The fun way to learn European Spanish (Castilian) with vocabulary building puzzles and fun wordsearches filled with Spanish trivia such as puzzles about Spanish poets, language, cinema and things to do and see in Madrid. Build up vocabulary and phrases alongside English translations with useful topics such as greetings, numbers and telling the time. Also fun as a refresher course and with pretty decorations on the very large softback pages relating to the topics like air travel, shopping, money and banking, at the museum, the rivers of Spain, around the home, countries, pets, popular culture, the body, food, illnesses and personality traits among the many topics. 128 very large page new softback, line art and solutions to all 104 wordsearches which are printed nice and large across the top half of each page. Full price.

Sub-titled 'Everything You Need to Know About 139 Languages That Don't Really Exist'. Now with artificial intelligence and artificial languages, we look throughout history starting with the Greeks to Grammelot with present and future dialects, languages with their roots on Earth, languages that are a little more out of this world, dystopian languages and full scale literary experiments, how TV sparks language development, Tolkien's secret vice, Klingon and fan fiction. The Voynich manuscript of the 15th century was discovered by a bookseller in 1912 and was written in an unknown language with an unknown script by an unknown author. It depicted unidentified constellations, mysterious plants, bathing women, astrological tables and long pieces of beautiful but incomprehensible text. Linguists and codebreakers have been trying in vain to solve that mystery for over century and since then linguists, cryptologists, occultists and various wannabe geniuses have also tried. If you think about it, all languages are made up - some are just more open about it than others. Here Yens Wahlgren heads up an expedition through time, space and multiple universes to explore the words that have built worlds. From the classic constructed languages of Star Trek and Tolkien to (literally) Orwellian Newspeak and pop-culture sensations such as Game of Thrones, The Witcher and The Mandalorian, this is your portal to over a hundred realms and lexicons - and perhaps the starting point to creating your own. 288 pages.

The survival of manuscripts is often random. Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales survive in 92 manuscripts because Chaucer was a well-connected diplomat. By contrast, no medieval manuscript survives of Julian of Norwich's Revelations of Divine Love, nowadays considered a great religious classic. Julian was a woman, and her radical theology was sometimes at odds with church teaching. In other chapters, the author discusses the Paston Letters, the Lindisfarne Gospel, the artists of the colourful Winchester Bible, Canterbury Pilgrims, the artist Tamaris pictured at work, the only surviving Beowulf manuscript singed at its edges and other books which have survived fires and floods, the personal prayer book of Henry VIII, and the work of hidden writers such as the Saxon nun Hugeburc, who lived in Germany and wrote the lives of saints Willibald and Wynnebald, coding her name into the text. The world of manuscripts is full of breathtaking, can't-believe-it discoveries, and in this fascinating book the author starts with three manuscript discoveries that not only made headlines but changed our understanding of history. In 1934 a house party in search of ping-pong balls found a cache of old books. Luckily one of the guests was a keeper at the Victoria and Albert Museum with an instinct for a find. In fact it was the lost Book of Margery Kempe, the first autobiographical work in English, from the early 14th century. Kempe had 14 children, suffered from post-natal depression, went abroad on pilgrimages and had visions, all of which she described in colourful style. In the same year there was another astonishing discovery, the original manuscript of Thomas Malory's great Arthurian epic, Le Morte D'Arthur, an exploration of the 15th century culture of chivalry. It also confirmed the identity of the author, which had been contested on the grounds that Malory was something of a career criminal unlikely to have penned the refined classic. In fact he wrote it in prison. The author's third dramatic discovery was made in the 12th century, when the monks of Durham Cathedral opened the coffin of St Cuthbert and found the Cuthbert gospel, the earliest intact European book. Created in the early 8th century, it subsequently travelled round the north of England as the monks of Lindisfarne sought to preserve Cuthbert's remains from the marauding Vikings. 340 pages, gorgeous gleaming-with-gold decoration and colour decoration and capitals in reproductions. Please note contents same as Hidden Hands: The Lives of Manuscripts and Their Makers.

