Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen's birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer's death in April 1992. It was the first book to offer both a complete survey of Messiaen's extraordinary achievements and a comprehensive guide to his music, also examining in detail the enduring inspiration which Messiaen derived from his religious faith and from his lifelong passion for ornithology and the natural world. The contributors, all of whom have made a special study of the composer, include two biographers of Messiaen and a number of the foremost interpreters of his music. Messiaen's influential teaching is recalled in essays by three of his pupils (Pierre Boulez, George Benjamin, and Peter Hill), and the composer is also remembered in a remarkable and moving contribution from his widow and devoted musical companion, the pianist Yvonne Loriod.

For big sisters and little brothers in dens, burrows, and houses everywhere. "Mildred," said Father Muskrat, "it is true that Harvey is selfish and inconsiderate, but he is not stupid and no-good. Mildred is loudmouthed and bossy," Father said to Harvey, "but she is not mean and rotten." When Mildred goes off to a big party where little brothers are not invited, Harvey finds a secret club in a secret place where big sisters are not allowed to be members. But when Harvey's lonesomeness overpowers his stubbornness, he discovers that a secret club with two members is much better.

Funny, thought-provoking and moving, this much loved story is a true classic. 'What are we, Papa?' the toy mouse child asked his father. 'I don't know,' the father answered. 'We must wait and see.' So begins the story of a tin father and son who dance under a Christmas tree until they break the ancient clockwork rules and are themselves broken. Thrown away, then rescued from a dustbin and repaired by a tramp, they set out on a dangerous quest for a family and a place of their own - the magnificent doll's house, the plush elephant and the tin seal they had once know in the toy shop. 'Hugely funny, provocative, pathetic and heroic.' TLS 'Brilliantly plotted . . . a spellbinder . . . it has a style that glows and crackles.' Spectator

'This is what literature is meant to be' Anthony Burgess 'O what we ben! And what we come to...' Wandering a desolate post-apocalyptic landscape, speaking a broken-down English lost after the end of civilization, Riddley Walker sets out to find out what brought humanity here. This is his story. 'Funny, terrible, haunting and unsettling, this book is a masterpiece' Observer 'A timeless portrayal of the human condition ... frightening and uncanny' Will Self 'A book that I could read every day forever and still be finding things' Max Porter

Frances and Thelma are friends -- most of the time

Thelma always seems to get Frances into trouble. When she tricks Frances into buying her tea set, it's the last straw. Can Frances show her that it's better to lose a bargain than lose a friend?

Frances, one of children's best-loved characters for over 30 years, now springs to life even more in Bread and Jam for Frances,beautifully reillustrated in sparkling full color by Lillian Hoban. In this memorable story, Frances decides that bread and jam are all she wants to eat, and her understanding parents grant her wish'at breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even snacktime. Can there ever be too much bread and jam?

'Sparkles with classical allusions and a wisecracking humour ... it is pure joy' Daily Telegraph It all begins the night a leaflet comes through the door of unsuccessful novelist Herman Orff, promising a magical cure for writer's block. The strange treatment plunges him into a hallucinatory London dreamworld populated by figures mythical and real: a severed talking head, Vermeer's girl with a pearl earring, his lost love Luise and, beneath it all, the Kraken awaiting. As Herman will discover, creating art is a tough business. 'One of his most accessibly entertaining books' The Times 'Short, smart and fizzy, the novel seeks out the roots of creativity with none of the solemnity that phrase implies' New Statesman

With London in the grip of a heat wave, a man takes refuge from the scorching sun in a nearby tea shop, only to share his table with a stranger who seems determined to make conversation. Too polite to ignore him, he becomes his reluctant confidant, as harmless small talk gives way to dark memories. "Missing" is the first of three unsettling stories of guilty secrets, past hurts, and haunted lives from one of the foremost English writers of the 20th century. Remembered chiefly as a poet, and in particular for his visionary poem "The Traveller," Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) was also acclaimed as a writer of short stories.

'An original ... a delight to read' The Times On an ordinary day in a strangely unfamiliar London, Kleinzeit is fired from his advertising job and told he must go to hospital with a skewed hypotenuse. There on Ward A4, he falls in love with the divine, rosy-cheeked Sister and is sent spinning into a quest involving, among other things, a glockenspiel, sheets of yellow paper, Orpheus, the Underground and that dirty chimpanzee, Death. 'Kleinzeit, is a sort of holy fool, a fierce, lonely intelligence desperately trying to make sense of a hopeless world. A tour de force ... entirely delightful' Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard

Frances doesn't think her younger sister Gloria can be her best friend. Besides, Albert is Frances's best friend. But when Albert has a no-girls baseball game, Franes sets out to prove to Albert a thing or two about friendship - and what girls can do. Along the way, Frances discovers that sisters can indeed be friends... maybe even best friends.

s her little sister Gloria's birthday approaches, Frances wavers between being generous'and being jealous. ‘[Frances] is every youngster who chafes at being the un-birthday child.

