The Codex by Douglas Preston

'Greetings from the dead', declares Maxwell Broadbent on the videotape he left behind after his mysterious disappearance. A notorious treasure hunter and tomb raider, Broadbent accumulated over half a billion dollars' worth of priceless art, gems, and artefacts before vanishing, along with his entire collection, from his mansion in New Mexico. At first, robbery is suspected, but the truth proves stranger: as a final challenge to his three sons, Broadbent has buried himself and his treasure somewhere in the world, hidden away like an ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

Arrested in 1849 for belonging to a secret group of radical utopians, Fyodor Dostoevsky was sentenced to four years in a Siberian labor camp - a terrible mental, spiritual, and physical ordeal that inspired him to write the novel The House of the Dead. Told from the point of view of a fictitious narrator - a convict serving a ten-year sentence for murdering his wife novel describes in vivid detail the horrors that Dostoevsky himself witnessed while in prison. The House of the Dead also describes the spiritual death and gradual resurrection from despair experienced by the novel’s central character ...

Animal Families

With beautiful photography and extraordinary wildlife sequences, this original and heartwarming book shows children that animals have family relationships, too-some of them just like ours! Pictures of human families are set beside animal clans to show charming similarities, as lion cubs fight over a stick, flocks of birds travel to warmer climates, and a mother monkey comforts her baby when he hurts himself. Children will recognize their own family dynamics in nature, and learn about members of the animal kingdom in an accessible and memorable way.

 

When smooth-skinned rhinoceros steals a cake from the Parsee ("from whose hat the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental splendour") he gets his just desserts--that is, cake crumbs deposited inside his skin. The itch causes him to rub and rub himself against a tree, until he becomes as wrinkled as we know him today.

The Cat that Walked by Himself is one of the best-loved cat tales ever written. It is a story of the beginning of domesticated life: Man meets Woman and they move into a cave and set up the first household. Dog, Horse, and Cow come out of the Wild Woods and become tame. But Cat refuses, “I am not a friend and I am not a servant. I am the Cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me.”

 

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