Birds, ​Beasts and Relatives

Gerald Durrell - The ​Corfu Trilogy
The ​Corfu Trilogy consists of the popular classic My Family and Other Animals and its delightful sequels, Birds, Beasts and Relatives and The Garden of the Gods . All three books are set on the enchanted island of Corfu in the 1930s, and tell the story of the eccentric English family who moved there. For Gerald, the budding zoologist, Corfu was a natural paradise, teeming with strange birds and beasts that he could collect, watch and care for. But life was not without its problems - his family often objected to his animal-collecting activities, especially when the beasts wound up in the villa or - even worse - the fridge. With hilarious yet endearing portraits of his family and their many unusual hangers-on, The Corfu Trilogy also captures the beginnings of the author's lifelong love of animals. Recounted with immense humour and charm, this wonderful account of Corfu's natural history reveals a rare, magical childhood.

Tupac Shakur - Tupac
"When ​I was a baby I remember one moment of calm peace, then three minutes after that it was on." A stunningly designed, richly illustrated companion to the much-anticipated documentary film, Tupac: Resurrection brings unprecedented clarity and soulful intimacy to the life and work of Tupac Shakur. In many ways the autobiography he never got to write, Tupac: Resurrection features the artist in his own words, examining his complicated life and the controversial decisions that plagued him while he was alive. Tupac: Resurrection captures, as never before, his boundless passion, searing honesty, and stunning intelligence, and showcases a range of never-before-seen writings, letters, screenplay ideas, lyrics, poems, photographs, and personal effects, and stands as an indelible testament to the artist's astonishing cultural legacy. Tupac: Resurrection crystallizes the enduring significance and impact of one of the most complex, haunting, and influential artists of our time.

Nick Hornby - About ​a Boy
Will ​is a thirty-six but acts like a teenager. He reads the right magazines, goes to the right clubs and knows which trainers to wear. He's also discovered a great way to score with women - at single parent's groups, full of available mothers, all waiting for Mr Nice. That's where he meets Marcus, the oldest twelve-year-old in the world. Marcus is a bit strange: he listens to Mozart, looks after his mum and he's never even owned a pair of trainers. Perhaps if Will can teach Marcus how to be a kid, Marcus can help Will grow up...

Agatha Christie - Death ​on the Nile
Linnet ​Ridgeway and Simon Doyle are being stalked by Simon’s furious ex, Jackie. So hell bent on taking revenge for the way she’d been treated she follows them all the way on their honeymoon to Egypt, aboard a steam cruiser travelling along the Nile. They are however not the only holidaymakers aboard the vessel, a certain Hercule Poirot attempts a relaxing cruise, only to be drawn into the threesome’s feud when Linette Ridgeway is found shot to death in her sleep.

Agatha Christie - Dumb ​Witness
Everyone ​blamed Emily’s accident on a rubber ball left on the stairs by her frisky terrier. But the more she thought about her fall, the more convinced she became that someone was trying to kill her. On April 17th she wrote her suspicions in a letter to Hercule Poirot. Mysteriously he didn’t receive the letter until June 28th… by which time Emily was already dead… ‘One of Poirot’s most brilliant achievements.’ Glasgow Herald

Stephen Fry - Moab ​is My Washpot
A ​number one bestseller in Britain that topped the lists there for months, Stephen Fry's astonishingly frank, funny, wise memoir is the book that his fans everywhere have been waiting for. Since his PBS television debut in the Blackadder series, the American profile of this multitalented writer, actor and comedian has grown steadily, especially in the wake of his title role in the film Wilde, which earned him a Golden Globe nomination, and his supporting role in A Civil Action. Fry has already given readers a taste of his tumultuous adolescence in his autobiographical first novel, The Liar, and now he reveals the equally tumultuous life that inspired it. Sent to boarding school at the age of seven, he survived beatings, misery, love affairs, carnal violation, expulsion, attempted suicide, criminal conviction and imprisonment to emerge, at the age of eighteen, ready to start over in a world in which he had always felt a stranger. One of very few Cambridge University graduates to have been imprisoned prior to his freshman year, Fry is a brilliantly idiosyncratic character who continues to attract controversy, empathy and real devotion. This extraordinary and affecting book has "a tragic grandeur that lifts it to classic status," raved the Financial Times in one of the many ecstatic British reviews. Stephen Fry's autobiography, in turns funny, shocking, sad, bruisingly frank and always compulsively readable, could well become a classic gay coming-of-age memoir.

