The Swallows are staying on the Suffolk coast while they wait for their father to return home from China. But although the harbour is bursting with bobbing yachts, barges and steamers, this year there's no chance of any sailing for the landlocked Swallows.

Darling and her friends live in a shanty called Paradise, which of course is no such thing. It isn't all bad, though. There's mischief and adventure, games of Find bin Laden, stealing guavas, singing Lady Gaga at the tops of their voices. They dream of the paradises of America, Dubai, Europe, where Madonna and Barack Obama and David Beckham live.

'There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that' This is the story of Darling, uprooted from her family home by paramilitary police, and living in a Zimbabwean shanty called Paradise.

In an age when a storm was evidence of God's wrath, pioneering meteorologists had to fight against convention and religious dogma to realise their ambitions. This book features Luke Howard, the first to classify the clouds, Francis Beaufort, quantifier of the winds, and, James Glaisher, explorer of the upper atmosphere by way of a hot air balloon.

A diabolical government asserts control by eliminating orgasms from sex in the title story of Welcome to the Monkey House, which gathers together twenty-five of Kurt Vonnegut's short stories from the 1950s and 1960s.

In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, the author began running to keep fit. A year later, he'd completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and on his writing. This title presents his portrait.

A collection of stories, set in the mid-West among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time.

What makes life worth living in the face of death? What do you do when when life is catastrophically interrupted? What does it mean to have a child as your own life fades away? This book offers a life-affirming reflection on facing our mortality and on the relationship between doctor and patient.