not.

Stars and Bars


William Boyd - 1984
    But when Loomis Gage, an eccentric millionaire, invites him to appraise his small collection of Impressionist paintings, Dores's plans quite literally go south. Stranded at a remote mansion in the Georgia countryside, Dores is received by the bizarre Gage family with Anglophobic slurs, nausea-inducing food, ludicrous death threats, and a menacing face off with competing art dealers. By the time he manages to sneak back to New York City–sporting only a cardboard box–Henderson Dores realizes he is fast on the way to becoming a naturalized citizen.

The Sure Thing: The Greatest Coup in Horse Racing History


Nick Townsend - 2013
    But one man has been proving them wrong for four decades. In the summer of 1975 Barney Curley, a fearless and renowned gambler, masterminded one of the most spectacular gambles of all time with a racehorse called Yellow Sam. It cost the bookmakers millions of pounds. They said that it could never happen again. But in May 2010, thirty-five years after his first coup, Curley staged the ultimate multimillion pound-winning sequel.The Sure Thing tells the complete story of how he managed to organise the biggest gamble in racing history – and how he then followed up with yet another audacious scheme in January 2014.

Quick, Let's Get Out of Here


Michael Rosen - 1983
    I looked at Eddie. Eddie's looking at me. Big grin on his face. I knew he had done it. Last week he put pepper in the raisins. The yucky things your brother does, the annoying things your parents say, the funny things you feel. Michael Rosen knows all about YOU! Look inside and see if he's spotted your deepest, darkest secrets. A much-loved classic of family life from the brilliant Michael Rosen & Quentin Blake.

Checkpoint Charlie: The Cold War, The Berlin Wall, and the Most Dangerous Place On Earth


Iain MacGregor - 2019
    In the early 1960s, East Germany committed a billion dollars to the creation of the Berlin Wall, an eleven-foot-high barrier that consisted of seventy-nine miles of fencing, 300 watchtowers, 250 guard dog runs, twenty bunkers, and was operated around the clock by guards who shot to kill. Over the next twenty-eight years, at least five thousand people attempt to smash through it, swim across it, tunnel under it, or fly over it. In 1989, the East German leadership buckled in the face of a civil revolt that culminated in half a million East Berliners demanding an end to the ban on free movement. The world’s media flocked to capture the moment which, perhaps more than any other, signaled the end of the Cold War. Checkpoint Charlie had been the epicenter of global conflict for nearly three decades. Now, “in capturing the essence of the old Cold War [MacGregor] may just have helped us to understand a bit more about the new one” (The Times, London)—the mistrust, oppression, paranoia, and fear that gripped the world throughout this period. Checkpoint Charlie is about the nerve-wracking confrontation between the West and USSR, highlighting such important global figures as Eisenhower, Stalin, JFK, Nikita Khrushchev, Mao Zedung, Nixon, Reagan, and other politicians of the period. He also includes never-before-heard interviews with the men who built and dismantled the Wall; children who crossed it; relatives and friends who lost loved ones trying to escape over it; military policemen and soldiers who guarded the checkpoints; CIA, MI6, and Stasi operatives who oversaw operations across its borders; politicians whose ambitions shaped it; journalists who recorded its story; and many more whose living memories contributed to the full story of Checkpoint Charlie.

The Comforters


Muriel Spark - 1957
    Caroline has an unusual problem - she realises she is in a novel. Her fellow characters also seem deluded: Laurence, her former lover, finds diamonds in a loaf of bread - has his elderly grandmother hidden them there? And Baron Stock, her bookseller friend, believes he is on the trail of England's leading Satanist.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry


J.D. McClatchy - 1990
    From Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, John Ashbery and Adrienne Rich, to Robert Haas and Louise Gluck, this anthology takes the full measure of our poetry's daring energies and its tender understandings.

The Ice House


Nina Bawden - 1983
    The revelation of that primitive cruelty cements a friendship in which protection plays no small part. Years later, middle aged, they remain close friends and live on the same street. So when Daisy's husband dies suddenly, Ruth's discovery that the marriage was unhappy is the first stage in the unravelling of the certainties she has wrapped around her adult life. Friendship, love, marriage and, above all, the scorching effects of adultery, come under the microscope in this dextrous novel. Journeying from a terrifying suburban household to its unexpected conclusion in the Egyptian Pharaoh's tombs, The Ice House is startling, tragic and humorous by turns.

Complicity


Iain Banks - 1993
    The source is pretty thin, but Cameron senses a scoop and checks out a series of bizarre deaths from a few years ago - only to find that the police are checking out a series of bizarre deaths that are happening right now. And Cameron just might know more about it that he'd care to admit...

The Last Lighthouse Keeper


Alan Titchmarsh - 1997
    From the presenter of 'How to be a Gardener' comes this entertaining novel.

Keeping Up Appearances: Hyacinth Bucket's Book of Etiquette for the Socially Less Fortunate


Jonathan Rice - 1993
    Read it and please don't let me down any more.' Mrs. Hyacinth Bucket"Keeping Up Appearances" is a book of etiquette on modern social behaviour. As a book on etiquette it delves into what to do and what not to do in times of social indecision.