English Books

"The Tales of Beedle the Bard" contains five richly diverse fairy tales, each with its own magical character, that will variously bring delight, laughter and the thrill of mortal peril.

This collection of original essays by an international team of Hughes scholars demonstrates afresh how key contextual and theoretical approaches to the poet's work serve to illuminate the texts. Part I reads Hughes' poems through cultural contexts while Part II examines his work through the frames of a range of literary theories.

Lucy Courtenay has officially been writing children’s fiction since 1999, and unofficially for a lot longer than that. Her desk drawers are full of half-finished stories waiting for the right moment to emerge and dance around her study in a shower of exuberant paperclips. She’s written for series such as THE SLEEPOVER CLUB, ANIMAL ARK, DOLPHIN DIARIES and BEAST QUEST. Her new series MERMAID SCHOOL is out now.

A new title in Young Reading, Series Three, based on the classic novel by John Buchan. Aimed at children whose reading ability and confidence allows them to tackle longer and more complex stories.Age 7+ Based on the classic adventure-thriller by John Buchan. Richard Hannay is in a race against time. Can he crack the code that could prevent an invasion? Or will the ruthless agents of the sinister Black Stone get to him first? Is anywhere safe? Whom can he trust? And just what is the secret of the 39 steps? Part of Series Three of the Usborne Reading Programme, for children whose reading ability and confidence allows them to tackle longer, more complex stories. Includes fascinating facts about the story.

Amoral, cunning, ruthless, and instructive, this piercing work distills three thousand years of the history of power in to forty-eight well explicated laws. As attention-grabbing in its design as it is in its content, this bold volume outlines the laws of power in their unvarnished essence, synthesizing the philosophies of Machiavelli, Sun-tzu, Carl von Clausewitz, and other great thinkers.

A remote military research station sends out a frantic distress call, ending with a chilling final command: Kill us all! Personnel from the neighboring base rush in to discover everyone already dead-and not just the scientists, but every living thing for fifty square miles is annihilated: every animal, plant, and insect, even bacteria.

The Ladybird Learning at Home range has been specially devised to help children develop and practise at home the skills they will need at school. The Alphabet provides colourful and entertaining pre-reading exercises based on the letters of the alphabet. The alphabet has been treated phonetically so that the name of the object begins with the sound of the letter. All exercises can be repeated on extra paper and in practical ways.

If you are looking for a story about cheerful youngsters spending a jolly time at boarding school, look elsewhere. Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are intelligent and resourceful children, and you might expect that they would do very well at school.

"Everyone wanted to believe that endless love was possible. She'd believed in it once, too, back when she was eighteen." In the spring of 1984, high school students Amanda Collier and Dawson Cole fell deeply, irrevocably in love. Though they were from opposite sides of the tracks, their love for one another seemed to defy the realities of life in their small town in North Carolina. But as the summer of their senior year came to a close, unforeseen events would tear the young couple apart, setting them on radically divergent paths. Now, twenty-five years later, Amanda and Dawson are summoned back home for the funeral of Tuck Hostetler, the mentor who once gave shelter to their high school romance. Neither has lived the life they imagined . . . and neither can forget the passionate first love that forever changed their lives. As Amanda and Dawson carry out the instructions Tuck left behind for them, they realize that everything they thought they knew—about Tuck, about themselves, and about the dreams they held dear—was not as it seemed. Forced to confront painful memories, the former lovers will discover undeniable truths about the choices they have made. And in the course of a single, searing weekend, they will ask of the living, and the Can love truly rewrite the past?

Using rhythmic text to help build reading skills, combined with original illustrations, the books in this series offer quirky, humorous retellings of traditional children''s tales.'