Abie Longstaff is the eldest of six children and grew up in Australia, Hong Kong and France. She knows all about squabbling, chaos and bossing younger sisters around. So she logically began her career as a barrister. She started writing when her children were born. Her favourite childhood books were Hating Alison Ashley, A Little Princess, Maura's Angel and The Black Stallion and she sneakily reads them again sometimes. Abie lives in Hove with her family.

Abie Longstaff

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Héctor García

Francesc Miralles

THE INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON 
 
‘A practical guide to seeking a long, healthy and happy life.’ Liz Earle 
 
‘Ikigai urges individuals to simplify their lives by pursuing what sparks joy for them.’ Marie Kondo 
 
'I read it and it's bewitched me ever since. I'm spellbound.' Chris Evans 
 
______________________________ 
 
We all have an ikigai. 
 
It's the Japanese word for 'a reason to live' or 'a reason to jump out of bed in the morning'. 
 
It's the place where your needs, desires, ambitions, and satisfaction meet. A place of balance. Small wonder that finding your ikigai is closely linked to living longer. 
 
Finding your ikigai is easier than you might think. This book will help you work out what your own ikigai really is, and equip you to change your life. You have a purpose in this world: your skills, your interests, your desires and your history have made you the perfect candidate for something. All you have to do is find it. 
 
Do that, and you can make every single day of your life joyful and meaningful. 
 
______________________________ 
 
'A refreshingly simple recipe for happiness.' Stylist 
 
'Warm, patient, and kind, this book pulls you gently along your own journey rather than pushing you from behind.' Neil Pasricha, bestselling author of The Happiness Equation 
 
'You've tried hygge and lagom - but it turns out ikigai is the key to happiness' Independent 
 
 
 
AVAILABLE NOW: The Four-Way Path, a guide to how Indian spirituality holds the key to a life of happiness and purpose - the new book from the bestselling authors of Ikigai!

Ikigai

The Japanese secret to a long and happy life

Ruth Rendell

Three classic Ruth Rendell stories: Means of Evil, The Fallen Curtain and The Fever Tree. 
 
Ruth Rendell is unequalled in her ability to weave stories that challenge our preconceptions and prejudices. From Wexford and Burden's investigation of a wife's apparent suicide, with all the evidence pointing to the husband in Means of Evil to the unsettling psychology behind a man's friendship with a boy in The Fallen Curtain and the paranoia that plagues two people who no longer know how to trust, in The Fever Tree.

Collected Stories

P.G. Wodehouse

Meet the hilarious British dilettante Bertram 'Bertie' Wooster who can't seem to help finding himself in the middle of awkward social situations, calling upon his valet Jeeves to escape embarrassment.

Bertie may be in danger of having his spine severed in five places by that jealous gorilla G. D'Arcy (Stilton) Cheesewright, but, as Jeeves insists, the priorities still have to be observed. And so, thanks to Jeeves, they are throughout this bumper volume, whatever mayhem may be loosed upon the befuddled head and generous heart of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster. Gathered in this volume are three of Wodehouse's hilarious Jeeves and Wooster novels: Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves and Jeeves in the Offing.

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 4

(Jeeves & Wooster)

The New Girl Friend was published in 1985, and the title story earned Rendell her second Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe award. 'Every tale is carefully crafted and climaxed, her feel for lurking malevolence is as assured as ever.' -The Times 
 
Then came The Copper Peacock in 1991, a collection of nine short horror stories in which 'the macabre potential of blameless situations such as village fetes, aquariums and even the broom cupboard are explored to provoke maximum unease in readers.' -Sunday Times 
 
Blood Lines, first published in 1995, includes the long title story and a novella, The Strawberry Tree, as well as nine short murder mystery stories. 'Ruth Rendell remains one of the most stylish, chilling and challenging writers around.' -Tribune 
 
Piranha to Scurfy, a collection of disturbing psychological short stories followed in 2000. 'Horror does not shake its gory locks directly at us, but hovers on the periphery of our inner vision, hidden among the ordinary, the everyday.' - Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

Collected Stories 2

Stanley Middleton

Shortly before his death last year, Stanley Middleton completed this, his last novel, which concludes a unique depiction of middle-class life in 'Middle England', quietly and cumulatively over many volumes and decades. Once again we are in Beechnall, the constant setting of Stanley Middleton's novels, and his sense of place and his feeling for his characters remains as strong as ever. 
 
