Opening with scenes from E.T.A. Hoffmann's Nutcracker, Willa Cather's My Ántonia, and Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows, this sumptuous treasury celebrates the anticipation, the customs, the memories, and the spirit of Christmas in an oversized, large-type edition with gilt-edged pages and a ribbon marker. Here are 31 short pieces, poems, and excerpts by writers like Louisa May Alcott, L. Frank Baum, Pearl S. Buck, Samuel Coleridge, Charles Dickens, Washington Irving, Clement Clarke Moore, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Dylan Thomas. Equally charming are scores of luminous color plates by Currier & Ives, Gustave Doré, Paul Gauguin, Childe Hassam, Grandma Moses, Thomas Nast, Arthur Rackham, Diego Rivera, Norman Rockwell, Andy Warhol, N.C. Wyeth, and numerous anonymous illustrators and engravers.

Homicide is the ultimate crime and unraveling a murder mystery is one of reading’s great pleasures. This Anglo-American collection of 24 classic mystery and murder stories brings together the best of the genre featuring stories by such celebrated authors as Agatha Christie, A. Conan Doyle, Dorothy Sayers, Ruth Rendell, Ellery Queen, Roald Dahl, John Updike, Donald E. Westlake, C. S. Forester, and many others. Some of the stories focus on the intricate plotting that leads to murder while others deal more with the aftermath of the crime. The motives are varied—hate, jealousy, revenge, money, greed, or even the thrill of the act. In Roald Dahl’s classic “Lamb to the Slaughter,” a jealous wife kills her unfaithful husband with a leg of lamb and then cooks him up for dinner before the dectectives arrive. Readers will revel in all the twists and turns and imaginative and surprising endings.

This is one of Dickens' earliest collections of stories. Intended for the holiday season, A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire offers tales of romance, theft, justice and heart-warming family reunions. Continuing the tradition of ghost stories for Christmas, some of the haunting tales are inspiring while others are chilling. The voices of this round include servants and employers alike — host and charwoman, mother and nursemaid — and some surprising ruminations on topics as diverse as disability and interracial love.

This series is each devoted to a decade of British life and contains around 300 photographs which were hand-picked by PA Photos' own archivists. Most have lain unseen since they were first used as news pictures and each image has been scanned especially, many from glass plates, to ensure the best possible quality of reproduction. These photos tell a fascinating story: alongside the major events that constitute formal history are found the smaller things that had significance for ordinary people at the time. These cameras have recorded for posterity everything in their view and each picture tells an eloquent tale, of occurrences big and small, which have shaped the people and the face of Britain today. PA Photos is the photography arm of the PA Group, which also owns the The Press Association, the UK's national news agency. Established in the late 19th Century, the PA has been capturing editorial photography for 140 years, resulting in an extraordinary archive of over 15 million images recording British life over more than a century.

This series is each devoted to a decade of British life and contains around 300 photographs which were hand-picked by PA Photos' own archivists. Most have lain unseen since they were first used as news pictures and each image has been scanned especially, many from glass plates, to ensure the best possible quality of reproduction. These photos tell a fascinating story: alongside the major events that constitute formal history are found the smaller things that had significance for ordinary people at the time. These cameras have recorded for posterity everything in their view and each picture tells an eloquent tale, of occurrences big and small, which have shaped the people and the face of Britain today.PA Photos is the photography arm of the PA Group, which also owns the The Press Association, the UK's national news agency. Established in the late 19th Century, the PA has been capturing editorial photography for 140 years, resulting in an extraordinary archive of over 15 million images recording British life over more than a century.

This series is each devoted to a decade of British life and contains around 300 photographs which were hand-picked by PA Photos' own archivists. Most have lain unseen since they were first used as news pictures and each image has been scanned especially, many from glass plates, to ensure the best possible quality of reproduction. These photos tell a fascinating story: alongside the major events that constitute formal history are found the smaller things that had significance for ordinary people at the time. These cameras have recorded for posterity everything in their view and each picture tells an eloquent tale, of occurrences big and small, which have shaped the people and the face of Britain today. PA Photos is the photography arm of the PA Group, which also owns the The Press Association, the UK's national news agency. Established in the late 19th Century, the PA has been capturing editorial photography for 140 years, resulting in an extraordinary archive of over 15 million images recording British life over more than a century.

