Vintage books Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther фон Арним Элизабет

Meet Elizabeth and discover there is no greater happiness to be found than when lost in a wilderness of a garden, with bird cherries, lilacs, hollyhocks and lilies crowding the vision. This is her sanctuary from a host of unreasonable demands, whether from the Man of Wrath (husband), babies, servants and (worst of all horrors) house guests. Plunge into her charming diaries and be warned: you won't be able to remain indoors

"Колдовской апрель", вышедший в 1922 году, мгновенно стал бестселлером в Великобритании и США и создал моду на итальянский курорт Портофино • Что ждет четырех эксцентричных англичанок из разных слоев общества, сбежавших от лондонской слякоти на Итальянскую Ривьеру? Отдых на средневековой вилле, возвращающий радость жизни, или феерическая ссора с драматическим финалом? Ревность и конкуренция или преображение, ведущее к искренней дружбе и настоящей любви? • Легкая, полная юмора и искрометности книга, ставшая классикой для многих поколений читателей • Элизабет фон Арним (1866-1941) - английская писательница, автор бестселлеров "Елизавета и ее немецкий сад", "Вера", "Все собаки моей жизни", "Мистер Скеффингтон" и др • Книга на английском языке • Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, cowed and neglected by their husbands, make a daring plan: they will have a holiday

'Now she had taken off her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy' • Mrs Wilkins and Mrs Arbuthnot, cowed and neglected by their husbands, make a daring plan: they will have a holiday. Leaving a drab and rainy London one April and arriving on the shores of the Mediterranean, they discover a flower-filled paradise of beauty, warmth and leisure. Joined by the beautiful Lady Caroline and domineering Mrs Fisher, also in flight from the burdens of their daily lives, the four women proceed to transform themselves and their prospects

Люси Энтуисл и Эверард Уэмисс оба переживают недавнее несчастье, когда встречаются и быстро влюбляются друг в друга. Люси - "милая девочка" Уэмисса, а для Люси Эверард - это целый мир. Единственным пятном на счастье Люси является темная фигура первой жены Уэмисса, Веры, которая умерла при загадочных обстоятельствах. Но только когда счастливая пара возвращается домой и начинает свою счастливую супружескую жизнь, Люси по-настоящему начинает задаваться вопросом: что же все-таки случилось с Верой? • Книга на английском языке • Lucy Entwhistle and Everard Wemyss are both reeling from recent unhappiness when they meet and swiftly fall in love. Lucy is Wemyss’s ‘sweet girl’, and to Lucy, Everard is the whole world. The only blot on Lucy’s happiness is the shadowy figure of Wemyss’s first wife, Vera, who died in mysterious circumstances

One September evening in 1785, the merchant Jonah Hancock finds one of his captains waiting eagerly on his doorstep. He has sold Jonah's ship for what appears to be a mermaid • As gossip spreads through the docks, coffee shops, parlours and brothels, everyone wants to see Mr Hancock's marvel. Its arrival spins him out of his ordinary existence and through the doors of high society, where he meets Angelica Neal, the most desirable woman he has ever laid eyes on... and a courtesan of great accomplishment. This meeting will steer both their lives onto a dangerous new course • What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the legendary destructive power a mermaid is said to possess?

Eliot Rosewater is tortured by a fabulous inheritance he feels he does not deserve, so he devotes himself to drink, and to a life serving the dull, the ugly, the irrelevant and the useless. This is a novel about the pleasures, pains and perversions of people and money. It is the story of a millionaire's lunacy, the obsessions of a famous family and the collective madness of a nation

Read this specially designed new edition of Jared Diamond's Pulitzer-prize winning exploration of what makes us human • Why has human history unfolded so differently across the globe? In this Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Jared Diamond puts the case that geography and biogeography, not race, moulded the contrasting fates of Europeans, Asians, Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and aboriginal Australians. An ambitious synthesis of history, biology, ecology and linguistics, Guns, Germs and Steel remains a groundbreaking and humane work of popular science • Patterns of Life: Special Editions of Groundbreaking Science Books

The Ds can't wait to go and stay with Nancy and Peggy in the Lake District during the summer holidays. But when the Amazons’ dreadful Great Aunt invites herself to stay too, the summer is threatened with dullness. Staying indoors and reading poetry is not what anyone had in mind. To save the Ds from total boredom, the Amazons arrange for their friends to stay in a tumble-down hut in the woods. And as long as no one discovers they're there they can sail all summer long • In the Backstory you can learn how to make a campfire! • Vintage Children’s Classics is a twenty-first century classics list aimed at 8-12 year olds and the adults in their lives

Caring deeply about our children is part of what makes us human. Yet the thing we call ‘parenting’ is a surprisingly new invention. In the past thirty years, the concept of parenting and the huge industry surrounding it have transformed childcare into obsessive, controlling, and goal-orientated labour intended to create a particular kind of child, and therefore a particular kind of adult • Drawing on the study of human evolution and her own cutting-edge scientific research into how children learn, Gopnik shows that although caring for children is profoundly important, it is not a matter of shaping them to turn out a particular way. Children are designed to be messy and unpredictable, playful and imaginative, and to be very different both from their parents and from each other

Discover the classic tale behind the hit film and one of the most beloved, comforting, charming stories of all time • Life in the March household is full of adventures as the four very different March sisters follow their varying paths to adulthood, always maintaining the special bond between them. Sensible Meg, impetuous Jo, shy Beth and artistic Amy each have to confront different challenges as they grow up together and attempt to learn how to be both happy and good • ‘Deals with life's big questions - love and death, war and peace, and ambition versus family responsibility - in a way that is inspiring and realistic. Use a hankie as a bookmark - tears are guaranteed’ Marie Claire

Ball games, cars, and romances: the icons and battlefields of modern life. In twenty-two linked stories, with infinite humour and pathos, Sherman Alexie explores some of the major issues of our time: the pull between the urban and the rural, the future and the past; the trials and tribulations of young adulthood; the comlex density of daily life. A modern mythmaker with a sharp eye for irony, Sherman Alexie's focus is an American Indian reservation, but his playground is the world

The Italian Renaissance shaped Western culture - but it was far stranger and darker than many of us realise. We know the Mona Lisa for her smile, but not that she was married to a slave-trader. We revere Leonardo da Vinci for his art, but few now appreciate his ingenious designs for weaponry. We visit Florence to see Michelangelo's David, but hear nothing of the massacre that forced the republic's surrender. In fact, many of the Renaissance's most celebrated artists and thinkers emerged not during the celebrated 'rebirth' of the fifteenth century but amidst the death and destruction of the sixteenth century • The Beauty and the Terror is an enrapturing narrative which includes the forgotten women writers, Jewish merchants, mercenaries, prostitutes, farmers and citizens who lived the Renaissance every day