The much-loved character of Peter Rabbit originated with a Christmas Card, and this edition of the classic tale includes Christmas endpapers, as in the original version. The naughty Peter Rabbit has no intention of following his siblings Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail down the lane to gather blackberries. Before she goes out to buy currant buns, his mother warns them that on no account are they to go into their neighbour Mr McGregor's garden, because Mr McGregor has previously caught Mr Rabbit and put him into a pie. But Peter is unable to resist, gorging himself on lettuces, radishes and parsley, and when Mr McGregor spots him he hides in a watering can and other nooks and crannies in one of the great classic chases of literature, losing his shoes and jacket in the process. Back home, he is sent to bed with camomile tea, while Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail enjoy their blackberries with milk. Gorgeously illustrated with Potter's own inimitable watercolour drawings. 70pp.

French artist Eugéne-Louis Charvot (1847-1924) was a distinguished painter and printmaker. A fascinating individual, he practiced medicine for many years but stated that his first love was art. Inspired by the serene countryside of his youth, he became a landscapist and made his debut in 1876 at the annual Salon in Paris. He spent his medical career in the French military and was posted in colonial Tunisia between 1885 and 89 and Algeria 1892 to 96 where he documented the life around him and sent oils back to Paris for entry in the Salons. Unlike other French artists attracted to Orientalism, Charvot was not a tourist in North Africa but rather a working member of the French colonial forces and his perspective and reactions are detailed in his letters to his family. His street scenes of North African life allow a unique glimpse into the time and place whether it is the Little Miller, the Jewish Quarter of Djara, Arab noblemen or people inside the cool patio courtyards of their homes. Notre Dame Cathedral, a peasant girl burning grass at twilight, in the field or sitting under trees, storms, a cow in the meadow, and portraits both in pencil and oils, his etchings were award-winning and this volume resurrects the reputation of this accomplished artist. It highlights his breadth of processes, productivity and inspiration in painting, etching and drawing. 68 page square softback, quality paper and dozens of illus., much in colour.

Sir Francis Kennedy McClean died at the age of 80 in 1955. As well as being an aeronaut and a pioneer pilot, he ensured the initial success of Short Brothers as an aeroplane manufacturer, served as the company's first test pilot and, in the words of that great naval aviator Air Commodore Charles Rumney Samson, his generosity 'started the Navy flying'. In 1902 McClean became a director of the Cannock Chase Colliery Company, a post he retained until the company was nationalised in 1948 and on his father's death in 1904 he retired, aged only 28, with considerable independence enabling him to pursue his personal interest in astronomy. McClean was also a balloonist and pioneer aviator, flying with Wilbur Wright in France in December 1908. He provided the Royal Aero Club with one of the first flying grounds in the UK at East Church in Kent, personally purchased no fewer than 16 airplanes from Short Brothers before WWI, and acted as the company's unpaid test pilot. Convinced that aviation was destined to play a vital role in the nation's defence, he made his own aeroplanes freely available for training and ensured that the Navy had a suitable site on which to establish its first flying school. His flight up the Thames to Westminster on 10th August 1912, during which he flew between the upper and lower spans of Tower Bridge and passed beneath the other bridges, and his Nile expedition flight in 1914 caught the public imagination, but despite all these achievements he remained modest and reticent. He was happiest when he was flying at Eastchurch, well away from crowded public venues such as Hendon and Brooklands, and this meant that reports of his activities were sparce and much of his work was carried out quietly. When he did put pen to paper he was dryly witty and never afraid to have a joke at his own expense. He usually declined to take part in competitions and races, but ironically when he entered for the Around Britain Seaplane Race of 1913, his Short S.68 proved a troublesome non-starter. There is little doubt that the deaths of his close friends the Hon. Charles Rolls and Cecil Grace heightened his awareness of the increased risks entailed in flying competitively. Lavishly illustrated Seaforth publication, 184 large pages, rare images.

Starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean and Edna Ferber, this is a brilliant study of a classic American film. Giant was an epic film of fame and materialism based around the discovery of oil at Spindletop and the establishment of the King Ranch of South Texas. Isolating his star cast in the wilds of West Texas, director George Stevens brought together a volatile mix of egos, insecurities, sexual proclivities, and talent. Hudson's promiscuity, Taylor's high diva-dom, and Dean's egotistical eccentricity, the film nevertheless made cinematic history and won awards including Best Actor for Dean, who died before the film was finished. In this impeccably researched narrative history, Don Graham chronicles the stories of Stevens whose trauma in World War Two intensified his ambition to make films telling the story of America; Edna Ferber, a considerable literary celebrity who meets her match in the imposing Robert Kleberg, proprietor of King Ranch; and Glenn McCarthy, an oil tycoon and Errol Flynn lookalike with a taste for Hollywood. 'Don Graham digs into Giant like a wildcatter drilling for oil... He provides colourful tales with minimal Texas exaggeration and a plethora of facts and anecdotes.' - Philadelphia Enquirer. 323pp, paperback with candid off-screen photos.

