This is book 1 of a fascinating and educational series. "Peter's Railway" is the story of a young boy who lives with his family in a cottage at the edge of his Grandpa's farm. It is a long way by road between their two houses and Grandpa does not own a car. So to make visiting each other easier, they build a miniature steam railway. They have some adventures along the way and use all sorts of machines and tools to help them in their great building project. In quiet moments, Grandpa tells Peter some incredible tales from the old times on the railways. The story ends with the grand opening ceremony with the first steam train running the full length of the scenic railway, through the fields, woods and past the river. The book combines the story with lots of simply explained technical information and diagrams. They are on pages at the ends of relevant chapters to avoid getting in the way of the story.

Book 6 in the hardback series - Racing Trains Peter's Railway is a story about a young boy who lives at Grandpa's farm. After building a miniature railway across the farm and then completing an amazing 5 mile extension to the line, Peter is ready for some more thrilling adventures. As their engineering skills progress the children are given more responsibility on the railway, and are delighted when they are given the task of completing a model Stirling Single locomotive - a perfect project for the summer! After watching the mainline train thunder past their miniature railway, the children were asking how fast was it travelling, and how fast could Fiery Fox go? Peter, always one for tinkering and creating things, comes up with just the ticket to measure speed - a computer-powered speedometer This leads to all sorts of adventures and the inevitable races along the track to test out Peter's new invention and to find out how fast trains can go! As in the previous books in the series, there is technical information and diagrams at the end of relevant chapters. In this book the topics explored are: how wheel size affects speed, pistons speed, work, power, computer programs, boilers, and much more...

This is book 2 in the series. Peter and his Grandpa have built a miniature steam railway across their farm, linking their houses. It is a scenic journey, crossing fields, woodland and running beside a river. For Peter the great excitement of this book is learning to drive the steam engine, Fiery Fox. It is what he has been waiting for since they started to build the railway. Apart from one disastrous escapade, everything works as they intended. The story finishes with the railway running at night, taking Grandma to a surprise birthday dinner. They also extend the railway and build a turntable so the engine can always face forwards for pulling the trains. As with Book 1, the story is combined with lots of simply explained technical information and diagrams, contained in pages at the ends of relevant chapters. More parts of the steam engine and railway are explored.

This is book 3 in the series. Peter and his Grandpa have built a miniature steam railway across their farm, linking their houses. It is a scenic journey, crossing fields, woodland and running beside a river. In this third book they extend the line to Yockletts Village. They tell Grandma the extension is for her to go shopping, but they have a secret plan to run trains at high speed. Along the way the two heroes discover a long forgotten traction engine which they put back to work and Grandma has a hair-raising escape. To celebrate the opening of the new line, The Great Train Race is organised with lots of visiting locomotives. Who will win? As in the previous books, the technical information and diagrams are at the end of relevant chapters, explaining how railways and engines work. Some of the drawings are familiar from the first two books, but the science and engineering explored is different. If the reader has enjoyed the technical information in books one and two, they will find this book takes them further.

This unique selection of plays by Luigi Pirandello contains some of his best-known works, such as Six Characters in Search of an Author - an absurdist piece in which the characters, actors and Pirandello himself interact during the rehearsal of a fictional play within the play - and Henry IV - a tragicomic tale of a man who falls from a horse and believes himself to be the eponymous Holy Roman Emperor. Preoccupied with the nature of truth and delusion, and treading dangerously on the borderline between sanity and madness, Pirandello's plays are a daring exploration of human actions and the dark motives lying behind them, and the culmination of the naturalistic school of theatre inaugurated by authors such as Ibsen and Chekhov.