On A Dark Dark Night

It's a dark, dark night with lots of creaks, booms, knocks and squeaks! Open the pages and curl up with your favorite someone for this just spooky enough book with a sweet surprise ending.

Upon awakening from his long winter's nap, Frog spends a happy day playing with his friends but when he reaches his pond after dark, he sees a huge pond monster and needs his friends' help to face it.

As Mouse runs through the moonlit town towards a big, dark house, all around him there are strange shapes and shadows, just waiting to jump out.

Ned the hedgehog is looking for a home in the cold, dark forest. He needs somewhere warm and cosy to sleep, but all he keeps finding are other creatures' homes: rabbits', foxes', owls', bats'. Will he ever find a snug safe bed of his own? This beautiful book is written and illustrated by award-winning author and illustrator Tim Hopgood. • Yellow/Band 3 books offer varied sentence structure and natural language • Text type: A story with predictable structure and patterned language. • A map of the forest on pages 14-15 shows Ned's journey and all the animals he encounters along the way. • Curriculum links: Knowledge and understanding of the World

Fearless Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson travels to Chicago to trap the head of a notorious crime family, in a high-stakes, nail-biting mission that sees her trapped in one of the city's tallest buildings during a blackout... 'A real cracker' Mark Billingham 'My kind of book' Lee Child 'Like Midnight Run, but much darker ... really, really good' Ian Rankin ________________ A city in darkness. A building in lockdown. A score that can only be settled in blood... Working off the books for FBI Special Agent Alex Monroe, Florida bounty-hunter Lori Anderson and her partner, JT, head to Chicago. Their mission: to entrap the head of the Cabressa crime family. The bait: a priceless chess set that Cabressa is determined to add to his collection. An exclusive high-stakes poker game is arranged in the penthouse suite of one of the city's tallest buildings, with Lori holding the cards in an agreed arrangement to hand over the pieces. But, as night falls and the game plays out, stakes rise and tempers flare. When a power failure plunges the city into darkness, the building goes into lockdown. But this isn't an ordinary blackout, and the men around the poker table aren't all who they say they are. Hostages are taken, old scores resurface and the players start to die. And that's just the beginning... ________________ Praise for the Lori Anderson Series 'This is romping entertainment that moves faster than a bullet' Jake Kerridge, Sunday Express 'If you like your action to race away at full tilt, then this whirlwind of a thriller is a must' Deirdre O'Brien, Sunday People 'With convincing, gritty local detail, unflinching violence, and a subplot of red-hot romance, all narrated by a likeable, fast-talking heroine, this punchy and powerful adventure will leave you wanting more' Sunday Mirror 'Stripper-turned-bounty hunter Lori, with her sickly young daughter in tow, gets into high-octane escapes when she sets out to bring her former lover and mentor to justice. Lively' Sunday Times 'The non-stop twists and turns – plus Lori's constant dilemma as she is torn between the instincts of motherhood and the need to stay focused on her perilous mission – draw in readers like a magnet and keep them hooked to the action right up to the emotional conclusion' Burnley Gazette 'Deep Down Dead is an impressive thriller, the kind of book that comfortably sits alongside seasoned pros at the top of their game. Sultry and suspenseful, it marks a welcome first vow for an exceptional new voice' Good Reading Magazine 'Gripping, entertaining and utterly addictive, this is a cracking start to an enthralling new crime series...' Lancashire Evening Post 'Suspense, action, romance, danger and a plot that will keep you reading into the wee small hours. I loved it' Lisa Gray, Daily Record 'Fresh, fast and zinging with energy' Sunday Mirror

Achille Mbembe is one of the world’s most profound critics of colonialism and its consequences, a major figure in the emergence of a new wave of French critical theory. His writings examine the complexities of decolonization for African subjectivities and the possibilities emerging in its wake. In Out of the Dark Night, he offers a rich analysis of the paradoxes of the postcolonial moment that points toward new liberatory models of community, humanity, and planetarity. In a nuanced consideration of the African experience, Mbembe makes sweeping interventions into debates about citizenship, identity, democracy, and modernity. He eruditely ranges across European and African thought to provide a powerful assessment of common ways of writing and thinking about the world. Mbembe criticizes the blinders of European intellectuals, analyzing France’s failure to heed postcolonial critiques of ongoing exclusions masked by pretenses of universalism. He develops a new reading of African modernity that further develops the notion of Afropolitanism, a novel way of being in the world that has arisen in decolonized Africa in the midst of both destruction and the birth of new societies. Out of the Dark Night reconstructs critical theory’s historical and philosophical framework for understanding colonial and postcolonial events and expands our sense of the futures made possible by decolonization.

Every human life is made up of the light and the dark, the happy and the sad, the vital and the deadening. How you think about this rhythm of moods makes all the difference. Our lives are filled with emotional tunnels: the loss of a loved one or end of a relationship, aging and illness, career disappointments or just an ongoing sense of dissatisfaction with life. Society tends to view these “dark nights” in clinical terms as obstacles to be overcome as quickly as possible. But Moore shows how honoring these periods of fragility as periods of incubation and positive opportunities to delve the soul’s deepest needs can provide healing and a new understanding of life’s meaning. Dark Nights of the Soul presents these metaphoric dark nights not as the enemy, but as times of transition, occasions to restore yourself, and transforming rites of passage, revealing an uplifting and inspiring new outlook on such topics as: • The healing power of melancholy • The sexual dark night and the mysteries of matrimony • Finding solace during illness and in aging • Anxiety, anger, and temporary Insanities • Linking creativity, spirituality, and emotional struggles • Finding meaning and beauty in the darkness

Reading St. John of the Cross’s Dark Night can be daunting; living the dark experience of purification it describes can be much more so. The description of the dark nights (yes, there is more than one!) which St. John presents seems so stark and painful that one might be tempted to just close the book and stop reading. On top of that, both the process St. John describes and the language he uses can be confusing and intimidating. The language of 16th-century scholasticism is not easily understood by 21st-century readers living in a completely different culture and context. Perhaps even more challenging is that fact that our modern lives, filled with the non-stop clutter of social media and technology, as well as comfort and ease, do not prepare most of us well to honestly look into our own depths to see who we are and who we are intended to become as fully alive human beings. Fortunately we now have this helpful book to guide us to that full life which St. John invites us to in The Dark Night. Father Marc Foley here combines his own theological and psychological background, as well as his experience as a spiritual guide, to help modern readers understand the experiences, challenges, and graced events of the purifying nights of sense and spirit. In addition to exploring certain key terms that John uses in Spanish and their meaning in the saint’s time and today, Father Marc includes pertinent selections from a wide range of writers, ancient to modern, that illustrate the themes he covers. Each chapter concludes with insightful questions for personal reflection or group discussion. The book has a comprehensive index.