There once lived a sad lady whose only friends were the flowers in her garden. By chance she discovers a mysterious plant growing by her house and decides to water it. So begins the magical and unexpected adventure of a plant that changes the very essence of people's lives. Starting with a spotty dotty flower, to a spotty dotty kettle, to spotty dotty walls and the journey down the footpath, the sad lady begins to paint her way to happiness and is soon joined by many new friends. A children's tale full of charm and gentleness paired with stunning watercolour illustrations, The Spotty Dotty Lady offers a glimpse of how the natural and emotional worlds can connect in making the ordinary extraordinary.

Age range 3 to 8 When a group of desert children invite their school teacher, Mrs White, home for dinner to show her why their homework is always grubby, no-one expects what is to come! They are happily showing Mrs White their higgledy piggledy garden when suddenly a big red sand storm comes billowing over the hill. Sand and spinifex whips at their legs and flies at their heads. They can hardly see through the storm. They hurry back home, only to discover that everything is now red. Their lovely clean house is covered in red dust. The beds are red. The washing on the line is red. The table is red. Their delicious dinner is red and ruined. And Mrs White’s clean white dress has turned into a dusty red dress. Now Mrs White finally knows why the children’s homework is always so grubby!

Age range 5+ Bubbay is lonely, with only the starts as friends. He lives in the outback tending his goats and sleeps under the stars. One night, Bubbay wishes for something he has never had — the stars hear him and, with the help of the magical Gubarlee and such as kangaroo, emu, crow and bower bird, Bubbay begins a quest to make his wish come true. A story full of magic, combined with richly textured illustrations.

ABOUT THE SERIES Meet Junie B. Jones, the lovable, mischievous kindergartener and star of this hysterical series by Barbara Park. Follow Junie B. from her first day of kindergarten to her last as she gets into one scrape after another. Readers will laugh along with Junie B. and her friends in Room Nine, as she attempts to escape 'punishment' from her teacher, and drives her parents to distraction! ABOUT THE BOOK It's kindergarten graduation! All the children in Room Nine are excited when they get their bright white graduation gowns. Mrs. says to keep them in their boxes until the big day. But Junie B. Jones can't help herself. Then- uh- oh- an accident happens! Can Junie B. find a way to fix things? Or will graduation be a spotty dotty disaster?

Ellie Haskell’s prodigal father, Morley Simons, has landed in Chitterton Fells just when Ellie and husband Ben were about to vacation in France. Morley’s luggage contains an urn with the ashes of his lady love, Harriet, to return to her relatives. As her father explains his relationship with the femme fatale Harriet, Ellie begins to suspect something is amiss. And when there’s another fatal car accident… Cozy British Mystery by Dorothy Cannell; originally published by Viking/Penguin

Way up north, lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and frogs sing a chorus. Big fella rain coming.

The Butterfly Garden is an entertaining introduction to the life cycle of a butterfly - played out by a fat caterpillar, a hungry kookaburra and a supporting cast of beautiful butterflies. Spare and simple, The Butterfly Garden also weaves in the idea of how the kookaburra may have got his laugh. Fern Martins illustrations are a mix of strong colour and transluscent beauty. Her stained-glass interpretations of the cocoon at its various stages show its ephemeral quality in a joyful and fluid way. This feel-good board book for Early Childhood will bring a smile to all readers.

Age range 5 to 7: Hidden in the sand dunes bordering a dusty, 1960s pearling town is a very special tree. Every day, Ella and Mia's grandpa comes home from work with a treat from the tree - the best - tasting toast in the world. Every night, grandpa tells the girls another fantastical tale about the toast tree, with its bright green leaves and orange trunk, that only grows in the dunes. Ella and Mia search high and low for the tree, laden with squares of golden - brown toast, but they can never find it. Based on a true story, The Toast Tree is about family, and the search for magic through the power of a child's imagination, as well as the ability to believe in the impossible. The book's beautiful illustrations evocatively capture both the mystical quality of Grandpa's stories and the fondly - remembered simple life of a bygone era. The Toast Tree will especially appeal to every child that has ever dreamed of having a special tree bearing their favourite food!.

Paul Pennyfeather is a second-year theology student who, as a result of mistaken identity, has his “education discontinued for personal reasons.” He ends up as a schoolmaster at a fourth-rate school, hired despite not meeting any of the qualifications in their advertisement. He there encounters a cornucopia of eccentric characters, including another master who has a wooden leg, a former clergyman with capital-D Doubts, and a servant who tells everyone he’s rich, but with a different tale for each about why he’s posing as a servant. Paul’s time at school leads to romance with a student’s mother, and that in turn leads to enormous complications in Paul’s life. Inspired in part by his own experiences in school and as a schoolmaster, Evelyn Waugh’s first published novel, Decline and Fall, is a dark and occasionally farcical satire of British college life. It’s something of a perverse coming-of-age story, subverting the expected journey and ending that the archetype usually demands. Shining a devastating light on many of the societal struggles of post-WWI Britain, Waugh took his novel’s title from another work that revealed the ineluctable descent of a great society: Gibbons’ The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Waugh issued a new edition of Decline and Fall in 1960 that contained restored text that was removed by his publisher from the first edition. This Standard Ebooks edition follows the first edition. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.

Kitchen Confidential meets Three Junes in this mouthwatering novel about three brothers who run competing restaurants, and the culinary snobbery, staff stealing, and secret affairs that unfold in the back of the house. Britt and Leo have spent ten years running Winesap, the best restaurant in their small Pennsylvania town. They cater to their loyal customers; they don't sleep with the staff; and business is good, even if their temperamental pastry chef is bored with making the same chocolate cake night after night. But when their younger brother, Harry, opens his own restaurant—a hip little joint serving an aggressive lamb neck dish—Britt and Leo find their own restaurant thrown off-kilter. Britt becomes fascinated by a customer who arrives night after night, each time with a different dinner companion. Their pastry chef, Hector, quits, only to reappear at Harry's restaurant. And Leo finds himself falling for his executive chef-tempted to break the cardinal rule of restaurant ownership. Filled with hilarious insider detail—the one-upmanship of staff meals before the shift begins, the rivalry between bartender and hostess, the seedy bar where waitstaff and chefs go to drink off their workday—Bread and Butter is both an incisive novel of family and a gleeful romp through the inner workings of restaurant kitchens.