At the heart of A Cautious Approach is a tentative love story, which begins when two lonely men meet, out walking on Christmas Day: Andy invites George home, and there he meets the captivating Mirabel, Andy's former fiancée. George has been a teacher, but ill health has deprived him of his career and confidence, and he has retrained as a postman. This chance encounter, and others that follow, have the potential to shift George's life, and soon he is drawn into a set of uncertain relationships in which past experience, present stoicism and future expectation all play a part. 
 
As ever, but here for the last time, Stanley Middleton's bold experimentation with flashbacks, and the embedding of one scene or dialogue within another, gives added density to his depiction of ordinary, defiantly unfashionable human lives.

A Cautious Approach

Poor Bertie is in the soup again, and throughout this latest omnibus it is only Jeeves who keeps him from being the fish and the main course as well. In these delightful pages you will encounter all the stalwarts who have made the Jeeves novels and short stories the pinnacle of English humour, from Aunts Agatha and Dahlia to Roderick Spode, Tuppy Glossop, Madeline Bassett, Oofy Prosser and Anatole the Chef. At the end even Augustus the cat has come to be much obliged to Jeeves. This volume contains Much Obliged, Jeeves, Aunts Aren't Gentlemen and the short stories 'Extricating Young Gussie', 'Jeeves Makes An Omelette' and 'Jeeves and the Greasy Bird'.

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 5

Patricia Volk

Patricia Volk’s glittering memoir, written with charm, panache and wit, juxtaposes the lives of two women – the iconoclastic fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and the author’s own mother – to tell the story of how young Patricia fashioned herself into a woman. 
 
Patricia Volk’s mother Audrey was an upper-middle class New Yorker, a great beauty, a perfectionist, and a polished hostess who believed in women doing things the proper way. 
 
The iconoclastic Italian fashion designer, Elsa Schiaparelli, on the other hand, never found a rule she didn’t want to break. One of fashion’s most radical provocateurs, she was a cultural revolutionary who embodied the ‘daring’. 
 
For Patricia, who read Schiap’s 'scandalous' autobiography, Shocking Life, at a tender age, these two women offered fabulously contrasting lessons in everything from fashion, make-up, lingerie, family and entertaining, to love, sex, superstition and gambling – lessons that would stay with her for the rest of her life. 
 
Moving seamlessly between the Volks’ 1950s Manhattan home and Schiap’s astonishing life in New York, Rome and Paris (among pals like Dali, Duchamp, Picasso), The Art of Being a Woman weaves Audrey’s notions of female domesticity with Schiap’s groundbreaking creative vision to tell the witty, wise and utterly delightful story of how a young girl learned that there is more than one way to be a woman.

The Art of Being a Woman

My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me

The Oldest Member's reverence for golf does not cramp his style in telling some of the funniest, tallest and most joyful stories in the whole Wodehouse canon. In this splendid omnibus, introduced by Wodehouse himself, love and the links are inextricably intertwined, in this bumper collection of hilarious short stories that show the course of true love is racing down the middle of the fairway.

The Golf Omnibus

In the whole delightful world of Wodehouse, the English clergy offers some of the richest sources of good-natured good humour. Confronted by burglars or belted earls, they plough serenely on with the Advent sermon or the opening of the village fete - until that is, they are swept uncontrollably into fiendish plots which only a well-disposed devil or member of the Drones Club could have contrived. 
 
No bishop is more endearingly plump and pompous than a P.G. Wodehouse bishop, no vicar more a pillar of his community (provided his sermons aren't too long), and in this collection of short stories we watch as they are plunged into one hilarious scenario after another.

The Clergy Omnibus

As always, Bertie is about to find himself in the soup (or 'up to the knees in bisque') and Jeeves is poised to pull him out - quite possibly after pushing him in in the first place. In this omnibus of characteristically hilarious short stories and novels, Jeeves is for the first time shockingly employed to resolve the woes of someone other than Bertie Wooster. Contains The Mating Season, Ring for Jeeves and Very Good, Jeeves...

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 3

'It beats me why a man of his genius is satisfied to hang around pressing my clothes and what not,' says Bertie. 'If I had Jeeves's brain I should have a stab at being Prime Minister or something.' 
 