Agatha Christie - The ​Murder of Roger Ackroyd
Roger ​Ackroyd was a man who knew too much. He knew the woman he loved had poisoned her first husband. He knew someone was blackmailing her – and now he knew she had taken her own life with a drug overdose. The one thing he didn’t know was the identity of the mystery blackmailer… But the evening post brought Roger this last scrap of information. But before he’d finished reading the letter, Roger was dead – stabbed through the neck where he sat in his study… ‘A classic – the book has worthily earned its fame.’ Irish Independent

Agatha Christie - Murder ​on the Orient Express
Travelling ​on the Orient Express, Poirot is approached by a desperate American named Ratchett. Afraid that someone plans to kill him, Ratchett asks Poirot for help. Sadly the very next day Ratchett's worst fears become reality, when he is found dead in his cabin, a victim of multiple stab wounds. With nothing but a scrap of paper to go on, Poirot must piece together Ratchett’s identity before he can establish which of his fellow passengers murdered him.

Agatha Christie - Dead ​Man's Folly
Sir ​George and Lady Stubbs, the hosts of a village fete, hit upon the novel idea of staging a mock murder mystery. In good faith, Ariadne Oliver, the well known crime writer, agrees to organise the murder hunt. Despite weeks of meticulous planning, at the last minute Ariadne calls her friend Hercule Poirot for his expert assistance. Instinctively, she senses that something sinister is about to happen...

Agatha Christie - After ​the Funeral
When ​Cora is savagely murdered, the extraordinary remark she made the previous day at her brother funeral takes on a chilling significance. At the reading of Richard's will, Cora was clearly heard to say, "It's been hushed up very nicely, hasn't it...But he was murdered, wasn't he?" In desperation, the family solicitor turns to Hercule Poirot to unravel what happened next ...

Gerald Durrell - Bill Bowler - My ​Family and Other Animals (Oxford Dominoes)
Text ​adaptation by Bill Bowler The weather in England that summer had been so awful that Gerald's mother sold the family house and took her children to live on the Mediterranean island of Corfu. Between lessons, the ten-year-old Gerald was free to walk round the sunny island and discover the wonderful people and animals living there. This is the story of Gerald's adventures with the fascinating animals of Corfu, and, of course, with his surprising family and their friends.

Stephen Fry - The ​Fry Chronicles
“I ​am English. Tweedy. Pukka. Confident. Establishment. Self-assured. In charge. That is how people like to see me, be the truth never so variance… In fact, I am chronically overmastered by a sense of failure, underachievement and a terrible knowledge that I have betrayed, abused or neglected the talents that nature bestowed upon me… Are you not prey to all those things also? I do hope so… I am surely describing nothing more than the fears, dreads and neuroses we all share? No? More or less? Mutatis mutandis? All things being equal? Oh, please say yes.”

Jennifer Worth - Call ​the Midwife
Jennifer ​Worth came from a sheltered background when she became a midwife in the Docklands in the 1950s. The conditions in which many women gave birth just half a century ago were horrifying, not only because of their grimly impoverished surroundings, but also because of what they were expected to endure. But while Jennifer witnessed brutality and tragedy, she also met with amazing kindness and understanding, tempered by a great deal of Cockney humour. She also earned the confidences of some whose lives were truly stranger, more poignant and more terrifying than could ever be recounted in fiction. Attached to an order of nuns who had been working in the slums since the 1870s, Jennifer tells the story not only of the women she treated, but also of the community of nuns (including one who was accused of stealing jewels from Hatton Garden) and the camaraderie of the midwives with whom she trained. Funny, disturbing and incredibly moving, Jennifer's stories bring to life the colourful world of the East End in the 1950s.

