Len Deighton was born in 1929 in London. He did his national service in the RAF, went to the Royal College of Art and designed many book jackets, including the original UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. The enormous success of his first spy novel, The IPCRESS File (1962), was repeated in a remarkable sequence of books over the following decades. These varied from historical fiction (Bomber, perhaps his greatest novel) to dystopian alternative fiction (SS-GB) and a number of brilliant non-fiction books on the Second World War (Fighter, Blitzkrieg and Blood, Tears and Folly). 
 
His spy novels chart the twists and turns of Britain and the Cold War in ways which now give them a unique flavour. They preserve a world in which Europe contains many dictatorships, in which the personal can be ruined by the ideological and where the horrors of the Second World War are buried under only a very thin layer of soil. Deighton's fascination with technology, his sense of humour and his brilliant evocation of time and place make him one of the key British espionage writers, alongside John Buchan, Eric Ambler, Ian Fleming and John Le Carré.

Len Deighton

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James Walton

Which Haruki Murakami novel shares its title with a Beatles song? In Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, what is Charlie's surname? What is heavy-drinking Rachel Watson known as in the title of a 21st-century bestseller? And what do you get if you add the number of Bennet sisters in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to the number of Karamazov brothers in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov? 
 
With four hundred questions covering books from literary classics to modern bestsellers, through iconic children's books and books you say that you've read but really you haven't, The Penguin Book Quiz is as appropriate for making you look well-read at a party as it is for a book-loving family to tuck into after Christmas dinner: it's as enjoyable to read as it is to play. 
 
Featuring the work of everyone from Antony Beevor to Zadie Smith, books from The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Ulysses, and with movie, music, television, theatre and literary references abounding, this entertaining quiz tickles the fancy (and the brains) of light and heavy readers alike. 
 
Answers: 
- Norwegian Wood 
- Bucket 
- The Girl on the Train 
- Eight (five sisters, three brothers)

The Penguin Book Quiz

From The Very Hungry Caterpillar to Ulysses

Jack Sheffield

York, 1988. 
 
Dr Tom Frith is beginning his first term as a tutor at the University of Eboracum. After teaching primary school children for several years, he's sure shaping the minds of young adults will be a welcome change. But that's before considering the pressures he'll face outside the lecture hall, from helping three hapless students who've been surviving exclusively on porridge, to fielding inappropriate propositions from students chasing higher grades. 
 
And then there's the particular challenge of Edna Wallop, the Acting Head of Faculty. Edna may have grand plans to overhaul the faculty's finances, but Tom can't help being suspicious of her methods... 
 
Meanwhile, Tom meets Inger, an enigmatic Music tutor, and feels an instant spark. One thing's for sure: it's going to be an eventful year on campus, for tutors and students alike! 
 
A hilarious, nostalgic and heart-warming novel about the trials and tribulations of life at a fictional Yorkshire university, perfect for fans of James Herriot and Tom Sharpe

University Tales

Michael Palin

Discover Michael's new travel adventure, Michael Palin in Venezuela, available now. 
 
'I cannot remember the last time I read a book so immediately absorbing and affecting. Michael Palin has never been better – which is, of course, saying a great deal.' BILL BRYSON 
___________________________________ 
 
From the time, many years ago, when Michael Palin first heard that his grandfather had a brother, Harry, he was determined to find out more about him. 
 
The quest that followed involved hundreds of hours of painstaking detective work. Michael dug out every bit of family gossip and correspondence he could. He studied every relevant official document. He tracked down what remained of his great-uncle Harry's diaries and letters, and pored over photographs of First World War battle scenes to see whether Harry appeared in any of them. He walked the route Harry took on that fatal, final day of his life amid the mud of northern France. And as he did so, a life that had previously existed in the shadows was revealed to him. 
 
