This endearing edition proudly includes the original telling of the beloved tale, The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Together, we travel alongside the Velveteen Rabbit on his magical journey towards becoming real and discover how he and other toys are brought to life once they are truly loved by their little owners. Also in this edition are modern, infant-friendly retellings of: The Three Billy Goats Gruff, The Three Little Pigs, The Frog Prince and The Tale of the City Mouse and the Country Mouse. All stories are beautifully illustrated with exclusive line drawings which truly bring these charming tales to life... just like your favourite toys. Paperback, large print with line illus.112pp.

Lord Clark of Windermere has always believed the Lake District a special place. His memoirs of the 1940s and 50s give a unique insight into a thriving rural community of working people which is now long gone. His warm style brings to life his happy years growing up in a family struggling to make ends meet including facing eviction, which made a lasting impression on him. Working on the land meant the family lived close to nature and he learned the names of all the local flora and fauna. He rejected a job on the farm for one in forestry and 50 years later became Chairman of the Forestry Commission. He attended university as a mature student and in 1970 was elected to Parliament where he spent almost 50 years including a spell in Cabinet. He was dubbed the 'First Green MP' and later led a successful campaign for World Heritage Status for the Lake District. The beauty of Lakeland is shaped by nature and then moulded by human activities. The sheep and cattle farmers of the uplands cleared the scrub trees and opened up the fells to grazing, providing humans with inspirational views and the freedom to roam at will. The traditional sheep breed, the Herdwicks, are 'hefted' to the land and won't stray from it. The mountainous area has been mined for over a thousand years and there have been over 1,000 mines and quarries and more than 20 minerals extracted. The tourist hotspot of Coniston has its extensive copper mines, whilst Grasmere and Glenridding also have their remains of lead mines. 182 page well illustrated softback, one colour plate.

First published in 1926, in this new set of beautifully reprinted paperbacks. Set in 18th century Versailles and England, the novel tells the story of a street urchin who was brought up by a Duke to act as a page. Leonie Bonnard is hot tempered and one of Heyer's best female leads. She is being drawn into a 21 year old feud. Justin Alastair, the Duke of Avon, is a reprehensible rake with an axe to grind. Decades ago the Comte de Saint-Vire did something unforgivable and ever since, Justin has been lying in wait to settle the score. When Justin meets Leon, a street urchin with a striking resemblance to his nemesis, he aims to use him as a pawn in his plans for revenge on the Comte, except Leon is in fact Leonie, a beautiful young ingénue who may just steal Justin's heart. Can Leonie win the Duke's affection, or will his need for revenge overcome them both? Immersive escapism brimming with elegance, wit and historical accuracy. 347pp, paperback.

'You're all fallen women. You've sowed the seed of Satan. You are nothing.' When Mary Creighton found herself pregnant at just 15 out of wedlock in 1960s Ireland, she dreamed of a happy life with her child, but found herself sent away to Castlepollard, a home for mothers and their unborn babies. Stripped of their clothes and forced into gruelling work, those women who survived childbirth were made to force-feed their children for adoption into wealthy families. Babies were ripped out of their mother's arms, but Mary refused to let that happen to her. She managed to escape only to later lose her beautiful daughter to social services and the meddling nuns, who always caught up with her. After spending time in an infamous Magdalene Laundry, and having two other children snatched away, Mary sought to demand answers for the atrocities committed in God's name. Hundreds of babies died and are still buried in the grounds of Castlepollard today. 325pp, paperback.

Published by the Natural History Museum the author is internationally known for his research on the evolution and ecology of plants. Nature's Web is solar powered driven by the energy that land plants and ocean phytoplankton capture from sunlight and lock away in carbon compounds in their cells. Plants and phytoplankton not only feed all life on the planet, but by capturing carbon dioxide they help control the concentration of this gas in the Earth's atmosphere. Their capacity to lock-up carbon is now overwhelmed by the amount that we are returning to the atmosphere through burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil which now threatens to heat our world to levels that will change it beyond recognition. Regulation of the climate is just one of the services that biodiversity provides to humanity. Geologists of the future may look back at this mass extinction as equivalent to the one that ended the reign of the reptiles. A quarter of our mammals are threatened, 40% of amphibians and perhaps a quarter of land plants. All major ocean fisheries are over-exploited and many have collapsed. Life in freshwaters is threatened by pollution, over-extraction of water for human use, and by invasions of non-native species that destroy the fabric of nature's web. Climate change is tugging at the links in the web, threatening to dislocate relationships with unpredictable consequences. What can we do? We must halt deforestation, restore habitats and fisheries, create and protect reserves for nature, find sustainable livelihoods for the poor and feed our growing population without endangering biodiversity. Homo sapiens or 'wise human' should be up to the task. The authors of this book are passionate about biodiversity in this book of science distilled from independent studies and subjected to peer review. The book begins with taking a look at breakfast which contains the product of many species, the human ecological footprint including population density, land transformation, electrical power infrastructure and access to land. World population projections, a warning from Easter Island way back in 1772 with the discovery of the remains of over a thousand chicken houses standing testament to the large human population that the island once supported and of course those famous statues. There are geological timescale charts, superb diagrams, fact boxes, colour photographs of astonishing occurrences like a silent seashore dogwhelk inserting its proboscis into one of the smaller mussels attached to the rocks, gorging on its soft parts. Here are coal swamps, a chart of the evolutionary radiation of mammals and an evolution atlas, an explanation of how the Amazon basin became so diverse and extraordinary wildlife pictures of butterflies and insects and mammals and leaves and crops and amphibians in crisis. Beautifully presented with hundreds of pictures, 192pp in large softback.

