and Mrs. Brown first met Paddington, a most endearing bear from Darkest Peru on a railway platform in London. A sign hanging around his neck said, "Please look after this bear. Thank you" So that is just what they did.From the very first night when he attempted his first bath and ended up nearly flooding the house, Paddington was seldom far from imminent disaster. Jonathan and Judy were delighted with this havoc and even Mr. and Mrs. Brown had to admit that life seemed to be more filled with adventure when there was a bear in the house.

    He said he'd been sent by Archer. But who was Archer? It had to do with the 2,000 words that Howard's author father had failed to deliver.It soon became clear not only that Archer wanted those words, but that his wizard siblings, Hathaway, Dillian, Shine, Torquil, Erskine, and Venturus, would also go to any lengths to get them.Although each wizard ruled a section of the town, he or she was a prisoner in it. Each suspected that one of them held the secret behind the words, and that secret was the key to their freedom. Which one of them was it? The Sykes family become pawns in the wizards' fight to win their freedom, wrest control from one another, and fan out to rule the world.Diana Wynne Jones skillfully guides the reader through a riveting, twisty plot, with satisfying surprises at every amazing turn. An exciting science fiction adventure where, happily, nothing is what it first seems to be.

    Whether it's trying to arrange a marriage for his sister or taking a job as a boot boy as step one in his grand plan to run away, Just William manages to cause chaos wherever he goes.

    The carved shield she finds in the attic, brought from New Guinea years ago, causes fourteen-year-old Clare disturbing dreams.

    Left in the care of the cruel Miss Slighcarp, the girls can hardly believe what is happening to their once happy home. The servants are dismissed, the furniture is sold, and Bonnie and Sylvia are sent to a prison-like orphan school. It seems as if the endless hours of drudgery will never cease.With the help of Simon the gooseboy and his flock, they escape. But how will they ever get Willoughby Chase free from the clutches of the evil Miss Slighcarp?

    What does "spudvetch" mean? Why do Mr Kidd's eyes flicker with fluorescent blue light when Charlie says spudvetch to him? A high-powered adventure can end only with a Boom!

    The father is a dustman and the mother a washerwoman, but because they are poor the children find even greater opportunities for adventure in their ordinary lives.

    Locked away in separate rooms as punishment by their ruthless grandmother, the Linnets feel at once that their new life is unbearable—and decide to make their escape—out of the house, out of the garden and into the village. Commandeering a pony and trap, the children and their dog are led away as the pony makes his way nonchalantly home. The pony’s destination happens to be a house that belongs to their gruff but loveable uncle Ambrose. The kindly uncle Ambrose agrees to take them under his wing, he educates them and encourages them to explore Dartmoor, letting the children have free rein in his sprawling manor house and surrounding countryside.Befriending the collection of house guests, including an owl, a giant cat, and a gardener, Ezra, who converses with bees, and getting to know the miscellaneous inhabitants of the village, the four siblings discover a life in which magic and reality are curiously intermingled and evil and tragedy lurk never far away. Then stumble upon the eccentric Lady Alicia Valerian, who seems to have lost her family. And then the real fun begins! The Linnets start their search for the missing Valerians. But the village is under a spell of the witch Emma Cobley. Can the children lift the spell and restore happiness to the villagers? Or will they be thwarted by evil Emma Cobley and her magic cat?This charming story beautifully depicts early twentieth century English country life while conjuring an air of magical adventure. It is full of vivid characters, battles between good and evil and wonderful spell-binding moments.

    M. Boston's thrilling and chilling tales of Green Knowe, a haunted manor deep in an overgrown garden in the English countryside, have been entertaining readers for half a century.There are three children: Toby, who rides the majestic horse Feste; his mischievous little sister, Linnet; and their brother, Alexander, who plays the flute. The children warmly welcome Tolly to Green Knowe... even though they've been dead for centuries.But that's how everything is at Green Knowe. The ancient manor hides as many stories as it does dusty old rooms.And the master of the house is great-grandmother Oldknow, whose storytelling mixes present and past with the oldest magic in the world.

