Adults may lament that today's children do not sing in the playground, but the kids know better. Funny, imaginative, shocking and nonsensical rhymes and songs are as much in evidence today as they always were. In this book, one of Scotland's best-known storytellers introduces hundreds of such rhymes from all over the country. Some date back hundreds of years; many others have been collected on the author's personal visits to schools. The result is an entertaining anthology which also offers a fascinating insight into the minds of Scottish children over the years.

James Ritchie was a young schoolteacher in Edinburgh before the Second World War when one day he found out that a science lesson was going poorly. 'What do you like doing?' he asked his class. They replied at once that they liked playing games. This book is wholly based on the author's acute observations of Edinburgh children at play. However, these games don't just belong to Edinburgh, or even Scotland. They are a universal representation of childhood, recognised by adults and children everywhere.

_______________ From the author of the bestselling No Matter What comes a heart-warming tale about a little owl who's going to get a new baby sibling... I'm your baby owl. You don't need a new one! Little Owl isn't pleased to hear that there's a baby owl in the egg Mummy has laid. So Mummy pretends it might be a baby penguin ... or crocodile ... or elephant. In the fun of imagining different kinds of siblings, Little Owl realises that a baby owl might just be the best thing of all. A gentle, lovely story about the arrival of a new sibling, addressing fears that Mummy's love will stop. Debi Gliori is a bestselling, award-winning author – writing for the first time for another illustrator: the talented Alison Brown.

Although she is the most popular novelist in history, with over two billion books sold worldwide, Agatha Christie lived a life shrouded in secrecy and fueled by curiosity. Nearly as notorious for her aversion to the press as she was for her 80 books and collections of short stories, Christie made no secret of her need for privacy. Utilizing over 5,000 previously unpublished letters, notes, and documents, award-winning biographer Richard Hack allows Christie to write again, 33 years after her death. Duchess of Death is her story, as full of romance, travel, wealth, and scandal as any mystery Christie ever crafted. There have been numerous biographies of the Queen of Crime, all of which claim to be definitive. However, Duchess of Death is the first to draw from such an enormous number of previously unpublished correspondence and notes, effectively establishing it as the most authoritative, penetrating look at the personal and literary life of Christie.

Ewan McVicar, one of Scotland's best-known storytellers and song writers, has collected songs in over 40 Scottish schools to create the first publications of the 'hidden' songs of Scots childhood. The songs featured include honest vulgarity, violence, football and anti-school ditties.

Only a twin from a shark calling family can appease the ancestors and bring a community back together in this powerful and haunting story. Isabel is on a plane heading back to her island birthplace in Papua New Guinea. Izzy is looking forward to seeing her family again, but there’s another tragic reason for the trip. Izzy’s twin brother, Ray, died in a freak diving accident, and Izzy and her mum are taking his ashes home for traditional death ceremonies. After they arrive, Izzy realises things have changed since their last visit. Logging threatens the community’s way of life and sharks no longer answer the song of the shark callers. Izzy’s cousin Noah explains that the clan needs someone to undertake a traditional diving ritual. The person must be a twin from the shark calling lineage. The dive will be perilous. And Izzy is the last twin. Will she have the courage to attempt the dive? And what deep, dark secrets will the ocean reveal if she does?

A landmark of postmodern American fiction, Letters is (as the subtitle genially informs us) "an old time epistolary novel by seven fictitious drolls and dreamers each of which imagines himself factual". Seven characters (including the Author himself) exchange a novel's worth of letters during a 7-month period in 1969, a time of revolution that recalls the U.S.'s first revolution in the 18th century - the heyday of the epistolary novel. Recapitulating American history as well as the plots of his first six novels, Barth's seventh novel is a witty and profound exploration of the nature of revolution and renewal, rebellion and reenactment, at both the private and public levels. It is also an ingenious meditation on the genre of the novel itself, recycling an older form to explore new directions, new possibilities for the novel.

From ‘Abbadabba’ to ‘Z-Cars’, this remarkable dictionary records the rich vocabulary that has evolved over the past century and a half, as part of the complex, stratified, multi-faceted and changing culture of Liverpool. The roots/routes, meanings and histories of the words of Liverpool are presented in a concise, clear and accessible format.

Sidney Bunting's life offers a unique perspective on the British Empire, illustrating the complex social networks and values that were carried across the world in the name of empire. Drawing on archival material, including the Bunting family papers and records of Bunting's Oxford years, this work presents his biography.