Winter has arrived, and the whole of Greendale has been carpeted in thick snow. While out snowboarding, Julian and the other children decide to make a giant snowball. It gets bigger and bigger until suddenly it rolls out of control. Postman Pat rushes to the rescue.

What happens when a man, dazzled like most of us by hi-tech, happy to have his suits made by robots in New York, sets out to find the meaning of life? John-Paul Flintoff's improbable and very funny book charts a journey through call centres and allotments, rat-catching and Savile Row tailors, to some kind of enlightenment. It is also a book about a man who learns how to crochet - and how you might too. John-Paul Flintoff is a bit of a one-off: a man who embarks on a spiritual pilgrimage by outsourcing his life to Bangalore, then hooks up with Mormons and Buddhists (well, Richard Gere), on a quest for truth and fulfilment. His journey is like a twenty-first century Candide, learning that life's satisfactions, and some kind of response to the concerns of economic meltdown and climate change, lie in learning how to make things for oneself, and mending things that fall apart. Along the way, Flintoff paints pictures with Brit-art oddball Billy Childish, gets apprenticed in Savile Row, grows his own food and spins fibre from nettles. Daringly, he also turns his book over to his wife Harriet, who likes nothing better than a fancy spa and a shop at Liberty's. The results are comic, heartwarming and inspiring.

Out of Control chronicles the dawn of a new era in which the machines and systems that drive our economy are so complex and autonomous as to be indistinguishable from living things.

Adrian Mole's first love, Pandora, has left him; a neighbor, Mr. Lucas, appears to be seducing his mother (and what does that mean for his father?); the BBC refuses to publish his poetry; and his dog swallowed the tree off the Christmas cake. "Why" indeed.

A novel set in the 60's by a writer who lived through them.

Story for young children, first published in the UK in 1982 by Andr} Deutsch, involving characters from a popular television program. Postman Pat has an urgent message to deliver. Will he get there in time?.

Describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing. The author shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront.

From the bestselling author of The Bomber Mafia: discover Malcolm Gladwell's breakthrough debut and explore the science behind viral trends in business, marketing, and human behavior. The tipping point is that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire. Just as a single sick person can start an epidemic of the flu, so too can a small but precisely targeted push cause a fashion trend, the popularity of a new product, or a drop in the crime rate. This widely acclaimed bestseller, in which Malcolm Gladwell explores and brilliantly illuminates the tipping point phenomenon, is already changing the way people throughout the world think about selling products and disseminating ideas. “A wonderful page-turner about a fascinating idea that should affect the way every thinking person looks at the world.” —Michael Lewis

The book is full of great ideas about amusing children and adults indoors in stormy and cold evenings. It offers funny, fascinating, and little-known games that were played by our grandparents in their childhood and remains attractive to a contemporary reader today.

By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas | Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year | A New York Times Notable Book | Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews | A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist | Winner of the ALA Alex Award | Finalist for the Costa Novel Award From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new. Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date. Praise for Black Swan Green “[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like.”—The Boston Globe “[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall.”—Time