Human life is a staggeringly strange thing. On the surface of a ball of rock falling around a nuclear fireball in the blackness of a vacuum, the laws of nature somehow conspired to create a naked ape that can look up at the stars and wonder where it came from. In this spectacular new book, Professor Brian Cox will take readers out of this world and into a whole new dimension as he gives us a new perspective on human life. Following the spark of human curiosity from its ignition in the distant past to its journey into the future, the book will span the history of the Universe, as Brian attempts to understand the greatest wonder of them all — humankind. He will reveal how time, physics and chemistry came together to create a creature that can wonder at its own existence, blessed with an unquenchable thirst to discover not just where it came from, but how it can think, where it is going and if it is alone. Combining dramatic photography and innovative CGI with the magical storytelling that has become Brian's trademark, Brian will give us his personal take on the past, present and future of this unlikely and unfathomably precious phenomenon — the story of humanity from the birth of the Universe to the ultimate fate of our species.

Sometimes a girl is touched by Mother War. Thorn is such a girl. Desperate to avenge her dead father, she lives to fight. But she has been named murderer by the very man who trained her to kill. Fate traps her in the schemes — and on the ship — of the deep-cunning minister Father Yarvi. Crossing half the world to find allies against the ruthless High King, she learns harsh lessons of blood and deceit. Beside her on her gruelling journey is Brand, a young warrior who hates to kill. A failure in his eyes and hers, he has one chance at redemption. Will Thorn forever be a tool in the hands of the powerful or can she carve her own path? is there a place beyond legend for a woman with a blade?

Extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful (Stephen King). The stunning new Penn Cage thriller in which a shocking murder from the 1960s finds new life — and victims — in the present.

Aza Ray is drowning in thin air. Since she was a baby, Aza has suffered from a mysterious lung disease that makes it ever harder for her to breathe, to speak-to live. All the doctors can do is give her drugs and hope they keep her alive. So when Aza catches a glimpse of a ship in the sky, her family chalks it up to a cruel side effect of the medication. But Aza doesn't think this is a hallucination. She can hear someone on the ship calling her name. Only her best friend, Jason, listens. Jason, who's always been there. Jason, for whom she might have more-than-friendly feelings. But before Aza can consider that thrilling idea, something goes terribly wrong. The sickness catches up with her. Aza is lost to our world. And found, by another. Magonia. Above the clouds, in a land of trading ships, Aza is not the weak and dying thing she was. In Magonia, she can breathe for the first time. Better, she has immense power. And she can use it to change the world. As she navigates her new life, Aza discovers that war is coming. Magonia and Earth are on the cusp of a reckoning. In Aza's hands lies the whole of humanity-including the boy who loves her. Where do her loyalties lie?

'Fantasy as it ought to be written' George R.R. Martin Robin Hobb returns to her best loved characters with the second volume in a brand new series. Happy endings never last... Years ago, they freed a dragon from the glaciers on Aslevjal. Then they parted ways, the Fool returning to far-off Clerres, while Fitz finally claimed a wife, a family, and a home of his own. Now, betrayed by his own people and broken by torment, the Fool has made his way back to the Six Duchies. But as Fitz attempts to heal his old friend in Buckkeep Castle, his young daughter Bee is abducted from Withywoods by pale and mysterious raiders who leave ruin and confusion in their wake. Fitz must find a way to rescue his beloved Bee. At the same time it is the Fool's fiercest wish to return to Clerres with the best assassin he has ever known, to gain vengeance and justice. Can Fitz bear to take up the tools of his old trade again, even to avenge his dearest friend and save his child?

This practice book will build essential skills through activity-packed fun. The activities are designed to give children a real sense of achievement. This helps to boost their confidence and develop good learning habits for life. This fun range of Maths and English activity books really helps to boost your child’s progress at every stage of their learning. The series builds important skills in line with their learning at school. Each activity is designed to give your child a real sense of achievement. • Helps to boost confidence and develop good learning habits for life. • Motivates children to learn at home using colorful activities that make learning fun. • Includes helpful tips and answers so that you easily support your child’s learning at home.