Great-Uncle Harry is an utterly compelling account of an ordinary man who led an extraordinary life. A blend of biography, history, travelogue and personal memoir this is Michael Palin at his very finest. 
___________________________________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR EREBUS: 
 
'Beyond terrific. I didn't want it to end.' BILL BRYSON 
 
'Magisterial . . . Palin brings energy, wit and humanity to a story that has never ceased to tantalise people.' THE TIMES 
 
'Everybody's talking about it . . . A brilliant book.' CHRIS EVANS 
 
'I absolutely loved it: I had to read it at one sitting.' LORRAINE KELLY

Great-Uncle Harry

A Tale of War and Empire

Bart van Es

The last time Lien saw her parents was in the Hague, where she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own, but a falling out after the war put an end of to their relationship. What was her side of the story, Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - wondered? What really happened during the war, and after? So began an investigation that would consume and transform both Bart's life and Lien's. This is an astonishing portrait of a young girl's struggle to survive war, and her powerful, tumultuous and painful ties with her foster family.

The Cut Out Girl

A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found

John Titford

The Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames is a useful and fascinating guide to the surnames that offer a unique insight into the place of origin, the occupations - and even the personality traits - of our ancestors. Detailed and informative, this dictionary covers the widest range of British surnames and is essential reading for anyone intrigued by the story of their name and by the history of their family. This edition replaces our out of date (and out of print) 1967 edition.

The Penguin Dictionary of British Surnames

Hannah Azieb Pool

In 1974 Hannah Azieb-Pool was adopted from an orphanage in Eritrea and brought to England by her white adoptive father. She grew up unable to imagine what it must be like to look into the eyes of a blood relative until one day a letter arrived from a brother she never knew she had. Not knowing what to do with the letter, Hannah hid it away. But she was unable to forget it, and ten years later she finally decided to track down her surviving Eritrean family and embarked upon a journey that would take her far from the comfort zone of her metropolitan lifestye to confront the poverty and oppression of a life that could so easily have been her own.

My Fathers' Daughter

Alison Light

Family history is a massive phenomenon of our times but what are we after when we go in search of our ancestors? Beginning with her grandparents, Alison Light moves between the present and the past, in an extraordinary series of journeys over two centuries, across Britain and beyond. 
 
Epic in scope and deep in feeling, Common People is a family history but also a new kind of public history, following the lives of the migrants who travelled the country looking for work. Original and eloquent, it is a timely rethinking of who the English were - but ultimately it reflects on history itself, and on our constant need to know who went before us and what we owe them.

Common People

The History of An English Family

Ronnie Archer-Morgan

Janet Gleeson

'Ronnie has overcome a heart-breaking start in life to achieve great success and no one deserves it more. What a dude, what a life!' - Fiona Bruce 
 
'Brilliant...a mercurial memoir of a meritorious life.' - Lemn Sissay 
 
For decades, Ronnie Archer-Morgan has brought to life the fascinating, often surprising backstories behind our most cherished heirlooms and household objects on the Antiques Roadshow. Now, he tells his own unlikely story. 
 
 Born in the fifties to a Sierra Leonean mother battling mental health problems, Ronnie spent his childhood in and out of care. After difficult beginnings, marked by abuse, racism and brushes with both criminals and the police, he got into music, managing to get DJ gigs and, later, worked as a celebrity hairdresser for Vidal Sassoon and Smile in the height of seventies London. A flair for spotting antiques led him to start his own Knightsbridge gallery, ultimately becoming one of the most respected figures in the industry, culminating in a regular spot as an expert on the nation's Sunday favourite, Antiques Roadshow. 
 
 Told with rich warmth, this is an extraordinary journey from deprivation and abuse to adventure and success against the odds - with stories of the incredible objects which shaped the way. 
 
'A surprising story, like many of the objects he appraises on the Antiques Roadshow' - Kate Adie, broadcaster and bestselling author 
 
'A fascinating, rollercoaster read, very well told.' - Times

Would It Surprise You To Know…?

Clair Wills

How far would you go for the missing? 
 
When Clair Wills was in her twenties, she discovered she had a cousin she had never met. Born in a Mother and Baby home in 1950s Ireland, Mary grew up in an institution not far from the farm where Clair spent happy childhood summers. Yet she was never told of her existence. 
 
How could a whole family - a whole country - abandon unmarried mothers and their children, erasing them from history? 
 
