Hodder&Stoughton

Did you give school history lessons your undivided attention? Even if you did, youre probably none the wiser as to how exactly Henry II of France came to have a two-foot splinter in his head or why Alexandra of Bavaria believed she had swallowed a piano. Or where terms like bunkum, maverick, John Bull and taking the mickey come from; or how the Tsarina of Russia once saved a life with a comma; or why Robert Pate hit Queen Victoria on the head with a walking stick. For some unknown reason the most interesting bits of history are kept out of lessons and away from syllabuses. Relegated to historys footnotes, they lie buried beneath the dense text like a few golden nuggets in a mountain of granite. Now The Interesting Bits rights this wrong; it is a veritable treasure trove of those surprising, eccentric, chaotic, baffling asides that dont fit neatly into historys official narrative. They are historys little-known treasures the gems that generations of teachers have excised from lessons on the grounds that they might make history too much like well fun.

Every day we use our mobiles and computers to communicate, but ironically we are losing touch with face-to-face talk. Catherine Blyth reveals the endless possibilities of conversation and shows that when it works it can come close to heaven. With examples from Elizabeth I to Tommy Cooper, courtesans to nomads, The Art of Conversation is full of tips on listening, the perfect handshake, talking shop and surviving conversational bores. Be it sharing a joke with a stranger, sparking a new idea or just letting off steam with a friend, there are infinite adventures to be had if you break the ice and say hello ...

It is barely three months since the murder of his wife and Thomas Lynley takes to the South-West Coast Path in Cornwall, determined to walk its length in an attempt to distract himself from his loss. On the forty-third day of this walk, he sees a cliff climber fall to his death a death apparently witnessed by a surfer in a nearby cove. Shortly afterwards, Lynley encounters a young woman from Bristol whose personal history is a blank before her thirteenth year. These events propel him into a case that brings Barbara Havers from London and thrusts both detectives into a world where revenge is only one of the motives they must sift through to identify a killer.

Wanted: new homes...When the strays from a local dogs' home are matched with brand new owners, it turns out it might not just be the lost dogs who need rescuing. Helen's ex-husband has given their children a puppy. The kids are in love, but she's the one stuck training the impossible Labrador. She's nearly at the end of her tether — until then the puppy bounds up to a handsome doctor...Meanwhile Kirsten and Johnny are happily married, even if it's not been so easy since they started trying for a baby. But can owning a neurotic basset hound really make up for not having a child? And Ambrose and Winnie just fear that they're too old for a new dog. But there's life in them yet, as a loyal dachshund will teach them. As the new owners' paths cross, their lives all become interwoven and linked. Just as they — and their dogs — learn lessons about loyalty, companionship, and maybe even some unconditional love...

Leamas is finished. Every agent he ran in the field has been remorselessly hunted and killed. It is time to come home, to come in from the cold. But in the moral ambiguities of the Cold War, nothing is ever as it seems — particularly where George Smiley is involved. With its thrillingly effective atmosphere and lean, brilliant prose, John le Carre's breakthrough novel is a suspenseful masterpiece, and a gripping insight into the unforgiving ethics of espionage. With it, he changed the rules of the game, and was rocketed to worldwide fame.

The English eccentric is under threat. In our increasingly homogenised society, these celebrated parts of our national identity are anomalies that may soon no longer fit. Or so it seems. On his entertaining and thought-provoking quest to discover the most eccentric English person alive today, Henry Hemming unearths a surprisingly large array of delightfully odd characters. He asks what it is to be an eccentric. Is it simply to thrive on creativity and non-conformity, and where does this incarnation of Englishness stem from? Hemming concludes that this tribe is, in fact, in rude health, as essential as ever to the English national identity, only they are no longer to be found where you'd expect them.

A new edition of 'Access to History: International Relations 1878-1941' updated to support the current A Level History specifications, with revised content, an accessible design and exam support through the examiner-authored study guides.

This is a rich, romantic historical novel showcasing the glamour, spectacle and theatrical energy of the Weimar Republic. As the clock chimed the turn of the twentieth century, Lilly Nelly Aphrodite took her first breath. Born to a cabaret dancer and soon orphaned in a scandalous murder-suicide, Lilly finds refuge at a Catholic orphanage, coming under the wing of the, at times, severe Sister August, the first in a string of lost loves. There she meets Hanne Schmidt, a teen prostitute, and forms a bond that will last them through tumultuous love affairs, disastrous marriages, and destitution during the First World War and the subsequent economic collapse. As the century progresses, Lilly and Hanne move from the tawdry glamour of the tingle-tangle nightclubs to the shadow world of health films before Lilly finds success and stardom in the new medium of motion pictures and ultimately falls in love with a man whose fate could cost her everything she has worked for or help her discover her true self. Gripping and darkly seductive, The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite showcases all the glitter and splendor of the brief heyday of the Weimar Republic, and the rise of Hollywood to its golden age. As it foreshadows the horrors of the Second World War, the novel asks what price is paid when identity becomes unfixed and the social order is upended.

