There were no more lions any more. There had been lions once. Sometimes in the shimmer of of the heat on the plains the motion of their running still flickered on the dry wind – tawny, great and quickly gone. Sometimes the honey-coloured moon shivered to the silence of a ghost-roar on the rising air.
Jachin-Boaz lives in a dusty town where he owns a shop that sells all kinds of maps: maps to find water, love, money, whatever the heart desires. He has a son, Boaz-Jachin, for whom he is making him a master-map that will be given to him when he is a man. This map that will contain all the secrets of the other maps combined, so that he will be able to find whatever he wishes to seek.

Jachin-Boaz shows his son the map, a labor of love representing years of his life spent upon it. Rhetorically he asks, ‘What can you seek that this map will not show you how to find?’ ‘A lion?’ asks Boaz-Jachin. Disappointed, the father responds: ‘A lion. I don’t think I understand you. I don’t think you’re being serious with me. You know very well there are no lions now.’

But then Jachin-Boaz leaves home, abandoning his wife and son and taking the master-map. He leaves a note which reads ‘I have gone to look for a lion.’ In the desert outside the town, there is a palace where the last king is entombed, his lion hunt carved in stone. Boaz-Jachin, who has decided to seek out his father and ask for the map, takes a bus to the palace where he makes a powerful connection with the image of the dying lion carved in stone.

Through a simple act of sympathetic magic, the son loosens the spears and sets the lion’s spirit free, then begins his journey across land and sea to find his father.

'Walker is my name and I am the same. Riddley Walker. Walking my riddels where ever theyve took me and walking them now on this paper the same. There aint that many sir prizes in life if you take noatis of every thing. Every time will have its happenings out and every place the same. Thats why I finely come to writing all this down. Thinking on what the idear of us myt be. Thinking on that thing whats in us lorn and loan and oansome.' Composed in an English which has never been spoken and laced with a storytelling tradition that predates the written word, RIDDLEY WALKER is the world waiting for us at the bitter end of the nuclear road. It is desolate, dangerous and harrowing, and a modern masterpiece.

Frances foils Thelma's plot to trick her out of a new china set. Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

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!

Famed for her many adventures, Frances made her debut with this title over thirty years ago. In this first Frances book, the little badger adroitly delays her bedtime with requests for kisses and milk, and concerns over tigers and giants and things going bump in the night. Long a favorite for the gentle humor of its familiar going to bed ritual, Bedtime for Frances is at last available with the warmth of full color enriching Garth Williams’s original nuanced and touching art. ‘Here is the coziest, most beguiling bedtime story in many a day.’—Kirkus Reviews (pointer).

Tom is so good at fooling around that he does little else. His Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong, who thinks this is too much like having fun, calls upon the fearsome Captain Najork and his hired sportsmen to teach him a lesson. So the Captain challenges Tom to three rounds of womble, muck, and sneedball, certain that he will win. However, when it comes to fooling around, Tom doesn't fool around, and his skills prove so polished that the results of the contest are completely unexpected. . .

Riddley Walker is a novel by Russell Hoban, first published in 1980. It is generally regarded as science fiction and won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel in 1982, as well as an Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award in 1983. It was additionally nominated for the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1981.