Sigrid Ruschmeier Books

The three Field sisters live in the sanitized suburbs of the fifties and sixties, but their plastic world is askew. They are growing up crazy in a very eccentric, often miserable, sometimes hilarious family. Their home is a war zone ruled by an abusive father - a philandering used-car salesman hooked on booze, guns and discipline. And whenever their mother's coffee mug is empty they hurry to refill it with whiskey, for they know she's living precariously in the wake of the strange unspeakable act she once committed against the family.These falling angels - tough-talking Lou; sensible, sentimental Norma; chic, naïve Sandy - go through rites of passage each in her own way. They turn to drugs, swinging sixties sex, schmaltzy fantasy - and, repeatedly, to one another. And, even after her death, they turn to their mother, and to the bizarre love they discover their father bore her, a love he must commemorate at Niagara Falls—

This story is about a little girl named Property Jones, so-called because she was left in the lost property cupboard of a bookshop when she was five years old. Property loves living in the bookshop, but she has a whopper of a secret ... she can't actually read! So Property doesn't see the newspaper article announcing the chance to win the Montgomery Book Emporium, the biggest and most magnificent bookshop in the world! When her family win the competition, Property finds herself moving to the Emporium, a magical place filled with floor upon floor of books and a very bad-tempered cat. But all is not at it seems at the Emporium and soon Property Jones finds herself in a whole heap of trouble.

Bill Bryson's first travel book opened with the immortal line, `I come from Des Moines. Somebody had to.' In this deeply funny and personal memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was, in the curious world of 1950s Middle America.

Richard Jury is supposed to be on holiday when the telephone call comes. And in any case, what has sudden death on American soil to do with an English police superintendent? But when the victim turns out to be British by birth, and to have a distant connection with Jury's old acquaintance Lady Cray, he reluctantly pries himself loose from his pint at the Jack and Hammer.

Bill Bryson goes to Kenya at the invitation of Care International, the charity dedicated to working with local communities to eradicate poverty around the world. It is a country that shares many serious human and environmental problems with the rest of Africa : refugees, AIDS, drought and grinding poverty. Travelling around the country, Bryson casts his inimitable eye on a continent new to him, and as a result publishes - the diary. (Adapted from verso)