Welcome leopard-lovers to this totally roarsome book about the evolution of leopard-print fashion, learn a few leopard-themed jokes, or plan a party fit for a spot-obsessed friend, on a journey from the age of the silver screen, through punk via glam rock to today's influencer-obsessed fast-fashion culture. Learn how the trend for wearing real fur was overtaken by luscious silks and expensive gowns created to showcase these spotted designs, and how leopard print is constantly evolved and adapted to suit the fashions of the day. Get creative and make leopard print cakes and cookies. Kids will love the Hide and Seek Bread and Spotted Jelly, the easy-peasy leopard face paint will make fancy dress parties a doddle for adults and kids, and for a touch of class in a glass, try out the spot painting technique. Facts, fiction and philosophy, read about the majestic snow leopard, analyse your leopard dreams and even learn a proverb or two. Have you heard about the leopard that lost its spots or the unusual strawberry-coloured leopard that's been sighted in South Africa? Which celebrity includes a leopard-print rug in their rider? Crazy quotes, silly jokes for all fellow feline friends. Big colourful graphic designed pages with large text, this is a favourite of our Chrissie here at the Bibliophile office. Remainder mark, 128pp.

When Will Hunt was 16 years old he discovered an abandoned tunnel that ran beneath his house in Providence, Rhode Island. His first tunnel trips inspired a lifelong fascination exploring underground worlds from the derelict subway stations and sewers of New York City to sacred caves, catacombs, tombs, bunkers and ancient underground cities in more than 20 countries around the world. He tracks the origins of life with a team of NASA microbiologists a mile beneath the Black Hills, camps out for three days with urban explorers in the catacombs and sewers of Paris, descends with an Aboriginal family into a 35,000 year old mine in the Australian outback, and glimpses of sculpture moulded by Palaeolithic artists in the depths of a cave in the Pyrenees. Each adventure is woven with mythology and anthropology, natural history and neuroscience, literature and philosophy and told in an elegant and graceful prose. Feel the lure of the darkness and our desire to connect with what we cannot see. 'A fearless, eloquent and truly insightful guide, Will Hunt takes us through the hidden worlds beneath our feet, from guerrilla art galleries to ancient sacred chambers to lost worlds inhabited by lost souls. Along the way, Hunt initiates us into a suite of subterranean mysteries that span geography, culture and time, awakening the dormant but profound allure the underworld holds for us...' - John Vaillant. 276pp, illus, US first edition with tiny remainder mark.

The story behind the man who brought us The Postman Always Rings Twice, Double Indemnity and Mildred Pierce, the film noir classics. James M. Cain was a master of the 'hard-boiled' school of writing in the 1930s and 1940s that included Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. His 1937 novel Serenade boldly portrayed its hero as a bisexual man. Before becoming a famous novelist, Cain taught journalism at various colleges in Maryland, wrote editorials for the New York World and was for a brief time Managing Editor at The New Yorker. While his biographer renders Cain's fast-paced life in New York and Hollywood, including his four wives, as he created a great number of short stories, novels, plays and magazine articles, part of the story is David Madden's own story. The long time relationship between the emerging young novelist and the elderly writer in decline enabled Madden to imagine Cain's creative process and throughout the book Madden meshes his own words with Cain's. Cain cooperated intimately and the biography is innovative in style and technique. 'Because I want Cain's own distinctly tough, frank, slangy voice to convey a sense of his life as a storyteller, I have employed three very unorthodox methods. First, I have restructured, pruned, and sometimes rephrased the pages he sent me and blended his words with my own phrases...' 'A second major feature of this biography, an imaginative impression of his creative process as a writer in the very act of writing, both fiction and non-fiction. A third major feature is my use of the technique that I have often used in my own fiction, whereby the point of view is confined strictly to what Cain remembers...' 'The mumps had released him from a six month stretch with Consolidated Gas and Light of Baltimore, secured through his father's connections, performing hateful routine tasks with ledgers. Inspecting roads and writing reports for the Maryland Road Commission had been enjoyable, but getting laid off was humiliating. As Principal of the high school in a little village of Vienna, Maryland, he had learned a few things about teaching.' Other chapters are titled The Butterfly and the Moth, Galatea and Mignon and The Magician's Wife. 300 pages.

