Books

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.'

The Bridges of Constantine is a poignant fresco of Algeria over the last fifty years, a searing love story and a hymn to a lost city. Khaled, a former revolutionary in the Algerian war of liberation has been in self-exile in Paris for two decades, disgusted by the corruption that now riddles the country he once fought for. Now a celebrated painter, he is surprised at the opening of one of his exhibitions to see Hayat, the daughter of his old revolutionary commander. A child when he last saw her, she has now become a seductive young novelist.

Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. From his home in New Jersey, where he lives with his old-world mother and rebellious sister, Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted Oscar's family for generations, dooming them to prison, torture, tragic accidents, and, above all, ill-starred love. Oscar, still waiting for his first kiss, is just its most recent victim.

The Broken World is the fourth instalment in the epic fantasy series by J. D. Oswald, The Ballad of Sir Benfro, preceded by Dreamwalker , The Rose Cord and The Golden Cage .