In early 2009 a strange sort of business plan landed on the desk of a pinstriped bank manager. It had pictures of rats and moles in rowing boats and archaic quotes about Cleopatra's barge. It asked for a £30,000 loan to buy a black-and-cream narrowboat and a small hoard of books. The manager said no. Nevertheless The Book Barge opened six months later and enjoyed the happy patronage of local readers, a growing number of eccentrics and the odd moorhen. Business wasn't always easy, so one May morning owner Sarah Henshaw set off for six months chugging the length and breadth of the country. Books were bartered for food, accommodation, bathroom facilities and cake. During the journey, the barge suffered a flooded engine, went out to sea, got banned from Bristol and, on several occasions, floated away altogether. This account follows the ebbs and flows of Sarah's journey as she sought to make her vision of a floating bookshop a reality.

Poor old Grandma!It had rained every day since she came to stay with Mother, Father, Morgan, the baby and Tailcat. But just as everyone was getting really fed up of being stuck indoors, the most amazing thing happened!Suddenly the house started to shudder and rock - and then just floated off down the street and off to sea.Before long, the family find themselves on the wackiest adventure ever! Hungry cannibals, blood-thirsty pirates, a kidnapping and buried treasure are just some of the hair-raisers in store. Will the family ever see dry land again or will evil One-Eyed Jake cut them into a million tiny pieces?

The author of Mongrels and the author of The Cabin at the End of the World team up to tell a quirky and uplifting fantasy “that will enthrall young teens” (School Library Journal). Things Mary doesn’t want to fall into: the river, high school, her mother’s life. Things Mary does kind of want to fall into: love, the sky. This is the story of a girl who sees a boy float away one fine day. This is the story of the girl who reaches up for that boy with her hand and with her heart. This is the story of a girl who takes on the army to save a town, who goes toe-to-toe with a mad scientist, who has to fight a plague to save her family. This is the story of a girl who would give anything to get to babysit her baby brother one more time. If she could just find him. It’s all up in the air for now, though, and falling fast . . . Fun, breathlessly exciting, and full of heart, Floating Boy and the Girl Who Couldn’t Fly is an unforgettable ride. “Straddles the border between magic realism and weird science . . . an entertaining, thoughtful piece.” —Publishers Weekly “Absolutely adorable . . . The plot was fast paced and driven and it kept me intrigued until the very end. It was [a] really light, easy read.” —Read Rant Review

Princess Hyacinth is bored and unhappy sitting in her palace every day because, unless she is weighed down by specially-made clothes, she will float away, but her days are made brighter when kite-flying Boy stops to say hello.

Every year, when the floods come to Cambodia, the Great River runs backward. The town on the Great River floats, and spreads out over a vast lake. How do the people live without land? Explore a hidden city, a floating town, a city on ice, a city that is sinking, one with many forgotten tunnels, and a military base inside a mountain. Learn about these fascinating places. Floating Town is one of 6 books in a set called City Secrets, which is part of the Sound Out Phonics Based Chapter Books series. City Secrets (Sound Out Levels 5 and 6) focus on the following skills: contractions, one-syllable spelling patterns, tense endings, word endings, compound words, prefixes and suffixes, and simple two-syllable words. Readers will not be able to tell that each book is written using controlled vocabulary. This audio edition features professional narration and highlights text as it is read. The reader may turn narration on or off while reading.

At the age of 67, Henry Holt struck off on a sailing adventure that would become a six-year voyage unlike any other way of seeing the world. The people he met and the challenges he faced along the way - from bureaucratic headaches at ports, to truly frightening weather events, to isolation from his friends and family while relying on their help from afar - only strengthened his commitment to the journey. Around the World in Six Years is an account of sailing lessons and life lessons in equal measure. Dramatic, funny, and heartfelt, it is an account of an ordinary man on an extraordinary trip, and will inspire the aspiring adventurer in every reader.