'And so, with great care, he planted his hundred acorns' While hiking through the wild lavender in a wind-swept, desolate valley in Provence, a man comes across a solitary shepherd called Elzeard Bouffier. Staying with him, he watches Elzeard sorting and then planting hundreds of acorns as he walks through the wilderness. Ten years later, after surviving the First World War, he visits the shepherd again. A young forest is slowly spreading over the valley - Elzeard has continued his work. Year after year the narrator returns to see the miracle being created: a verdant, green landscape that is testament to one man's creative instinct. miracle he is gradually creating: a verdant, green landscape that is a testament to one man's creative instinct. 'I love the humanity of this story and how one man's efforts can change the future for so many' Michael Morpurgo, Independent VINTAGE EARTH is a series of books that reveals our ever-changing relationship with the environment. These are stories old and young, set in worlds real or imagined, that allow us to explore our connection to the natural world. Transformative, wild, surprising and essential, these novels take on the most urgent story of our times.

'One of the greatest books of the century' - Guardian 'Hiding...where would we hide?... Margot and I started packing our most important belongings into a satchel. The first thing I stuck in was this diary...' In July 1942 thirteen-year-old Anne Frank and her family, fleeing the horrors of Nazi occupation, went into hiding in an Amsterdam warehouse. Over the next two years Anne vividly describes in her diary the frustrations of living in such confined quarters. This unabridged, definitive text reveals Anne's innermost thoughts and feelings as she grows up, and provides a deeply moving true-life story that comes to an abrupt and tragic end. Contains an Afterword, chronology of events and glossary of terms.

The narrator of this allegorical tale, journeying by foot across the barren plains of the lower Alps, has his thirst assuaged by the well water drawn by the shepherd Elzéard Bouffier. Thus begins the subtle parable that Giono weaves of the life-giving shepherd who chooses to live alone and carry out the work of God. Over forty years the desolate hills and lifeless villages which so oppressed the traveller are transformed by the dedication of one man. All with the help of a few acorns. Written in the 1950s, Giono’s brief story, which he hoped would help set in motion a worldwide reforestation programme, had a message ahead of its time. It has inspired many readers over the years to rediscover the harmonies of the countryside and prevent its wilful destruction. This edition is enhanced by Harry Brockway’s delightful engravings and by an afterword by Alyne Giono.

This beautiful record, on fine paper, is Crumley's homage to these noble creatures, but it is also an elegy, a love song to one swan whose silent tragedy he watched from one season to the next. 'A small mound on white feathers lies on a tussock of grass made grey by a Highland winter. It is all the monument there will ever be to the life of a swan.' With these words, and those that follow, Jim Crumley has ensured that there will be a more enduring witness to the life of this swan, and of all swans, than that pyre of white feathers. Crumley watches, year in year out, as a pair of mute swans struggles, against the odds, to raise young on a wild patch of lock. But the pen starts to lose her eggs to predators; and the cob begins to disappear for longer and longer periods. Until comes the day when a third swan, stronger and younger than the first pen, appears at the other end of the loch. This journal of a swan-watcher, as he calls himself, is an elegy to these noble creatures; and most poignantly it is a memorial to one swan, whose silent drama he has recorded.