Beginning in summer with clouds of breeding seabirds in Shetland and ending with nightjars like giant moths in the heart of England, the author maps his encounters with birds. He covers birds like sparrows, starlings and ravens, and exotic species like electrically coloured hummingbirds in California and bee-eaters in Africa.

VINTAGE JAPANESE CLASSICS - five masterpieces of Japanese fiction in gorgeous new gift editions. They regard this disillusionment as an act of betrayal on his part - and the retribution is deliberate and horrifying.

A band of savage 13-year-old boys reject the adult world as hypocritical and sentimental, and train themselves in a brutal callousness. When the mother of one of them begins an affair with a ship's officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic.

Tells the story of the campaign for votes for women. This title presents a tale of loyalty, love and courage, set against a vividly realised backdrop of Edwardian Britain, it follows the fortunes of a maid-of-all-work swept up in the feminist militancy of the era.

Offers an interview with Salman Rushdie, relating specifically to the texts under discussion. This guide deals with Rushdie's themes, genre and narrative technique,and a close reading of the texts can provide a rich source of ideas for intelligent and inventive ways of approaching the novels.

VINTAGE CLASSICS MURDOCH: Funny, subversive, fearless and fiercely intelligent, Iris Murdoch was one of the great writers of the twentieth century.

Planet Earth is 4.5 billion years old. In just a fraction of that time, one species among countless others has conquered it. Us. We are the most advanced and most destructive animals ever to have lived. What makes us brilliant? What makes us deadly? What makes us Sapiens? The author explores who we are, how we got here and where we're going.

U is a 'corporate anthropologist' who, while working on a giant, epoch-defining project no one really understands, is also tasked with writing the Great Report on our society. But instead, U spends his days procrastinating, meandering through endless buffer-zones of information and becoming obsessed by the images with which the world bombards him.