To discover the missing pieces of her family's story, Clair searched across archives and nations, in a journey that would take her from the 1890s to the 1980s, from West Cork to rural Suffolk and Massachusetts, from absent fathers to the grief of a lost child. 
 
There are some experiences that do not want to be remembered. What began as an effort to piece together the facts became an act of decoding the most unreliable of evidence - stories, secrets, silences. The result is a moving, exquisitely told story of the secrets families keep, and the violence carried out in their name.

Missing Persons, Or My Grandmother's Secrets

Jeremy Clarkson

Everyone knows that Jeremy Clarkson finds the world a perplexing place - after all, he wrote a bestselling book about it. Yet despite the appearance of The World According To Clarkson, things don't seem to have improved much. However, Jeremy is not someone to give up easily and he's decided to have another go. 
 
In And Another Thing, our exasperated hero discovers that: 
 
 He inadvertently dropped a bomb on North Carolina 
 
 We're all going to explode at the age of 62 
 
Russians look bad in Speedos. But not as bad as we do. 
 
 No one should have to worry about being Bill Oddie's long lost sister 
 
He should probably be nicer about David Beckham 
 
Thigh-slappingly funny and - as ever - in your face, Jeremy Clarkson bursts the pointless little bubbles of the idiots while celebrating the special, the unique and the sheer bloody brilliant ...

And Another Thing

The World According to Clarkson Volume 2

Colm Tóibín

'A father...is a necessary evil.' Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses 
 
In Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know Colm Tóibín takes three of Ireland's greatest writers - Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats and James Joyce - and examines their earliest influences: their fathers. With his inimitable wit and sensitivity, Tóibín introduces us to Wilde Senior, the philandering doctor whose libel case prefigured that of his son; the elder Yeats, an impoverished artist who never finished a painting; and to John Stanislaus Joyce, the hard-drinking, storytelling father of James, who couldn't feed his own family. This is an illuminating study of how each of these men cast a long shadow not only over the lives of their famous sons, but over the works for which they are celebrated and cherished.

Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know

The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce

Neil Oliver

For longer than recorded history there have been tales of spirits and of places where our hackles rise and our skin turns cold. 
 
Bestselling historian Neil Oliver travels the British Isles on a deliciously spine-chilling tour that spans several centuries and explores more than 20 sites - castles, vicarages and towers, lonely shorelines and forgotten battlefields - to unpick their stories.. 
 
Oliver invokes his family's history alongside that of kings and queens past as he probes why our emotions and senses are heightened in certain locations where the separation between dimensions seems gossamer thin. Our landscape is riven with these places, creaking from the weight of the secrets they hold, the echoes of tragedy and dark deeds . From Inverness to Devon, Co Dublin to Norfolk, Hauntings casts an enjoyably eerie glow with stories that, told generation after generation, are inextricable from place - and considers why they matter.

Hauntings

A Book of Ghosts and Where to Find Them Across 25 Eerie British Locations

Deborah Cohen

On a Liverpool railway platform a heartbroken mother hands over her eight-year-old illegitimate son for adoption . . . 
 
The one-year-old daughter committed to an institution and barely visited or referred to by her family ever again . . . 
 
In Family Secrets Deborah Cohen explores the extraordinary choices British families made in the past to protect their good name. Whether it is hiding an adopted son's origins or the tangled attempts to prevent a divorce, Family Secrets exposes how we dealt with our shame - publicly and in our hearts.

Family Secrets

The Things We Tried to Hide

Margaret Weis

Tracy Hickman

An intrepid woman and her friends must somehow undo the great damage they have done to the future of their world in the thrilling conclusion to the New York Times bestselling Dragonlance series 
 
When Destina Rosethorn and her companions were transported to a time 300 years before their birth—to the days of the Third Dragon War famed in song and story—the last thing they wanted to do was upset history. But upon returning to the near-past from which they departed, they discover a world completely altered. Thanks in no small part to the Graygem of Gargath that Destina carries, the war that was once won is now lost, and the forces of evil hold sway over the land. 
 