This practice book will build essential skills through activity-packed fun. The activities are designed to give children a real sense of achievement. This helps to boost their confidence and develop good learning habits for life. This fun range of Maths and English activity books really helps to boost your child’s progress at every stage of their learning. The series builds important skills in line with their learning at school. Each activity is designed to give your child a real sense of achievement. • Helps to boost confidence and develop good learning habits for life. • Motivates children to learn at home using colorful activities that make learning fun. • Includes helpful tips and answers so that you easily support your child’s learning at home.

This practice book will build essential skills through activity-packed fun. The activities are designed to give children a real sense of achievement. This helps to boost their confidence and develop good learning habits for life. This fun range of Maths and English activity books really helps to boost your child’s progress at every stage of their learning. The series builds important skills in line with their learning at school. Each activity is designed to give your child a real sense of achievement. • Helps to boost confidence and develop good learning habits for life. • Motivates children to learn at home using colorful activities that make learning fun. • Includes helpful tips and answers so that you easily support your child’s learning at home.

An ideal purchase for visitor or resident alike, this handy little atlas has an extensive area of coverage and shows the center of London at an extra large scale. From Chiswick in the west to Barking in the east, and Hampstead in the north to Dulwich in the south, mapping is at a scale of 1:20,000 (3.17 inches to 1 mile); and in Central London at 1:12,500 (5.1 inches to 1 mile). The maps are exceptionally clear and easy to use with color coding for both the roads as well as locations such as shops, hospitals, hotels, schools, and more. It includes the new Olympic Park, the latest boundary of the congestion charging zone, postal district boundaries, tourist information centers, an updated underground map on the back cover, and a full index to street names.

«From one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved storytellers of our time comes a major new collection of stories and verse We each have our little triggers... things that wait for us in the dark corridors of our lives. So says Neil Gaiman in his introduction to Trigger Warning, a remarkable compendium of twenty-five stories and poems that explore the transformative power of imagination. In «Adventure Story» a thematic companion to the #1 New York Times bestselling novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane Gaiman ponders death and the ways in which people take their stories with them when they die. «A Calendar of Tales» is comprised of short pieces about the months of the year stories of pirates and March winds, an igloo made of books, and a Mother's Day card that portends disturbances in the universe. Gaiman offers his own ingenious spin on Sherlock Holmes in his award-nominated mystery tale The Case of Death and Honey. Also included is Nothing O'Clock, a very special Doctor Who story that was written for the beloved series in 2013, as well as the never-before-published Black Dog, a haunting new tale that revisits the world of American Gods as Shadow Moon stops in at a village pub on his way back to America. Gaiman, a sophisticated writer whose creative genius is unparalleled, entrances with his literary alchemy and transports us deep into an undiscovered country where the fantastical becomes real and the everyday is incandescent. Replete with wonder and terror, surprises and amusements, Trigger Warning is a treasury of literary delights that engage the mind, stir the heart, and shake the soul.»

Collins Primary Thesaurus is a clear, practical thesaurus that builds writing and vocabulary skills.

The Hueys have an important question about counting in this hilarious new book from international bestselling, award-winning author/illustrator, Oliver Jeffers, creator of How to Catch a Star and Lost and Found. The thing about the Hueys was that they loved numbers: 0, 1, 2, 3... Wait! 0? Is 'none' a number? Join the Hueys for a counting conundrum! This witty and lively pictorial debate makes numbers interesting and fun!

