Alfie Green And The Magical Gift

A rusty key opens a dusty box hidden in Alfie's grandad's shed. Inside is an old, old book -- with magical powers. The book promises Alfie a gift, but first he must take the crystal flower across Sleepy Meadows full of Snapping Dragons to the crooked tree that is guarded by Giant Hogweeds. If Alfie succeeds he will be able to do something he has never done before! The first book in the Alfie Green series: now in paperback.

Alfie is in big trouble. He stopped Whacker Walsh and his gang from trapping bees in the park and now they are out to get him. What can he do? The wise old plant in the magical book comes up with a plan that sends Alfie back to Arcania in search of the Queen Bee in Honeycomb Mountain. But first he has to survive an attack from the blazing bushes of Firethorn Valley! Alfie needs back-up -- and he needs it NOW!

Hundreds of tiny eyes peep up at Alfie Green from the sink in his garden. Frogs! Who invited them? And when the frogs tell their friends and relations about their great new swimming pool, the place is invaded. Alfie needs help -- fast. This is a job for the magic book that Alfie has inherited from his granddad. And the magic book comes up with a very unusual way of solving Alfie's problem. New in paperback.

When a mysterious stranger suddenly turns up claiming to be Alfie's guardian, Alfie's happy days living with Tim's family are over. Soon, Alfie's trapped in a cage with a grouchy vampire and a mysterious creature called a scoffle. He's been 'collected' by werewolf hunter, Sebarino Silvertooth, who is capturing extraordinary creatures in order to sell them to researchers. Can Tim and his parents, with the help of Grandpa Werewolf and Noura, help Alfie escape before he ends up in a lab?

The circus has come to town. But it's no ordinary circus, it's Monty's Marvellous Monkey Circus and all the performers are monkeys! All the kids from Budsville are really excited, except for Alfie who suspects all is not what it seems ...

A car mechanic turned internationally acclaimed opera star, Alfie Boe has taken Broadway by storm, conquered the West End and has won the hearts of the nation. The first official bad boy of opera, this is the story of his life - the ups and the downs, from finding fame to losing his father - and of his love affair with music. A story not typical of most musical stars, Alfie's dreams of singing only became a reality when fate intervened in the form of a stranger: he was training as a car mechanic when a customer overheard him singing and told him about a London audition. Alfie tried out, got the part and has never looked back. Celebrated worldwide and lauded by Baz Luhrman and Cameron Mackintosh as the best tenor we've produced in a generation, for the first time, he will grant his millions of fans an intimate glimpse into the life of the man they adore.

Alfie is enjoying life as a werewolf - until his crazy, werewolf-hating neighbour, Mrs Chalker, arrives back in town. And she appears to have turned over a new leaf. Can Alfie trust her? Then things gets even more suspicious when two Mrs Chalker lookalikes are spotted carrying a rowing boat through the forest. There can't be three Mrs Chalkers, can there? Alfie is on his guard, but too late he discovers that the Mrs Chalkers are all part of a club dedicated to eradicating all werewolves. Alfie better watch his hairy werewolf back...

As any reader of Jo Walton's Among Others might guess, Walton is both an inveterate reader of SF and fantasy, and a chronic re-reader of books. In 2008, then-new science-fiction mega-site Tor.com asked Walton to blog regularly about her re-reading—about all kinds of older fantasy and SF, ranging from acknowledged classics, to guilty pleasures, to forgotten oddities and gems. These posts have consistently been among the most popular features of Tor.com. Now this volumes presents a selection of the best of them, ranging from short essays to long reassessments of some of the field's most ambitious series. Among Walton's many subjects here are the Zones of Thought novels of Vernor Vinge; the question of what genre readers mean by "mainstream"; the underappreciated SF adventures of C. J. Cherryh; the field's many approaches to time travel; the masterful science fiction of Samuel R. Delany; Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children; the early Hainish novels of Ursula K. Le Guin; and a Robert A. Heinlein novel you have most certainly never read. Over 130 essays in all, What Makes This Book So Great is an immensely readable, engaging collection of provocative, opinionated thoughts about past and present-day fantasy and science fiction, from one of our best writers. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.