According to Cecil Day-Lewis, the sonnet, the detective story and the blurb are all the most perfect crystallisation of literary form. Veteran Penguin Books blurb writer and editor Louise Willder distils her 25 years' experience and boasts that she has written over 5,000 blurbs in her career. Our editor Annie can certainly top that! Her book concerns our initial impressions of a book - title, strap line, quotes, opening line and cover design which all work together to make us want to pick it up. The second section stays with the bigger picture to consider the blurb's literary history. Has the way we use words to sell books changed over time and when did the earliest blurb appear? Writers have been eliciting words of praise from other writers for hundreds of years and markets have always been crowded. The oldest known printed advert in English is from the 15th century - and it is for a book. What can great writers from Jane Austen to J. D. Salinger and lesser known figures tell us? Which authors really hated blurbs? Then we narrow our focus in on the rules of good copy and the best way to capture something in as few words as possible while still making those words feel fresh and original. How do shape, structure, pace and style work together? Is it ever OK to swear or give away the ending? Yes of course it is! Another section looks at blurb writing from children's books to blockbusters and yet another what happens in our brains when we read a piece of persuasive copy. Can blurbs be sexist? How does copywriting relate to language, culture, screenwriting, fairy tales, advertising and even musicals? This is the outside story of books and some titbits on the eccentrics - gossipy, brilliantly created publishing world which has been the writer's home for over two decades. For all bibliophiles. 351pp of funny, curious and stylish thoughts about books.

Literary friends and foes prove that the pen is truly mightier than the sword. The world's most respected writers reveal their acerbic side of beloved authors who can become brutal critics when writing about their fellow wordsmiths. Curated from letters, essays and reviews, this sometimes stinging, sometimes good natured and always delightful collection will ignite the armchair critic in us all. Edna St Vincent Millay on e.e. cummings: 'Some of the most pompous nonsense I ever let slip to the floor with a wide yawn.' Virginia Woolf on James Joyce: 'A queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.' Evelyn Waugh: 'I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.' And Charlotte Brontë on Jane Austen's Emma: 'She ruffles her reader by nothing vehement, disturbs by nothing profound.' Page after page of amusement ending with the quite brilliant Lord Byron on William Wordsworth: 'Turdsworth'. One quote per page, nicely typeset. 144pp.

Designed for ages 8-11 years or indeed aspiring writers of all any age looking for inspiration and guidance for inspiring adjectives, testing your word choices, faces and features, writing about clothes, under the sea, the busy city, the tropical rainforest or putting yourself into the story. And all about writing dialogue and words for feelings and personality. If you want to add some extra magic to your stories, get help with creating characters, setting scenes and opening a wonderful world of words, here is plenty of space to build your own word bank. Big spiral bound hardback with beautiful fun children's designs and borders and robots, animals and characters and plenty of lined space and suggested words decorating every page.

The one and only A-Z Fart Dictionary is a hilarious, illustrated collection of fart definitions whether it's politics, poetry, karaoke, Mardi Gras, Food Network, Jane Austen, love, war, ghosts, family, sports, fashion, Shakespeare, or vegetables, there's a fart in this book for everyone. Examples include "apple fart: a fart that keeps the doctor away," "boomerang fart: a fart which has somehow returned to haunt you," and many, many more. So, readers, the next time you fart, or bear witness to one, take note of your surroundings, purpose, or social inconvenience. Label it, as in this unique volume. Featuring whimsical artwork and all wrapped up in a classy little package, a perfect gag gift and certain to be a hit with anyone who has ever laughed at the sound of breaking wind. 13 x 15.5cm, 160 pages.

The popular American humorist on his move to Paris was inspired to write some hilarious pieces about his attempt to learn French. His family is another inspiration. Anyone who has heard him speaking live or on the radio may recall his attempts to learn French from a sadistic teacher who declared that 'every day spent with you is like having a caesarean section'. 'You Can't Kill the Rooster' is a portrait of his brother who talks incessant hip-hop slang to his bewildered father. No one hones a finer fury in response to such modern annoyances as restaurant meals presented in ludicrous towers of food, and cashiers with six-inch fingernails. Wonderfully astute observations, thoughtful honest and humorous writing such as 'Knuckle of flash-seared crappie served with a collar of chided ginger' and some pretty rude toilet humour. 272pp, paperback.

200 fast and furious code-cracking puzzles from the pages of The Daily Mirror. Each puzzle has a time limit and your task is to complete the crossword grid within the time, so can you beat the clock? Target times are given in minutes and seconds above the very large grid with the alphabet A-Z along the bottom to cross off as you go in these fun, frantic and taxing puzzles. With solutions, extra large softback, 304pp.