«Rita Mae Brown and her literary feline sidekick Sneaky Pie Brown are back with a third omnibus of clever sleuthing by postmistress Mary Minor «Harry» Haristeen and her feline sidekick Mrs. Murphy. For the first time all in one volume, here are CAT ON TH.»

Imagine a sparkling quilt of snow or a frosted window pane, listen out for carol singers or the sound of Santa's sleigh, and follow a star to find a baby in a stable. Here is a festive collection of poetry for children, with poems from Charles Causley, Eleanor Farjeon, Berlie Doherty, A.A. Milne, and many more. Beautifully illustrated by Mark Marshall, Joanne Partis and Melanie Williamson, these are poems to enjoy again and again: from opening the first window on an advent calender to putting away the Christmas decorations on twelfth night. A must for every bookshelf, whether at home or at school.

In 1941, Irene Nemirovsky sat down to write a book that would convey the magnitude of what she was living through, not in terms of battles and politicians, but by evoking the domestic lives and personal trials of the ordinary citizens of France. She did not live to see her ambition fulfilled, or to know that sixty-five years later, Suite Francaise would be published for the first time, and hailed as a masterpiece. Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia, Suite Francaise falls into two parts. The first is a brilliant depiction of a group of Parisians as they flee the Nazi invasion and make their way through the chaos of France; the second follows the inhabitants of a small rural community under occupation who find themselves thrown together in ways they never expected. Nemirovsky's brilliance as a writer lay in her portrayal of people, and this is a novel that teems with wonderful characters, each more vivid than the next. Haughty aristocrats, bourgeois bankers and snobbish aesthetes rub shoulders with uncouth workers and bolshy farmers. Women variously resist or succumb to the charms of German soldiers. However, amidst the mess of defeat, and all the hypocrisy and compromise, there is hope. True nobility and love exist, but often in surprising places. Irene Nemirovsky conceived of Suite Francaise as a four or five-part novel. It was to be a symphony — her War and Peace. Although only two sections were finished before her tragic death, they form a book that is beautifully complete in itself, and awe-inspiring in its understanding of humanity.

«In «Depths» Mankell confirms his status as a writer deserving acclaim beyond the crime genre. By delving deep into the male psyche, he has produced a novel at once tense and compelling, but also powerful, moving, and ultimately tragic.»

Buried beneath the crumbling gray walls of England's majestic castles lie some of the most colourful stories in history — tales of triumph and disaster, courage and cowardice, loyalty and betrayal, ingenuity — and stupidity. Enemies at the Gates takes an entertaining look at English castles under siege, from the tunnels and trebuchets of the early Middle Ages to the Civil War when many fortifications, left undisturbed for centuries, were suddenly propelled into the forefront of national events. Telling the stories of both attackers and besieged, Julian Humphrys takes us on a journey through the human stories of triumph and catastrophe that accompanied each campaign.

Internationally acclaimed and bestselling author Mankell delivers a timely and riveting thriller that will have readers on the edge their seats until the very end.

This third Shardlake novel is set in the autumn of 1541, during the reign of Henry VIII. This time Matthew Shardlake is faced with the most terrifying fate of the age: imprisonment in the Tower of London.

«From the author of the bestseller «A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian» comes a tender and hilarious novel about a crew of migrant workers from three continents who are forced to flee their English strawberry field for a journey across England in pursuit of a better future.»

