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World-Eater
by Robert Swindells'There's something in the sky... something terrible!'On the night of the great storm, a mysterious new planet suddently appears in the sky. Orbiting the sun between Mercury and Venus, the huge blue-grey sphere has scientists baffled as probes reveal its surface to be flat and bare and its interior liquid. Eleven-year-old Orville, absorbed in witing for his favourite pigeon to hatch her first eggs, is the first to suspect the true nature of the planet. But will anyone listen to his theory? And, if they do, can they avert disaster? For if Orville is right, the world is doomed . . .
(Un)arranged Marriage
by Bali RaiMANNY WANTS TO BE A FOOTBALLER. OR A POP STAR. OR WRITE A BESTSELLER. HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET MARRIED...'Harry and Ranjit were waiting for me - waiting to take me to Derby, to a wedding. My wedding. A wedding that I hadn't asked for, that I didn't want. To a girl who I didn't know... If they had bothered to open their eyes, they would have seen me: seventeen, angry, upset but determined - determined to do my own thing, to choose my own path in life...'Set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, this is a fresh, bitingly perceptive and totally up-to-the-minute look at one young man's fight to free himself from family expectations and to be himself, free to dance to his own tune.
Rani And Sukh
by Bali RaiA powerful and gripping novel that sweeps the reader from modern-day Britain to the Punjab in the 1960s and back again in a ceaseless cycle of tragedy and conflict.1950s Punjab - a secret affair goes terribly wrong and the bride commits suicide after her lover is attacked by her family. The two families part in violence and conflict.2004 Leicester - Rani and Sukh fall in love, unaware of the terrible legacy of the past and the conflict between their two families-Can tragedy be averted or will the two young people be able to escape the cycle of violence and draw the families together for the future?
The Whisper
by Bali RaiThe Crew didn't think things could ever get that bad again. They were seriously wrong. Things have calmed down for the Crew (Billy, Ellie, Della, Jas and Will) and life in the Ghetto is ticking on as usual. But things are about to kick-off all over again. The police have launched Operation Clean-up and dealers are regularly being pulled off the street and into the police station. Someone's got to be grassing them up, and soon Nanny and the Crew are getting blamed. Billy is mugged, Ellie is picked on in school, and Billy's house is being targeted. The Crew need to find out who's pointing the finger before things get really serious. As tough and uncompromising as ever, Bali's latest novel won't disappoint his army of fans and will undoubtedly win him many more. A thrilling sequel that also stands alone.
Timesnatch
by Robert SwindellsOnce a creature is extinct, it's gone for ever, isn't it?Not any more - as a butterfly from the past proves. The physicist mother of Kizzy Rye and Fraser Rye has invented an amazing time machine that can travel back into the past, snatch a plant or animal now extinct and bring it back into the present.It's a wonderful achievement, a real scientific breakthrough. But the machine - 'Rye's Apparatus' - has a horrifying potential. Suddenly Kizzy and Fraser find themselves caught up in a terrifying spiral of events - events that lead finally to a monstrous demand from a sinister and violent organization...WINNER OF THE 1995 EARTHWORM AWARD, 7-11 YEAR-OLD CATEGORY
Boojer
by Alison PrinceBoojer is sick of being stuck in a hutch with no company and an owner who hardly ever remembers to feed him. Encouraged by some cheerful mice, he manages to escape. Boojer is only in search of juicy carrots and a friend, but he gets far more than he bargained for...
The Crew
by Bali RaiMeet Ellie, Jas, Della, Will and Billy. They're tough. They're street-smart. They're the Crew, and they live in what they call the Ghetto - the estates round the city centre where everyone is skint and it's important to stick together. No-one has a go once you're part of a gang. Except, sometimes, the older gangs who can be really dangerous- A new, contemporary novel for today's teenagers from the author of the critically acclaimed (un)arranged marriage.
Pony Stories (3 Book Bind-Up)
by VariousA Summer of Horses by Carol Fenner - Faith battle with her fear of horses as she learns to ride on a farm holiday. Fly-By-Night by K. M. Peyton - Ruth learns that keeping a pony is harder than she'd thought. Three to Ride by Christine Pullein-Thompson - David discovers that making it to the top as a show-jumper is going to be a bumpy ride.
Black Beauty's Family
by Josephine Pullein-Thompson Diana Pullein-Thompson Christine Pullein ThompsonEveryone's heard about Black Beauty, probably the greatest horse that ever lived. But what about the rest of his family? Here we meet some of his other extraordinary relations, each with an amazing story to tell. There's his brother, Black Ebony, who is involved in a terrible mining accident; his great niece, Black Princess, a heroine in World War One; and then there's Black Velvet, a distant relation whose life as a show jumper is about to change dramatically.