The river of Time is rising, flowing inexorably towards present day. So it is up to Destina and her friends to make one last, desperate attempt to restore Time’s river to its proper channel. For if they cannot manage it, the altered past will sweep over the present until no trace of their old world remains.

Dragonlance: Dragons of Eternity

(Dungeons & Dragons)

Justin Webb

'Searingly honest... gripping... fascinating and hugely entertaining.'- Sunday Times 
 
'Moving and frank ... A story of a childhood defined by loneliness, the absence of a father and the grim experience of a Quaker boarding school. It is also one of the most perceptive accounts of Britain in the 1970s.'- Misha Glenny 
 
'A crisp, unself-pitying memoir of a 'trainwreck' youth ... I've always likes Webb on the radio. But I like him much more after reading this book. He offers precisely the kind of brisk honesty and considered analysis he expects from his interviewees. Our politicians should all read it, and step up their game.' -Telegraph 
......................................................................................................................................................... 
 
Justin Webb's childhood in the 1970s was far from ordinary. 
 
Between his mother's un-diagnosed psychological problems, and his step-father's untreated ones, life at home was dysfunctional at best. But with gun-wielding school masters and sub-standard living conditions, Quaker boarding school wasn't much better. 
 
Candid, unsparing and darkly funny, Justin Webb's memoir is as much a portrait of a troubled era as it is the story of a dysfunctional childhood, shaping the urbane and successful radio presenter we know and love now. 
........................................................................................................................................ 
 
'I thoroughly enjoyed Justin Webb's bonkers childhood. He captures the middle class of the age with a tenacity only possible in one of its victims.' -Jeremy Paxman

The Gift of a Radio

My Childhood and other Train Wrecks

The year is 1976 and Jack Sheffield never wants to leave his job. 
 
Jack has been the deputy head teacher at Newbridge Primary School for six years now, and he's happy exactly where he is - even if it sometimes feels like there are a few things missing from his life. After all, the kids keep him busy and there's always a game of rugby to play. 
 
But it's a time of change, and Jack's world is no exception. New and old faces appear in his life and a romance blossoms, bringing with it a buried secret and hidden threat. Soon, Jack must make a decision as to where his future is heading, and prepare to face whatever change is yet to come . . . 
 
A classic Jack Sheffield tale, ready to transport you back to a simpler time.

School Days

Madeleine Roux

“Any Critter will love this book” 5 star Reader Review 
“This only made me love Lucien more” 5 star Reader Review 
“Absolutely delightful” 5 star Reader Review 
 
__________ 
 
Delve into the mind of Critical Role's most charming villain in this original novel that chronicles Lucien's early life and his fateful meeting with the Mighty Nein. 
 
Lucien has always been able to spin a bad situation to his advantage. From his childhood on the dangerous streets of Shadycreek Run to his years living off the grid and learning blood magic from the Claret Orders, the charismatic blood hunter will find a way to get the upper hand. 
 
When Lucien is on a job in the frozen wastelands of Eiselcross with his fellow mercenaries, a rough-and-tumble crew called the Tombtakers, fate leads him to a mysterious journal in the ruins of an ancient city. The book speaks of the Somnovem, nine beings who can grant Lucien power beyond imagining - if he is able to find them and free them from captivity. 
 
Intrigued by this opportunity, Lucien pores over the journal - but the more he reads, the stranger things become. The nine whisper to him in dreams and waking visions. Time slips away, along with Lucien's grasp on reality. And tattoos of red eyes begin appearing on his skin. . . . 
 
With the ability to reshape the world within his grasp, Lucien ignores all warning signs. He has always bent fortune to his will, and nothing - not even death - will stop him now. 
 
Written by New York Times bestselling author Madeleine Roux, Critical Role: The Mighty Nein - The Nine Eyes of Lucien explores the meteoric rise and fall of one of Critical Role's most notorious and tragic figures. 
__________ 
 
 
“I had a hard time putting this down” 5 star Reader Review 
“Does such a great job of humanising Lucien, and then tearing it all down” 5 star Reader Review 
“Adds so much character depth” 5 star Reader Review

Critical Role

The Mighty Nein - The Nine Eyes of Lucien

C. Daly King

A classic Golden Age locked-room mystery in which the discovery of a body turns a cross-country train journey into a hunt for a killer. 
 