The World According to Bertie is the fourth in the series and revolves around the many colourful characters that come and go at No. 44 Scotland Street. McCall Smith handles the characters with his customary charm and deftness — the stalwart Tory chartered surveyor, the pushy mother, and, most importantly in this novel, the beleaguered Italian-speaking prodigy, Bertie. This is classic McCall Smith — clever, witty and entertaining — and beautifully illustrated. A chance encounter with Armistead Maupin in San Francisco inspired Alexander McCall Smith to write this series of novels based around the fictional No. 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's New Town.

Mr J.L.B. Matekoni becomes involved in the agency's work when he investigates an errant husband. But can a man investigate such matters as competently as one of the ladies? Mma Ramotswe has her doubts. One thing, though, that she does not doubt is the good nature of Mr J.L.B. Matekoni, who stands for all that is solid and true in a shifting world.

The phenomenal series set in a future New York City returns as NYPSD Lt. Eve Dallas hunts for the killer of a seemingly ordinary history teacher-and uncovers some extraordinary surprises. Craig Foster's death devastated his young wife, who'd sent him to work that day with a lovingly packed lunch. It shocked his colleagues at the private school, too, and as for the ten-year-old girls who found him in his classroom in a pool of bodily fluids-they may have been traumatized for life. Eve soon determines that Foster's homemade lunch was tainted with deadly ricin, and that Mr. Foster's colleagues have some startling secrets of their own. It's Eve's job to sort it out and discover why someone would have done this to a man who seemed so inoffensive, so pleasant... so innocent. Now Magdalena Percell... there's someone Eve can picture as a murder victim. Possibly at Eve's own hands. The slinky blonde-an old flame of her billionaire husband, Roarke-has arrived in New York, and she's anything but innocent. Roarke seems blind to Magdalena's manipulation, and he insists that the occasional lunch or business meeting with her is nothing to worry about... and none of Eve's business. Eve's so unnerved by the situation that she finds it hard to focus on her case. Still, she'll have to put aside her feelings, for a while at least-because another man has just turned up dead. Eve knows all too well that innocence can be a faAade. Keeping that in mind may help her solve this case at last. But it may also tear apart her marriage.

In her latest spellbinding escapade, Jane Austen arrives in London to watch over the printing of her first novel, and finds herself embroiled in a crime that could end more than her career. For it is up to Jane to tease a murderer out of the ton, lest she — and her country — suffer a dastardly demise... On the heels of completing Sense and Sensibility, Jane heads to Sloane Street for a monthlong visit with her brother Henry and his wife, Eliza. Hobnobbing with the Fashionable Great at the height of the Season, Jane is well aware of their secrets and peccadilloes. But even she is surprised when the intimate correspondence between a Russian princess and a prominent Tory minister is published in the papers for all to see. More shocking, the disgraced beauty is soon found with her throat slit on Lord Castlereagh's very doorstep. Everyone who's anyone in high society is certain the spurned princess committed the violence upon herself. But Jane is unconvinced. Nor does she believe the minister guilty of so grisly and public a crime. Jane, however, is willing to let someone else investigate — until a quirk of fate thrusts her and Eliza into the heart of the case... as prime suspects! Striking a bargain with the authorities, Jane secures seven days to save herself and Eliza from hanging. But as her quest to unmask a killer takes her from the halls of government to the drawing rooms of London's most celebrated courtesan, only one thing is sure: her failure will not only cut short her life. It could lead to England's downfall. A compulsively readable, uncommonly elegant novel of historical suspense, Jane and the Barque of Frailty once again proves Jane Austen a sleuth to be reckoned with.

Red, blue, yellow, green, orange, purple, pink — animals can be startlingly colorful. Why are they found in so many shades, tints, and hues? From the scarlet ibis to the blue-tongued skink, award-winning author/illustrator Steve Jenkins depicts a whole world of colorful animals in his signature style. Living Color explores a range of animals from old favorites like the pink flamingo to rare and fascinating creatures such as the long-wattled umbrella bird and the ringed caecilian. How do the brilliant feathers, scales, shells, and skin of these animals help them survive? Find out in this strikingly beautiful book how animals use color to warn predators, signal friends, attract a mate, or hide from their enemies.