Luckily for us, Bertie Wooster manages to retain Jeeves's services through all the vicissitudes of purple socks and policeman's helmets, and here, gathered together for the first time, is an omnibus of Jeeves novels and stories comprising three of the funniest books ever written: Thank You, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters and The Inimitable Jeeves.

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 1

Sanna Annukka Ltd

E.T.A. Hoffmann

Hoffmann's classic Christmas fairy tale, immortalised by Tchaikovsky's ballet, is brought to life by the gorgeous contemporary artwork of Finnish illustrator, Sanna Annuka. 
 
On Christmas Eve, Fritz and Marie excitedly await the arrival of Godfather Drosselmeier and the marvellous gifts he brings for them every year. When Marie discovers a curious nutcracker doll among the presents, she suddenly finds herself caught up in an age-old battle before being transported to a magical world of sugar-frosted castles, chocolate kings, and true love. 
 
Sanna Annukka is familiar to many from her collaborations with Marimekko and her artwork for Keane's album, Under the Iron Sea. The Nutcracker is her third book project. This cloth-bound edition combines the charm of Hoffmann's original nineteenth-century tale with the freshness of Sanna Annuka's gorgeous illustrations. 
 
A beautiful gift to give and receive.

The Nutcracker

Shelby Lorman

_____________________________ 
We all know a good boy. 
 
 He's a 'Feminist’... in his Tinder bio. 
 He ghosts you, but then feels bad. (For a moment.) 
 He’s not mansplaining, just aggressively clarifying. 
 And he's open to being wrong. Theoretically. 
 
 Ready to call time on rewarding those who clear the low bar of not being outwardly awful? 
 
 Awards for Good Boys explores why so-called and self-proclaimed good boys are actually not that great, and makes literal our tendency to applaud men for doing the absolute least. It will make you cry-laugh, feel validated, and help you unravel your own assumptions about what makes us good. ______________________________ 
'Shelby and her art are extremely my shit. You need this book.' Samantha Irby, author of We Are Never Meeting in Real Life 
 
 ‘A short book of one woman’s opinions. It’s funny, but I prefer when men are funny or else my ego feels bruised.’ Ben from Twitter

Awards for Good Boys

From the viral Instagram account

Edited by the bestselling author of Birdsong and Dr Hope Wolf, this is an original and illuminating non-fiction anthology of writing on the First World War. 
 
A lieutenant writes of digging through bodies that have the consistency of Camembert cheese; a mother sends flower seeds to her son at the Front, hoping that one day someone may see them grow; a nurse tends a man back to health knowing he will be court-martialled and shot as soon as he is fit. 
 
In this extraordinarily powerful and diverse selection of diaries, letters and memories – many of which have never been published before – privates and officers, seamen and airmen, munitions workers and mothers, nurses and pacifists, prisoners-of-war and conscientious objectors appear alongside each other. 
 
The war involved people from so many different backgrounds and countries and included here are, among others, British, German, Russian and Indian voices. Alongside testament from the many ordinary people whose lives were transformed by the events of 1914-18, there are extracts from names that have become synonymous with the war, such as Siegfried Sassoon and T.E. Lawrence. What unites them is a desire to express something of the horror, the loss, the confusion and the desire to help – or to protest. 
 
A Broken World is an original collection of personal and defining moments that offer an unprecedented insight into the Great War as it was experienced and as it was remembered.

A Broken World

Letters, diaries and memories of the Great War

Zoe Williams

Whether we have children or not we all want the future to be fairer and happier; and Zoe Williams believes that we need to make that happen collectively. 
 
GET IT TOGETHER is a rousing call to arms for us all to play our part in creating a more equal society. 
 
Zoe believes that it’s not enough to sit back and watch as our NHS slides away from us; as the young and low earners are forced out of London; as hundreds of thousands of people nationally drift into poverty; as education becomes increasingly divided and as the wealthiest five people in Britain earn more than the poorest 20%. 
 
Zoe will address key questions including: has the NHS had its day; has an immigrant stolen your job; have you ever wondered why you can't afford a house; and who got us into this mess anyway? She will then offer up, in answer, a combination of fact, opinion and debate that will be as inspiring as it is important. 
 
