Winterfrost

An ordinary Danish Christmas turns extraordinary when a family overlooks an important folkloric tradition. Christmas has come, and with it a sparkling white winterfrost over the countryside. But twelve-year-old Bettina’s parents have been called away unexpectedly, leaving her in charge of the house, the farm, and baby Pia. In all the confusion, Bettina’s family neglects to set out the traditional bowl of Christmas rice pudding for the tiny nisse who are rumored to look after the family and their livestock. No one besides her grandfather ever believed the nisse were real, so what harm could there be in forgetting this silly custom? But when baby Pia disappears during a nap, the magic of the nisse makes itself known. To find her sister and set things right, Bettina must venture into the miniature world of these usually helpful, but sometimes mischievous folk. A delightful winter adventure for lovers of the legendary and miraculous.

‘Possibly the most accurate picture of police work in crime fiction today... An absolute cracker’ – Mike Ripley Denton is having more than its fair share of crime. A serial killer is murdering local prostitutes; a man demolishing his garden shed uncovers a long-buried skeleton; there is an armed robbery at a local minimart and a ram raid at a jewellers. But Detective Inspector Jack Frost's main concern is for the safety of a missing eight-year-old. And soon after another girl is reported missing, her body is found . . . raped and strangled. Then Frost's prime suspect hangs himself in his cell, leaving a note blaming Frost for driving him to suicide. Frost may be coarse, insubordinate and fearless. But he’s also in serious trouble.

It is April 1948 and the Second World War had been over for two and a half years. Britain was trying to get back to normal, but food and clothes were still being rationed and almost every street in London had its own bomb site, added to which, everything was in short supply, unemployment was high and life was still very difficult and hard for everyone. One ex-serviceman’s life was much like another’s; glad to be alive and free, but beset by guilt and sadness for everything that happened to them in the war and filled with bitterness about the way they had been treated since it ended. Arnold Smith is typical of a soldier who eventually came home, but could not settle back into the old routine, although he had tried hard to, for the last two years. When his sweetheart gave him the bad news that she had found someone else, it was the final straw, so he packed a few things in a bag, got a bus to London's, Paddington railway station and bought a ticket for the next train out. He was not even too sure of where it was going, but he was just pleased that it was going somewhere new! The book follows Arnold to a new life with new people, but the past keeps catching up with him. Whilst romance and adventure are present, they simply give Arnold and his friends the opportunity to live life to the full and put the past behind them, or to allow grief and self pity to blind them to whatever new opportunities it had in store for them.

This volume reviews coastal wetlands, which comprse marine and brackish salt marshes of temperate regions and mangrove swamps in tropical and subtropical regions of the world. It includes information on the general nature of wetlands; the physiographic conditions under which they develop; the climatic conditions and soils associated with wetlands; the fauna found in them; and the uses to which wetlands have been put and the changes such uses involve.

London ; New York : Wiley, c1977.