Martin Booth

Pati just knows the rumours are true - there is a West Country panther. Now she and SImon are setting out to track it. They're confident of their survival skills, but as they are drawn deeper and deeper on to the moors, they have to ask - what will happen when they find it? Suggested level: primary.

Sebastian is the alchemist's son, pursuing his father's enemy through the centuries. Pip and Tim can hardly believe his story. But then they themselves are caught in a web of magic and cunning, and their only hope of escape is to join Sebastian in his desperate battle against unimaginable evil. Suggested level: intermediate, junior secondary.

Nicholas Highgate, separated from his parents during the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, is smuggled to the mainland by his Chinese nurse and disguised as a Chinese boy. As he grows to manhood he witnesses the atrocities and deprivations of the Japanese occupation and is himself drawn into the Communist resistance activities. The book ends when the Japanese surrender and Nicholas is reunited with what remains of his family.

"In this study, Martin Booth crafts a tale of medical advance, religious enlightenment, political subterfuge, and human rights, of law enforcement and custom officers, cunning smugglers, street pushers, gang warfare, writers, artists, musicians, and happy-go-lucky hippies and potheads." "Booth chronicles the fascinating and often mystifying process through which cannabis, a relatively harmless substance, became outlawed throughout the Western world, and the devastating effect such legislation has on the global economy. Above all, he demonstrates how the case for decriminalization remains one of the twenty-first century's hottest topics."--BOOK JACKET.

Pip and her twin brother, Tim, join forces again with Sebastian, the alchemist's son they awakened from a centuries-long slumber, to fight against an evil magician who learns people's deepest secrets in order to control their souls. Suggested level: intermediate, secondary.

Evocative, funny and full of life - a beautifully written and observed childhood memoir of growing up in colonial Hong Kong shortly after World War 2.Martin Booth died in February 2004, shortly after finishing the book that would be his epitaph - this wonderfully remembered, beautifully told memoir of a childhood lived to the full in a far-flung outpost of the British Empire...An inquisitive seven-year-old, Martin Booth found himself with the whole of Hong Kong at his feet when his father was posted there in the early 1950s. Unrestricted by parental control and blessed with bright blond hair that signified good luck to the Chinese, he had free access to hidden corners of the colony normally closed to a Gweilo, a 'pale fellow' like him. Befriending rickshaw coolies and local stallholders, he learnt Cantonese, sampled delicacies such as boiled water beetles and one-hundred-year-old eggs, and participated in colourful festivals. He even entered the forbidden Kowloon Walled City, wandered into the secret lair of the Triads and visited an opium den. Along the way he encountered a colourful array of people, from the plink plonk man with his dancing monkey to Nagasaki Jim, a drunken child molester, and the Queen of Kowloon, the crazed tramp who may have been a member of the Romanov family.Shadowed by the unhappiness of his warring parents, a broad-minded mother who, like her son, was keen to embrace all things Chinese, and a bigoted father who was enraged by his family's interest in 'going native', Martin Booth's compelling memoir is a journey into Chinese culture and an extinct colonial way of life that glows with infectious curiosity and humour.

Bran, a massive war dog, plays a part in this story of Britain's invasion by the Romans in 43 A.D.