Slipcased softback with quality ridged cover and dedication page, the stories have been retold by Vic Parker from the Old and New Testaments of the world's bestselling book. From the Creation of the World, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Ark, the Ten Commandments, Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, to Daniel in the Lions' Den and other famous stories from the Old Testament, beautiful colour illustrations and border decoration artwork entice us through each little story of approximately four pages, with Bible references and large text, often wrapped around the images. The second part of the book begins with The Angel Gabriel Brings News from the New Testament, Follow the Star, John the Baptist, Jesus is Tempted, Jesus Chooses Special Helpers, Two Fish and Five Loaves, The Good Samaritan, The First Palm Sunday, The Last Supper right through to The Crucifixion and The Coming of The Holy Spirit. Pastel coloured beautifully decorated pages, all in colour. Slipcased softback. Ages 5 -10.

The science presenter, journalist and author who writes for BBC's Science Focus magazine developed her love of wildlife while growing up in the Caribbean. Here we are taken into adventures that changed everything, from the navigational instruments that have led us through unknown lands, to the advanced engineering that carried us into the depths of the ocean, to the rocket science that propelled us into space. Our insatiable curiosity has driven our survival as a species and here we can chart the ground-breaking sea voyage in 1735 that settled the debate raging between Descartes and Newton about the shape of the earth, to the balloon ride that led to the discovery of cosmic rays, and adventures yet to come, and whether some regions would be better left untouched by human hands. We go into the Amazon, read about an amorous butterfly collector Margaret Fountaine born in 1862, about SA Agulhas gliding slowly under Tower Bridge emblazoned with the words Seeing is Believing, the Great Northern Expedition, finding the Titanic, a cutaway drawing of a space shuttle, a huge robotic arm of the International Space Station and the Gedi mission of December 2018 and out to worlds beyond. 272pp, illus.

The international bestseller and conclusion to the triumphant Twilight series, this is the iconic love story of Bella and Edward told from the vampire's point of view. When Edward Cullen and Bella Swan met it was the most unnerving and intriguing event that Edward had experienced in all his years as a vampire. Told through his eyes, we learn more fascinating details about his past and the complexity of his inner thoughts and how he can justify following his heart if it means landing Bella in danger. For ages 11 to adult, chunky 756 page paperback.

A story of war, love, ageing and the mysterious allure of birds. It is 1973 and Jim Kennoway, a distinguished ornithologist and World War Two veteran, leaves his work in the American Museum of Natural History in New York and retreats to an island in Maine. His desires are simple - to be left alone with his cigarettes, gin and his battered copy of Treasure Island. His solitude is interrupted when a remarkable young woman from the Solomon Islands arrives on her way to study medicine at Yale. She is the daughter of an island scout Jim befriended during the war, when they collected and skinned birds while spying behind enemy lines. Jim curses the intrusion as he finds his thoughts catapulting back to a dark truth from his time in the Solomons, yet she may be able to teach him what it is to be human again. Told in a lush, expressive prose, 309pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'Scott, Zelda, and The Jazz Age Invasion of Britain: 1904-1929' this extraordinary history shows how the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald's creation of Jay Gatsby, war hero and Oxford man at the beginning of the Jazz Age attracted an astounding array of authors and intellectuals. The poet T. S. Eliot, the polo star Tommy Hitchcock, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald were a diverse group of Americans who came to the City of Dreaming Spires when the Rhodes Scholar programme had just begun and World War One had enveloped much of Europe. Fitzgerald created the character Jay Gatsby shortly after his and Zelda's visit to Oxford, and the creation is a cultural reflection of the aspirations of many Americans who came to the University of Oxford seeking beauty, wisdom and social connections. Beginning in 1904, the story chronicles the experiences of American expatriates through Prohibition and the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929, interpreted through the pages of the classic novel The Great Gatsby. It shows how much Fitzgerald owes a debt to the medieval, romantic and European historical tradition and what he would have experienced at the post-war university encountering an impressive array of artists including W. B Yeats, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. An interesting mix of intellectual, cultural, biographical and emotional history populated with transformative Great Thinkers. With maps on endpapers of the City of Oxford, 346pp, a glossary of Oxford terms like Battels (expenses incurred), Punt and Torpids (boat race for novice crews). US first edition.

In 1726 in the town of Godalming, a young woman confounds the medical community by giving birth to 17 rabbits. This astonishing true story is the basis for this powerfully evocative novel. Surgeon's apprentice Zachary Walsh knows that his master John Howard prides himself on his rationality, but John cannot explain why or how Mary Toft, the wife of a local journeyman, has managed to give birth to a dead rabbit. When this singular event becomes a regular occurrence, John and Zachary realise that nothing in their experience as rural physicians has prepared him to deal with a situation like this - strange, troubling, and possibly miraculous. John contacts several of London's finest surgeons, three of whom soon arrive in Godalming to observe, argue and perhaps use the case to cultivate their own fame. When King George I learns of Mary's plight, Mary and her doctors are summoned to London where Zachary experiences a world far removed from his small-town existence, and is exposed to some of the darkest corners of the human soul, the human appetite for witnessing the grotesque - diseases, injuries, deformities and idle perversions of the bored and wealthy contrasted with religious, scientific, spiritual and philosophical beliefs of the educated and mostly moral main characters. While Mary lies in bed, doubts begin to blossom among her caretakers and a growing group of onlookers waits with impatience for another birth, another miracle. Canadian first edition, 2019 with roughcut pages which are highly desirable in North America. 320pp.

