What would literary lions tell us about cooking, cleaning, and gardening? A three-book collection of parody and practical advice by a "brilliant" humorist ( The Financial Times).The Household Tips of Great Writers covers all your household needs, indoors and outdoors, from pruning a rose bush with Pablo Neruda to mending a dripping tap with Jean-Paul Sartre. Throwing a tea party? Irvine Welsh has the recipe for the perfect chocolate cake, though t...

Twelve great authors offer their top tips on gardening, from Sylvia Plath's struggles with autumn bulbs, to Pablo Neruda on pruning roses at the end of a romance. In Brecht's mini opera, a courageous mother's fight to protect her tender young potatoes from the army reveals the tragic consequences of a crop being harvested too soon. On Zola's allotment, a striking miner finds more brutal and perilous than anything he imagined at the coalface. Carver's anti-hero plants up a neglected hanging...

For too long DIY books have suffered the neglect of the literary establishment. Finally, here in one volume, are the essential DIY tips of the world's greatest writers. Dostoyevsky tells of a young man employed by an elderly lady to retile her bathroom; Caesar puts up a shelf for his rebellious tribe of adolescenti; the existentialist hero of the Sartre pastiche is both disgusted and nauseated to discover in a blocked sink the revelation of his own condition. We also learn how to ...

'As with the commander of an army, or the leader of any enterprise, so it is with a Great Writer and his house.'Great Writer's Household Tips covers all your household needs, indoors and outdoors, from pruning a rose bush with Pablo Neruda to mending a dripping tap with Jean-Paul Sartre. Throwing a tea-party? Irvine Welsh has the recipe for the perfect chocolate cake, though that's not all he's cooking. Brilliant, hilarious, and always pitch-perfe...

An easy to read, how-to guide with complete instructions for creating lifelike portraits of wild and domestic animals using colored pencils.In this comprehensive, thirty-two–page book, accomplished artist Debra Kauffman Yaun shares her artistic insights and techniques for creating strikingly realistic animal drawings in colored pencil. The book opens with essential information on choosing tools and materials, understanding color theory, and creating basic pencil str...

Through a series of journal entries, a woman records her thoughts and feelings over the course of a summer, shortly after giving birth to her child. Confined to her bedroom on the advice of her husband, a physician, “The Yellow Wallpaper” chronicles the woman’s increasing instability, as she becomes obsessed with the yellow wallpaper covering the walls of her room.“The Yellow Wallpaper” is considered one of the earliest American feminist works of fiction and is unique for author Ch...

Put a new face on fun!No matter what your experience level, you can turn everyday faces into sweet, funny or frightening works of art that move, laugh, grow and always make people smile! The first half of this book features fun, friendly transitions, such as birds and butterflies, puppies and princesses, knights and night skies. Part Two crosses over to the dark side with strikingly horrible, downright unnerving personas, including vampires, zombies, gargoyles and ...

Playfulness, spare elegance, and wit epitomize the poetry of Billy Collins.With his distinct voice and accessible language, America’s two-term Poet Laureate has opened the door to poetry for countless people for whom it might otherwise remain closed.Like the present book’s title, Collins’s poems are filled with mischief, humor, and irony, “Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address / only those in my own time zone”–but also with quiet observation, int...

Chickens are the best choice for the first time livestock owner. And you can keep them even if you live in a town or have only a small amount of land. Keeping chickens is a fun and absorbing hobby, and there is nothing more rewarding than collecting and eating your own fresh eggs. This concise e-guide contains sound, practical advice and looks at exactly what you need to get started: from selecting the best breeds of chicken for your garden, housing, feeding, caring, and mana...

Kobo Abe, the internationally acclaimed author of Woman in the Dunes*,* combines wildly imaginative fantasies and naturalistic prose to create narratives reminiscent of the work of Kafka and Beckett.In this eerie and evocative masterpiece, the nameless protagonist gives up his identity and the trappings of a normal life to live in a large cardboard box he wears over his head. Wandering the streets of Tokyo and scribbling madly on the interior walls of his box, he d...

Britain's favourite gardener Alan Titchmarsh has also been the most popular contributor to Gardeners' World magazine for the last twenty years.This collection of his very best columns, demonstrates just why he is regularly voted the readers' favourite. His brilliant writings are, in turn, practical - just how far back should we prune our roses? - opinionated - I always rail at people who go out on a Sunday afternoon to tidy their gardens. I mean, a garden is no...

A brief overview of Orchids as they were collected and grown in the late 19th century.