Frances is a fussy eater. In fact, the only thing she likes is bread and jam. She won't touch her squishy soft-boiled egg. She trades away her chicken-salad sandwich at lunch. She turns up her nose at boring veal cutlets. Unless Mother can come up with a plan, Frances just might go on eating bread and jam forever

'Superb ... Pilgermann is history, metaphysics, a tangle of mysteries, profound and simple' Guardian It is 1097 and a traveller arrives in the great, walled city of Antioch with a vision of a beautiful and mysterious geometric design that will change the lives of all those who see it. Pilgermann is a mesmerising recreation of the world of the Crusades, following its unlikely hero and those he meets on a journey of picaresque horror across a Europe of hatreds, visions and a desperate wish for salvation. 'A dark treatise on the mysterious nature of things ... The world according to Pilgermann is a brutish place borrowing from Hieronymus Bosch, pilgrimage narrative, allegory and the historical novel' The New York Times Book Review 'A strange and beautiful work' Evening Standard

'A piece of invention as original as any of Tolkien's or C.S. Lewis's' New Statesman 'I have gone to look for a lion.' In a world where lions have become extinct, the map-maker Jachin-Boaz nevertheless abandons his wife and son to find one, leaving just this note. But his decision has unexpected consequences. He will be pursued by his son, Boaz-Jachin, and by something else: a tawny-skinned, amber-eyed beast from another place and time, a bringer of life and death. 'Magic at work ... Funny as well as beautiful' Irish Times 'Hoban is unclassifiable, thank goodness. His narrative is so minutely and compellingly realistic that after a time you cease to notice that he has stood reality on its head' Sunday Times

'Wonderful, life-saving ... places Russell Hoban among the greatest, timeless novelists' The Times Born to swim thousands of miles in the ocean, the giant sea turtles are now trapped in a tank of golden-green water at London Zoo. But not for much longer. Two lonely people, a bookseller and a children's illustrator, have begun thinking turtle thoughts. As they come together to hatch a plan to release the turtles into the sea, their diaries reveal how they find their own lives changing in imperceptible and quite unintended ways. 'Crackles with witty detail, mordant intelligence and self-deprecating irony' Time 'This lovely human fable seems to me one of the best things of its kind - a fine and touching achievement' John Fowles

In The Lobster's Birthday and Other Stories, discover what happens when you wake up thirsty in the middle of the night. How do you play a trick on the most insufferable boy in the village, while helping out Aunt Arabelle at the same time? What would you do on your birthday if you were a lobster? Find out when you join Harriet, Just William, and Harold and Gloria in this comical collection of short stories. Chucklers is a series of funny novels, short stories, anthologies and comics that make reading a pleasure for 7-11 year olds. There is something for everyone in this varied collection which is packed with fantastic illustrations. Books contain inside cover notes to support children in their reading. Help with children's reading development also available at www.oxfordowl.co.uk. The series is written by top children's authors and edited by award-winning author Jeremy Strong. The books are finely levelled, making it easy to match every child to the right book.

'Recalls Orwell's 1984 and Wells's The Time Machine ... a revelation' Guardian On 4 November 2052, Fremder Gorn is discovered drifting in deep space. He has no spacesuit, no helmet, no oxygen, but he is still alive: the sole survivor from the mysteriously vanished ship Clever Daughter. How did he get here? To find out, Fremder must search through memory, dream and the unknowable fragments of his own mind. 'A wildly imaginative piece of science fiction' The Times 'Unputdownable, moving, ingenious ... it will remain in my head with troubling images and scenes for a long time' A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

'Russell Hoban's imagination knows no bounds ... darkly funny and profound' The Times 'You want to buy my death for a million pounds!' Piccadilly Circus tube station is an unlikely location for a pact with the Devil, but this is where Jonathan Fitch first meets Mr Rinyo-Clacton. Devastated after his girlfriend Serafina has left him, Jonathan agrees that this mysterious stranger will pay him a million pounds for a year, if he agrees to die at the end of it. What could possibly go wrong? 'A poignant and engaging fable of ownership and surrender' Philip Hensher, Mail on Sunday 'Nothing is accidental or optional in this jewelled clockwork egg of a book ... Hoban is a hugely skilled, moving and endlessly entertaining writer' The Times Literary Supplement