Quick, Simple, and Practical Magic for Every Day of the Year, this cheerful, practical book does what it says on the cover: each page is devoted to a day of the year, with instructions for a spell to improve happiness and contentment. Although some of the spells are tied to a specific date, for instance "Summer Solstice Power Spell" or "Autumn Equinox Spell for Balance", most of them are designed to be used at any time in a wide range of situations. The equipment needed is mostly what can be found in the household cupboard or local shop. A Mother and Child Bonding Spell for 12 May, around the time of Mothering Sunday, requires an orange candle, two quartz stones and a white lily in a pot. The candle is lit, the spellcaster focuses mentally on his or her own parental relationships while holding the quartz stones, and then they are pressed into the soil of the lily pot for permanence. Most love spells tend to relate to other people, but a rather original 14 February entry here is a "Valentine's Spell to Love Yourself", involving a bag of candy hearts and a mirror, where you read out to yourself the message on the heart. The New Year's Day spell for starting afresh requires a purple candle and your favourite incense, to reinforce the message to yourself that you can and will become a new person. For the "Spell to End the Old Year" you need a pen and some fireworks, and you are going to write on the fireworks all the things you want to eliminate from your life, then light them and send the bad stuff shooting off into space. 384pp, softback, drawings.

Two leading Wiccans combine to provide different perspectives on Wicca in this volume of practical aspects of the craft. Shawn Robbins contributes her psychic gifts and her experiences as a practitioner of magic directed towards the healing of the mind and soul, while Charity Bedell is a student of the Feri tradition of witchcraft and has particular interests in trolldom, runes, druidism, kabbalah, shamanism, ceremonial magic and Egyptian magic. To complement this she runs an online store of herbs that she uses spiritually in her practice. The book's chief focus is on the power of holistic healing. An introduction on the differences between traditional and modern witchcraft explains that the inflexibility of traditional spellcasting is now being widely replaced by a more flexible approach. Although some witches work with negative energy, others with positive, the rule of thumb is never to perform magick to change a person's free will, not only because it is wrong in itself but also because spells always bounce back on their creators in some way. Common herbal remedies are listed, for instance the power of mugwort, chamomile or nettle, with a chapter on aromatherapy, crystal alignment and chakra balancing. A final section on a range of potions is accompanied by Wiccan recipes, including Imbolc Cake and Muffins for Beltane. 307pp, drawings.

Far from home and faced with the horrors of combat, hundreds of men and boys fighting in World War Two found comfort and companionship with the animals they adopted at training centres and in war zones around the world. The book is sub-titled 'Heart Warming Photos of GIs and Their Dogs In World War Two', and author and historian L. Douglas Keeney sifted through many of the more than 2.5 million photographs at the National Archive to discover some of the greatest mascot and pet photography taken between 1941 and 1945, compiled from the collections of all branches of the US Military. A B-17 crew in England rigged an oxygen mask for their dog. A stray dog ran through a hail of bullets up the gangplank of a coastguard landing ship in the Pacific. A GI was caught stuffing a dog into his duffel bag. They were photographed and these photographs sent home and published in newspapers and magazines and became part of the theme the home front needed - that the boys were doing alright. Sinbad is a fighting dog from a fighting ship who slept through it all in his bunk when the cutter ran into a U-boat pack, depth charged six submarines, and sank the last by ramming it. Meet Soogie the mascot of a coastguard manned LCI operating in French waters, three years since he came aboard in Galveston, Texas. There are puppies, one abandoned on a sinking ship and rescued by Commander Dixon and Doc Sunshine on cheering-up duty shaking paws bunk to bunk as soldiers recover. The images are by turns funny, moving and inspiring showing the men at work and rest, soldiers, sailors and pilots, and although dogs were the most popular mascots, a few chickens, crows, rats, goats, monkeys and parakeets endeared themselves to US soldiers. Chapters include Dog Tags, Dogs and Dog Faces, Dog Fights, Salty Dogs, Semper Fido and Mascots of the US Marine Corps and Humour in the Face of War. Max the Boxer was a fully-fledged paratrooper in the Army who earned his wings after five jumps. Skippy is a Pitbull/pointer who played a big part in his bomber crew so much so that some of its members painted him on their B-17 Flying Fortresses and fitted him with a custom oxygen mask. Hobo was the Navy dog who followed his pals onto the landing craft when they took a beach. Big archive photos on every page, 175 page large softback.