Dolphin books

Described by the author as a "breathless catalogue", designed to be "read through accelerando from beginning to end without a break", this little book is a lively collection of the games being played and the rhymes being recited by children in London streets around the time of the Second World War. In order to convey the momentum and verve of the play described, and the exuberant inventiveness of the children, Douglas often quotes verbatim the descriptions given to him by the children themselves.

Many forms of individual and family life in the Middle East today are still reminiscent of those of the Biblical world. Basing his study on these fundamental similarities, the author both brings to life the world of the Bible and documents a rapidly changing civilization. His comprehensive analysis of Middle Eastern sexual customs helps to explain the attitudes toward romantic love, incest, marriage, adultery, family life, and the position of women in society found in the Bible -- as well as many other aspects of life in the Middle East.

A factual account yet written of the development of British policy in the light of democratic opinion in the last decade.

This vivid biography, written by John Dickson Carr, a giant in the field of mystery fiction, benefits from his full access to the archives of the eminent Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—to his notebooks, diaries, press clippings, and voluminous correspondence. Like his creation Sherlock Holmes, Doyle had "a horror of destroying documents," and until his death in 1930, they accumulated to vast amount throughout his house at Windlesham. They provide many of the words incorporated by Carr in this lively portrayal of Doyle's forays into politics, his infatuation with spiritualism, his literary ambitions, and dinner-table conversations with friends like H. G. Wells and King Edward VII. Carr, then, in a sense collaborates with his subject to unfold a colorful narrative that takes Doyle from his school days at Stonyhurst to Edinburgh University and a medical practice at Southsea, where he conceived the idea of wedding scientific study to criminal investigation in the fictive person of Sherlock Holmes. It also explores the private tragedy of Doyle's first marriage and long-delayed second as it follows him into the arena of public activity, propaganda, and literary output that would win him not only celebrity but also knighthood. 8 pages of black-and-white photographs are featured.