A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke
by Ronald RengWINNER OF THE WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR WINNER OF THE BRITISH SPORTS BOOK AWARDS FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR Why does an international footballer with the world at his feet decide to take his own life? On 10 November 2009 the German national goalkeeper, Robert Enke, stepped in front of a passing train. He was thirty-two years old and a devoted husband and father. Enke had played for a string of Europe's top clubs, including Barcelona and Jose Mourinho's Benfica and was destined to become his country's first choice in goal for years to come. But beneath the veneer of success, Enke battled with crippling depression. Award-winning writer Ronald Reng pieces together the puzzle of his friend's life, shedding valuable light on the crushing pressures endured by professional sportsmen and on life at the top clubs. At its heart, Enke's tragedy is a universal story of a man struggling against his demons.‘It should be on every British football fan's reading list’ Metro
The Cloud of Dust
by Charlie BoxerThis short novella is the story of a love affair. A young man goes up to Edinburgh University. Lonely, he writes letters to his mother and to his best friend Paul. He tells them about the city, about the people he has met, the books he has read. Then one day he meets a girl, Kate. Almost from that moment he is lost. Intoxicated, agonized, his love for Kate becomes all consuming, obsessive. He believes she loves him too, but she is already committed to another, and his focus changes to an intense exploration of what love really means.Astonishing in its intensity and the beauty of its language, The Cloud of Dust has all the makings of a cult bestseller
The Little Hammer
by John Kelly'Would you believe me if I told you that I was only nine years of age when I killed him?' In a paint-splattered room, a young and successful Irish painter confronts his shocking and murderous past- a dark day on the beach at Bundoran, Co. Donegal, when he quietly dispatched a palaeontologist with his own geological hammer. His life is further disrupted by the beautiful Billy Maguire, an Ingrid Bergman lookalike who leads him all the way to Prague and involves him-and his beloved and devoutly paranoid grandmother-in yet another grievous crime. Struggling to keep reality and unreality apart, he wishes only to be taken seriously-as sinner and lover, artist and murderer.Featuring cameos from Elvis Presley, Shirley Temple and the Pope, the Little Hammer is a triumph of linguistic brio, dark imagination and wild wit from one of Ireland's most exciting new talents.
The Player's Curse: A Bella Wallis Mystery (Bella Wallis Victorian Mysteries #3)
by Brian ThompsonBella Wallis – respectable society widow with a secret identity as a writer of sensationalist novels – is now happily engaged to the love of her life, Philip Westland. But Westland’s shadowy job, working for the British government, continually takes him abroad and away from the charismatic, impatient Bella. And then there is the matter of Westland’s sister’s incarceration in a French nunnery, a mystery about which he refuses to say a word.Bella is convinced that their future together can only be resolved by getting to the bottom of his secret. The resulting quest will take her from the Oval, and a vicious curse laid on champion batsman W.G Grace, to the desolate moors of Yorkshire, on the trail of some decidedly dangerous women and a surprisingly chatty hermit…
Tynan Letters
by Kathleen TynanThe Letters of Kenneth Tynan- drama critic, talent snob, intellectual dandy, inveterate campaigner - provide a record of a soul: written between the ages of 11 and 53, they not only chart the extraordinary parabola of his career but show the constancy of his quest for grace, style and effortless wit.
Mary Magdalen: Truth and Myth
by Susan HaskinsA dramatic, thought-provoking portrait of one of the most compelling figures in early Christianity which explores two thousand years of history, art, and literature to provide a close-up look at Mary Magdalen and her significance in religious and cultural thought.
A Countryside For All: The Future of Rural Britain
by Michael SissonsThe rural fuse has been lit. The countryside is tinder-dry. Post offices and banks, shops and schools are closing. Farmers are going out of business. Houses are becoming unaffordable as prices soar ad poverty grows. Pollution and over-exploitation are destroying landscapes. Many rural communities are on the verge of collapse. Some fear the foot- and - mouth crisis will prove to be the last straw. This book offers disturbing evidence of the background to the crisis.A Countryside For All is a rallying cry for action, pointing ways towards a presciption for the future. This volume tackles many of the issues in a variety of new and original ways. Possibly the most controversial and radical call is for the creation of a Department for the Countryside, with a Secretary of State for the Countryside- who would be responsible for setting a coherent set of policies to reverse the decline of rural Britain.This timely book outlines the main problems facing the countryside, and starts to bring together a balanced range of proposals. Thought-provoking, filled with common sense, often controversial but always fascinating, it points the way forward for the countryside, and for town and country as a whole.
