This is a book which sets out to show that even the most unpromising madonna can survive the years of looking after babies and toddlers. Full of down-to-earth tips and anecdotes, this is a battle-manual for the mother on the front line - going from pregnancy to pre-schoolers, and taking in sibling fights, fraught outings, nannies and careers along the way.

How Not to Be a Perfect Mother : The Crafty Mother's Guide to a Quiet Life

Parenting & Relationships

PURVES, Libby

Parenting

HarperCollinsPublishers

How Not to be a Perfect Family

Health, Fitness & Dieting

HarperCollins Publishers, Ltd

In the summer of 1988, Libby Purves set sail with her family on a voyage round the entire coastline of Britain, from the soft, sandy South-East, to the wilder shores of Orkney. They travelled in the wake of their literary-nautical forebears aboard their modern-built gaffer, Grace O'Malley, with their children, Nicholas (five) and Rose (three). As conscious of curious anecdote and tragic folklore as she is of contemporary injustice and familial tension, Libby Purves evokes a fresh, rich and fascinating portrait of people and places.

One Summer's Grace: A Family Voyage Around Britain

Travel

Europe

HarperCollins, Publishers

Casting off

Sceptre

A Long Walk in Wintertime

Alice McDonald has escaped all the obvious traps that lie in wait for women. She loves her job but enjoys her clever, spirited children too; her husband (Dan the New Man) does his share at home, and their London house is always full of friends. At her thirty-seventh birthday party, Alice reflects that their life has been a pretty successful production so far. But love can be treacherous, and children are never quite what they seem. Two months later, far from home and alone on a desperate quest through the bleak lanes of Norfolk, Alice wonders how it fell apart so quickly. Were things ever as good as they seemed? Had the McDonalds really been happy, or was it no more than a stage illusion?

A long walk in wintertime

Everything seems to be going well for Alice McDonald, who has a successful career, clever children, and an ideal husband. Two months later, it has all fallen apart, and Alice is left wondering if her happiness had been an illlusion.

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Home leave

1997 1st. ed

Catherine, Caroline, Toby and Mark are a diplomat's children whose childhood homes were wherever their father was posted. Now they are successful adults with their own lives, but when Toby goes missing, his brothers and sisters are jolted into making angry, anxious journeys to try and find him.

Home Leave

Hodder&Stoughton

More Lives Than One

Kit Milcourt has been a climber, diver in exotic waters, and affluent young city banker. Now, because of his beloved Anna, he is a teacher. Glumly mediocre Sandmarsh High School is hard put to contain his maverick ideas, and only the soothing presence of Anna keeps the peace. But Anna can’t guard her erratic husband on the school tripinstead a far darker staff member follows him and discovers what Kit has secretly planned for the children amid the dim alleys of winter Venice. Between farce and tragedy the resulting events swiftly change Kit’s and Anna’s live in unthinkable ways, strain a great love to the limit, and open a dark chasm into the past.

Regatta

Sheila Harrison always looks forward to the descent of the summer visitors to her house in Blythney, East Anglia. But she is not prepared for the upheaval caused by one young girl, Anansi, who arrives from a background Sheila can only guess at.

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