Jacqueline Wilson - Jacky ​Daydream
Everybody ​knows Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson's best loved character. But what do they know about Jacqueline herself? In this fascinating book, discover... ... how Jacky played with paper dolls like April in _Dustbin Baby._ ... how she dealt with an unpredictable father like Prue in _Love Lessons._ ... how she chose new toys in Hamleys like Dolphin in _The Illustrated Mum._ ... how she enjoyed Christmas like Em in _Clean Break._ ... how she sat entrance exams like Ruby in _Double Act. _ But most of all how Jacky loved reading and writing stories. Losing herself in a new world was the best possible way she could spend her time. From the very first story she wrote, it was very clear that this little girl had a very vivid imagination. But who would've guessed that she would grow up to be mega-bestselling, award-winning author! Includes previously unseen photos, Jacqueline's own school reports and a brand new chapter from Jacqueline on the response to the book, her teenage years and more!

Michael Palin - Hemingway's ​Chair
Martin ​Sproale is an assistant postmaster obsessed with Ernest Hemingway. Martin lives in a small English village, where he studies his hero and putters about harmlessly--until an ambitious outsider, Nick Marshall, is appointed postmaster instead of Martin. Slick and self-assured, Nick steals Martin's girlfriend and decides to modernize the friendly local office by firing dedicated but elderly employees and privatizing the business. Suddenly, gentle Martin is faced with a choice: meedly accept defeat as he always has, or fight for what he believes in, as his hero, Hemingway, would. Filled with Michael Palin's trademark wit and good humor, this novel is for anyone who has ever dreamed of triumphing over the technocrats and backstabbers of the world. Hilarious, touching, and ultimately inspirational, _Hemingway's Chair_ will make readers stand up and cheer.

Augusten Burroughs - A ​Wolf at the Table
From ​the author: 'My father doesn't feature much in "Running with Scissors". And one of the reasons for this is because he didn't feature much in my life. But there's another reason, too: Our relationship was so complicated, so dark, so confusing and so big, that to tell the story would require a book. So finally, upon the death of my father in 2005, I decided to tell the story I have been most afraid yet most compelled to tell.' This prequel to international hit "Running With Scissors" tells the story of Augusten's relationship with his tormented father: a man who sent his wife mad and saw his other son run away from home, prior to Augusten going into foster care. It is harrowing, insightful and amusing by turns.

Charles Elton - Mr ​Toppit
When ​the author of The Hayseed Chronicles, Arthur Hayman, is mown down by a concrete truck in Soho, his legacy passes to his widow, Martha, and her children - the fragile Rachel, and Luke, reluctantly immortalised as Luke Hayseed, the central character of his father's books. But others want their share, particularly Laurie, who has a mysterious agenda of her own that changes all their lives. For buried deep in the books lie secrets which threaten to be revealed as the family begins to crumble under the heavy burden of their inheritance. Spanning several decades, from the heyday of the British film industry after the war to the cut-throat world of show business in Los Angeles, Mr Toppit is a riveting tale of the unexpected effects of sudden fame and fortune. Not since Jonathan Coe's What a Carve Up! has a novel managed to capture a family and a society to such wonderfully funny and painful effect.

Jean Rhys - Smile ​Please
Jean ​Rhys' unfinished posthumous autobiography. From the early days on Dominica to the bleak time in England, living in bedsits on gin and little else, to Paris with her first husband, this is a lasting memorial to a unique artist.

Frederick Forsyth - The ​Day of the Jackal
The ​Jackal. A tall, blond Englishman with opaque, gray eyes. A killer at the top of his profession. A man unknown to any secret service in the world. An assassin with a contract to kill the world's most heavily guarded man. One man with a rifle who can change the course of history. One man whose mission is so secretive not even his employers know his name. And as the minutes count down to the final act of execution, it seems that there is no power on earth that can stop the Jackal.

C. S. Forester - Hornblower ​and the Atropos
1805, ​and Hornblower is both humbled and honoured in quick succession . . . After near disaster on board a canal barge, Horatio Hornblower is given his first assignment as Captain, taking charge of the Atropos, a 22-gun sloop that will act as flagship for the funeral procession of Lord Nelson. Soon the Atropos is part of the Mediterranean fleet's assault upon Napoleon, and Captain Hornblower must execute a bold and daring salvage operation for buried treasure lying deep in Turk waters. Under the guns of a suspicious port captain and the threat of a Spanish frigate more than double Atropos's size, Hornblower must steer his ship unscathed and triumphant . . . This is the fourth of eleven books chronicling the adventures of C. S. Forester's inimitable nautical hero, Horatio Hornblower.