By the author of H is for Hawk here is a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to nature. A literary cabinet of curiosities about the wonders and oddities of the natural world, Helen Macdonald's best loved pieces plus new essays range from nostalgia from the countryside of her youth to a true account of a refugee's flight to the UK. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, she observes the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watches tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeks the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. Chapters include Swan Upping, Deer in the Headlights, The Falcon and the Tower, The Observatory, Murmurations, A Cuckoo In the House, The Arrow-Stalk, Berries, Cherry Stones, Rescue and Goats and What Animals Taught Me. In her own words 'Many of the essays here are exercises in interrogating such human ascriptions and assumptions' on how we inevitably view the natural world as a mirror of ourselves reflecting our own world view and needs, thoughts and hopes. As a scientist she explains how migrating birds navigate by visualising the Earth's magnetic field through detecting quantum entanglement taking place in the receptor cells of their eyes. Science does what we would like literature to do - explain an exquisitely complicated world that is not all about us. We need to communicate the value of things so that more of us can fight to save them. Desirable US roughcut page edges, 260pp. First edition US.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Emmanuelle Arsan offered a radical portrait of an uninhibited young woman. Free from moral judgements and devoted to the pleasure of her body and mind, one of the most famous French characters of the 20th century, Emmanuelle has become the bestselling erotic cult classic, selling more than a million copies worldwide. Emmanuelle II further chronicles the daring heroine's rousing initiation into the ecstasies of love and sex against the exotic backdrop of Thailand. It succeeds like few novels before in transforming erotic fantasies into works of enticing literary merit and it was written by a husband and wife team under a pseudonym to conceal the identity of the French diplomat stationed in Thailand. 'All time spent in other pursuits than that of making love, embraced by an ever-increasing number of arms, is time lost.' Enjoy this sensational and sensual sequel. Alongside The Story of O, it is a classic book of erotica and the most famous French underground novel of the late 20th century. 382pp, paperback.

Sub-titled 'Britain from the Shadow of the First World War to the Dawn of the Jazz Age', the granddaughter of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson has become the voice of critical gaps in the fabric of British history. Armistice Day 1918 dawns with great joy for victorious Britain, but the nation must confront the carnage war has left in its wake. Nicolson looks through the prism of daily life to narrate the slow healing process. The burial of the nameless soldier in the Tomb of the Unknown brings closure at last. 'The Great Silence', two minutes observed in memory of those lost, halts an entire nation. Within two pages we meet Corporal Adolf Hitler, blinded in a gas attack after four years of fighting at the Western Front, the cloudiness beginning to clear but his vision still hazy. In London, a young diplomat Harold Nicolson was working in the basement of his office in Whitehall and the door of number ten was flung open by a hatless Lloyd George announcing 'At eleven o'clock this morning the war will be over.' Riveting and revealing details of the fast-changing lives of everyday men and women, colourful characters abound in this tribute to Britain's dead. 16 pages of photos, 302pp, paperback.

'Punchy, clear, well-argued, and beautifully translated, both linguistically and culturally.' - Peter Brown, Princeton University. Sensitive and informed, this is an appreciation of and introduction to the Confessions, doing justice both to the appealing narrative of sin and fall that preoccupies most readers, and to the more complicated structure and ending of the whole work. Garry Wills tells the story of what motivated Augustine to dictate it, how it asks to be read, and the many ways it has been misread in the one and a half millennia since it was composed. This is an unparalleled introduction to one of the most important books in the Christian and Western traditions. Understandably fascinated by the story of Augustine's life, modern readers have largely succumbed to the temptation to read it as autobiography but this Wills argues this is a mistake. He argues it is rather a long prayer, suffused with the language of Scripture and addressed to God, not man. Augustine tells the story of his life not for its own significance, but in order to discern how, as a drama of sin and salvation leading to God, it fits into sacred society. 'We have to read Augustine as we do Dante, alert to rich layer upon layer of Scriptural and theological symbolisms.' Wills also addresses the long afterlife of the book, from controversy in its own time and relative neglect during the Middle Ages, to a renewed prominence beginning in the 14th century and persisting to today. Confessions has become an object of interest not just for Christians, but also historians, philosophers, psychiatrists and literary critics. It is a spiritual classic. 166 roughcut pages, highly desirable in the USA from where we have imported this Princeton University Press publication.