Simon Vance

What can smell like bubblegum, glow neon green at night, be poisonous and yet still eaten by humans, and even help create rain? The answer is mushrooms! From their hidden networks underground to the fruiting body above, mushrooms can do incredible things. But don't call them plants-mushrooms are fungi. They're more closely related to animals like you!

This beautiful tale follows a raindrop's journey on Earth, from the time of the dinosaurs to the creation of the earliest cities and beyond. It explains how Earth has depended on the same water supply throughout its existence by flowing and falling all around us, fueling and forming much of what we have seen and used for millions of years.Featuring beautiful narration and educational back matter including an explanation of the water cycle, the importance...

Lisbeth Salander has been forged by a brutal childhood and horrific abuse. And repeated attempts on her life. The ink embedded in her skin is a constant reminder of her pledge to fight against the injustice she finds on every side. Confinement to the secure unit of a women's prison is intended as a punishment. Instead, Lisbeth finds herself in relative safety. Flodberga is a failing prison, effectively controlled by the inmates, and for a computer...

The disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden, gnaws at her octogenarian uncle, Henrik Vanger. He is determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. He hires crusading journalist Mikael Blomkvist, recently at the wrong end of a libel case, to get to the bottom of Harriet's disappearance. Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-three-year-old, pierced, tattooed genius hacker, possessed...

You Only Live Twice is the eleventh novel in Ian Fleming's James Bond series of stories. It was first published in 1964. It was the last Fleming novel published in his lifetime. It is the concluding chapter in what is known as the "Blofeld Trilogy," following after Thunderball and On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The story starts eight months after the murder of Tracy Bond, which occurred at the end of On Her Majesty's Secret Service. James Bond is...

Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Antoinette, Baudelaire, Baron Haussmann, the real-life Mimi of La Boheme, Proust, Charles de Gaulle--these and many more are Robb's cast of characters in a series of stories about the Paris you never knew.

George Hall's comfortable retirement is shattered by the madness of family life as he and his family prepare for his daughter Katie's wedding.

A glittering, evocative, fascinating, story-filled portrait of Venice, the ultimate city, embracing facts and romance, history and artists, carnival masks and leper colonies, wars and sieges, and scandals and seductions.

Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin form a friendship in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy is described.