'I see murder in this unhappy hand!' When Mrs Robinson, palmist to the Prince of Wales, reads Oscar Wilde's palm she cannot know what she has predicted. Nor can Oscar know what he has set in motion when, that same evening, he proposes a game of 'Murder' in which each of his Sunday Supper Club guests must write down those whom they would like to kill. For the fourteen 'victims' begin to die mysteriously, one by one, and in the order in which their names were drawn from the bag! With growing horror, Wilde and his confidantes Robert Sherard and Arthur Conan Doyle, realise that one of their guests that evening must be the murderer. In a race against time, Wilde will need all his powers of deduction and knowledge of human behaviour before he himself — the thirteenth name on the list — becomes the killer's next victim.

You aren't stupid. You know there's no such thing as a perfect mother. Plenty of other books will tell you there is, but this one won't lie to you. I was weak and I cheated and I was punished, but my god I loved my child through all of it. Love means you never break, and it means you're stronger than the things they do to you. I know this is true because I have been through fire, and I am the proof that love survives. I am not a perfect mother but I will tell you the perfect truth, because this is you and me talking. This is my story.

Charlotte O'Keefe's beautiful, much-longed-for, adored daughter Willow is born with osteogenesis imperfecta — a very severe form of brittle bone disease. If she slips on a crisp packet she could break both her legs, and spend six months in a half body cast. After years of caring for Willow, her family faces financial disaster. Then Charlotte is offered a lifeline. She could sue her obsetrician for wrongful birth — for not having diagnosed Willow's condition early enough in the pregnancy to be able to abort the child. The payout could secure Willow's future. But to get it would mean Charlotte suing her best friend. And standing up in court to declare that she would have prefered that Willow had never been born...

In her provocative second novel, Spanish author Julia Navarro takes readers on an exhilarating journey across centuries and continents, as an upstart archaeologist and a murderous group of conspirators vie for a treasure that will rewrite history an explosive account of the worlds creation recorded millennia ago by a humble scribe onto the legendary Bible of Clay. From the tense months preceding the contemporary war in Iraq, to ancient Mesopotamia, to the atrocities of the last century, here is historical fiction at its richest, a sweeping saga that challenges both conventional geopolitics and the very foundations of modern religion.

Spring, 1941. The armies of the Reich are masters of Europe.Britain stands alone, dependent on her battered navy for survival, while Hitler's submarines — his 'grey wolves' — prey on the Atlantic convoys that are the country's only lifeline. Lieutenant Douglas Lindsay is amongst just a handful of men picked up when his ship is torpedoed. Unable to free himself from the memories of that night at sea, he becomes an interrogator with naval intelligence, questioning captured U-Boat crews. He is convinced the Germans have broken British naval codes, but he's a lone voice, a damaged outsider, and his superiors begin to wonder — can he really be trusted when so much is at stake? As the Blitz reduces Britain's cities to rubble and losses at sea mount, Lindsay becomes increasingly isolated and desperate. No one will believe him, not even his lover, Mary Henderson, who works at the very heart of the intelligence establishment. Lindsay decides to risk all in one last throw of the dice, setting a trap for his prize captive — and nemisis — U-Boat Commander Jurgen Mohr, the man who sent his ship to its doom...

We don't want to tell you what happens in this book. It is a truly special story and we don't want to spoil it. Nevertheless, you need to know enough to buy it so we will just say this: It is extremely tunny, but the African beach scene is horrific. The story starts there, but the book doesn't. And it's what happens afterwards that is most important. Once you have read it, you'll want to tell your friends about it. When you do, please don't tell them what happens either. The magic is in how it unfolds.

The Cat is the wildest Animal in the Wild Wet Woods. But when he sees Man and Woman living in a warm dry Cave, he starts thinking about how he can join them...

Join Class Two as they wander round the zoo. They see all sorts of animal antics, but they don't notice the anaconda slipping up behind that's determined to make a meal of them. But Class Two are a resourceful bunch and come up with a rescue plan.

It's a world where everything might seem pretty normal. But the weird, the surprising and the truly terrifying are lurking just out of sight. Like a hitchhiker who isn't quite all he seems, a spooky cottage with a grisly secret and a mobile phone that lets you contact the dead! Each story has a shocking sting in the tale...

