A richly detailed history of the opulent age of the zeppelin and the visionary builder behind the great airship, Dr. Hugo Eckener It wasn't the airplane that first romanced the public's imagination at the dawn of the twentieth century , but the great airships known as dirigibles, or zeppelins. Championing this great leap into the technological future was a visionary German entrepreneur, Doctor Hugo Eckener. For Eckener, the development of the airship, especially coming in the aftermath of the First World War, represented an opportunity to shrink the world through safe and speedy international travel. Botting's engrossing story vividly recaptures the spirit of the times, when new technologies in communication, transportation, manufacturing and other areas were revolutionizing society. The great airships were a source of wonder wherever they flew, and Eckener was likened to Christopher Columbus, hailed around the world as the great explorer of his day, not unlike the astronauts would be a few generations later. From its utitlitarian beginnings in the Great War, the airship reached its apotheosis with the round-the-world flight of the Graf Zeppelin in 1929. Seventeen years after the voyage of the Titanic, this great airship- twice as big and three times as fast as that ill-fated liner-captured the world's attention and seemed to blaze a path to the future. That future, of course, was not to be, as Eckener's dream evaporated soon after, with the destruction of the Hindenburg and the impending success of the airplane.

Chronicles the remarkable friendship between reclusive, unconventional poet Emily Dickinson and Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, a radical abolitionist, reformer, and writer, who became responsible for the publication of her poetry after her death, a relationship that that they carried on through their correspondence for more than twenty years. 20,000 first printing.

With a preface by W. Somerset Maugham.

For his fifth novel, Wilcox (Sort of Rich, 1989, etc.) leaves the everyday comedy of small-town Louisiana for more serious matters in New York City, where a few Tula Springs natives struggle with ambition and disappointment, and faith and disillusion. Wilcox plays with perspective in a narrative that jumps back and forth in time as he follows the lives of two Louisiana girls who come to the big city in the early 70's with seemingly opposite goals. The high-minded Emily Brix, whose parents are pretty low on the Tula Springs social ladder, wants to conquer the serious stage fresh from her years at Smith. Instead, she finds herself working as a ``glorified receptionist'' for a Times Square movie-production company, where she reads countless scripts that offend her lofty cultural standards. This petite, virginal, self-effacing blonde eventually marries Hugh Vanderbilt, a well-healed graduate student in theology at Union, whose practical proposal leads to an unromantic marriage. Meanwhile, Clara Tilman, a hometown beauty and friend of Emily's sister, decides to become a model to escape her abusive boyfriend back home, the studly F.X. Pickens (the future coke-head ex-con of Modern Baptists). With luck and newly acquired savvy, Clara exploits her southern belle act and earns modest fame as a TV actress while Emily's life spirals downward. Her acting career never takes off; her marriage falls apart; and she finds herself a dumpy 40-year-old living in cramped quarters and working at a test-preparation center. Things are never as clear as they seem here, and Wilcox's narrative style allows him to return to key events, exposing the passionate and messier truths of everyone's sexual behavior. Emily proves the most serious misrememberer- she's also a sexually repressed expert at denial who shares a dark secret with her alter-ego Clara. A surprisingly ordinary fiction from the otherwise gifted Wilcox, whose first venture outside Tula Springs drifts, with little humor to steer it straight.

An exciting historical adventure from War Horse author and former Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo.


Gracie and her friend Daniel have always been warned to stay away from the Birdman and his side of the island. But then they find a message in the sand and discover the Birdman is not who they thought. They build up a lovely friendship with him, but when the children get stranded on Samson Island they don't know whether to believe the birdman's story that the island is cursed.


Set against the backdrop of the First World War, in the tradition of Friend or Foe and Private Peaceful Michael Morpurgo brings the emotional reality of conflict to life in a way that is accessible to younger readers. Look out for his other historical adventures including An Eagle in the Snow and Listen to the Moon