Zoe Williams brings together here all the arguments that occupy the current political landscape and shows us that on all levels, it’s lunacy to be anything other than left-wing unless you’re actually already an oligarch. She offers us the debate in a truly entertaining way - she’s pacey, conversational and funny. This is a road map for a better future that will be a major part of the debate in the run up to the election next May.

Get It Together

Why We Deserve Better Politics

Rob Ryan

A stunningly illustrated fairytale for all ages from internationally-acclaimed papercut artist Rob Ryan – the follow-up to THE INVISIBLE KINGDOM. 
 
This is a story about a young boy who doesn’t want to be King. 
 
What he wants, more than anything, is to be normal. 
 
So one night, he runs away from the palace. He climbs out of his four-poster bed, disappears through a hidden door in the ceiling, creeps down a long-forgotten passageway, opens a small window and leaves behind everything he’s ever known. 
 
At first, the world outside the palace seems a magical place that the King delights in exploring. But with no friends to call on, no money in his pocket, in fact nothing apart from the clothes he is wearing, it isn’t long before the young King realises that life on his own is going to be full of challenges. 
 
Meanwhile, Lord Von Dronus, the most senior of all the King’s courtiers, is determined to find the young King before anyone realises he's disappeared. 
 
Beautiful, touching and surprising, The Kingdom Revealed is about appreciating the everyday and learning what matters most.

The Kingdom Revealed

Collects Right Ho, Jeeves; Joy in the Morning; and Carry on, Jeeves 
 
'If you haven't read PG Wodehouse in a hot bath with a snifter of whiskey and ideally a rubber duck for company, you haven't lived [...] A book that's a sheer joy to read.' INDEPENDENT 
 
'To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language.' BEN SCHOTT 
______________________ 
Jeeves may not always see eye to eye with Bertie Wooster on ties and fancy waistcoats, but he can always be relied on to whisk his young master spotlessly out of the soup (even if, for tactical reasons, he did drop him in it in the first place). 
 
The paragon of Gentlemen's Personal Gentlemen shimmers through the pages in much the same way he did through the first Jeeves Omnibus. This volume contains one brilliant collection of short stories and two hilarious novels: Right Ho, Jeeves, Joy in the Morning and Carry On, Jeeves.

The Jeeves Omnibus - Vol 2

Amy Ransom

________________________ 
*'NEW MUM, YOU'RE DOING BRILLIANTLY'* 
 
 Reassuring, funny and down-to-earth, THE NEW MUM'S NOTEBOOK is everything you need for the first year of life with a baby. 
 
‘It is hands down THE best book I was given as a new mum. I feel it should be issued to all mums on leaving hospital.’ (Louise, Amazon review) 
_________________________ 
 
What do new mums want most of all (apart from sleep)? They want someone to tell them what they’re feeling is ‘normal’. That they’re doing ok. That they will be ok. The New Mum’s Notebook, written by Amy Ransom – mum of three and creator of the Surviving Motherhood blog – does all this and more. 
 
 From night feeds, napping and weaning, to which films to cue up on Netflix, finding some headspace and getting all the support, coffee and cake you need, Amy has been there – and this is the book she wishes she’d had by her side. 
 
 Divided into the first 12 months of motherhood, with 304 pages of reassurance, love and humour, as well as spaces to scribble thoughts, feelings and memories from those crazy early days, The New Mum’s Notebook will nurture a new mum in however she chooses to raise her baby. Whether it’s her first or her fifth. 
 
 Word on the street is it’s almost worth having another baby for... 
 
 'You've created the book that we all wish we'd had.' – Clemmie, mum of two 
 
 ‘My go-to present for my new mummy friends’ – Kate, mum of two 
 
 ‘I've had loads of baby record books and never ever filled one in. This book feels so different. I love it.’ – Annabel, mum of five 
 
 * Perfect for expectant mothers and new mums 
 
 * Gorgeous colour pages including lots of reassurance, self-care advice, journal pages, affirmations and simple recipes 
 
 * Divided into 12 months to take you through every stage of a new mum and baby’s first year 
 
 * Eight journal pages per month with space to write notes, thoughts, memories and all those ‘to-dos’ 
 
 * 12 months of milestone charts for mum and baby

The New Mum's Notebook

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