The luxurious Transcontinental Express, a locomotive journeying coast-to-coast across the United States, is the height of 1930s technology and sophistication. Alongside carriages for dining, drinking and dancing, there’s even a swimming pool car – in which the corpse of a banker is found floating facedown just one day into the journey. 
 
With nowhere to hide, any passenger could be next. It's up to the clever Dr Pons – with his sharp wit and knack for impossible puzzles – to get to the bottom of the case, before it is too late. 
 
'A highly ingenious, entertaining and unusual tale.' Daily Herald

Obelists En Route

Charlotte Moore

Hancox is the Tudor hall house in rural Sussex where Charlotte Moore grew up, and where she lives today. It's been in the family since her ancestor Milicent Ludlow, young, single and an orphan, took it on in 1891 and began to enlarge the house and manage the farm. Hancox tells the story of the house and the family over the following thirty years, in the long run-up to the First World War. 
In one sense it's a rural idyll: the arrival of the car disturbs this peaceful agrarian world, but apart from that the rhythms of the countryside go on as they had for centuries before. But all was not quite as it seemed: Milicent made a distinguished marriage but her husband harboured a secret. Milicent herself gradually succumbed to religious fanaticism. And the death of the youngest boy at Ypres devastated the family, bringing the idyll to a painful end. 
Using extraordinary archive material held at Hancox today, Charlotte Moore weaves an Edwardian tale of madness and jealousy, love and loss, heroism and tragedy.

Hancox

Ekow Eshun

'Where are you from?'  'No, where are you really from?'  These questions, which he has been asked since boyhood, drive Ekow Eshun to travel through Ghana in search of his roots, and lead him on an exploration of history and belonging, from slavery in Africa and the West to the present day and what it means to be black.  In search of answers, Ekow unearths yet more questions, some shocking contradictions and some long-forgotten truths about his family past...

Black Gold of the Sun

Searching for Home in England and Africa

Cast of Critical Role

Jess Barber

Martin Cahill

Rebecca Coffindaffer

Aabria Iyengar

Sam Maggs

Sarah Glenn Marsh

Rory Power

Nibedita Sen

Izzy Wasserstein

Kendra Wells

Liam O'Brien

In these ten stories, see the legendary adventuring party anew through the eyes of some of the most memorable characters whose lives were touched by Vox Machina. 
 
Within its pages: 
• Shaun Gilmore reflects on the life he has chosen, as told by Aabria Iyengar. 
• Raishan, racked by a pestilent curse, plots to release the Cinder King from his fiery prison, as told by Rory Power. 
• Trinket the Wonder Bear accompanies the next generation of Vox Machina on their first adventure, as told by Sarah Glenn Marsh. 
• Plus seven more hilarious, heartbreaking, and heroic tales featuring Kaylie, Doty, Kevdak, and more! 
 
The adventure began in 2015 with a group of friends sitting down in front of a camera to roll some dice, bring their characters to life, and tell a story that would become immortalized in their livestream tabletop roleplaying game: Critical Role. What started as a humble home game eventually grew into a worldwide phenomenon that has touched countless people with its poignant, larger-than-life storytelling – and in that same vein, this collection celebrates the characters whose lives were touched by Vox Machina but whose stories are yet to be told. 
 
Contributors: Foreword by Liam O’Brien • Jess Barber Martin Cahill • Rebecca Coffindaffer • Aabria Iyengar • Sam Maggs • Sarah Glenn Marsh • Rory Power • Nibedita Sen • Izzy Wasserstein • Kendra Wells

Critical Role: Vox Machina - Stories Untold

Angela Findlay

'Fascinating ... an extremely courageous work.' The Lady 
'Absolutely extraordinary ... Findlay reveals a vast, hidden European story that few nations have ever been brave enough to confront' Keith Lowe' 
'Beautifully written, poignant and acutely perceptive' Sinclair McKay 
'Moving and powerful' Julia Samuel 
 
...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... 
In My Grandfather's Shadow is an unflinching, thought-provoking fusion of memoir and history, and an exploration of the hidden scars left across generations by the conflict and horrors of the Second World War. 
 