Collins Easy Learning French Conversation is an ideal tool for learners of French at all levels, whether at school, in evening classes, or at home, and is indispensable for business or leisure. The text consists of 12 units, each illustrating the language used in a particular situation, followed by a summary which gives all the key phrases covered throughout the book. The one-stop phrase shop unit gives you all the everyday expressions and language structures you need to speak in natural French. Finally, the short grammar and verb supplement and the glossary give you further help and ensure that you have everything you need at your fingertips, and the free audio download helps you to communicate with confidence. This book is easy to use, and contains all the phrases you need in order to communicate effectively in natural French. It's easy to read, with a clear, color layout ensures that you find what you are looking for quickly and easily. Finally, it's easy to understand, and has thousands of examples show how French is really used.

The world first publication of a previously unknown work by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the extraordinary story of the final days of England's legendary hero, King Arthur. The Fall of Arthur, the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur King of Britain, may well be regarded as his finest and most skilful achievement in the use of the Old English alliterative metre, in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthur's expedition overseas into distant heathen lands, of Guinevere's flight from Camelot, of the great sea-battle on Arthur's return to Britain, in the portrait of the traitor Mordred, in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle. Unhappily, The Fall of Arthur was one of several long narrative poems that he abandoned in that period. In this case he evidently began it in the earlier nineteen-thirties, and it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 and urgently pressed him 'You simply must finish it!' But in vain: he abandoned it, at some date unknown, though there is some evidence that it may have been in 1937, the year of the publication of The Hobbit and the first stirrings of The Lord of the Rings. Years later, in a letter of 1955, he said that 'he hoped to finish a long poem on The Fall of Arthur'; but that day never came. Associated with the text of the poem, however, are many manuscript pages: a great quantity of drafting and experimentation in verse, in which the strange evolution of the poem's structure is revealed, together with narrative synopses and very significant if tantalising notes. In these latter can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion, and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere, which was never written.

«My name is Harriet Manners, and I'll always be a geek.» It's the hilarious third book in the bestselling award-winning GEEK GIRL series! Now in paperback. Harriet Manners knows more facts than most. She knows that New York is the most populous city in the United States. She knows that its official motto is 'Ever Upward'. She knows that one in thirty-eight people living in the US lives there. But she knows nothing whatsoever about modelling in the Big Apple and how her family will cope with life stateside. Or 'becoming a brand' as the models in New York say. And even more importantly, what to do when the big romantic gestures aren't coming your way from your boyfriend...Does geek girl go too far this time? The laugh out loud follow-up to award-winning debut GEEK GIRL and MODEL MISFIT will have you in stitches!»

This practice book will build essential skills through activity-packed fun. The activities are designed to give children a real sense of achievement. This helps to boost their confidence and develop good learning habits for life. This fun range of Maths and English activity books really helps to boost your child’s progress at every stage of their learning. The series builds important skills in line with their learning at school. Each activity is designed to give your child a real sense of achievement. • Helps to boost confidence and develop good learning habits for life. • Motivates children to learn at home using colorful activities that make learning fun. • Includes helpful tips and answers so that you easily support your child’s learning at home.

A beautiful, stunningly ambitious novel about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever. For Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, the world is full of mazes. The miniature of a Paris neighbourhood, made by her father to teach her the way home. The microscopic layers within the invaluable diamond that her father guards in the Museum of Natural History. The walled city by the sea, where father and daughter take refuge when the Nazis invade Paris. And a future which draws her ever closer to Werner, a German orphan, destined to labour in the mines until a broken radio fills his life with possibility and brings him to the notice of the Hitler Youth. In this magnificent, deeply moving novel, the stories of Marie-Laure and Werner illuminate the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

The Bard meets the Backstreet Boys in Pop Sonnets, a collection of 100 classic pop songs reimagined as Shakespearean sonnets. All of your favorite artists are represented in these pages — from Bon Jovi and Green Day to Miley Cyrus, Beyonce, and beyond. Already a smash sensation on the Internet — the Tumblr page has 20,000+ followers — Pop Sonnets has been featured by the A.V. Club, BuzzFeed, and Vanity Fair, among many others. More than half of these pop sonnets are exclusive to this collection and have never been published in any form.