    Mary Fred spends the fifteen dollars that is intended for a new formal to buy her beloved Mr. Chips, a lame horse. Elizabeth's husband, Don, is sent overseas, and a weak and wan Elizabeth arrives at the Malones' with her two-week-old son, Martie. When Mr. Malone is called away on business for the Call, the children's step-grandmother, Nonna, arrives to "run" the household and shower them with gifts. It is quickly evident that Nonna has earned her title as "the iron hand in the velvet glove." When Nonna provides Mary Fred expensive new clothes and relieves her of her household responsibilities, will Mary Fred be able to manage her confused priorities?

    There was a baby in it."So ten-year-old Maria, orphaned mistress of Malplaquet, discovers the secret of her deteriorating estate: on a deserted island at its far corner, in the temple long ago nicknamed Mistress Masham's Repose, live an entire community of people—"The People," as they call themselves—all only inches tall. With the help of her only friend—the absurdly erudite Professor—Maria soon learns that this settlement is no less than the kingdom of Lilliput (first seen in Gulliver's Travels) in exile. Safely hidden for centuries, the Lilliputians are at first endangered by Maria's well-meaning but clumsy attempts to make their lives easier, but their situation grows truly ominous when they are discovered by Maria's greedy guardians, who look at The People and see only a bundle of money.

    Patty Hirst was no great scholar, but she was the "nicest girl" at Morton Priory, and a gifted artist as well.

    I read the book at a single sitting and felt bereft when I finally closed the cover onto the last page.""The house itself seemed to possess her. It was a love affair, and like many love affairs, it was inconvenient." Nestled cozily in the English countryside stands a house called Duntan-grand, proud, beautiful to look at, yet slowly falling apart and riddled with problems. How can Sonia, Lady Duntan so fiercely love such a monster of a house, almost as much as she loves her four children, perhaps more than she loves her husband, whose family has lived at Duntan for over 200 years?For Sonia, restoring Duntan to its former glory has become synonymous with repairing her own sense of self, and refurbishing the house means working closely with Simon Hadleigh, the charming director of the Heritage at Risk Association. But as her marriage seems to be crumbling faster than the house itself; her children growing up quickly; her painting career taking off and Simon awakening in her a long, dormant passion, Sonia realizes that everything has its price...

    Carrie and Nick are billeted in Wales with old Mr Evans, who is so mean and cold, and his timid mouse of a sister, Lou, who suddenly starts having secrets. Their friend Albert is luckier, living in Druid's Bottom with warm-hearted Hepzibah Green and the strange Mister Johnny, who can talk to animals but not to human beings. Carrie and Nick visit him there whenever they can for Hepzibah makes life exciting and enticing with her stories and delicious cooking. Gradually they begin to feel more at ease in their war-time home, but then, in trying to heal the rift between Mr Evans and his estranged sister, and save Druid's Bottom, Carrie does a terrible thing which is to haunt her for years to come. Carrie revisits Wales as an adult and tells the story to her own children.

    It's been there for an age. I keep on saying that I'll write a journal. So I'll start right here, right now. I open the book and write the very first words: My name is Mina and I love the night. Then what shall I write? I can't just write that this happened then this happened then this happened to boring infinitum. I'll let my journal grow just like the mind does, just like a tree or a beast does, just like life does. Why should a book tell a tale in a dull straight line?And so Mina writes and writes in her journal, and through her stories and poems there grows an opus of her life - her lessons, her loves, her beliefs, her mum, her dad, her thoughts and her dreams.In this stunningly designed book, David Almond revisits Mina before she has met Michael, before she has met Skellig, in what is a thought-provoking and extraordinary prequel to his best-selling debut novel, Skellig. From the winner of the Whitbread Children's Book Award the Carnegie Medal and the 2010 Hans Christian Andersen Award comes the extraordinary prequel to the award-winning Skellig.