A quest is never what you expect it to be.

Elizabeth Madeline Martin spends her days in a retirement home in Cape Town, watching the pigeons and squirrels on the branch of a tree outside her window. Bedridden, her memory fading, she can recall her early childhood spent in a small wood-and-iron house in Blackridge on the outskirts of Pietermaritzburg. Though she remembers the place in detail – dogs, a mango tree, a stream – she has no idea of where exactly it is. ‘My memory is full of blotches,’ she tells her daughter Julia, ‘like ink left about and knocked over.’

Julia resolves to find the Blackridge house: with her mother lonely and confused, would this, perhaps, bring some measure of closure? A journey begins that traverses family history, forgotten documents, old photographs, and the maps that stake out a country’s troubled past – maps whose boundaries nature remains determined to resist. Kind strangers, willing to assist in the search, lead to unexpected discoveries of ancestors and wars and lullabies. Folded into this quest are the tender conversations between a daughter and a mother who does not have long to live.

Taken as one, The Blackridge House is a meditation on belonging, of the stories we tell of home and family, of the precarious footprint of life.

A full colour map, based on digitised OS maps of Swansea of about 1919, with its medieval past overlain and important buildings picked out. The map includes an inset map of Mumbles and its medieval castle. In the Middle Ages, Swansea (Abertawe) became a centre for trade around the mouth of the river Tawe. Following Norman control of the area, Swansea Castle was established in the early 12th century and a borough charter was granted at the end of that century. Great growth began in the 17th century with the establishment of copper-smelting in the area of the lower Tawe valley, an industry which grew until Swansea was the world capital of the copper industry - hence its nickname of 'Copperopolis'. Initially using ore from Cornwall, Swansea took advantage of its local coal resources and its good port facilities to process copper, arsenic, tin, gold and other metals, using imported raw materials from all over the world. The port exported the final products, along with many tons of coal. At the time of the background map shown here, heavy industry and its spoil heaps dominated the lower Tawe valley, and extensive docks dominated the south of the town, but evidence of its medieval past and its street layout survived. The remains of the Norman castle became a workhouse and the course of the river Tawe had been altered to make access for ships easier.

A never-before-seen collection of United States National Park Service maps This book brings togethere a collection of over 400 maps produced by the United States National Park Service from 1910 to today. Photographer Brian Kelley has impulsively archived the rarely seen treasures over the past three years, uncovering a design portfolio with little to no credit to their respective designers. The growing collection displays a progressive design approach, from more typographic-driven covers, to the proliferation of duotone print production, culminating in the Unigrid system developed by Italian designer Massimo Vignelli in the 1970s.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

Unlike some other reproductions of classic texts (1) We have not used OCR(Optical Character Recognition), as this leads to bad quality books with introduced typos. (2) In books where there are images such as portraits, maps, sketches etc We have endeavoured to keep the quality of these images, so they represent accurately the original artefact. Although occasionally there may be certain imperfections with these old texts, we feel they deserve to be made available for future generations to enjoy.

A full colour map, based on digitised OS maps of Alnwick and Alnmouth of about 1920, with its Anglo-Saxon and medieval past overlain and important buildings picked out. The map's cover has a short introduction to the area's history, and on the reverse an illustrated and comprehensive gazetteer of Alnwick's and Alnmouth's main sites of historic interest. The back of the map has coloured early views of buildings, monuments and street scenes of Alnwick and Alnmouth. The map has been created by a team of people representing the various historical societies of Alnwick and Alnmouth, a number of individuals with specific local knowledge and the curators of local historical collections, including the extensive archives of both the Duke of Northumberland and Bailiffgate Museum. Members of the team have previously produced works on particular aspects of the area's history, including the town itself, local heritage heroes, the Abbey, the Shrovetide Football Game and the district during the Great War.