Which is best Kipper wonders, Christmas Day or Christmas Eve? Presents? Or expecting presents? Kipper's friends: Pig, Arnold and Tiger are all getting ready for Christmas too and Kipper manages to give little Arnold his best Christmas Eve ever.

Twenty years ago they were high school royalty, the girls everyone envied. But life for Tracy and Holly has subsided into suburban contentment, husbands, homes and families. So when Olivia, the group's glamorous leader, returns to America as a rich widow, they decide to celebrate their reunion onboard a luxurious sailing boat in the Caribbean. Accompanied by Tracy's unruly teenage daughter and an attentive and experienced crew, the three friends set sail for the holiday of a lifetime. But what really awaits them in the sun-drenched Caribbean is more mysterious and terrifying than anything they could have imagine. As their dream trip turns into a desperate fight for survival, the women soon find themselves faced with dwindling supplies, modern-day piracy and, above all, the deep, lonely ocean. To survive, they must rely on the bonds that have held them close all these years, friend to friend, mother to daughter — even as old secrets, old alliances and new treacheries push them beyond endurance! In her breathtaking new novel of suspense, Jacquelyn Mitchard explores the limits of friendship and the truths that bind us to each other forever.

Set in Finland in 1939, this is the story of one man who remains in his home town when everyone else has fled, burning down their houses in their wake, before the invading Russians arrive. Timo remains behind because he can't imagine life anywhere else, doing anything else besides felling the trees near his home. This is a novel about belonging — a tale of powerful and forbidden friendships forged during a war, of unexpected bravery and astonishing survival instincts. The Burnt-Out Town of Miracles is not a novel about war, but about the lives of ordinary people dragged into war, each of whom only wants to find the path back home. Roy Jacobsen uses the dramatic natural landscape of light and darkness, fire-blazing heat and life-robbing cold to spectacular effect.

Meet Melissa and Paul: Five years after they split up he's still looking for love in all the wrong places while she wants the one thing she can't have: Paul.Meet Chris and Vicky: They're so in tune they even brush their teeth in time with each other. So what is Chris doing risking it all for a meaningless affair? Meet Cooper and Laura: He wants to settle down, she wants to take a grown-up gap year but can their relationship really survive a year apart? Set across a year of leaving dos, birthday parties and anniversary celebrations The Life and Soul of the Party is a warm, funny and moving tale celebrating love, life and those special moments we've all spent in the kitchen at parties.

Finn has escaped from the terrible living Prison of Incarceron, but its memory torments him, because his brother Keiro is still inside. Outside, Claudia insists he must be king, but he doubts even his own identity. Is he the lost prince Giles? Or are his memories no more than another construct of his imprisonment? And can you be free if your friends, Keiro, Attia the dog-slave, are still captive? Can you be free if your world is frozen in time? Can you be free if you dont even know who you are? And inside Incarceron, has the crazy sorcerer Rix really found the Glove of Sapphique, the only man the Prison ever loved. Sapphique, whose image fires Incarceron with the desire to escape its own nature. If Keiro steals the glove, will he bring destruction to the world? Inside. Outside. All seeking freedom. Like Sapphique.

Is the Camel the laziest creature on earth? The other Animals want to get him out of the Howling Desert to do his fair share of work. Can the Jinn help? Collect all the titles in the series: How the Camel Got Its Hump How the Whale Got Its Throat How the Leopard Got Its Spots How the Rhinoceros Got His Skin The Beginning of the Armadilloes The Sing-Song of the Old Man Kangeroo The Cat that Walked by Himself The Elephant's Child...

This is a book that helps managers and employees deal with change and crisis management in organisations from all sectors but particularly SMEs. Avoiding academic theories about change (that few understand), case studies of organisations that have previously been highlighted in the news (whose cases really don't even apply to the SME market) and opinion pieces by ex-CEOs 'CHANGE & CRISIS MANAGEMENT' is a book written in James Rieley's inimitable plain talk for the managers and employees of SMEs. This is the book for those faced with the daily challenges of how to deal with situations when things have gone really bad and where tough decisions are required if the company is to survive and realise its potential. 'CHANGE & CRISIS MANAGEMENT' is written in five easy to read, understand AND APPLY sections.Section four will contain a set of 'worksheets' that the readers can reproduce, along with specific instructions on how to use them, why to use them, and when to use them. Key Book Threads: Dealing with change; change management; crisis management; organisational performance; personal and organisational effectiveness.