Alan Garner is an exceptional lecturer and essayist. Alan Garner's account of his mental illness will become a classic, and each strand of the book will be a source of fascination to anyone who has ever fallen under the spell of an Alan Garner story, as also to all who concern themselves with the craft of writing.

The meeting of Voltaire, successful financier, famous poet and troublemaker, and the enchanting amateur physicist and countess Emilie du Chatelet, was a meeting of both hearts and minds. In the Chateau de Cirey, the two brilliant intellects scandalised the French aristocracy with their passionate love affair.

Offers a view of mental health care - from the inside out.

Although they have met only a few times, Voss and Laura are joined by overwhelming, obsessive feelings for each other. Voss sets out to cross the continent, and as hardships, mutiny and betrayal whittle away his power to endure and to lead, his attachment to Laura gradually increases.

A novel about a failed dancer turned computer-graphics designer who's been around the block but these days doesn't leave her house. At heart, though, it's a meditation on how and whether you can ever know other people, what is evil, what is reality, what is humanity - and can you fake them? Or is there a litmus test for the real thing?

In 1845, the author went to live in the woods near his hometown of Concord, Massachusetts. In this book, he documents his passion for the landscape and wildlife of Walden Pond, and his philosophical and political motivations for rejecting the materialism.

Parks are such a familiar part of everyday life. You might be forgiven for thinking they have always been there - and that they always will. In fact, the roots of even the most humble neighbourhood park lie in age-old battles over land and liberty. This celebration of parks is filled with history, and anecdotes.

Tolstoy's epic depicts Russia's war with Napoleon and its effects on the lives of those caught up in the conflict. In this book, he creates some of the most vital and involving characters in literature as he follows the rise and fall of families in St Petersburg and Moscow who are linked by their personal and political relationships.