In a quest to discover the truth about her German grandfather, first a proud Wehrmacht General serving on the Eastern front, then a broken POW on trial for Nazi war crimes, Angela Findlay travels across Europe and Russia to uncover the untold story of millions of Germans long buried not only in guilt and shame but also trauma. 
 
Carefully breaking the silence surrounding so many of World War Two's perpetrators, she challenges widespread binary narratives and offers a way forward that allows the intergenerational wounds to heal and us all to grasp the urgent lessons of the darkest episode in modern history. 
 
Brave, profoundly insightful and moving, In My Grandfather's Shadow is a courageous look at a taboo subject and raises important questions about how and why we should remember the past.

In My Grandfather’s Shadow

A story of war, trauma and the legacy of silence

Well, someone's got to do it: in a world which simply will not see reason, Jeremy sets off on another quest to beat a path of sense through all the silliness and idiocy. 
 
And there's no knowing what might catch Jeremy's eye along the way. It could be: 
-The merits of Stonehenge as a business model 
-Why all meetings are a waste of time 
-The theft of the Queen's cows 
-One Norwegian man's unique approach to showing his gratitude 
-Fitting a burglar alarm to a tortoise 
-Or how Lou Reed was completely wrong about what makes a perfect day 
 
Pithy and provocative, this is Clarkson at his best, taking issue with whatever nonsense gets in the way of his search for all that's worth celebrating. Why should we be forced to accept stuff that's a bit rubbish? Shouldn't things work? Why doesn't someone care? I mean, is it really too much to ask? 
 
It's a good thing we've still got Jeremy out there, still looking, without fear or favour, for the answers.

Is It Really Too Much To Ask?

The World According to Clarkson Volume 5

Welcome back to Clarkson’s Farm. 
The spring crop failed. Farming sheep, pigs and cows was hardly more lucrative (better off breeding ostriches…) 
 
But in the face of uncooperative weather, bureaucracy, and the world’s persistent refusal to recognise his genius, our hero’s not beaten yet. Not while the farm shop’s still doing a roaring trade in smelly candles, he isn’t. 
 
Misery loves company and in girlfriend Lisa, Farm Manager Kaleb, Cheerful Charlie and Gerald his Head of Security Jeremy’s got the best. And it’s hard to feel too gloomy with a JCB telehandler, a crop-spraying hovercraft and a digger in the barn.

Diddly Squat: Home to Roost

John Buckley

Spencer Jones

&lsquo;The Armchair General team has done it again. An absorbing read for Christmas.&rsquo; 
Peter Caddick-Adams 
 
&lsquo;Brilliant and immersive.&rsquo; 
Harry Sidebottom 
 
The second book in the Armchair General series, where YOU choose the fate of the First World War 
 
________________________________ 
 
HISTORY IS WRITTEN BY THE VICTORS. WILL IT BE YOU? 
 
TAKE THE HOTSEAT 
Assume the role of real historic decision-makers: general, leaders, soldiers and intelligence officers of the Allied Forces during World War I. 
 
EXAMINE THE INTELLIGENCE 
Explore eight key moments from the First World War, using real contemporaneous intelligence: including the July Crisis, the Battle of the Somme, and the Russian Revolution. 
 
CONSIDER THE SCENARIO &amp; MAKE YOUR DECISION 
From battlefields to the Royal Courts, each tactical and strategic decision you make leads to a different outcome. 
 
Will you follow the path of the past - or shape a new history...? 
________________________________ 
 
PRAISE FOR THE ARMCHAIR GENERAL SERIES 
 
'An original and exciting approach...The Armchair General adds enormously to our understanding of the conflicts' JAMES HOLLAND 
 
'A reminder that history is a never ending now, a relentless and endless present that comes without the luxury of hindsight' AL MURRAY 
 
'Wonderfully original...putting readers at the heart of the decision-making process and allowing them, literally, to change the course of history. This is counterfactual history at its very best' SAUL DAVID

The Armchair General World War One

Can You Win The Great War?

