Everyone has plans for baby Ellen. Buteven though she's just a babyEllen will do exactly as she pleases. Here is a heartwarming book for any family with a new baby, wishing for a new baby, and, most important of all, loving a new baby.

192 pages, inner pocket

Wrongly accused of a theft, Tintin is led to set out with Snowy on an adventure to investigate a gang of forgers.

The world's most famous travelling reporter solves the mystery of the Black Island. Wrongly accused of a theft, Tintin is led to set out with Snowy on an adventure to investigate a gang of forgers. Join the most iconic character in comics as he embarks on an extraordinary adventure spanning historical and political events, and thrilling mysteries. Still selling over 100,000 copies every year in the UK and having been adapted for the silver screen by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson in 2011. The Adventures of Tintin continue to charm more than 80 years after they first found their way into publication. Since then an estimated 230 million copies have been sold, proving that comic books have the same power to entertain children and adults in the 21st century as they did in the early 20th.

192 pages, inner pocket

When Jack and Annie got back from their adventure in Magic Tree House #4: Pirates Past Noon, they had lots of questions. Did pirates really make people walk the plank? What was life like on a pirate ship? Is there any buried treasure around today? Argh! How do you talk like a pirate? Find out the answers to these questions and more as Jack and Annie track the facts.

192 pages, inner pocket

A funny and affectionate look at all the things your parents do for you. It's not all tidying up and making you brush your teeth ...

You may think your parents just boss you around and tell you what to do. And there's no getting away from it - they do have to do quite a lot of that! But there's so much more to them - did you realise they are also tent poles for dens that are wonky, dustbins for bits you don't want to eat up and grandstands to make you grow tall?

A renowned authority on the secret world of opium recounts his descent into ruinous obsession with one of the world’s oldest and most seductive drugs, in this harrowing memoir of addiction and recovery. A natural-born collector with a nose for exotic adventure, San Diego–born Steven Martin followed his bliss to Southeast Asia, where he found work as a freelance journalist. While researching an article about the vanishing culture of opium smoking, he was inspired to begin collecting rare nineteenth-century opium-smoking equipment. Over time, he amassed a valuable assortment of exquisite pipes, antique lamps, and other opium-related accessories—and began putting it all to use by smoking an extremely potent form of the drug called chandu. But what started out as recreational use grew into a thirty-pipe-a-day habit that consumed Martin’s every waking hour, left him incapable of work, and exacted a frightful physical and financial toll. In passages that will send a chill up the spine of anyone who has ever lived in the shadow of substance abuse, Martin chronicles his efforts to control and then conquer his addiction—from quitting cold turkey to taking “the cure” at a Buddhist monastery in the Thai countryside. At once a powerful personal story and a fascinating historical survey, Opium Fiend brims with anecdotes and lore surrounding the drug that some have called the methamphetamine of the nineteenth-century. It recalls the heyday of opium smoking in the United States and Europe and takes us inside the befogged opium dens of China, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos. The drug’s beguiling effects are described in vivid detail—as are the excruciating pains of withdrawal—and there are intoxicating tales of pipes shared with an eclectic collection of opium aficionados, from Dutch dilettantes to hard-core addicts to world-weary foreign correspondents. A compelling tale of one man’s transformation from respected scholar to hapless drug slave, Opium Fiend puts us under opium’s spell alongside its protagonist, allowing contemporary readers to experience anew the insidious allure of a diabolical vice that the world has all but forgotten.

A classic, poetic introduction to the forty-four presidents! Do you know which president never attended school? Which president had fifteen children? The first president to keep an automobile at the White House? The only unelected president? The Buck Stops Here is filled with fascinating details that tell the history of the forty-four presidents of the United States. Campaign slogans and songs, scandals, wars, accomplishments, and failures color each page and bring life to each president as a unique historical personality. In a book that is truly for all ages, Alice Provensen give us a close, personal view, in pictures and text, of our presidents, as well as a visual and social history of our country.