Steve Simpson's remarkable collection of poetry and illustrations is dream-like, playful and wildly inventive. Here is a selection of the beings within: The detective, who carelessly morphs into birds and insects, and cannot choose between brooding and moping, until a stylish grayscale client with retrolescent highlights appears. Proteus, Homo Sapiens Beta, who discovered fire and put it out, who created a rudimentary encyclopedia that he pedaled across Gondwanaland on weekends. Millie, th...

Steve Simpson's mesmerizing collection of short fiction and illustrations is surreal and wildly imaginative, with touches of playfulness throughout. Here is a selection of the beings within: At Claire's school, the walls were cardboard, and her chain-smoking math teacher never allowed numbers to be mentioned. He used a drawing of a press to flatten slices of air into tissue paper for kites, and he was Claire's favorite, because all the other teachers were ghosts. One day, with a little pas...

Sometime in his mid-teens, Steve Simpson decided he wanted to become a hermit. Socially awkward and athletically inept, he felt isolated from his classmates in a huge suburban high school. Finding no joy in the company of his peers, he sought his joy in nature; in the forest preserves and state parks of the Midwest and in kayaking the waters of the region. He read Walden at an impressionable age, and the movie Jeremiah Johnson helped to reinforce the notion that true happiness could be fou...

Sometime in his mid-teens, Steve Simpson decided he wanted to become a hermit. Socially awkward and athletically inept, he felt isolated from his classmates in a huge suburban high school. Finding no joy in the company of his peers, he sought his joy in nature; in the forest preserves and state parks of the Midwest and in kayaking the waters of the region. He read Walden at an impressionable age, and the movie Jeremiah Johnson helped to reinforce the notion that true happiness could be fou...

Freedom of speech is indispensable to a free and civilized society, yet this precious right is increasingly under attack today.Islamic totalitarians repeatedly threaten and kill those deemed blasphemers while our political leaders stand idly by—and many intellectuals blame the victims. College students seek “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” from controversial ideas. The government harasses tea party groups, preventing them from speaking out during an election, and it investigate...

The first book in a laugh-out-loud, high-voltage, action-packed adventure series for 8+ readers from hugely popular TV personality, Alesha Dixon, written in collaboration with Katy Birchall.10-year-old Aurora Beam lives at home with her utterly unremarkable family - until the day she sees her little sister being picked on in the playground and suddenly beams of light shoot out of her fingers!It's time for her parents to drop a life-changi...

An imaginative short story inspired by real events, taken from the collection, BEYOND THE STARS, and written and illustrated by two award-winning talentsTold from the perspective of the Russian dog Tsygan, this is the story of the first living creatures to be sent into space – the ‘star dogs’ of the title.Roddy Doyle’s typically accessible voice is complemented by the illuminating illustrations of Steve Simpson, together immersing a new generation of young readers in the in...

The second book in a laugh-out-loud, high-voltage, action-packed adventure series for 8+ readers from hugely popular TV personality, Alesha Dixon, written in collaboration with Katy Birchall.Aurora Beam is finding this saving-the-world lark isn't all its cracked up to be.World-famous overnight after she foiled the Blackout Burglar's plot to steal a precious stone, she's living in the full glare of the media's flash bulbs: everyone wants a piece of the coo...

The fourth book in a laugh-out-loud, high-voltage, action-packed adventure series for 8+ readers from hugely popular TV personality, Alesha Dixon, written in collaboration with Katy Birchall.Aurora Beam is reeling after the bombshell revelation of the secret supervillain's identity... but is there someone else even *more* powerful pulling the strings?Light is fading across the globe, with whole countries being plunged into darkness and chaos.Auror...