Decked

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Robert Macfarlane

"Landmarks is a book about the power of language - 'strong style, single words' - to shape our sense of place. It is both a field guide to the literature the author loves (Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin and many more), and a 'word-hoard', gathering an astonishing archive of place-terms from old Norse to Anglo-Romani, living Norman to Hebridean Gaelic. Over the book's course, via its chapters, its glossaries and surprise of its postscript - we come to realize that words, well used, are not just a means to describe landscape, but also a way to know it, and to love it"--from publisher.

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Michael Hughes

This biography examines the long life of the traveller and author Stephen Graham. Graham walked across large parts of the Tsarist Empire in the years before 1917, describing his adventures in a series of books and articles that helped to shape attitudes towards Russia in Britain and the United States. In later years he travelled widely across Europe and North America, meeting some of the best known writers of the twentieth century, including H.G. Wells and Ernest Hemingway. Graham also wrote numerous novels and biographies that won him a wide readership on both sides of the Atlantic. This book traces Graham's career as a world traveller, and provides a rich portrait of English, Russian and American literary life in the first half of the twentieth century. It also examines how many aspects of his life and writing coincide with contemporary concerns, including the development of New Age spirituality and the rise of environmental awareness. The result is a fascinating portrait of a man who was for many years a significant literary figure on both sides of the Atlantic.

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Anna Quindlen

"This book is a tale of three cities: the fictional London that lives in the pages of writers from Shakespeare to P. D. James and Martin Amis; the historical metropolis where so many immortal authors have made their homes; and the vibrant capital that today welcomes visitors from all over the world. Anna Quindlen evokes all three as she travels from Sherlock Holmes's digs at 221b Baker Street (as real an imaginary address as there ever was), to Poet's Corner in Westminster Abbey, a memorial to the greatest writers of our language, to Hyde Park Gate, the genteel neighborhood from which Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga unfolds. We stroll through elegant squares that summon the ghosts of characters from Thackeray and Trollope, and pause at a pub whose ornate sign would be familiar to anyone - real or fictional - from Shakespeare's era to today." "At once a tribute to one of the world's greatest cities and a freewheeling celebration of the rich literature it has inspired, this is a writer's vision of a world both imagined and utterly true - all gathered, refracted, and reflected in a magical mirror called London."--BOOK JACKET.

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L. Frank Baum

Over a century after its initial publication, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is still captivating the hearts of countless readers. Come adventure with Dorothy and her three friends: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, as they follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Emerald City for an audience with the Great Oz, the mightiest Wizard in the land, and the only one that can return Dorothy to her home in Kansas.