This is the first novel for this age by this prolific author. On his birthday, Marty receives a gift from his grandfather - a magical seed. Humorous and unusual, this story about making dreams come true will inspire and raise serious topics. Suitable for 9-12 year old readers.
Seed is a funny, big-hearted story by award-winner Caryl Lewis about the power of hope and imagination when you believe in the impossible. Perfect for readers of 8-12. Illustrated in black and white throughout by George Ermos.
A Welsh adaptation by Elidir Jones of The Beast and the Bethany: Revenge of the Beast by Jack Meggitt-Phillips.
LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2022
A REESE WITHERSPOON BOOK CLUB PICK
SHORTLISTED FOR THE COSTA NOVEL AWARD 2021
A rich, magical new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World - now a top ten Sunday Times bestseller
It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.
In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.
Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.
In The Island of Missing Trees, prizewinning author Elif Shafak brings us a rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature, and, finally, renewal.
'What a wonderful read! This book moved me to tears... in the best way. Powerful and poignant' Reese Witherspoon
'A brilliant novel -- one that rings with Shafak's characteristic compassion for the overlooked and the under-loved, for those whom history has exiled, excluded or separated. I know it will move many readers around the world, as it moved me' Robert Macfarlane
'A wonderfully transporting and magical novel that is, at the same time, revelatory about recent history and the natural world and quietly profound' William Boyd
'This is an enchanting, compassionate and wise novel and storytelling at its most sublime' Polly Samson
'A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. THE ISLAND OF MISSING TREES is balm for our bruised times' David Mitchell
'An outstanding work of breathtaking beauty' Lemn Sissay
'A writer of important, beautiful, painful, truthful novels' Marian Keyes
'Lovely heartbreaker of a novel centered on dark secrets of civil wars & evils of extremism: Cyprus, star-crossed lovers, killed beloveds, damaged kids. Uprootings. (One narrator is a fig tree!)' Margaret Atwood on Twitter
'Elif Shafak is a unique and powerful voice in world literature' Ian McEwan
The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk.
The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body - that of a man who resembles Emmett Till, a young black boy lynched in the same town 65 years before.
The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried.
In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance.
*The #1 Sunday Times Bestseller*
*Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2021*
*A Barack Obama Summer Reading Pick*
'This is a novel for fans of Never Let Me Go . . . tender, touching and true.' The Times
'The Sun always has ways to reach us.'
From her place in the store, Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, watches carefully the behaviour of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass in the street outside. She remains hopeful a customer will soon choose her, but when the possibility emerges that her circumstances may change for ever, Klara is warned not to invest too much in the promises of humans.
In Klara and The Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro looks at our rapidly changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator to explore a fundamental question: what does it mean to love?
Brittle with Relics is a landmark history of the people of Wales during a period of great national change.
'Richly humane, viscerally political, generously multi-voiced, Brittle with Relics is oral history at its revelatory best: containing multitudes and powerfully evoking that most remote but also resonant of times, the day before yesterday.'
DAVID KYNASTON
There is no present in Wales,
And no future;
There is only the past,
Brittle with relics.
- 'A Welsh Landscape', R. S. Thomas
In the closing third of the twentieth century, Wales experienced the simultaneous effects of deindustrialisation, the subsequent loss of employment and community cohesion, and the struggle for its language and identity. These changes were largely forced upon the country, whose own voice, rarely agreed upon within its borders, had to fight to be heard outside of Wales.
Brittle with Relics is a history of the people of Wales undergoing some of the country's most seismic and traumatic events: the disasters of Aberfan and Tryweryn; the rise of the Welsh language movement; the Miners' Strike and its aftermath; and the narrow vote in favour of partial devolution.
Featuring the voices of Neil Kinnock, Rowan Williams, Leanne Wood, Gruff Rhys, Michael Sheen, Nicky Wire, Sian James, Welsh language activists, members of former mining communities and many more, this is a vital history of a nation determined to survive, while maintaining the hope that Wales will one day thrive on its own terms.
'A testament to the brutal circumstances that bonded the communities of Wales into a new polity for the 21st century.'
GRUFF RHYS
'This book is a guide to remembering who we can be when we work together.'
GWENNO SAUNDERS
'An essential telling of Welshness that contains a powerful reflection of Englishness, too.'
EMMA WARREN
*INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER*
*AN OBSERVER DEBUT OF 2022*
*AS FEATURED ON FRONT ROW*
When we go through something impossible, someone, or something, will help us, if we let them . . .
It is October 1966 and William Lavery is having the night of his life at his first black-tie do. But, as the evening unfolds, news hits of a landslide at a coal mine. It has buried a school: Aberfan.
William decides he must act, so he stands and volunteers to attend. It will be his first job as an embalmer, and it will be one he never forgets.
His work that night will force him to think about the little boy he was, and the losses he has worked so hard to forget. But compassion can have surprising consequences, because - as William discovers - giving so much to others can sometimes help us heal ourselves.
'I LOVE IT! Utterly and completely brilliant.' JOANNA CANNON
'It's a long time since I've read a debut novel that moved me so much.' RACHEL JOYCE
'Extraordinary.' SOPHIE HANNAH
'A brave and tender novel.' JOANNA GLEN
What readers are saying:
'One stunning read to remember.'
'Beautifully written . . . I would recommend this book to all.'
'Utterly heartbreaking and uplifting . . . I loved it.'
'Tremendous.'
A powerful novel for adults - Ffion Dafis's first novel, following the success of her first autobiographical book. She is already a well-known actress.
Sara Mai is back! All kinds of interesting creatures live in the zoo run by her family, including a very rare snake. But who would want to steal a snake? A story for 7-11 year old readers by a past Welsh Children's Poet Laureate, Casia Wiliam, with 6 special illustrations by Gwen Millward.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLERA Guardian, Daily Telegraph, New Statesman and Daily Express Book of the Year'Hugely, highly and happily recommended' Stephen Fry'You should read Humankind. You'll learn a lot (I did) and you'll have good reason to feel better about the human race' Tim Harford'Made me see humanity from a fresh perspective' Yuval Noah HarariIt's a belief that unites the left and right, psychologists and philosophers, writers and historians. It drives the headlines that surround us and the laws that touch our lives.