Flawed Angel
by John FullerOnce upon a time in a Middle Eastern land, a fat, sweet-natured little boy grows up as the son of an important ruler. His older brother was apparently still-born and so he is the heir to his father's kingdom. But far away from the royal palace a lonely prospector happens across a wild creature, half boy, half animal, roaming the forests. Eventually this strange child's adventures lead him to the capital and into the path of a platoon of deserters from Napoleon's army - the flashy, ultimately dangerous, face of Enlightenment thought in this isolated kingdom - with drastic consequences. With original poems embedded like gems in the text, this is a fable for all ages, full of shivers and delights, sadness and wonder.
Look Twice: An Entertainment
by John FullerJohn Fuller's brilliantly inventive fourth novel is a modern romance which playfully explores the world's need for illusion. On the last train leaving the Duchy of Gomsza, before it is seized by civil turmoil, three illusionists - an artist, journalist and a magician reveal their past failures in love and reasons for leaving. But it is th mysterious fellow traveller Jozef Pyramur who dazzles each man in turn with different versions of reality.
The Burning Boys
by John FullerWhen David's mother is killed in the Blitz he moves to a new life in Lancashire with his young aunt Jean. As he watches the adult world around him, a fighter pilot wakes to discover his brutal disfigurement in a world he neither recognises nor remembers. The fragile link between the man and the boy as each experiences his own painful rite of passage is movely described in this powerful and evocative novel.
The Space of Joy
by John FullerThe Space of Joy is a sequence of poems that recounts the endless desire for love (and the failures and compromises that accompany that desire) in a number of writers and musicians who fatally prioritise their art. It begins with Petrarch, who created great lyric poetry out of an impossible infatuation, and moves through Coleridge's self-induced guilt within domestic happiness, Matthew Arnold's disbelief in mutual love, Brahm's self-delusion and the complexities of Wallace Stevens's marriage. It so happens that both Brahms and Arnold found themselves contemplating their art and their lives in the small Swiss town of Thun, and it is Thun that provides the setting for the wonderful concluding poem of this collection in which Fuller thinks back to his own boyood and his parents' marriage. If there is any resolution in this sequence of magnificently playful and thought-provoking poems, it is the conviction that while 'poetry may be the only heaven we have', it is life itself that must create the 'space of joy' which art wishes to celebrate.Shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award.
Time to Save Democracy: How to Govern Ourselves in the Age of Anti-Politics
by Henry B. TamTo govern ourselves or not to? This is the existential question of politics. In the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges, Henry Tam explores what should be done to revive democracy, setting out in a clear and accessible manner 9 key areas where reforms are necessary to ensure we can govern ourselves more effectively.
The Rise of Mental Vulnerability at Work: A Socio-Historical and Cultural Analysis
by Ari VäänänenSince the 1960s, a major mental health crisis has emerged among Western working populations. By analysing the development of various occupational cultures and using extensive data sources, this book captures the history of mental vulnerability in working life. Through a study spanning several decades, the book develops a new understanding of how mental vulnerability has evolved through changes to our working lives and socio-cultural being. It shows how our current knowledge about work, disability and the psyche is influenced by our time and provides intertwining conceptual frameworks and alternatives to current canonised knowledge about mental health in working life.
Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms
by Thomas ElstonWhy do top-down reforms to public services so often over-promise and under-deliver? Using five concepts from psychology, economics and organisational sociology, Thomas Elston addresses this pressing question of good governance. Rather than focusing on the challenge of implementation, Understanding and Improving Public Management Reforms reveals how flawed policy design is often the major contributor to reform failure. Cognitive bias, restrictive social institutions and inattention to ‘quiet costs’ during the policy-making process are essential to explaining the poor track record of reforms to date – and point the way towards better decision-making in future. Written for policy professionals, service managers, students and researchers alike, this concise, practical and multidisciplinary study draws on varied examples to help reconceive the perennial problem of public management reform – and to propose new solutions.
Spycops: Secrets and Disclosure in the Undercover Policing Inquiry
by Raphael SchlembachThe ‘spycops’ scandal has laid bare the existence of secretive police units that sent undercover police officers to infiltrate and undermine hundreds of political campaigns and activist groups. This is the first academic analysis of the activists’ experiences and their attempts to find answers and accountability in the Undercover Policing Inquiry. Written from the perspective of the ‘policed’, the author draws on extensive fieldwork and his first-hand experience of police infiltration through his participation in climate campaigns.
The Politics of Police Governance: Scottish Police Reform, Localism, and Epistocracy
by Ali MalikMaking a unique contribution to the scholarship on democratic policing, this book adapts the concept of epistocracy to explore the role of knowledge and expertise in police governance and accountability. Analysing the Scottish police governance arrangements following reform in 2013, the book provides a framework for knowledge-based working practices, showing how the principles of democratic policing may be achieved in practice.