These days, you might know him better as a tractor-driving Gentleman Farmer, but Jeremy Clarkson wasn't always a horny-handed son of the soil. 
 
Not at all . . . 
 
Back in the day Jeremy was far more likely to be found gunning around the world in a haze of burnt rubber and petrol fumes. But life as a globe-trotting petrol-head also meant he was forced endure more than his fair share of foolishness, frustration and downright bafflement. And, while Jeremy may not a patient man, you have to ask why anyone should have to consider issues as diverse and perplexing as: 
 
- The downsides of relaxing in a bath of crude oil 
- Why fishing is for people who hate their kids 
- Whether there are noise-cancelling headphones with the power to silence James May 
- Why saving the planet means soggy paper straws and no more children 
- What to do about the rambler who stole his marrow 
 
But as puzzling and exasperating as life on the road often seemed to be, you could always count on Jeremy to set the world to rights with a rare wit and unique understanding. And at full throttle. Just don't expect it to all go smoothly . . .

Can You Make This Thing Go Faster?

Change is in the air for Jack Sheffield and the Ragley village school. 
 
It's 1987, and after a decade as head teacher at Ragley-on-the-Forest School, Jack Sheffield is looking to the future. He and his wife are expecting a new baby, the school is preparing for the introduction of the new National Curriculum, and the coming year promises a whole host of other surprises. Whether it's combing the church for an escaped pet mouse or dealing with the obnoxious new school governor, life in the village is always entertaining. 
 
So when Jack is offered an opportunity that could change everything, he knows he has a difficult decision to make. Endings are never easy, but perhaps the thrill of a new beginning is exactly what Jack needs... 
 
Hilarious, nostalgic and heart-warming in equal measure, Last Day of School is the final novel in the much-loved Teacher series. 
 
 
_____________________ 
 
Praise for Jack Sheffield: 
 
'Wry observation and heartwarming humour in equal measure.' Alan Titchmarsh 
 
'Overflowing with amusing anecdotes.' Daily Express 
 
'Amusing adventures at the North Yorkshire village school.' Choice 
 
'Jack Sheffield's in a class of his own.' York Press

Last Day of School

Margaret Forster

Margaret Forster's grandmother died in 1936, taking many secrets to her grave. Where had she spent the first 23 years of her life? Who was the woman in black who paid her a mysterious visit shortly before her death? How had she borne living so close to an illegitimate daughter without acknowledging her? 
 
The search for answers took Margaret on a journey into her family&rsquo;s past, examining not only her grandmother's life, but also her mother&rsquo;s and her own. The result is both a moving, evocative memoir and a fascinating commentary on how women&rsquo;s lives have changed over the past century.

Hidden Lives

A Family Memoir

Robert Kurson

In 1991, sixty miles off the coast of New Jersey, at the incredible depth of 230 feet underwater, two amateur divers, John Chatterton and Richie Kohler, find what divers dream about: an undisturbed wreck that they soon identify as a German U-boat.Week by week – and then year by year – these two polar-opposite figures and their team of daredevil divers seek to identify the vessel that in the meantime they call “U-Who”; three divers, including a father and son, die while trying to do so. No historian or government can solve the puzzle and official records agree that there couldn’t be a U-boat there.But after increasingly perilous diving…and painstaking archival research…and gaining the trust of retired U-boat crew…these two polar-opposite divers, who move from being rivals to comrades, finally identify it as U-869 and work out what on earth it’s doing there.Then they trace the families of the men who died on U-869, whose bones they’d agreed they wouldn’t touch, in an ending worthy of Steven Spielberg.It’s a story of – among other things – persistence, ingenuity and a shared obsession…

Shadow Divers

James Rebanks

One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on. 
 
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island. 
 
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold. 
 
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge, forgiveness and how to make lasting change.

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