Ages 7-10 years will love this joyful and uplifting story of times gone by from the internationally acclaimed author of Skellig. Liam just wants to go out running with his mates. It's not long until the Junior Great North Run and there's training to be done, but Mam needs him today to help old Harry clear out his house. Harry knows a thing or to about running because when he was a lad he says he ran from Newcastle to South Shields. 'But, Harry,' says Mam, 'That's 13 miles!' Harry grins. 'Different times' he says. This is the story of that day, of sweltering heat, clattering boots, briny sea air and the heavenly taste of ice cream - the day when Harry and his pals ran and ran and ran through the blazing sunlight all the way to the sea on 29th August, 1938. Having a clear-out we see old Harry's apprenticeship papers as a welder in a shipyard, photos, documents, savings books, rent books, pension books, his dad's death certificate in 1954 and his mother's just a few months later, holiday bookings, outdated foreign money, medications and hospital appointment cards and pictures of four skinny big kids on a beach, three lads and a lass, the lads wearing baggy shorts and boots and vests. A little bit of Newcastle dialect, two stories of childhood running simultaneously, Salvatore Rubbino brilliantly captures the pace of the story and the period in his colour artworks. 64pp.

Welcome paperback reprint of a book first published in 1980 under the title 'The Zoo Quest Expedition: Travels in Guyana, Indonesia and Paraguay.' In 1954 a young David Attenborough had the opportunity of a lifetime, to travel the world finding rare and elusive animals for London Zoo's collection, and to film the expedition for the BBC in a new show called Zoo Quest. This is his story written in his inimitable voice of these travels. Staying with local tribes while searching for giant anteaters, Komodo Dragons in Indonesia and armadillos in Paraguay, he battles with cannibal fish, aggressive tree porcupines and escape-artist wild pigs to record the incredible beauty and biodiversity of these regions. The methods may be outdated now, but the fascination and respect for wildlife, the people and the environment are not. Now we can all travel vicariously with the old-fashioned adventurer and Britain's favourite naturalist who is an elegant and gently funny writer. See also the follow up 90905 Journeys to the Other Side of the World. 398pp in paperback reprint with 90 archive photos, three in colour.

A companion to 90904 Adventures of A Young Naturalist, the book was first published in 1981 under the title 'Journeys to the Past: Travels in New Guinea, Madagascar, and the Northern Territory of Australia', and in paperback in 2018 under the title 'Two Roads'. With some 90 photos, many colour plates and maps, we can travel vicariously with the pioneering naturalist Sir David Attenborough in his early days. Following the success of the original Zoo Quest expeditions in the late 1950s onwards the young David Attenborough embarked on further travels. From the land divers of Pentecost Island and the Sing-Sings of New Guinea to a Royal Kava ceremony on Tonga and the ancient art of the Northern Territory, this is a journey like no other. Alongside these remarkable creatures, Sir David encounters paradise birds, chameleons, Sifakas, pygmies and dancing birds, flamingos, tenrecs and mouse lemurs, the dog-headed man, babakoto, geese and goannas, painted caves and buffaloes, and the hermits of Borroloola. 'Every year for a decade, between 1954 and 1964, it was my great luck to go to the tropics and make natural history films.' 'I have left the accounts of these places and events essentially as I wrote them.' Written with his usual charm and generosity, he allows us to go along for the ride. 413pp, paperback. 90 illus. including colour plates.

'A quietly radical, three-dimensional view of issues such as reproduction, birth, death and disability that has the power, at times, to make you stop mid-sentence and carefully reassess some of your most basic assumptions.' - Scotsman. In a deft mix of the clinical and the lyrical, Francis moves skilfully between the scientific and aesthetic, anatomical fact and emotional consequence in his beautifully written and elegant series of essays. Drawing on his experiences as a doctor, he blends stories from the clinic with reflections on the way the body has been imagined and understood over millennia, offering new perspectives on everything from the ribbed surface of the brain to the unique engineering of the foot. His chapters are headed Brain, Head, Chest, Upper Limb, Abdomen and Pelvis, Lower Limb and cover Neurosurgery of the Soul, Seizures, Sanctity and Psychiatry, The Eye: A Renaissance of Vision, Face: Beautiful Palsy, Inner Ear: Voodoo and Vertigo, Heart: On Seagull Murmurs, Ebb and Flow, Shoulder: Arms and Armour, Wrist and Hand: Punched, Cut and Crucified, Kidney: The Ultimate Gift and Large Bowel and Rectum: A Magnificent Work of Art among them. From the threshold of life and death of the womb, to tips of our feet and toes, this is an extraordinary journey through the most intimate landscape of all - our own bodies. Index, 252pp, illustrated paperback.

From the bestselling author of 'Cathedral of the Sea'. Moors and Christians have been enemies for centuries, but can one man bring their conflict to an end? Snared between two cultures and two loves, one man is forced to choose. 1564 in the Kingdom of Granada and after years of Christian oppression, the Moors take arms and daub the white houses of Sierra Nevada with the blood of their victims. Amidst the conflict is young Hernando, the son of an Arab woman and the Christian priest who raped her. He is despised and regularly beaten by his own stepfather for his 'tainted' heritage. Fuelled with the love of the beautiful Fatima, Hernando hatches a plan to unite the two warring faiths, and the two halves of his identity. The award-winning author is a practicing lawyer in Barcelona and this is his most recent European blockbuster, selling millions. A big chunky paperback at a great price, rich in historical detail. A thumping 972pp.