Fay Weldon lets her incisive wit loose on a hot issue facing many modern families  child care, and what can happen when that involves having a nanny under your roof. Hattie and Martyn are the proud parents of newborn Kitty; both are in their early thirties, smart, handsome, and, for reasons of liberal principle, not married but partnered. All seems fine at first  healthy baby, happy couple  but when they have to decide who’ll look after little Kitty, things get complicated. Hattie’s dying to get back to work but Martyn fears employing foreign help might hurt his leftist political aspirations. Martyn capitulates when Agnieska arrives  a Polish nanny who happens to be both domestic goddess and first-rate belly dancer, the maker of a mean cup of cocoa who’s also educated in early childhood development. Having her in the house makes life livable again for the young couple, so when problems arise with her immigration papers Martyn and Hattie will do anything to keep her in the country. But will their decision to have Martyn marry her be the trouble-free solution they envision.

She May Not Leave

Literature & Fiction

Weldon,Fay

Contemporary

Fourth Estate

The second volume of one of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century. In 'Walking in the Shade' we move into the heyday of Lessing's career, sparked off by the international success of her first novel, 'The Grass is Singing'. A wonderful evocation of London's literary and political life during the 1950s and 1960s. Doris Lessing was at the very centre of the intellectual scene at that time, and knew many of its personalities and opinion-makers -- Kenneth Tynan, John Osborne, EP Thompson, Bertrand Russell and many others. Perhaps the most frank and open book Doris Lessing has ever written. She writes about her involvement with communism, her love affairs, her depression at the ending of a relationship and her experience of bringing up a child on her own.

Walking in the Shade: Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962

Biographies & Memoirs

LESSING, DORIS

Arts & Literature

Paperback. Pub Date :2004-12-06 Pages: 176 Language: English Publisher: HarperCollins UK Beautiful reissue of this wonderful Fitzgerald backlist title. shortlisted for the 1991 Booker Prize.In 1912 Fred Fairly is a Junior Fellow at the college of St Angelicus in Cambridge. where for centuries no female. not even a pussy cat. has been allowed to set foot (though the starlings couldnt altogether be regulated). Fred lectures in physics and the questionable nature of matter and worries about the universal problem known in Cambridge at the time as' the absurdity of the Mind-Body Relationship '. To Fred this is tormenting rather than absurd.The young woman beside him when he wakes up one evening in the Wrayburns' spare bedroom might help resolve it. but how can he tell if she is quite what she seems Fred is a scientist.To him the truth should be everything. and indeed he thinks it...

The Gate of Angels

Children's Books

Fitzgerald, Penelope

Education & Reference

By turns, an unsparing and joyous account of life in a postwar London rooming house by Doris Lessing, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature 2007.In the early post-war years, Doris Lessing left her native Southern Africa in search of a grail - a life of glamour and refinement that she naively believed England offered everyone. A fascinating, hilarious memoir of her first impressions of her adopted country, `In Pursuit of the English' brilliantly captures Lessing's constant wonder at and growing affection for the people she came to know: the working-class of the East End of London. Lusty, quarrelsome, unscrupulous and full-blooded, they were quite unlike the English she had expected to find ...

In Pursuit of the English

Ray Bradbury,Doris Lessing

Under My Skin: Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949

Literary

A CLASSIC FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF THE THINGS THEY CARRIED Originally published in 1975, Tim O'Brien's debut novel demonstrates the emotional complexity and enthralling narrative tension that later earned him the National Book Award. At its core is the relationship between two brothers: one who went to Vietnam and one who stayed at home. As the two brothers struggle against an unexpected blizzard in Minnesota's remote north woods, what they discover about themselves and each other will change both of them for ever.

Northern Lights

O’Brien, Tim

In her forties and recovering from a long battle against depression and alcoholism, Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis decided to trade in her landlubber life - a nice house in Cardiff and a sensible job at the BBC - for life aboard a small yacht with her husband Leighton, a former bosun with the Merchant Navy and now in his mid-sixties. "We bought our first sailing boat by accident! She was a twenty-three-foot Intro class racer called Nitro, had a yellow hull and was totally unsuitable for beginners, so we bought her and started to learn how to sail in the Bristol Channel. Not long afterwards we were talking about renting out the house and sailing around the world." After buying a yacht - Jameeleh - and teaching themselves to sail it (a process not without its fair share of disasters, from psychotic seas off St. Govan's Head to broken ribs off Ballycotton), Gwyneth and Leighton set out to cross the Atlantic. Unfortunately Gwyneth's incessant seasickness and Leighton's daily deterioration into a moody Captain Bastard were not the only catastrophes with which they had to contend. This strange, stirring and often hilarious account of their voyage is as much a beginner's guide to sailing as it is a portrait of a marriage under the pressure of depression, both medical and meteorological. Gwyneth Lewis's training as a poet and film-maker lends her prose a wonderfully visual quality, and her contagious optimism in the face of inconceivable adversity - not much more could possibly have gone wrong - makes this unique book both touchingly witty and incredibly wise.

Two in a Boat : A Marital Voyage

Self-Help

Lewis, Gwyneth

Relationships

Free World

Louis Menand

From the author of the highly successful "Counting Sheep" comes a new book on the study of happiness. "Making Happy People" is quite simply a study of happiness. It looks at the origins of happiness within the individual during the lifelong process of development from birth to death. It also explores the relationship between happiness and success, and the ways in which early experience, parents and eduction influence each individual's capacity for happiness, the most sought-after and most elusive human property. Breaking new ground in the literature of happiness, this book offers a scientific perspective on a subject that has hitherto been the preseve of philosophers, artists, psychoanalysts and self-help gurus. All parents want their children to be happy, but few take things further than this vague wish - until things start to go wrong and unhappiness has arrived to stay. Only then do they realise that what might seem obvious at first glance is in fact far from obvious. Accessible to parents and teachers alike, "Making People Happy" uses the perspective of psychology and biology to reveal the way to be happy and to help children become happy people for life.

Making Happy People : The Nature of Happiness and Its Origins in Childhood

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Paul, Martin

Psychology & Counseling

A book about the lengths people will go to nuzzle out some pleasure - and the scientific reasons that lie behind those impulses. The author looks at changing attitudes to pleasure over the centuries, including religious and philosophical lawgiving on the subject, before moving on to the science of all this human frenzy.

Sex, Drugs and Chocolate

Science & Math

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